Author Archive for Kriss Barlow

Guest Post: Notes from The Physician Strategy Summit

The Physician Strategy Summit, hosted by the Forum for Healthcare Strategists, was held in Atlanta, GA this week. Consistently, this is a wonderful conference for those who are immersed in business planning, strategy and relationship development with physicians.

This year, a special track was added for physician recruitment. There were discussions of employment models, legal obligations along with solid techniques for attracting and retaining physicians.

Each general session highlighted challenges and opportunities for healthcare providers, but I wanted to share some facts from Kaveh Safani, MD, JD at Cisco Systems, Inc. It was a compelling presentation. His initial message clearly illustrated that fixing the health care system is not as simple as many try to portray. There are many complexities and here are a few of the examples he offered.

• In a sample of insured Americans between 2003-2007, 1% of that population represented 30% of the total cost with a total annual health care expenditure of $101,000. And the range of diseases in that 1% group was extremely diverse with no clear groupings to change that would provide significant impact.
• Heart disease is no longer the big driver in inpatient hospital activity or cost. The greatest increase in inpatient care between 2004 and 2007 was renal disease. Conditions likely due to increased diabetes and secondary effects of long term treatment of heart disease.
• The present hospital financial issues have more to do with shrinking investments than operating margins. Actual operating margins for hospitals have trended pretty constant.
• The top performing hospitals clear success factor is decreasing length of stay which enhances productivity and results in labor expense advantages. The other is management of interest expense and bad debt. Top performing hospitals actually spend more on drugs and supplies than lower performing hospitals. He went on to say that most of the LOS management is influenced not by MDs but by hospital systems.
• He offered this video, definitely worth watching.

Challenging times mean more push for tighter measures and faster timelines for relationship sales. That message and a great example of how it is being tracked was presented by Lori McLelland and Una Newman at Emory and Carrie Bennett with LifePoint Hospitals. For readers that are not able to travel to seminars, the content is generally available for listening.