Two topics dominated the conversation at last month’s Healthcare Financial Management Association’s ANI: The Healthcare Finance Conference. One was Seattle’s surprisingly sunny weather; the other, of course, was healthcare reform.
And while those attending the ANI show at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center were more than happy to let the sun shine, they had definite plans on how to fix the nation’s broken healthcare system.
“We are living in extraordinary times,” said Catherine Jacobson, of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, who opened the June 14-17 conference as the incoming 2009-10 HFMA chairperson. She urged those attending to take action on reform, make it personal, make it patient-oriented and “make it count.”
From a show floor packed with hundreds of healthcare vendors pushing the latest in revenue cycle management tools, financing programs and security software, to keynote speeches from management guru Patrick Lencioni, former Vice President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore and Commonwealth Fund President Karen Davis, to education sessions heavy on case studies, attendees were urged to take advantage of the prevailing winds of change.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has put President Barack Obama’s health reform plans on the fast track, said Brett Hickman, a partner in the health industries department at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. Hosting one of the educational sessions, Hickman said the nation is moving in the right direction with SCHIP initiatives, the economic stimulus package, Medicaid, COBRA and health IT.
According to Hickman, the nation should be promoting prevention. Employers should offer incentives for wellness programs, he said, and step up to change the delivery methods of EHRs.
The nation wastes $1.2 trillion a year in the healthcare industry, Hickman said. Between $303 billion and $493 billion can be attributed to the behavioral sector, $312 billion in the clinical sector and $126 billion to $315 billion on the operational side.
“We’re doing it to ourselves,” he said.
Another topic of conversation was consumer directed healthcare.
“We’re really still at the front end of CDH,” said Stewart Hanson, vice president of healthcare solutions and wholesale lockbox at Fifth Third Bank, during another educational session.
CDH is a growing portion of a $2 trillion market, he pointed out. It increased by 43 percent in 2008 and is expected to reach 14.9 million accounts by the end of this year.
“Better tools are needed for calculation of patient responsibility though,” he said.
Another session took a closer look at healthcare reform efforts in Massachusetts, highlighting successful efforts and suggesting that the program might be useful in other states or even on the national health reform stage.
“Essentially everyone came together at the threat of losing money, said Gerard Vitti, president and CEO of Healthcare Financial, Inc.
Programs such as Commonwealth Care and YAP (the Young Adult Plan) have helped to cover the gaps in insurance coverage, he said. Currently there are 169,197 enrollees in Commonwealth Care.
Capping off the show on Wednesday, Davis brought together a distinguished panel of experts to discuss “Moving Towards a High Performance Health System.” The panel featured Lloyd Dean, president and CEO of Catholic Healthcare West, Lori Mitchell, CFO of Harborview Medical, and Gregory P. Poulson, senior vice president at Intermountain Healthcare. One day earlier, Gore, in a speech closed to the press, urged attendees to become more environmentally conscious.