Healthcare Trends & Partnerships
If community health-care facilities like Auburn Memorial Hospital want to stay healthy and viable in a changing system, they’re going to have to stop relying on decades-old business models. That was the message delivered at May’s Wednesday Morning Roundtable meeting where Bill Allison spoke to a group of local government, business and health care leaders at the Center for Wellness. Allison, who is vice president of fiscal policy with the Healthcare Association of New York State, spoke during the last in a series of members only forums organized to foster discussion and eventually inspire ideas to improve the local economy and quality of life.
He gave a presentation on health-care partnerships and trends and discussed how hospitals and other health service providers might have to change their approach to care in the midst of ongoing state and federal reforms. Throughout his talk and the question-and-answer session that followed, Allison repeatedly pointed to ‘clinical integration’ as the future of health care - especially in markets like Cayuga County.
“The challenge is… do we need to be part of something bigger in order to survive?” Allison said to the group, later adding, “Think of other health-care providers that you can partner with.”
He described health care as being ‘fragmented,’ stressing multiple times that community institutions like AMH should consider coordinating care. Allison used the term ‘patient-centric’ when suggesting a new approach, meaning providers and hospitals go beyond a ‘reactive’ model of treating an acute injury or illness. There are private practices, nursing homes, wellness centers, home-care groups and other organizations that hospitals can acquire, or with whom they can partner, to focus on prevention and rehabilitation before and after a patient receives treatment, he said.
“We need to transform our communities and health care providers to really address our fragmented care,” Allison said. “Integrate and align yourself with all these providers,” he later said.
Allison suggested that coordinated care can cut back on health care costs in the long run, and he also said it can help groups and organizations secure financing in a tight credit market. Allison said it can help target some of the ‘frequent fliers’ who utilize more hospital time and services than the average patient due to chronic issues. Twenty percent of Medicare recipients use 75 percent of the funds in New York State, he said. “You have to be so much more than just a hospital,” he said.
Auburn Memorial Hospital’s Board of Directors Chairman Eric Allyn, who moderated the talk, said he foresees health care in the region heading toward more coordinated care. “The business model isn’t just going to be the hospital,” said Allyn, who later added that “you’re going to see more and more hospitals acquiring and partnering with primary care practices.”
The meeting was the final in a series of forums dubbed the Wednesday Morning Roundtable, a program organized by the group that participated in 2007’s A Call to Action: A Blueprint for Our Region’s Future. The forum organizers sent out approximately 150 invitations to potential participants, and the membership is about 75 people.
The series included four other round-table discussions on topics like job development, a local musical theater festival, the plan for a biogas pipeline fueled by Cayuga County’s dairy industry and the city of Auburn’s inclusion on a list of the country’s top small cities to raise a family.
—Christopher Caskey, Citizen staff writer
