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Brian Smith, president of Bon Secours Mercy Health, said Tuesday that he will retire Dec. 31.

Smith has spent more than three decades with the health system. He’s credited with playing a key role in the integration of Bon Secours and Mercy Health.

“When I started as a wages and benefits manager in 1990, I had no idea that Mercy Health – and later Bon Secours Mercy Health – would be my professional home for 32 years,” Smith said in a statement. “Serving this ministry and the millions of patients who come through our doors each year has been my pleasure and a true calling, and I am honored to have been a part of such a dynamic and innovative health system.”

Smith spent 22 years at St. Rita’s Medical Center in Lima before moving to a system-wide role in 2012.

Bon Secours Mercy Health CEO John Starcher described Smith as a “dedicated servant leader.”

“Many of our most successful initiatives are evidence of Brian’s continued operational focus and intellectual curiosity,” Starcher said in a statement. “When I think about the millions of patients we serve, the advancements we’ve made in technology and the emphasis Brian has placed on better care processes that improve the patient experience, I know it is Brian’s strong leadership that has enabled our teams to work at the top of their license.”

Bon Secours operates 48 hospitals and is one of the five largest Catholic health systems in America.

ECU Health hires first chief nursing executive

Trish Baise has been hired as the first chief nursing executive of ECU Health in North Carolina.

Baise will join ECU Health on Jan. 1, 2023. In her new role, she will advance nursing care, education and research throughout the system. She joins ECU Health after serving as vice president and chief nurse executive at Atrium Health-Cabarrus.

Brian Floyd, chief operating officer of ECU Health said nursing is at the heart of the organization.

“The creation of the CNE position and the appointment of Dr. Baise to lead in this role allows our organization to innovate and collaborate to further build a nursing culture that helps recruit and retain talented nurses and care givers who are dedicated to serving our region,” Floyd said in a statement.

Baise brings more than 30 years of healthcare experience to the role.

“I am honored to have the opportunity to pioneer the Chief Nursing Executive position at ECU Health,” Baise said in a statement. “ECU Health is a recognized leader in rural health care and the organization’s mission aligns with my professional values of providing high-quality care to communities in rural environments.

“I am constantly inspired by the difference nurses make in the lives of those they care for, and I look forward to working alongside the great nurses that live the ECU Health mission every day,” she said.

HCA Gulf Coast appoints new vice president

Holly Elliott has been named the vice president of women’s and children’s services of HCA Healthcare’s Gulf Coast Division.

Elliott will take the new role beginning Jan. 1. She is currently serving as HCA Healthcare’s corporate vice prescient of women’s and children’s services.

Amy Casseri, senior vice president of physician relations, women’s and children’s services and imaging at HCA Healthcare, touted Elliott’s accomplishments.

“Holly has been instrumental in leading the corporate women’s and children’s strategic agenda,”  Casseri said in a statement. “Among many of her successes, Holly initiated HCA Healthcare’s first company-wide OB/GYN Physician Townhall focused on initiatives to improve maternal and neonatal outcomes. Additionally, she coordinated the completion of our 2022 NICU cohort workshops and the consolidation of our NICU cohort 3-year strategic plan.”

Elliott will focus on developing women’s and children’s growth initiatives and coordinate best practices across the HCA Gulf Coast Division’s hospitals and women’s centers.

“Holly’s previous division experience driving high-priority initiatives and recruiting high-quality clinicians is invaluable,” Mike Lance, chief development officer at HCA Healthcare Gulf Coast Division, said in a statement. “Holly will be a tremendous asset to our development team yet again.”

Head of Pa. hospital trade group plans to retire

Andy Carter, president and CEO of The Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania, plans to step down next year.

Carter announced last week that he plans to retire by June 30, 2023. He has led the organization since 2012.

"Together with a truly remarkable team of dedicated professionals, we have strengthened health care in Pennsylvania by making it more accessible, affordable, and higher quality,” Carter said in a news release.

