Cooperating for better care.

hospitals

Tag Archives

Most hospitals still opaque on prices

February 22, 2016by Robert Whitcomb in Uncategorized tagged ,

foogyroad

The Boston-based Pioneer Institute has released a study of price transparency at 54 hospitals in six U.S. metropolitan areas.  The study found that of  the hospitals included, only nine had systems to provide price information in a consumer-friendly way.

The study covered the Dallas-Fort Worth area; Des Moines, Iowa; Los Angeles; New York City; Orlando, Fla.,  and Raleigh/Durham, N.C. In more than 60 percent of the hospitals  in the study, it took  up to  11 phone calls to get price information or the search was abandoned entirely.

The study touted the  following hospitals for providing price information in a relatively  fast and otherwise consumer-friendly way:

•    Cedars Sinai (Los Angeles).
•    Dallas Regional Medical Center.
•    Dr. P. Phillips Hospital (Orlando).
•    Duke University Hospital (Raleigh/Durham).
•    The Iowa Clinic (Des Moines).
•    Mount Sinai (New York).
•    NYU Langone (New York).
•    Wake Med Cary Hospital (Raleigh/Durham).

 

 

 

 

 

4 imperatives for population-health management

January 21, 2016by Robert Whitcomb in Uncategorized tagged , , , ,

 

order

This piece in Healthcare Executive discusses “four imperatives” for population-health  management. Some excerpts:

Imperative 1. Commit to a New View of Healthcare
“The board and executive team should be evaluating whether they are capable of reorganizing and achieving financial and clinical relevance in an ambulatory and telehealth-focused delivery system. This path holds the opportunity to maintain relevance and market share-and therefore financial and clinical strength-in the changing market.”
Imperative 2. Build Agility

“The role of healthcare’s leaders now centers on building organizational agility, defined as the ability to nimbly operate current business while simultaneously preparing for changing/new conditions.”

“Today’s successful leaders have to be both transformers-moving healthcare to a PHM-based model-and business curators-managing the traditional business while healthcare in their community(ies) transitions to the new model.”

Imperative 3: Experiment and Innovate

“Unlike the ‘tipping point’described by Malcolm Gladwell,  which happens quickly and is hard to prepare for because predictions are lacking, healthcare organizations have had ample forewarning of the basic trajectory of health system change. Organizations that use value-based payment and delivery models now, even on a limited scale as pilot tests, are better positioned for success as the delivery system continues its progress toward broad implementation of value-based care.”

“Proactive hospital and health system leaders are innovating, looking within and beyond healthcare for models that work.”

Imperative 4. Use Integrated Planning and a Blueprint for the PHM Journey

“Revisioning and redesigning an organization’s delivery system should be staged based on the entity’s unique market, capabilities, desired role and competitive factors.”

“Leadership must ensure that the foundational planning process is grounded in fact-based market, financial and clinical/quality realities, and the organization’s current and expected performance related to these realities. Certain organizations will be able to carve out a strategy to deliver only high-end acute-care services. But for most hospitals and health systems, an effective ambulatory and virtual strategy will be key to market relevance.”

How hospitals can regain communities’ trust after crises

November 4, 2015by Robert Whitcomb in Uncategorized tagged ,

 

dallashosp

Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas, scene of an Ebola crisis last year.

–Photo by Hasteur

Near-constant communication and transparency are critical in hospitals’ regaining their communities’ trust.

Examples include Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, in Dallas, in dealing with Ebola and Providence St. Vincent Medical Center, in Portland, Ore., in dealing with a hostage situation.

As this piece in Becker’s Hospital Review notes “Hospitals have to be ready to respond to any type of scenario and leadership must be prepared to speak to those events in the moment with clarity and transparency. Communities look to those moments to reinforce their belief systems about the hospital.”

And as ” people “heavily rely on the Internet for information, blogs are a great tool for hospital leaders to share information and interact with the public. ”

 

 

Possible upside of not-for-profit hospitals’ Medicaid losses

November 2, 2015by Robert Whitcomb in Uncategorized tagged ,

 

Melanie Evans reports in Modern Healthcare that “{m]ost hospitals lose money on every Medicaid patient they treat, and those losses are mounting as millions of Americans gain coverage through state programs that provide insurance to no- and low-income residents.”

“But for not-for-profit hospitals, at least, those losses may have one positive side effect.

“Larger Medicaid losses will inflate what is already the biggest reported benefit to communities that hospitals must show to maintain their tax-exempt status. One estimate pegged hospitals’ total tax breaks at $24.6 billion in 2011.”

She notes that ”with charity care declining, Medicaid losses are growing as a share of not-for-profit hospitals’ total community benefit. It’s unclear if this will increase scrutiny of their tax exemptions.”

 

Narrow networks generally don’t hurt care

October 15, 2015by Robert Whitcomb in Uncategorized tagged , ,

 

Polls have suggested that consumers value low monthly premiums over access to prestigious healthcare institutions such as (expensive) teaching hospitals affiliated with famous universities, and thus are willing to be in narrow insurance networks.

Bruce Spurlock and Maribeth Shannon, writing in HealthAffairs, conclude  that “except for a handful of outlier networks, consumers can have confidence that the hospital care in their region is comparable to other plans’ product networks, and that network size does not seem to typically influence performance.

