Cooperating for better care.

hospitals

Tag Archives

Timothy J. Babineau, M.D.: Look at what works well in U.S. healthcare and build on that

March 10, 2017by Robert Whitcomb in Uncategorized tagged , ,

 

American healthcare is expensive. Too expensive. On this, there is little debate. In 2001 the median U.S. household spent 6.4 percent of its income on healthcare; by 2016, the same household spent 15.6 percent of its income on healthcare. That bigger share of the pie leaves less for other essential purchases such as food, education and housing.

The same phenomenon exists at the national level, with spending on education, the environment and social programs getting squeezed. Recent estimates from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have the American healthcare tab coming in at $3.6 trillion for 2016 and projected to continue to soar through 2025. Despite broad agreement that rising healthcare costs are unsustainable, the root causes of the rates of increase and the best ways to combat them remain the subject of some debate and confusion.

Numbers matter. The 80/20 rule—known to healthcare actuaries as the Pareto principle, posits that 80 percent of all medical spending is incurred by only 20 percent of the population. Whether a population is defined as a company, a county, or a country, most healthcare spending is for care of a small minority of individuals. Moreover, the bulk of that spending arises from either largely unavoidable or unpredictable single events (such as trauma or sudden-onset acute illnesses); such chronic conditions such as diabetes; complex episodes of care for such illnesss as cancer, and care delivered at the end of life.

A critical (but often overlooked) point is the fact that as much as 40 percent of spending during chronic and complex episodes is avoidable if providers and systems adhere to established standards of care. Reining in runaway healthcare spending must involve better management of high-cost episodes of chronic and complex care.

A key buzzword in today’s debate is “population health”. Confusion occurs when the term is interpreted as a strategy for controlling healthcare costs when it is applied across our entire population as opposed to the sickest 10 percent or 20 Percent. Wellness initiatives, early detection, the avoidance of emergency room visits, and disease prevention have undeniable value, and should all be pursued, but they will not (by themselves) sufficiently reduce healthcare spending by enough to make the system “affordable”.

As the Baby Boomers swell the ranks of Medicare beneficiaries, the inevitability of illness is the only certainty in an otherwise uncertain world. To be successful, programs, payment systemsand policies to curb healthcare spending must focus on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of care delivered to the sickest subset of the population. This is best accomplished within a completely integrated healthcare-delivery system.

American hospitals and healthcare systems are among the best in the world. Rather than asserting that “American healthcare is broken” and in need of rebuilding from scratch, a better strategy may be to look at what works well within our system and ask how we can build on those strengths while facing the escalating costs head on. Hospital systems are in the health care business, and we should not be reluctant to say so. No matter what wellness and prevention programs we collectively offer, inevitably a small subset of the population will still get very sick, and it is a core mission of health systems—working in close partnership with our primary and specialty providers—to take the very best and most efficient care of them when that happens.

Irrespective of what happens with the Affordable Care Act (ACA), as leaders in health care, we must redouble our efforts to eliminate unnecessary variations and wasteful spending in the clinical care we deliver to patients.

Rather than debate the actual percentage that is “wasteful spending” (now commonly referenced at around 30 percent) we would be better served by continuing the hard work of identifying and eliminating areas within our own systems where needless variations in care add cost without improving outcomes. As Lifespan, the system I lead, continues to evolve into a comprehensive, high-value, integrated healthcare system, we are doing just that.

Timothy J. Babineau, M.D., is president and chief executive of Providence-based Lifespan, a large hospital system, and a professor of surgery at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.

 

Hospitals should pay more attention to ancillary providers

March 3, 2017by Robert Whitcomb in Uncategorized tagged , ,

 

Andrea Simon, writing in FierceHealthcare, discusses why hospitals must pay more attention to ancillary providers, which fall into these three big categories:

“Those involved in diagnostic services such as the labs, imaging, radiology, speech and hearing testing and so forth; those who deliver care or are the therapeutic providers, from occupational therapy and physical therapy to alternative medicine and speech pathology; and those offering a wide range of care-delivery services, including skilled nursing facilities, hospice, home health services, urgent care centers, retail centers and other custodial centers.