“From successfully advocating early in my tenure for Medicaid expansion, to relentlessly improving quality and safety, HAP and its members have been vigorous champions for achieving the vision of a healthy Pennsylvania.”

Carter formerly served as the president of the Ohio Children’s Hospital Association, and he also led the Visiting Nurse Associations of America.

The hospital association’s board of directors is undertaking a national search to find Carter’s successor. Carter plans to stay on board until his replacement is named and plans to assist in the transition, the association said.

Orlando Health elevates leader to hospital president

Maggie Bonko has been named the new president of Orlando Health Horizon West Hospital.

Bonko will start in her new role on December 1. She has been serving as assistant vice president and chief operating officer of Orlando Health South Seminole Hospital for the past five years.

She joined Orlando Health in 2005 as a recruiter and one year later was promoted to the role of manager of recruitment. She became director of human resources in 2010 for both Orlando Health Dr. Phillips and Orlando Health-Health Central Hospital. She later served as administrator of allied health and operational support for both Orlando Health South Seminole and Orlando Health Dr. P. Phillips Hospital.

“Orlando Health Horizon West Hospital is in the heart of a rapidly growing community. Maggie has the right experience and drive to match that growth inside the hospital by providing additional services and programs that will benefit our patients,” Philip Koovakada, senior vice president Orlando Health South Central region and president, Orlando Health–Health Central Hospital, said in a statement.

Articles

ECU Health hires its first chief nursing executive, HCA Gulf Coast appoints a new vice president, and the head of Pennsylvania's hospital association is retiring.

Bon Secours Mercy Health president is stepping down, and more | MED MOVES 

Derek Streat is founder, CEO and chairman of DexCare, a data-driven intelligence company focused on healthcare access.

Consumers today are experts in online shopping. 

Whether you’re buying clothes, electronics, furniture, or nearly anything else, online stores allow you to sort items and apply filters to find the exact products you’re looking for, delivered exactly when you need them. The site may even recommend items it thinks you’ll like based on purchase history or other criteria. Once you find what you want, you can add it to your cart and check out with just a few clicks.

If online shopping can be this streamlined and simple, yet personalized to individual preferences, why can’t finding care be? By improving e-commerce capabilities in healthcare, it can.

The last time you tried to schedule a doctor’s appointment, what was your experience like?

Most likely, it wasn’t as simple as the last time you tried to buy a new shirt online. 

Maybe you had to visit multiple different sites before you found the correct one for scheduling, or you were directed to call the office and were inevitably placed on a long hold. You may have even found a provider you wanted to see, only to find out they didn’t have any appointments available.

This is the current state of appointment scheduling, and it’s incredibly frustrating. To simplify this process and optimize care access, health systems need to merchandise care – making care options, providers, and appointment times more easily discoverable, just like your favorite online retailer. 

Merchandising is the next frontier of healthcare, and health systems need to reach it in order to compete with growing threats in the industry.

Utilizing the same technology as online retailers, care discovery will be as easy as browsing your favorite store, and appointment scheduling will look like a digital storefront.

The patient can begin their journey by making a search on either a search engine or a website, including the health system’s digital front door. If searching on Google, for example, the e-commerce technology will route patients and drive traffic to the health system’s booking site. 

The platform then automatically filters search results based on the patient’s input of intent and need and displays real-time availability for the care options best suited to their needs. The interface also shows additional information such as the providers’ specialties – just like you’d be able to see the details of a product you’re considering buying. Providers that aren’t a good fit or are unavailable aren’t shown at all, so patients don’t waste their time pursuing options that aren’t relevant.

With all this information personalized for the individual, patients can feel confident that they’re finding the best possible care option for them. Once the patient has identified the best provider, location, and time, they can book the appointment in just a few clicks. The whole process is so intuitive that, ideally, the care finds the patient instead of the patient having to find the care.

Internal research found that 80% of patients who begin the process of booking an appointment drop off before they complete it – missing out on critical and potentially life-saving care. By simplifying the process, health systems can greatly reduce this alarming number and ensure that all patients get the care they need.

