Shelly Schorer, FHFMA, MBA, serves as Chief Financial Officer for Northern California at CommonSpirit Health.
On May 26th, Shelly will serve on the panel "Key Steps to Improve Regulatory Compliance and How to Avoid Ending Up on the Front Page of the Newspaper" at Becker's Hospital Review 11th Annual Meeting. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference, which will take place on May 24-26, 2021 in Chicago.
To learn more about the conference and Shelly's session, click here.
Question: What, from your perspective, is the biggest challenge about the future of work for hospitals, and what can they do about it? (i.e. automation, desire for more flexibility, clinician shortages, etc.)
Shelly Schorer: The biggest challenge we face as an industry is our care delivery model. It is complicated for patients to see specialists, to know where to go and how we bill-is every provider in-network for example. We need to meet consumer demand to deliver healthcare to the patient, via telehealth, decentralized centers, etc. The acute hospital setting needs to be much less of the focus. I think the most difficult thing is changing our mindsets to a new model and not do what we have always done as providers. This is difficult in a changing reimbursement model as well. The need to reduce overall costs also plays into the need to change how we deliver health care. Advances in scientific research are enabling us to move many procedures to an outpatient setting. According to a friend of mine who does research, Dr. Mark White, With advanced therapies and monitoring the goal is to be able to do these treatments to patients in an OP setting and be able to monitor them at home. So, essentially, reducing all the IP specific charges. He also said it’s actually that the toxicity of the therapy itself is improving making it less risky and the need to closely monitor less and less.
Q: How can hospitals reconcile the need to maintain inpatient volumes with the mission to keep people healthier and out of the hospital?
SS: This is a tough but necessary dilemma to address. The acute care setting is becoming more and more for the Medicare long term stay population. We need to determine how to rely less on admissions for revenue. Hospitals have to get out of the “being all things” business and focus on key service lines where they excel. Leaving the tertiary and quandary to fewer facilities for trauma type care.
Q: What's one lesson you learned early in your career that has helped you lead in healthcare?
SS: That physicians are scientists and when presented with problems or efficiency questions, they make the best partners to solve an issue. Collaboration is the only way to make advancements in change or innovation, that blended skillset and knowledge is a must.
Q: What do you see as the most exciting opportunity in healthcare right now?
SS: The ability to use things like the apple watch and telemedicine to help patients take care of themselves and stay out of the hospital. Also, the advancement in cell research to prevent illness and change the way we treat patients before they are really sick.