Video: See this New England Council interview with David Torchiana, M.D., president and CEO of Partners HealthCare, the biggest hospital system in New England, on the possible impact of Republican health-insurance legislation on, among other things, the Bay State. To see the video, please hit this link.
President-elect Trump has been meeting with healthcare leaders in recent days to discuss, among other things, the future of the Affordable Care Act, if it has one.
These have included John Noseworthy, of the Mayo Clinic, Paul Rothman, of Johns Hopkins Medicine, David Torchiana, of Partners HealthCare, and Toby Cosgrove of the Cleveland Clinic.
Also in the meeting were Bruce Moskowitz, M.D., a physician in Palm Beach, and Isaac Perlmutter, chief executive of Marvel Entertainment. The Washington Post was unable to explain what he was doing there.
Former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson also met with Mr. Trump to discuss the future of healthcare policy.
To read more, please hit this link.
David Torchiana, M.D., a cardiothoracic surgeon, has run the 2,000-doctor physicians’ group for the past 12 years. That experience, presumably, will help better align the interests and missions of physicians and the system.
He told The Boston Globe. “We know we have to soften our external relations and get ourselves out of this place of being a miscreant in Massachusetts. It’s not a place we aspire to be.”
And, he said, Partners will focus on controlling medical costs by higher efficiency, including better care coordination. That’s pretty much what all systems are promising to do.
Partners’ market power, high prices, but not always better patient outcomes, have been key to the intense opposition to its further expansion in metropolitan Boston, which has involved two Hallmark Health hospitals north of the city and South Shore Hospital south of it.
Several years ago, The Globe ran a series detailing how much higher Partners’ charges were than its competitors’ for the same services, and its special deals with insurers.