Why health system executives should embrace e-commerce

Merchandising healthcare may seem controversial. You might worry that taking an e-commerce approach will make the experience more impersonal and transactional, but this is not the case.

Merchandising can make care more accessible and custom-tailored by allowing patients to find exactly what they want and need. Healthcare is undergoing a massive transformation, and patients now expect to find and receive care with ease and convenience. Merchandising is the best path to delivering these experiences that will result in the highest patient satisfaction.

Health systems will also see immense benefit from merchandising. Turning care discovery into a storefront will enable systems to better capture, convert, and retain patients, which will drive greater revenue down the road. One health system that implemented improved e-commerce saw a 121% conversion lift, 39% increase in bookings, and 30% more net new patients while also significantly lowering the cost of delivering care.

Our current appointment scheduling platforms aren’t enough anymore. It’s time for health systems to get on board with the model of e-commerce that online retailers have seen so much success with.

Merchandising is nothing to be afraid of – it’s just about getting things to consumers more intelligently and effectively – and both health systems and patients stand to benefit from this.

Just as Americans are shopping online for the holidays, patients should be able to have the same convenience in finding the care that they need. 

Online shopping for healthcare? Why health systems should merchandise care | Derek Streat

Abhishek Jacob is vice president of Edifecs

Fred Guthrie is associate vice president of Edifecs

Amid an uncertain economy, providers, payers, and patients alike will be turning their attention to value-based care models to cut costs and improve health outcomes.

These models, where reimbursement is rewarded based on quality of care, have taken center stage once again in the healthcare discussion.

During the pandemic, the industry saw a rapid move towards these pay-for-performance payment models, with one large health player quickly implementing a value-based care model in just 18 months, according to a recent analysis by 

. This analysis also notes that even as digital health investment has declined since 2021, private equity firms continue to place bets on innovative healthcare business models that deliver positive results, showing promise for the acceleration of value-based care adoption.

While COVID-19 pushed value-based care back onto the stage, health plans must now shine the spotlight on this healthcare delivery model moving forward. Why?

Health plans hold the keys to the back-end technology powering these value-based models, to the patient information that will empower more equitable care, and to the systems that will allow for seamless data exchange across the healthcare continuum.

Unlocking data insights to advance health equity

To carry the value-based care torch forward, health plans must unlock the data.

For years health leaders have discussed the need to consider social determinants of health (SDOH) – the factors outside of a doctor’s office that impact care – into how care is delivered to each patient. By integrating this data into patients’ care plans in a value-based care model, health plans can better assess patient health risks and help providers proactively support patients.

Data aggregators like LexisNexis have developed the tools to collect SDOH data. The challenge is this data is often held in siloes or delivered to providers too late in a patient’s care journey. Looking ahead, health plans will need to leverage technology solutions that can automate and scale their value-based care programs with SDOH data pulled from aggregators and disseminate this information to every healthcare player impacting a patient’s care.

Innovative Management Solutions of New York (IMSNY)

, which is a joint venture led by large behavioral health practice associations, is paving the way for SDOH data integration.

IMSNY built a SDOH solution centered around three components: a map of the local community-based supports for patients, a data warehouse that brings together patients’ community-based and clinical data, and a curated network designed to make closed-loop referrals to ensure the client receives the referred service. This program has allowed patients to receive whole-person healthcare, leading to better health outcomes.

To transform value-based care infrastructure with new SDOH data streams, health plans need to take a hard look at the technology they innovate with.

The reality is value-based care started as an experiment. In its early stages, health plans developed value-based care models through homegrown solutions, massive spreadsheets and labor-intensive manual processes. Compounding the problem, legacy claims and payment systems, built for fee-for-service are, at best, marginally able to support value-based care and payment models.

Now, as more providers are open to adopting these risk-based cost models, the challenge is modernizing these legacy systems to manage an influx in new value-based care contracts, while still coordinating legacy contracts.