“The major caveat is that some extremely narrow networks with overall lower-performing hospitals probably would benefit from a more inclusive network structure or a marked improvement in performance of the participating hospitals.”

Hospitals must make nurses part of institutional decision-making

September 17, 2015by Robert Whitcomb in Uncategorized tagged , , , ,

 

 

nurses5

In a sponsored piece about the need for hospitals to seek guidance from nurses on improving their institutions, Patrick Robinson, Ph.D. and R.N., dean of Capella University’s School of Nursing and Health Sciences,  answers such questions as:

What is the benefit of administrators and executives including nurses’ voices in decision-making?

What changes need to take place for nurses to be heard?

How can nurses encourage one another to feel more empowered?

What can leadership do to encourage nurses to share their ideas more?

He concludes with:

“Make sure there are opportunities, such as focus groups or town hall meetings, for ideas to be exchanged. Additionally, put data in the hands of nurses and give them the opportunity to see not only the individual patients they work with, but the hospital or health system as a whole in a manageable way. That will enable nurses to offer their insights. Give nurses that opportunity and develop them beyond their degrees to be evidence-based decision-makers by investing in continuing education to drive creativity and innovation.”

 

Hospitals on a hiring spree

September 9, 2015by Robert Whitcomb in Uncategorized tagged , , ,

help_wanted_sign

 

To the surprises of many in the sector, hospitals and health systems are on something of a hiring spree, adding 15,900 in August, say preliminary figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Indeed, the sector added more than 100,000 jobs in the first eight months of this year.

The additions to hospital payrolls this year has  been more than most other industry sectors.

What’s driving the hiring, of course, is increased admissions at many hospitals, particularly driven by the flood of aging Baby Boomers.

 

Strategies for faster and better care

July 31, 2015by Robert Whitcomb in Uncategorized tagged ,

speed

A new Institute of Medicine report says that hospitals  can deliver services much faster, and with quality improvements, without  adding much to costs.

Among the recommended strategies:

  • Matching supply and demand through continuing evaluation.
  • Immediately determining  need when the patient inquires about services.
  • Learning when the patient wants to come in, and what kind of care is desired.
  • Offering need-tailored, technology-enabled alternatives to clinic visits, when appropriate.
  • Formal planning for patient surges.
  • Constantly assessing changing circumstances.

 

 

 

 

Trying to address hospitals’ perilous ‘weekend effect’

July 31, 2015by Robert Whitcomb in Uncategorized tagged , , , , ,

Hammock11

Chuck Lauer, a former Modern Healthcare publisher, writes about how to combat “weekend effect” in hospitals.

“Simply put, there are fewer physicians and nurses {on weekends} to treat patients, and fewer technicians to operate life-saving equipment on the weekend. However, people don’t have fewer medical problems on the weekend. They still have heart attacks, accidents and other emergencies, and there are plenty of patients admitted for elective procedures over the weekend.

“So it doesn’t surprise me that there’s a markedly higher death rate for patients admitted on the weekend ….”

“In an industry like healthcare, where you are dealing with life and death issues, is it permissible to reduce the availability of services and use second-string staffing for two days of every week?”

“Examining policies at 117 Florida hospitals and their outcomes for 126,666 patients, researchers concluded that by boosting specific services, hospitals could lower the rate of complications on the weekend.

“These strategies involved raising the nurse-to-bed ratio, fully adopting EHRs and improving inpatient physical rehabilitation, home health and pain management.

“Interestingly, simply hiring more staff — increasing the nurse-to-bed ratio — was not the most effective of these strategies. While hospitals that raised the nurse-to-bed ratio were 1.44 times more likely to overcome the weekend effect, the likelihood rose to 2.37 times for hospitals that had home health programs and 4.74 times for hospitals that fully adopted EHR.”

 

Why do some hospital mergers flop?

July 23, 2015by Robert Whitcomb in Uncategorized tagged , , , , ,

morgan

By Art Young, about the legendary banker.

Becker’s Hospital Review looks at why some merged hospitals fail to achieve the economies of scale touted by merger architects. Mukesh Gangwal and George Whetsell, managing partners at Chicago-based Prism Healthcare Partners, weigh in on these matters. Here are a few of their remarks:

“Hospitals] merge with a great plan, but don’t implement all of the things they said they were going to do to gain economies of scale. You can build that out in the plan, but once you merge, the way you get those economies — you have to let people go — which is difficult….”

“Most healthcare — it’s still local. They have a large stake in the community they serve. Their boards represent community leaders. This puts inherent pressure to not take action that [negatively] affects people, the community and their reputation….”

“A huge percentage of hospitals are nonprofit and community-based. They are not trying to make huge profits — they are trying to not lose money. There are a lot of social and community service dimensions to their mission. So it’s very service-oriented. Letting people go is very counter to the mission and culture of these organizations. Even holding people accountable [is difficult]….”

“As systems get bigger and gain more hospitals, they often create a corporate office. Functions like planning, marketing, IT, payroll, so on — they basically pull out of hospitals and centralize in a shared support office. There is often a huge amount of unhappiness with the level of service provided by the shared functions….”

 

 

 

Page 5 of 7First...456...Last

Contact Info

info@cmg625.com

(617) 230-4965

Wellesley, Mass