Recently in our Health Policy class we had a guest speaker come in to talk to us about the Affordable Care Act and how it came into being a law. This presentation made me realize just how much governmental policies affect the way hospital managers run their business. We have talked about this a lot in all of my classes this semester, as well as hear professionals talk about current policy issues at various networking events. As a manager, is it essential to be up to date on the latest policies and know what is going on and what could be changing.
I found an article written in The Baltimore Sun titled "Hospital presidents talk about health issues with business owners". In this article, the president of John Hopkins Hospital talked about how closely she watches things like taking away health insurance coverage or making changes to the Medicaid program. She said that they do worry about the federal level and what is going on there. Dr. Mohan Suntha also talked about how communicating with physicians about policy issues can be difficult. He explained how they just want to know the "rules of the game" so that they can figure out how to better take care of patients. This can be difficult for them, however, because in healthcare the "rules of the game" are constantly changing. Overall, managing any business requires knowledge of current policy issues, but in healthcare it is especially important and changing constantly.
Link to article:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bs-hs-gbc-hospital-ceos-20171115-story.html
Interesting post. In today's healthcare landscape, it has become increasingly difficult for hospitals to plan ahead. How do you start working on something that will take years to develop when you don't know what the insurance landscape is going to look like?
ReplyDeleteThere are so many ongoing political debates. I am in a health policy graduate class right now and some of the proposed changes are so extreme. Changes to the Medicaid program are a major issue right now and it is important to watch these closely. So many people rely on Medicaid that changes to its funding could be disastrous to many, including hospitals who see a majority of Medicaid patients.
My deceased father-in-law was a small town general practice physician. He remembers how the American Medical Association was initially against the Medicare proposal when it came out in the mid-1960s. Not because they were against increasing access to healthcare for the elderly and indigent, but because they knew how federal government financing of healthcare (no matter how well-intentioned at first) would morph over the decades into a bureaucratic monster (as Sarah somewhat alluded to above), and would as a secondary consequence turn healthcare into a for-profit business. The AMA simply couldn't abide that, but they faced such a public relations outcry over their resistance to Medicare legislation that they had to back down. In a way they were right. Once Uncle Sam got it's camel nose into the healthcare financing tent it quickly came all the way in. My father-in-law remembers being paid (prior to Medicare) in bushels of peaches, smoked hams, canned vegetables, eggs, etc, from grateful but poor farmers who always honored their debts for his medical services. Minimal paperwork. Now he absolutely despised the "business" of American medicine and wanted universal healthcare, where everyone was a salaried employee of the government (despite those separate challenges).
ReplyDeleteHealthcare is a heavily regulated industry - therefore you have to know what government actors are doing and planning.
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