To do this, health plans are increasingly looking towards technologies that can optimize value-based care programs for improved performance year-over-year. Health plans need technology that standardizes and automates value-based programs and adapts to provider contracting needs.

These technologies need to fundamentally support data aggregation, governance, and quality, a modular and reusable IT infrastructure, improved policy support and compliance, improved information sharing capabilities, and a framework to support value and improved outcomes.

Opening the door to provider communications

As health plans modernize their technology stack to scale their value-based care systems, improving communication with providers will be paramount. Historically, value-based care has been an opaque system for some providers with uncertainty around how they are performing on a contract.

This lack of transparency ultimately slows down value-based care adoption as providers are unsure if they should or can take on new members. Health plans must provide a bigger window into provider performance.

There also needs to be more clarity for providers on how to submit patient care data to the health plan. For many plans, this process is still highly fragmented with providers submitting data from various channels. Narrowing provider dataflow to one channel with technology that can deliver fast insights on this data will be the future of value-based care.

Health plans are the gatekeepers to value-based care. SDOH data integration, improved technology infrastructure and increased transparency into provider data flow will be the key to push value-based and equity-based care forward.

Dr. Abhishek Jacob is the vice president of product management at Edifecs, where he heads value-based care product offerings. Fred Guthrie is the associate vice president at Edifecs, and he is product owner for the company’s population payment management business.

Health plans possess the back-end technology powering value-based models and the patient information that will empower more equitable care.

Accelerating value-based care: Why health plans now hold the keys | Viewpoint

 last month, said Wednesday it has brokered a deal to sell two hospitals in the Chicago area.

Pipeline, a for-profit system based in El Segundo, Calif., said it is selling West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park and Weiss Memorial Hospital in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood to Resilience Healthcare and Ramco Healthcare Holdings, LLC. Pipeline previously said the financial performances of the Chicago-area hospitals was dragging the system.

Pipeline said it sought approval of the sale in a motion submitted late Tuesday to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas. If the court signs off on the deal, Resilience would assume operation of both hospitals beginning Dec. 2, Pipeline said.

“We are pleased to have reached this important milestone after months of discussion, planning and full transparency, and we are grateful to the physicians and staff who have continued their dedicated service to their patients during this year of change,” Pipeline CEO Andrei Soran said in a statement.

“We are proud of the investments we have made in these Chicago facilities, and we wish Weiss and West Suburban all the best in their continued service to their communities,” he said.

The sale has two phases, according to Pipeline.

The first phase involves Resilience taking over the hospitals, a medical office building adjacent to Weiss, the River Forest Medical Campus affiliated with West Suburban and the Chicago Health Medical Group. 

In the second phase, Ramco is expected to buy the real estate associated with the Chicago medical facilities, Pipeline said. That second phase should close in the next few months, according to Pipeline.

Pipeline Health currently operates seven safety net hospitals in three states.

Assuming the sale occurs as anticipated, Pipeline would be left with five hospitals: White Rock Medical Center in Dallas; and four hospitals in the Los Angeles area: Memorial Hospital of Gardena, Coast Plaza Hospital in Norwalk, Community Hospital of Huntington Park, and East Los Angeles Doctors Hospital.

However, Pipeline has struggled to improve the finances of the two hospitals in the Chicago area. The system said it has invested $60 million to upgrade the facilities.

Pipeline has been trying to arrange the sale with Resilience throughout much of the past year. The Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board approved the sale June 7, but Pipeline has been working since then to finish the deal.

“We have worked diligently and transparently in our engagement, partnering with the community in ongoing conversations about the hospitals and their service to patients and about our work toward a change of ownership,” Soran said in a statement.

Resilience is led by healthcare executive Manoj Prasad and financial partner Rathnakar R. Patlola, who manages Ramco.

 filed in the bankruptcy court last month, Pipeline said the poor financial performance of the Illinois hospitals was taking a toll on the entire system. 

