I'm fortunate to lead a health system that is a joint venture of two respected Rhode Island hospitals – Roger Williams Medical Center and Our Lady of Fatima Hospital – and Prospect Medical Services, a company with more than 20 years of experience creating new ways of organizing and delivering health care services. This is what we see on the horizon.
» Collaboration among providers will be the new driver in health delivery. Much of the competition among providers that we now see in Rhode Island will evolve into innovative partnerships that benefit both providers and consumers through population health management.
» The organization of health care services will no longer be hospital-centric. Our model of Coordinated Regional Care will be the first fully clinically integrated, multilevel network of providers, including hospitals, physician groups, nursing homes, clinics and others, working together simultaneously to drive quality, improve patient satisfaction, manage utilization and lower costs of health delivery.
» Institutional health care providers will seek deeper integration with the physician community. Health systems such as ours have significant infrastructure and capital that can be accessed by physicians … either through membership in an independent physician association or through employment.
» Exceptional quality and lower delivery of care costs will not be mutually exclusive concepts. While many fear that the search for economy in health care delivery will degrade quality of patient care, our experience has been just the opposite. New ways of organizing and aligning the interests of providers, insurers and consumers and managing risk can truly produce win-win-win outcomes. •