Cost Effectiveness of Health

Despite the havoc the COVID-19 pandemic created for hospitals, it also created an opportunity for many important lessons learned on how care can be delivered more efficiently and cost effectively in patients’ homes.

Increasing health expenditures and the pressures of the recent pandemic have contributed to the development of a new type of center of excellence (COE), called the future-state COE, which is designed to better address the needs of large employers. This COE model incorporates value-based contracting and a strong incentive design into a service-line strategy to create employee health programs that benefit employers, patients and providers alike.

Research into the costs of delivering telehealth versus in-person visits by the Department of Orthopaedics at Penn Medicine sought to answer the health systems’ questions about the long-term economic viability of telemedicine services, and to help inform their conversations with payers about how much they should appropriately be paid for the services.

Two leaders of health system hospital-at-home programs describe how the acute hospital care at home model represents an important change in how our nation approaches healthcare delivery, because it has been shown to yield improved care outcomes and greater patient satisfaction.

Healthcare organizations can best prepare for an anticipated labor shortage and other workforce challenges by adopting a holistic and proactive approach to human capital management as a discipline, with the goal of promoting greater employee engagement and satisfaction.

Two healthcare leaders describe a new model of geriatric care being developed in Southern California and the Southwest, designed to deliver a full range of primary care services to seniors in their homes. This model may set the stage for the emergence and adoption of this innovative approach to in-home healthcare nationwide. The model is a practical response to a proven demand among seniors for such an approach.

The November HFMA’s Cost Effectiveness of Health Report, sponsored by Kaufman Hall, features stories that explore the growing trend toward delivery of healthcare at home, as reflected in CMS’s Acute Hospital Care at Home waiver and a unique senior-care-at-home approach in Southern California that has national implications. The report also includes features that explore leading health systems’ innovative venture investing strategies and the need for more proactive approaches to addressing workforce challenges facing the industry.

The October HFMA’s Cost Effectiveness of Health Report, sponsored by Kaufman Hall, presents Part 2 HFMA’s of Healthcare 2030, which examines workforce challenges facing healthcare organizations and the types of response that will be required to meet those challenges. Also included is an interview with HFMA’s Todd Nelson, who explains why it is so important for all stakeholders in the United States to work collaboratively toward improving cost effectiveness of health in the United States.

Supply chain disruptions, labor shortages and rising expense costs caused by the COVID-19 pandemic continues to efforts of the nation’s hospitals and health systems to improve their performance, a Kaufman Hall survey found.

Healthcare News of Note for healthcare finance professionals is a roundup of recent news articles: A majority of people prefer in-person healthcare to telehealth visits, patients have trouble grasping information during doctor visits, and Walmart taps an Ochsner exec to lead its healthcare expansion.