The Chicago facilities lost $69.7 million over the 12-month period that ended in August 2022, according to the court filing. Pipeline said higher labor and supply costs in the COVID-19 pandemic have exacerbated the financial woes of the Illinois hospitals.

“Due to the financial state of the Illinois Facilities, Pipeline’s California- and Texas- based healthcare operations have effectively subsidized the Illinois Facilities to avoid operational disruptions,” Russell Perry, Pipeline’s chief transformation officer, wrote in the court filing.

Many hospital systems have been struggling in the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in the past year. 

More than half of all hospital systems are expected to finish 2022 in negative margins

, according to a report from the American Hospital Association. Facing higher costs and inconsistent volume, 

hospitals have been in the red for nine consecutive months

The California-based system says it has an agreement to sell two Chicago-area hospitals to Resilience Healthcare and Ramco Healthcare Holdings.

After seeking bankruptcy protection, Pipeline Health strikes deal to sell two hospitals

The MetroHealth Board of Trustees said it has fired MetroHealth CEO Akram Boutros after discovering that he paid himself more than $1.9 million in bonuses without disclosing the payments to the board.

MetroHealth has fired CEO Akram Boutros, saying he improperly paid himself $1.9 million in bonuses. Boutros is taking legal action.

MetroHealth said Boutros was terminated after an outside investigation uncovered that Boutros gave himself bonuses over a period of four years without notifying the board, the Cleveland-based system said in a 

The board received the results of an investigation of the compensation by an outside law firm Saturday. The board said it voted Monday night to terminate Boutros’ employment “for cause.”

“We all recognize the wonderful things Dr. Boutros has done for our hospital and for the community,” Vanessa Whiting, chairwoman of MetroHealth’s board of trustees, said in a statement. “However, we know of no organization permitting its CEO to self-evaluate and determine their entitlement to an additional bonus and at what amount, as Dr. Boutros has done.”

Boutros plans to take legal action over the firing. An attorney for Boutros contends the termination of Boutros was retaliatory and in response to his exposure of board misconduct in the improper hiring of a new CEO, 

 has been hired as the organization’s next president and CEO. Boutros had previously announced in November 2021 that he planned to retire at the end of this year.

Whiting said in a statement Tuesday that the allegations from Boutros “are false and a distraction from the facts we have previously communicated about the issue at hand.”

MetroHealth said that Boutros, by his own admission, established metrics to measure his performance, conducted his own evaluation of his performance in relation to those benchmarks, and paid himself more than $1.9 million from 2017 through 2021.

The system said the board did not authorize Boutros to perform such a self-assessment and had no knowledge of the payments.

MetroHealth’s board said Boutros’ contract states clearly that the board sets Boutros’ compensation. Only the board can determine Boutros’ compensation, including bonuses, and the board is the only authority that can set performance metrics determining compensation, Whiting said.

MetroHealth’s board demanded repayment of the bonuses. On Oct. 31, Boutros repaid $2.1 million, which represented the supplemental bonus money, and more than $124,000 in interest, the system said.

Boutros told the board at a public meeting that he had disclosed the matter to the Ohio Ethics Commission on Nov. 1, the day after he repaid the money, the system said.

“We stand ready to cooperate with any investigating authorities while we continue our internal investigation,” Whiting said in the statement.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley said Tuesday that his office “is in contact with the Ohio Ethics Commission to review the matter,” but didn’t comment further, 

Boutros didn’t disclose his full compensation to the board and didn’t offer the information to a consultant hired to review and assess the CEO’s compensation, the board said.

MetroHealth’s board tapped a law firm, Tucker Ellis, to investigate the bonus payments.

Nabil Chehade will assume the CEO’s duties on an interim basis.

Airica Steed, currently executive vice president/system chief operating officer of Sinai Chicago Health System and president of Mount Sinai and Sinai Children’s Hospital, will take over as president and CEO on Dec. 5.

Steed was chosen to succeed Boutros, who planned to retire at the end of the year, the system said. MetroHealth announced her selection as the next CEO in September.

