What capabilities will are necessary for hospitals to remain successful in the future? And more importantly, how do organizations develop those capabilities?
Today I write from Washington, D.C., where I’m attending the U.S. News & World Report’s first Hospital of Tomorrow leadership forum. The theme of the forum, “Hospital of Tomorrow,” has brought together health system and industry leaders to discuss just that: What capabilities will be required of hospitals in a year, two years, ten years down the road to be successful?
A lot of phrases are thrown out in response: population health, primary care medical homes, reducing costs, driving efficiencies, focus factories, electronic medical record systems, care paths.
These are fancy words that describe complex models and mean a lot to those who work in the industry. But to patients, they don’t mean much. Instead, the key to being a successful “Hospital of Tomorrow” is much simpler. And it’s already something we’re very familiar with: The Triple Aim – high quality care, low cost and managing population health.
Robert C. Robbins, MD, president and CEO of Texas Medical Center in Houston adds one caveat to the triple aim: the importance of excellent patient experience. Success will be about “highest quality care at the lowest cost while at the same time providing excellent customer service,” he said during a forum panel.
To be sure, while it sounds simple, the ability to “maximize [an] outcome for existing resources or maybe less,” – as Bill Frist, former U.S. Senate majority leader and a transplant surgeon, put it during the same panel – is actually quite difficult.
So how can healthcare organizations improve outcomes while lowering costs?
When I asked Toby Cosgrove, MD, president and CEO of the Cleveland Clinic about the most needed capabilities, he answered by explaining “not all hospitals will be all things to all people.” He believes the health systems that will succeed will be those that can provide coordinated care throughout the entire continuum of care, but individual hospital sites are better off focusing on providing one or two core services and being excellent at them. This strategy – rather than offering a laundry list of specialty services and being average in all of them – is the approach that will benefit individual hospital sites.
Dr. Robbins agreed, explaining the “arms race” we’re seeing in so many markets is “going to be over.”
So did former Sen. Frist. “Do you need 5,000 hospitals out there each trying to be a comprehensive hospital, marketing to patients?”
And while becoming focus factories working toward specialized, low cost, high quality care will lead most healthcare organizations toward the path of success, certain types of facilities face additional roadblocks, and academic medical centers are certainly one of them.
The problem for, and benefit of AMCs, is that they must train future medical professionals, perform clinical research and provide patient care, and must do all three with a majority of funding coming from just one of the three buckets.
Sen. Frist explained that the reimbursement model for medical training needs improvement. “We need to put a price tag on that,” he said, “but [AMCs] need to justify that.”
Another panelist, Donna Shalala, president of the University of Miami and former HHS Secretary under President Bill Clinton, explained that despite the challenges facing healthcare organizations, the future is exciting. It’s “where the next adventure is,” she said. “There’s going to be nothing like healthcare.”
Oh, and one phrase I didn’t hear at all on the first day of the forum? Accountable care organization.