Hospital leaders at Huron Healthcare’s annual Healthcare CEO Forum agreed that the care delivery model must evolve to enable organizations to become more efficient and effective at keeping populations healthy rather than reacting to illness. The vast majority of hospitals are not currently configured to deliver wellness services, and developing those capabilities will require new kinds of community partnerships as well as significant time and capital investments.
“While reconfiguring the delivery model to focus on wellness care is the best strategy in the long run for this country, it will require fundamental changes by providers,” said John Tiscornia, managing director, Huron Healthcare. “This transformation will need to take place across the healthcare enterprise, with providers focusing on reducing utilization, coordinating care, and minimizing variances.”
Becoming a Provider of Wellness
CEOs from across the country said that such transformation requires a complete re-imagining of the who, what, when, where and how of delivering care to our communities.
“We’re working on figuring out what roles we can play in keeping populations healthy, rather than just reacting to illness,” said Dan Wolterman, president and CEO of Memorial Hermann in Houston, Texas. “We don’t have the data analytics to be successful in a new type of delivery. Even though we’ve made major investments for many years, we’re still not there yet.”
Delivering Care Outside the Hospital
Delivering care in non-acute settings holds the promise of reducing the cost of care—and potentially improving care quality. However, this approach is not without its challenges, especially in relation to effective care coordination and information management between inpatient and outpatient settings.
“Hospitals need to provide many different access points throughout the community so that patients can seek care in more convenient locations at times that make sense for them,” said Dean Harrison, president and chief executive officer, Northwestern Memorial HealthCare in Chicago, Ill. “Once the patient presents at any access point, the system’s goal then becomes delivering the right care in the appropriate setting for each individual patient.”
Expanding Roles of Clinicians
Evolving the care delivery system involves changing ideas around which clinicians deliver care. Creating the most effective and efficient matches between caregivers and the kind of care needed helps maximize the licenses of everyone on staff, and holds the promise of reducing the cost of care. One CEO noted that patients at her hospital are very accepting of getting care from nurse practitioners and physician assistants rather than physicians, if it means getting care more quickly.
“We think we can take a physician practice that’s caring for 10,000 patients today and get them caring for 100,000 patients by taking a team approach, getting more people working up to their license level. We think this is the future of primary care,” said David T. Feinberg, MD, president of the UCLA Health System, chief executive officer and associate vice chancellor of the UCLA Hospital System and Health Sciences in Los Angeles, Calif.
Attendees at the Huron Healthcare CEO Forum represented a broad range of organizations, from larger multi-hospital systems to smaller community hospitals, across urban and rural communities. The CEO Forum report shares valuable insights on transformative leadership and innovation from the CEO attendees, and from experts outside the healthcare industry. Key themes discussed included Moving from Volume to Value, Changing the Care Delivery Model, Physician Relationships, and Cost Containment.
About Huron Healthcare
Huron Healthcare partners with clients to provide comprehensive performance improvement solutions that improve quality, increase revenue, reduce expenses, and increase physician, patient, and employee satisfaction across the healthcare enterprise. Clients include national and regional integrated healthcare systems, leading academic medical centers, community hospitals and physician practices. Modern Healthcare ranked Huron Healthcare third on its 2011 list of the top 20 largest healthcare management consulting firms. Learn more at www.huronconsultinggroup.com/healthcare or follow us on Twitter: @Huron.
About Huron Consulting Group
Huron Consulting Group helps clients in diverse industries improve performance, comply with complex regulations, reduce costs, recover from distress, leverage technology, and stimulate growth. The Company teams with its clients to deliver sustainable and measurable results. Huron provides services to a wide variety of both financially sound and distressed organizations, including healthcare organizations, Fortune 500 companies, leading academic institutions, medium-sized businesses, and the law firms that represent these various organizations. Learn more at www.huronconsultinggroup.com.
