High Performance Health Care

Recently our Center, in collaboration with the Minnesota Chapter of the American College of Healthcare Executives, sponsored a forum on leadership from the perspective of senior executives. Guests included Don Wegmiller and Gordon Sprenger who led the creation of the Allina health care system. When these executives were asked about emerging trends they both targeted medical tourism as a force not yet understood by most of the players in the US health care system.

Medical Tourism is alive and growing
Mr. Sprenger is now on the Joint Commission International resource board, accrediting hospitals internationally. Approximately 100 hospitals are accredited around the world with the same standards as the US. A significant growth in the number of accredited hospitals is anticipated.

Mr. Wegmiller indicated that he knows of at least six “medical tourism” companies. In the last year, 750,000 people worldwide were getting their healthcare outside of their own country. He is also aware of a new company that contracts with an employer’s insurance broker for overseas medical services. 50% of the money that the employee saves by getting their healthcare overseas is put into their health savings account and the remainder is refunded to the company.

Both leaders stressed that we should not consider medical tourism a “fad.” Many other companies in the US have been impacted by global competition and healthcare is not immune.

Six million medical tourists in 2010
The Deloitte Center for Health Solutions recently released a study on medical tourism which indicated 2 in 5 individuals in the US were interested in pursuing care abroad if the quality were comparable and the cost 50% or less. They project the number of medical tourists traveling abroad (outbound tourists) to be 6 million in 2010. Deloitte also compared the price of 15 common procedures and found the US weighted average inpatient price to be $10,629 and the average oversees price a startling $1,410.

Medical tourism within the United States
There is also a growing trend for individuals to travel outside their local markets to receive care within the US (intrabound medical tourism.) Recently Bloomberg News reported that the Foundation Coal Company in Cheyenne, Wyoming had begun sending its employees to the Mayo clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The Mayo Clinic, which receives a five-star "best'' rating for cardiac care, charges an average of $66,529 for heart bypass surgery, according to Health Grades. The Cheyenne Regional Medical Center in Cheyenne, Wyoming, just 220 miles from the coal mines, charges $98,227 for the same operation and gets a one-star "poor'' ranking. Health care costs for this company have dropped 5% a year since 2005.

HPHC and a smaller world
The growing transparency of quality and costs means that organizations that can deliver high performance health care are now beginning to enjoy a real market advantage. Those providers that think their geography will protect them are in denial.

The world is definitely getting smaller. I was amazed two years ago to have a clinic manager enroll in our Mini MBA for Health Care Management from the Dubai Health Care City. In the first class I asked her if it wasn’t a long way to come for one course and she said, “It’s easy - Dubai, London, Chicago, Minneapolis – no problem.”

Posted by Dan McLaughlin at 04:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Welcome to High Performance Healthcare. This blog is based at the Center for Health and Medical Affairs at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis Minnesota and its goal is to support those individuals and organizations that seek to consistently improve the performance of the American healthcare system. Our target audience is progressive healthcare leaders, clinicians, policymakers and academics.

The American health care system is rightly criticized for poor quality, access and cost. And yet, there are exciting innovations in the leadership and management of healthcare today and our intent is to publicize and popularize these advances. To see more about our definition of High Performance Healthcare click here. The Center for Health and Medical Affairs has over 20 year history of providing degree, executive development, custom education to individuals and organizations throughout the upper Midwest. This region is the home to health care systems that provide some of the most efficient and high quality health care in the country. Our students and clients come from these organizations.

Because we are part of the Opus College of Business we believe in the scientific basis for health care management and leadership. Business schools have developed and refined the scientific principles that underlie the operations of many successful businesses today. These principles are built upon the basic research and literature from the fundamental fields of mathematics, psychology, sociology, economics and organizational behavior.

These principles have been used by the general business sector for many years but are only now being successfully applied in some health care systems. Sadly, the poor performance of much of health care today can be attributed to the inability of many leaders to successfully utilize these contemporary methods and leadership approaches. Our belief is that high performance health care can only be achieved through the broad application of these scientifically based tools and principles.

The topics we will address in this blog are: reports on research projects undertaken by our faculty and contributors, summaries of the many health care events held here at St. Thomas and the identification of helpful articles from the literature. Most health care leaders do not have the time to review the many academic publications that contain valuable insights that could assist them in their leadership challenges. Therefore, this blog will frequently highlight interesting and useful articles.

Recently CHMA and the Minnesota Chapter of the American College of Healthcare Executives hosted a “Senior Leadership Forum” that featured three individuals who have led the formation and growth of some of the largest and high performing systems in Minnesota. Click here to see their observations on current health care issues, the need for regulation, medical tourism and other leadership challenges.

The principle author of this blog is Dan McLaughlin, director of the Center for Health and Medical Affairs. We invite readers to share comments on our postings or any great examples of high performance in your organization.

Posted by Dan McLaughlin at 02:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)