The Changing Landscape of Healthcare System
Margie R. Collins
HCS/490 Health Care Consumer - Trends and Marketing
June 23, 2014
Mr. Lance Danko
The Changing Landscape of Healthcare System
“We do not have a health care crisis in this country - we have a health crisis with a health care system incapable of dealing with it.” ~ Mike Huckabee, Former Governor of Arkansas “We have to move from illness to wellness. Businesses will have to invest in wellness. There is no choice. It’s not philanthropy. It’s enlightened self-interest.” ~ Shrinivas M. Shanbhag, Medical Adviser, Reliance Industries, India “Our vision should be to have the healthiest people, not just the best health care, in the world. With prevention and wellness as
Many of the challenges Academic Medical Centers (AMCs) face in the current environment are well understood and widely recognized even if the solutions are not. Faster provider consolidation, both horizontally and vertically, over the past several years is reshaping the competitive landscape. Community-based providers are gaining the size and strength to drive market dynamics and negotiate on equal or better footing with payers. Competitors are also gaining new competencies, keeping and caring for more patients themselves. This has begun to impact AMCs' referral streams and their ability to maintain market share. There are already a growing number of markets across the country where AMCs are experiencing flat-to-declining inpatient volume growth and losing their dominant market position to large, evolving systems. Government and commercial payers are aggressively advancing value-based payment methodologies and steering patients to lower cost providers. AMCs which tend to have higher costs-to-serve than their community-based counterparts will face difficulty competing for services others also provide at acceptable levels. AMCs looking to thrive in this environment need to find ways to coordinate with other types of providers across the continuum to reorient the site of care to more cost effective settings and control quality, variation and outcomes. AMCs also need partners along the continuum to