“The ancillary care industry is large and growing even larger. According to the Ancillary Care Services Web site ancillary care is currently one of the fastest-growing sectors of healthcare, representing nearly 30% of medical spending. In addition, the ACS Provider Network includes more than 33,000 healthcare providers in 32 specialty categories, along with specialty care programs that save more than 50% on costs.”

 

“In deciding how best to use ancillary care providers amid massive changes throughout the entire healthcare spectrum, hospitals need to select partners so they can coordinate care while still offering patients choice. In addition, they would be wise to rethink how to work with both ancillary providers and medical records systems to design better ways for information to flow across the care continuum.”

To read more, please hit this link.

 

Hospitals might shut out high-fee physicians

January 22, 2017by Robert Whitcomb in Uncategorized tagged ,

Lorna Collier, in an article in Medical Economics, writes:

“More hospitals today are competing for patients using retail strategies, such as offering flat-rate, easy-to-compare bundled pricing, finds a new PwC report. As a result, physicians with high fees may find themselves shut out of hospital contracts. And that means less patient volume and less revenue.”

To read her piece, please hit this link.

Do hospitals face same fate as big-box stores?

January 19, 2017by Robert Whitcomb in Uncategorized tagged ,

mall

Empty mall in Arizona.

Becker’s Hospital Review looks at the economic future of hospitals.

Among the observations:

Failed big-box stores are “somewhat similar to hospitals and health systems. Generally, larger hospitals and health systems operate at a 0 to 10 percent margin and no more. Hospitals also have a very high cost structure, roughly half of which is composed of overhead costs that are difficult to change. The same is true of big box stores. The small margins leave big box stores and hospitals vulnerable to relatively small losses of revenues.’’

“Hospitals and health systems do not face the exact same threat from the Internet. Rather, they face a similar threat from the movement to outpatient care, changes in reimbursement levels and the loss of lots of little pieces of services to ancillary providers and alternative care settings. For example, the movement of spine procedures and joint replacements to outpatient settings and the movement of imaging, lab tests and other low-acuity services away from hospitals into urgent care and other settings may, over time, make an irreparable dent to hospital revenues. Many of these movements in isolation can be combatted. Here, like the gradual and then increased movement to e-commerce from big box stores, the combination of outward forces can be devastating’’.

“Hospitals and health systems have tried to counter this threat by becoming more integrated and trying to own markets. In the ideal situation, at least theoretically, the hospital is market essential or market dominant and can retain high prices and healthy margins. Alternatively, the health system takes directly or indirectly almost the entire insurance payment and is responsible for allocating it among itself and other providers. Health systems control more of the premium dollar by owning a health plan or taking risk and payment from a plan for services. However, many systems taking that route have found the insurance business is much riskier and tougher than they anticipated. Thus, this situation does not have an easy answer.’’

“In the hospital arena like in the big box arena, we see erosion of revenue (or much smaller increases in revenues) paired with a cost structure that remains largely unchanged. As with a lot of the big box stores, the movement to reduced revenues was relatively slow and then grew stronger to a tsunami type wave. Akin to the old story of the frog boiling. On some days, we wonder if the hospital industry is positioned to undergo a similar crisis over the next 5 + years.’’

To read more, please hit this link.

 

 

Maximizing the benefits of supply-chain management

January 3, 2017by Robert Whitcomb in Uncategorized tagged , , , ,

 

In this Becker’s Hospital Review piece, two  Cardinal Health executives answer five questions about maximizing supply-chain management.

The introduction notes:  “The supply chain can serve as a critical strategic asset to a hospital or integrated delivery network when addressing the important initiatives tied to managing costs and quality of care. Hospitals should step back from pre-existing inefficient processes and workarounds and instead focus attention on leveraging automation and technology to drive efficiencies, lower costs and improve care quality” as hospitals and health systems move toward new payment models.

To read the piece, please hit this link.

