"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.

Thursday, July 10, 2014

It's Working....at least at WMHS and in Maryland

I just read that the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is embarking on a monitoring project to determine as to whether or not the Affordable Care Act is working.  Well, look no further as it is definitely working in Cumberland.  Remember the NY Times article in August of 2013 on the TPR demonstration project at WMHS?  The article said that "this hard-scrapple of a city at the base of the Appalachians is an unlikely hotbed of health care innovation that (through the Western Maryland Health System) is carrying out an experiment that could leave a more profound imprint on health care than President Obama's reforms.  That's exactly what we have been doing and the results are as follows. We have successfully reduced inpatient admissions by 32% from 19,000 four years ago to 14,000 today; readmissions by 42% with emphasis on heart failure, COPD and diabetes; nursing home readmissions by 38%; ED use rates by 3%; ED admissions by 6% and ED visits by 20% by around 10,000 over the last few years from almost 60,000 to just under 50,000.  

Collectively through these efforts, we have saved over $1.5 million; that's caring for patients in a location other than the inpatient acute care setting.  We continue to build upon the success that we have experienced over the last several years.  All of our efforts have translated to a FY '14 year to date operating margin of almost 9% and a total margin of close to 12%.  The experiment continues to be an ongoing success at WMHS.

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