Forecast
Health Care: Five Trends for 2010
By
Dec 22, 2009 - 4:13:07 PM

(HealthNewsDigest.com) - Augusta, Ga. - Most of what you see or hear about health care reform centers around the cost of care and who can receive it. But there is much more to reforming health care than lowering medical bills and improving coverage accessibility.

While politicians battle over what should be included in a health
reform bill, hospitals are embracing practices that create higher
quality outcomes by focusing on the patient.

I see many health care trends that are likely to gain national momentum
in 2010. Here are five of them:

1. “Pay for performance” will be standard practice. One of the most
significant challenges in all hospitals is improving the quality and
safety of patient care. Increasingly, insurance companies will measure
hospitals by their performance and will move toward a “pay for
performance” method for dispensing reimbursements. Hospitals that
participated in a recent hospital quality demonstration project for the
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services raised their overall quality
by an average of 17.2 percent over four years based on their delivery of
more than 30 nationally standardized care measures in five clinical
areas. Insurers are watching these kinds of scorecards and will hold
patient care providers more accountable to produce safe, quality
outcomes in order to be reimbursed for services.

2. Patients will be more selective about their care. Patients are frequently surveyed on their health care experiences, and hospitals are
scrutinized by a number of organizations, including the Joint
Commission, the American Hospital Association, the University
HealthSystem Consortium and various patient satisfaction survey firms.
In addition, watchdog organizations like the Leapfrog Group work to
reduce preventable errors, increase transparency in hospitals and
improve the quality and affordability of health care. Through the
Internet, today’s consumers have access to the same reports as
hospital CEOs and other health care leaders. This savvy patient
population will search and compare the data before making health care
decisions

3. Nurse-to-patient ratios will improve. Increased aging is causing
significant climbs in hospital census numbers and patient severity. The
American Nurses Association is poised to push for very specific
nurse-to-patient ratios in 2010 to accommodate these growing patient
care demands. The ANA is recommending that medical-surgical floors have
one nurse for every five patients; intermediate care beds have one nurse
for every four patients; and intensive care units would require at least
one-on-two, and even one-on-one care, depending on the severity of
patients.

4. The electronic medical record (EMR) will prove invaluable. Through
the implementation of electronic medical records, physicians and care
providers will be able to communicate across the country and compare
notes on similar cases to speed the most appropriate care to each
patient treated. For example, MCGHealth is one of about 1,000 hospitals
in America using the EMR to track influenza cases. Flu trackers hope to
predict where it might strike next in time to prepare those who will be
affected.

5. The need for cost containment will continue. In 2008, health care
spending in the United States reached $2.4 trillion, and it’s
projected to reach $4.3 trillion by 2016. As the cost continues to
skyrocket, hospitals and policymakers will look for new containment
measures. Areas that could benefit include technology, research and
wellness programs. Saving time means saving money, so innovative
information systems and medical equipment will be sought that can
perform common tasks more quickly and efficiently. There will be greater
demand on researchers to find less costly treatments, and, hopefully,
cures for common illnesses and diseases. And, finally, in the best of
all worlds, our society will begin to focus on wellness. Preventable
illnesses and hospitalizations account for an enormous amount of
monetary waste in the system, not to mention disability and death.

These are pivotal times. The course that health care reform takes over
the next few years will leave an indelible mark on America.

MCG Health, Inc. (d/b/a MCGHealth) is a not-for-profit corporation
operating the MCGHealth Medical Center, MCGHealth Children’s Medical
Center, the Georgia Radiation Therapy Center, and related outpatient
facilities and services throughout the state. For more information,
please visit mcghealth.org.

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