Conversely, Boutros’s attorney said the firing is punitive and Boutros will be taking his case to court.

Jason Bristol, a Cleveland-based attorney representing Boutros, issued a statement saying the termination was retaliatory, WJW-TV reported. The attorney said the board’s statement “is full of misinformation and outright lies.”

“The MetroHealth Board’s actions yesterday are the latest of a series of retaliatory acts against Dr. Boutros after he raised the issue of the unauthorized hiring of the new CEO,” Bristol said in the statement.

“He uncovered that the Board members were participating in serial deliberation outside of public meetings and that the Chair signed agreements and authorized payments without Board approval,” Bristol said in the statement.

“The Chair led a retaliatory charge against him for blowing the whistle on these practices,” Bristol said in the statement.

Boutros was improperly targeted for receiving bonuses that other employees received, and only Boutros was forced to repay the bonuses, Bristol said.

MetroHealth said it has added safeguards related to the payment of bonuses.

MetroHealth operates four hospitals and dozens of sites of care in and around Cleveland. The system employs 8,000 workers. MetroHealth serves more than 300,000 patients, and about two-thirds are uninsured or covered by Medicare or Medicaid.

Dr. Akram Boutros gave himself bonuses over four years without disclosing the payments, the MetroHealth board said. An attorney for Boutros says the firing is retaliatory after he planned to expose misconduct by the board.

MetroHealth CEO fired for paying himself $1.9M in bonuses, vows legal fight

Gundersen Health System and Bellin Health have announced that they plan to complete their merger by Nov. 30 and will move forward as a combined organization starting Dec. 1.

Gundersen Health System and Bellin Health say they are on the cusp of coming together and forming a new healthcare organization.

The two nonprofit systems have announced that they plan to complete their merger by Nov. 30 and will move forward as a combined organization starting Dec. 1.  The new system will operate 11 hospitals and more than 100 clinics serving patients in Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota and Iowa.

Bellin and Gundersen have both described the consolidation as a “planned merger of equals.” The systems announced in June that they were discussing a merger to preserve and expand healthcare services for the region.

These planned hospital mergers and acquisitions collapsed. Here’s why.

Both Bellin and Gundersen will keep their individual identities and logos, the systems said.

Scott Rathgaber, Gundersen’s chief executive officer, will serve as the incoming CEO of the merged organizations.

“Our health systems have been successfully fulfilling our individual missions, but we know we will thrive and best serve our patients and communities by finding partners with shared missions and strategic visions,” Rathgaber said in a statement.

“This merger brings transformative opportunities to expand our patient-centered care and community-minded work,” he said. “Together, we can invest resources wisely and efficiently to improve health and well-being in our communities, especially for marginalized individuals and broadly for everyone in our care.”

John Dykema, chairman of the Bellin Health Board of Directors, will be the chair of the newly created board, residing in northeast Wisconsin.

Bellin CEO Chris Woleske will serve as the new organization’s system executive vice president and regional president of the Bellin Region. Woleske sought to reassure patients that they would continue seeing their physicians.

“The most important message we want to share with everyone is this: The people you know and the care and locations you trust are not changing,” she said in a statement. “Coming together will allow Bellin and Gundersen to better serve our patients and communities, preserving and enhancing a legacy of local, personalized care that will endure for decades to come,” Woleske said. “We have found a true partner in Gundersen, and we know we will be stronger together.”

Bellin’s headquarters in Green Bay, Wisconsin and Gundersen’s headquarters in La Crosse, Wisconsin will remain. The systems said they will have a “balanced leadership structure” with the top two posts - the CEO and board chairperson - in different regions to ensure equal representation.

Heather Schimmers, Gundersen’s chief nursing officer and chief operating officer, will serve as regional president of the Gundersen Region.

The systems said they plan to offer more clinical services and expect to share resources. The combined organization also expects to offer more virtual care options into homes and workplaces, the systems said.

