"The Ronan Report" provides insight about the activities at the Western Maryland Health System in Cumberland, Maryland, and about the changes taking place in healthcare today from a CEO's perspective.

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

It's More Than A Change in Payment Methodologies

I am preparing to present at the end of the month to a couple of external groups regarding our success under the "new" payment methodology, Total Patient Revenue.  As a reminder, WMHS along with nine other Maryland hospitals changed how we were paid for care delivery back in FY 2011, ultimately impacting how we actually deliver care.  

What I have gleaned from this change in shifting care delivery from one of volume to one of value has been remarkable.  In three years, we went from providing care for the convenience of pretty much everyone except for the patient to the gold standard, which puts the patient and their family in the center of everything that we do.  In addition, we, along with our employed staff and physicians, now have a much better understanding of what it takes to deliver the best possible care.  

Mandated by the State, initiatives like Quality Based Reimbursement, which either rewards or penalizes hospitals in Maryland for the care that they provide, have given us the opportunity to bring improvement to our Core Measures, Patient Satisfaction, Re-admission Rate and our Potentially Preventable Conditions.  We have greatly improved the overall coordination of the patient's care through these many initiatives.  


There is now a partnership between our patients and our staff from which everyone has benefited.  Our staff has embraced their empowerment as well as the very critical core value of innovation.  Everyone is looking at ways to bring improvement to the care delivery process while the patient is in the hospital as well as post discharge and we have found it.  What started as a way to reduce the cost of care has become so much more for our patients and our staff.

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