NASHVILLE, TN – Radical changes in healthcare will not put hospitals at the center of the healthcare delivery system – instead moving the focus of care further upstream.
That’s a positive change, albeit a scary one for most hospitals, and one that facilities will need to make, said executives of several top hospitals in an exclusive roundtable discussion at the annual Breakthroughs Conference and Exhibition sponsored by Premier, Inc.
“It’s an exciting time in healthcare,” said Michael Bryant, president and CEO of Methodist Medical Center of Illinois. “Technology is now allowing that shift, and I don’t think it’s just a fad.”
Bryant sees a movement away from hospital-centric care to “person-centric” care over the next 10-20 years.
Hospitals are grasping the need to change, and Premier itself is moving beyond just providing discounts on supplies to helping more than 2,000 member hospitals anticipate changes, said Susan DeVore, its COO.
“The challenge for us is to take this fragmented system, create new models and scale them so we are able to do them togther,” she said. “Shame on us if we can’t figure out some ways to improve healthcare.”
Efforts such as the Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration, a project jointly operated by Premier and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, have shown that performance standards can improve the quality of care, save lives and reduce healthcare spending, said Tom Strauss, president and CEO of Summa Health, a integrated delivery system based in Akron, Ohio.