 

Insurers may soon lose ACA excuse for their soaring premiums

December 29, 2016by Robert Whitcomb in Uncategorized tagged , , , , , , ,

gillray_shakespeare_sacrificed_20_june_1789

 

Ana Mulero, writing in Healthcare Dive, notes that “2016 was a terrible year for insurance costs. Double-digit ACA premium increases were common. Insurance and provider monopolies and near-monopolies look likely to support future increases. But as we go into 2017, it’s reasonable to ask: How long will consumers put up with this?”

After all, “{T}his comes as some payers, including the five largest ones in the U.S., have remained highly profitable. Aetna, Anthem, Cigna, Humana, and Unitedhealth, four of which have multibillion-dollar plans to merge, have collectively profited more than $65.5 billion post-ACA, Public Citizen reported in October.”

Meanwhile salaries for insurance execs continue to surge. Consider, she writes:

”{S}alaries for C-suite executives were raised by 57% last year at Health Care Service Corp. (HCSC), which operates Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans in Illinois, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas, according to a recent analysis by Modern Healthcare. The top ten company executives saw their combined earnings increase from a total of $36.1 million in 2014 to $56.7 million in 2015.”

And,  “Hospitals and health systems may actually be the ones that have felt the squeeze the most, and they have acted in ways that are {also} pushing up costs.

“Health systems are consolidating at a rapid pace, and many of them say they have done so to have more leverage with insurance companies. This activity has in turn led to monopolies and duopolies on the provider side as well, which results in not only increased prices to consumers, but also a decrease in quality care as competition is significantly reduced.”

“Hospital prices in monopoly markets are more than 15% higher” than in non-monopoly markets,  says Deborah Feinstein, the Federal Trade Commission’s director of the Bureau of Competition.

“Requiring more transparency around payers’ operating costs and salaries of their C-suite execs could help address these issues. But with Republicans promising a repeal, the ACA may not be available as cover for high costs much longer.

“Thus, insurance companies looking for whom, or what, to blame for the increases may face an uncomfortable reality soon: For every finger they point, three fingers might point back at them.” And, we might add, at some monopolistic hospital systems, too.

To read her whole article, please hit this link.

Seeking new specialists for the C-Suite

December 23, 2016by Robert Whitcomb in Uncategorized tagged , , , ,

 

How do hospitals respond to the need for experts in value-based reimbursement,  population health, cybersecurity and systems’ consolidation in hospital C-Suites?

“Healthcare organizations are becoming larger and more complex,” says Lydia Ostermeier, vice president for senior executive search at B.E. Smith, told Becker’s Hospital Review. So “C-suite leaders’ roles have grown tremendously in scope. Adding additional members to the team helps take some of that load off their plate.”

Several new roles are becoming especially familiar and popular, according to Ms. Ostermeier. These include chief experience officer, chief population-health officer, chief medical-information officer, chief nursing-information officer, chief strategy officer and chief safety officer.


Ms. Ostermeir said that  when an organization needs an executive to focus exclusively on population-health management, cybersecurity, patient satisfaction or any other concentration, they should first consider the following five questions, in Becker’s words:

1. “How will the new role create value?”

2. “What will be the new leader’s primary duties?”

3. “How will the new position change the current organizational structure?”

4. “What skill sets must the leader in the given role possess?” 

5. “How will the organization communicate the change to the staff?”

To read the article, please hit this link.

The Cures Act and hospitals

December 4, 2016by Robert Whitcomb in Uncategorized tagged , , ,

 

Paul Keckley, the healthcare-sector analyst, looks at the implications of the  21st Century Cures Act for hospitals.

Among his recommendations for hospital executes for living in the Cures Act world:

  • “Formulary design and medication management policies and procedures need constant review so that competing compounds can find their way readily into a hospital’s prescribing patterns. And the hospital’s interaction with retail pharmacies should enable shared knowledge about new and emerging classes and compounds that offer the same efficacy and effectiveness at a lower rate.”
  • “Medical device utilization, purchasing, and measures of effectiveness and safety need closer scrutiny. Of particular note are two areas where compliance risk is quite strong: the financial relationships between physicians and hospitals and manufacturers, and the safety associated with devices.”
  • “Medical directors must be proactive. Pharmacists should be included in care coordination teams across the organization.”
  • ”Mental health professionals should be recruited to the clinical community.”
  • The diagnostic tests inclusive of mental and physical health signs, symptoms, risk factors, and co-morbidities should be updated and hardwired into clinical decision support systems that prompt, alert and remind clinicians to make definitive diagnoses.”

