Health Systems Need to Completely Reassess How They Manage Costs
Health systems Need to Completely Reassess How They Manage Costs. In this Harvard Business Review online posting, Jeff Goldsmith says that health care executives frequently tell him that, in response to recent financial pressures, that “they have done all the easy stuff”. This article explores what they will need to do to actually get control over their costs. If they believe they have picked all the “low hanging fruit”, this article argues that “it is time to get a ladder”.
Do Most Hospitals Benefit from Directly Employing Physicians?
Do Hospitals Benefit from Employing Physicians? Over the last decade, hospitals have employed more than a hundred thousand physicians, many formerly in private practice. Recent evidence suggests that each practice generates direct losses of nearly $200 thousand per year, before considering incremental hospital market share gains. How should hospitals think constructively about the complex challenges surrounding physician employment, and create value both for patients and their physicians? This Harvard Business Review article, with Navigant colleagues Alex Hunter and Amy Strauss, frames and answers these questions.
To Combat Physician Burnout and Improve Care, Fix the Electronic Health Record
Fix the EHR! The so-called Electronic Health Record has become a major source of professional dissatisfaction in healthcare. With Dr. Robert Wachter, Chair of Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco and author of Digital Doctors, Jeff discusses what has gone wrong with the design of this complex tool, and lays out the major changes that need to be made in EHRs for them to achieve their potential in improving both care and the patient experience.
5 Ways U.S. Hospitals Can Handle Financial Losses from Medicare Patients
What to Do About Hospitals’ Medicare Financial Losses. This Harvard Business Review blog posting is a follow up to the October blog, and explores why losses in treating Medicare patients have soared (to more than triple the losses from Medicaid patients!), and how hospitals can work with their clinicians to improve care processes, eliminate needless variation in use of the hospital’s services and reduce those losses.
How U.S. Hospitals and Health Systems Can Reverse Their Sliding Financial Performance
What Hospitals Can Do to Reverse their Sliding Financial Performance. This Harvard Business Review blog posting examine the causes of the sharp deterioration in hospital operating earnings during 2016 and early 2017, and outlines essential strategies managements should pursue to reverse those declines.
Confessions of a Healthcare Super User
Confessions of a SuperUser This posting explores what Jeff Goldsmith learned about the health system he has worked in for over forty years as a patient. It examines his experience of five complex surgical episodes in four different health systems, and how theories of how the health system works match up against the patient experience.
The Scorecard: The Great Trump Health Policy Train Wreck
The Great Trump Healthcare Trainwreck This posting provides a scorecard to evaluate President Trump’s performance in managing the multiple unsuccessful attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and provide some clues to this political defeat.
California’s Coverage Expansion: Fiscal And Political Risks
California’s Coverage Expansion: Fiscal and Political Risks This posting explores how California got the number of uninsured in its state down to 7% by dramatically expanding its MediCal progam and standing up Covered California, one of the most successful health exchanges in the nation. Can this expansion be sustained as Congress considers unwinding the Affordable Care Act?
Guest commentary: To profit from uncertainty, health enterprises must become anti-fragile
To Profit from Uncertainty, Hospitals Must Become Anti-Fragile This Modern Healthcare OpEd discusses Nasim Taleb’s book Anti-Fragile: Things that Gain from Disorder and its relevance to healthcare management. In particular, health systems actually become more difficult to manage and their business risks increase as they become larger, and diversify into unrelated businesses. How hospital managements can manage uncertainty is an increasing challenge as the industry consolidates.
Geisinger’s Transformation: Balancing Growth And Risk
Geisinger’s Transformation: Balancing Risk and Growth This posting in Health Affairs blog examines the unconventional turnaround Strategy which Glenn Steele pursued as CEO of the Geisinger Health System that led both to financial success and a remarkable clinical transformation that made Geisinger one of the national leaders in healthcare redesign.