Jerry Rupp, PhD, serves as Chief Innovation Officer at Fusion5.
On May 2nd, Dr. Rupp will give a presentation on "Aligning Physicians and Patient Care Redesign through Internal Cost Savings" at Becker's Health IT + Clinical Leadership + Pharmacy conference. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference, which will take place May 2-4, 2019 in Chicago.
To learn more about the conference and Dr. Rupp's session, click here.
Question: What is the biggest evolution you've seen among the hospitals/health systems you work with over the past 2-3 years?
Jerry Rupp: Healthcare innovation often takes time out of necessity. Changes in healthcare delivery or a payment model is complex and should be thoroughly tested before making any significant change an operational norm. Given this mantra, innovative concepts are being developed and tested much more rapidly than is perceived. The perception of slow change is derived from the time it takes to test, structure, and scale innovative strategies.
Q: Tell us about the last meaningful interaction you had with a patient.
JR: Hospitals have traditionally seen themselves as the deliverers of healthcare, a concept that bears some accuracy. The advent of payment reform models that include two-sided risk and an extension of that risk profile to areas of the continuum of care that lie outside the four walls of the hospital has changed the perceptions and interactions of providers with the hospital/health system. Episodic care management can not only reside within the hospital, but must include the initiating physicians, whether independent or employed, and other pre-acute and post-acute providers. Effective healthcare delivery in such models requires coordination of services and aligned incentives amongst the providers and the facilities in which services are provided. Hospitals have increasingly embraced these concepts as new innovative models of healthcare delivery are introduced.
Q: Most people understand innovation as starting something new. The lesser discussed side of innovation is when you stop something. What is one thing health systems would benefit from stopping, quitting or banning?
JR: Innovation in healthcare delivery through the new healthcare delivery and payment models like those initiated by CMS requires careful patient management throughout the care continuum. The best results are observed when healthcare providers focus on providing services tailored to individual patient needs rather than to the revenue cycle of each healthcare setting or a cookie-cutter approach to care requirements. Tailoring post-acute care incidence and length of service is an important factor in redesigning care to meet the need of healthcare reform. When hospitals/health system own the post-acute care service providers there can be a significant misalignment of incentives. The base need of a system owned facility would be to maintain revenue while the concept of redesigning care requires a more patient centric approach. If a given initiative has incentive payments, reorganizing post-acute care utilization could be perceived as simply robbing Peter to pay Paul. Not owning such facilities might provide better alignment strategies