PORTLAND, ME – The construction of new hospitals and massive expansions of others across the country show how unprepared the nation is for the effect of Baby Boomers on the $2.3 trillion healthcare industry, says futurist Jeff Goldsmith.
“The complexity of how we pay for care,” he says, is a waste of time and money. It’s a payment system in dire need of revamp. "We're not getting near enough mileage out of the $2.3 trillion," Goldsmith said.
Goldsmith, president and founder of Health Futures Inc. in Charlottesville, Va. spoke Monday night before a group of healthcare leaders here. His talk, A Look over the Horizon: Maine, Health Care and Baby Boomers, kicked off the Institute for Civic Leadership and the Daniel Hanley Center for Health Leadership’s program to improve health in Maine.
Gap between supply and demand
Goldsmith focused on how the health system would cope with the “mismatch” between the demand for healthcare services and the dwindling supply of professionals, technicians and managers in the field. It’s a condition he chronicled in a recent article titled Baby Boomers and the Health System: It’s the Workforce, Stupid.
It’s like a tsunami, he said. Tsunami waves start out in the deep ocean and cannot be felt aboard ships or seen from the air. However as the waves near the shore the water depth decreases and the tsunami slows, but its height grows making “the water recede a long way.” Goldsmith likens the receding water to how baby boomers are beginning to leave the workforce, in particular the healthcare workforce. They might not retire, he said, but they are moving to less stressful work and seeking part-time occupations.
Our problem, he says, will be the lack of healthcare workers not the lack of hospital beds.
Providers, payers must collaborate
On the financial front, IT can help said Goldsmith, but this will have to come through intimate collaboration between providers and payers. Digitalizing claims management and processes will slim down costs, he said.
Regional health information exchanges will also serve to cut costs by reducing the amount of redundant information, he added.
Three technologies at the fore
Goldsmith sees eICU, remote monitoring and Eliza as three types of technology that can help fill the gap between demand for services and fewer workers. Electronic ICU solutions focus on the critically ill, whereas telemonitoring extends to patients who are not critically ill. Despite the small differentiation both will serve to continuously monitor and manage patients while improving clinical workers’ productivity.
Eliza specializes in the design, development and hosting of speech recognition software applications in healthcare. It is capable of having conversations with patients about their health, provides disease management and preventive health measures, as well as helping patients with their insurance, all accomplished at a fraction of the cost Goldsmith says.
These three technologies are part of a larger group of what he refers to as being part of “virtual clinical care”, which Goldsmith sees as being imperative as healthcare professionals continue to leave the workforce.
New book
Johns Hopkins University Press will publish Goldsmith’s new book The Fate of the Baby Boom: A Contrarian Look at the Next Twenty Years in April. The book explores the plans, attitudes and resources of baby boomers, and outlines a pro-work, health improving social policy that fits their values and plans. Goldsmith’s book Digital Medicine: Implications for Healthcare Leaders can be downloaded from the Health Futures Web site for free.