To read his article, please hit this link.

 

Tougher times seen coming for hospitals under Trump

November 30, 2016by Robert Whitcomb in Uncategorized tagged , , , , ,

depressed

Tougher times may be coming to hospitals under the Trump administration.

Whatever changes, including repeal, of course, occur to the Affordable Care Act, there will probably be “less coverage, or less generous coverage” in  insurance, Gary Claxton, vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told CNBC.

“If you start with the hospitals, it seems unlikely that as many people will have coverage that is as generous as currently exists. So that means that when they go to the hospitals, they’ll have less money to pay with, or less insurance. So it seems unlikely this will be good for hospitals.”

Mr. Trump has pledged to repeal the ACA and replace it with a yet-to-be-announced plan. Congressional Republicans vow to back him.

Minda Wilson, a Los Angeles healthcare lawyer and author warned CNBC about potential damage to hospital reimbursement from the plan to changing Medicaid to a block-grant program for the states. “I think the hospitals are not going to do well, period,” she said.

This may be reflected  in the fact that the stocks of the for-profit hospital chains have all fallen a lot since Mr. Trump’s  election.

To get the CNBC report, please hit this link.

The uses of ‘temporal data’

November 14, 2016by Robert Whitcomb in Uncategorized tagged ,

 

David Goldsteen, M.D.,  CEO of VigiLanz, an “intelligence-solutions” provider, warns hospital administrators  to beware of over-relying on big data that don’t let them pinpoint problem sources or develop facility-specific solutions.

He touts “temporal analytics”  — breaking down big data into real-time clusters — to tell administrators what’s happening at the point of care, He says hospital administrators might find situation-based temporal analytics better at identifying day-to-day problem points than big data.

Among the ways to look at temporal analytics:

1. Drawing an institution-specific profile.  “As clinicians take tests like blood cultures, [temporal analytic platforms] can collect the time stamps regarding when those actions occurred,” Bart Abban, Ph.D., director of analytics and data science at VigiLanz, says. “Based on that, you can really paint a profile of what is happening to the patient from time to time, sequence to sequence.”

2. Create actionable solutions. Temporal analytics is different “from a big data approach, because big data — while occasionally coming up with some useful little insights — really isn’t what you need to operate your institutions,” Dr. Goldsteen told Becker’s.

Becker’s, summarizing his remarks, says: “By deploying a platform to track and time stamp specific clinical issues like antimicrobial, pharmacy and infection problems, a hospital can identify endemic patterns and inform staff in real-time when issues occur. Problems like prescribing the wrong antimicrobial to treat pneumonia can then be faced at the point of care.”

3. “Allocate resources to garner the highest outcomes. Determining the variability in clinical response can have significant consequences on outcomes in value-based care, Dr. Abban says. ‘Once you minimize the variability, you can begin to quantify how much effort [you] take to move responses’ toward the most effective solution, he says. When pushing toward a new outcome, temporal analytics allows hospitals to analyze if ‘the marginal outcomes or the marginal returns are greater than the marginal cost put in,’ Dr. Abban says.”

4. “Use hospital culture to convert data into action. Raw data will only foster action if a hospital’s culture enables staff to use the information, Dr. Goldsteen says. Problem hospitals may be able to get as far as identifying their specific problems, but even this is ineffective if the hospital’s staff is not on board with using the data to pursue better outcomes. ‘As you’re fed real time information and you support a cultural shift in your organization, you’re going to be asking your frontline providers to act upon that data,’ Dr. Goldsteen says. ”

To read the whole piece, please hit this link.

Page 2 of 7123...Last

Contact Info

info@cmg625.com

(617) 230-4965

Wellesley, Mass