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“As public and commercial payer expectations for well-managed care are rapidly tightening, we recognize the need to prepare for the inevitable ‘demand destruction’ that is already beginning to be felt on hospital margins still dependent on inpatient volumes. Well-managed populations in the new era will receive more primary care and thus will need fewer emergency department visits, and effective care management and care transitions are already reducing hospital readmissions. Managing our costs is a very high priority.
Becoming well-prepared, both strategically and operationally, to execute and manage risk-based populations heads the top of our ‘must-do list.’ Optimization of our clinical practices and implementation of population health management strategies are imperative if we are to succeed with alternate payment models.
Additionally, we are challenged more and more by market dynamics as Denver-based health systems aggressively expand their hospital footprints and physician networks into Northern Colorado and Southern Wyoming. When you couple operating a nonprofit hospital in a state that has not expanded Medicaid, we are increasingly seeing our competitive advantage go to health systems in contiguous states that did expand Medicaid and have been able to invest charity care dollars into infrastructure improvement and technology, and even into growing their physician networks.
We have prioritized our efforts this next year around achieving our value-based purchasing goals, performance improvement and high reliability. Ambulatory service growth and more efficient workflows, practice leadership and governance in inpatient and ambulatory settings will strengthen our ability to deliver on the three-part aim of better health, better care at a lower cost. We will also continue our efforts to control our costs and embark on a second round of mid-leader driven, cost-reduction identification, which was so very successful for us in 2015.
Nursing workforce shortages keep our CNO up at night, and we’re hard at work at innovating and integrating care delivery across the system in hospital units and ambulatory settings. And last but not least, we are casting a wide net to identify strategic care alliances that will enhance services to our primary and secondary service areas.”
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