Last Word
A Touchstone for Transformation

It is easy for leaders to become sidetracked when juggling dozens of competing priorities. Yet, in health care, clarity is always close at hand. The commendable providers featured in this Leadership report offer a vital reminder: Always return to what is best for patients and the community.

This is the touchstone for all healthcare providers. Focusing on the patient naturally leads to two key questions:

• How can providers ensure that patients receive high-quality, safe, and efficient care?
• How can providers ensure their own financial health so they can continue providing needed services to the community?

The answers to both of these questions are becoming more intertwined as payers, patients, and policymakers increasingly focus on improving value, or quality and efficiency.

Performance improvement and cost containment efforts have been ongoing within hospitals, physician groups, and other providers for decades—with many admirable results. Most providers can quickly point to, for example, improved infection rates on a particular hospital unit or higher immunization rates among a particular patient population.

Yet many of the greatest achievements still remain to be achieved—and often depend on increased coordination and collaboration across providers and across care sites. Clearly payment system modifications are needed as well as changes in healthcare delivery. Payers and policymakers are beginning to tie payment to performance on quality- and efficiency-related measures. Yet, it is still unclear how this will play out in the future, and how exactly providers will be financially affected.

This Fall/Winter 2009 Leadership report is intended to begin a dialogue about how providers can transform care delivery. Future Leadership reports and offerings will continue to offer practical, real-life examples of how providers are improving value and ensuring better coordination among care sites.

Particular emphasis will be put on the following topics:

• Integration among hospitals, physicians, skilled nursing facilities, home care agencies, and other providers
• Driving out unnecessary costs while also improving quality
• Managing clinical and financial risks

Clearly, there is a long road still ahead. But providers that focus on what’s right for patients—quality, safety, satisfaction, and cost—will be able to navigate the road through whatever weather patterns develop along the way.