Ms. Pumpian — who controls the corporate-wide functions of accounting, cash management, contracting, capital financing and several other fiscal operations — believes hospitals and health systems today must find ways to enhance their continuum of care and design models to reduce readmissions in order to stay in the black. A positive hospital-physician relationship is essential to both of those initiatives.
“What is key is to make certain that these physicians and institutions are going in the same direction,” Ms. Pumpian says. “Both need to be incented to do the same thing, which is what’s best for patient care.”
She notes there are several ways hospitals and their physicians can effectively reduce their readmissions, such as ensuring patients attend post-acute office visits routinely after discharge and providing resources to people to ensure they are taking the proper post-discharge steps. “This has proven to be a key indicator to keep readmissions from occurring,” Ms. Pumpian says.
Ms Pumpian first joined Sharp HealthCare in 1984, and since then, she has received several awards, including the Sharp HealthCare Leadership Award and the Young Women’s Christian Association Tribute to Women in Industry Award.
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