When the systems first disclosed the merger discussions in June, Rathgaber said, “Coming together would better position us to weather industry changes, and make needed financial investments in digital infrastructure, facilities, equipment and therapeutics, while maintaining affordability for the patients and communities we serve.”

While Bellin and Gundersen are poised to complete their consolidation, two other health systems in the Upper Midwest are exploring a merger.

Essentia Health and the Marshfield Clinic Health System

 said in October that they have begun talks that could lead to a merger. If Essentia and Marshfield Clinic merge, it would create a system of 25 hospitals and more than 26,000 employees.

Essentia operates 14 hospitals along with dozens of clinics in Minnesota and North Dakota, along with a few facilities in Wisconsin. Marshfield Clinic manages 11 hospitals and other sites of care in Wisconsin and Michigan’s upper peninsula.

, announced last week that they have entered into 

 to join forces and create a new system. The new organization will operate five hospitals in western Pennsylvania and have more than $1 billion in revenue.

There have been fewer hospital consolidations in the COVID-19 pandemic, but 

more hospital consolidations in the coming months

, out of financial necessity or to seize opportunities to expand services.

Trinity Health, one of America’s largest Catholic health systems, completed the acquisition of MercyOne in September

. MercyOne,  based in Iowa, operates 16 medical centers and more than 400 sites of care.

 announced in May that they plan to merge and form an organization with $27 billion in annual revenue. If federal regulators approve the deal, the new health system would operate 67 hospitals and 1,000 ambulatory sites in six states.

Industry analysts say if regulators sign off on the Atrium-Advocate Aurora merger,

. Other larger systems could see the deal as a model for other transactions by merging with systems in other regions, and thus avoiding the 

 that comes with trying to acquire or merge with hospitals in the same markets.

The two systems are creating a new organization with 11 hospitals serving patients in Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota and Iowa.

Gundersen Health System, Bellin Health say ‘merger of equals’ will close Nov. 30

At a time when hospitals are facing labor shortages and serious financial pressures, Brian Kalis said it’s important for healthcare leaders to employ long-term strategy.

Kalis, the managing director of strategy for Accenture’s healthcare business, spoke with 

 at the HLTH Conference in Las Vegas last week. He shared his perspectives on the concerns he’s hearing from hospital leaders.

Most hospitals are worried about their finances after what has been a brutal year for most health systems. Many hospitals are in the red and 

more than half of U.S. hospitals are expected to finish the year in negative margins

, according to a report by the American Hospital Association.

“Hospitals are really concerned about profitability pressures, which are really driven by high inflation as well as workforce shortages,” Kalis said. “Right now, they’re seeing that as really a need and an opportunity to rethink care delivery, and really blend technology and human ingenuity to improve access, experience and outcomes.” 

(See excerpts of our conversation in this video. The story continues below the video.)

Amid RSV surge, children’s hospitals push Biden to declare national emergency

Looking forward, Kalis said hospital leaders should examine areas where they are spending more than they should and look at ways to invest in better ways to deliver healthcare.

“Right now, it’s a really important time to both look at your cost structure and see where is excess cost that you can use to ultimately create a leaner structure to maintain and sustain your overall mission,” Kalis said. “Once you do that, that ultimately will free up capital to reinvest in new areas, to ultimately begin to transition, for care delivery reinvention.

“Balancing those two things, optimizing the existing business to be profitable at the core, and then shifting for that new model to be sustainable long-term, is an important balance right now,” he said.

Hospitals and health systems continue to grapple with 

. Kalis said hospital leaders must think about ways to use technology to help reduce the burden on staff and maximize their productivity.

“A big part of this and it’s really important for hospitals struggling with the labor shortage to think long-term, and really think of how can you actually rethink the care model and blend technology and clinicians in new ways to ultimately improve labor productivity. And really that does require a rethink in how you can shift tasks,” Kalis said.

“How do you shift tasks both to different levels of labor, how do you shift tasks to patients, how do you shift tasks to technology as well,” he continued. “And really that requires a rethink of how healthcare can be provided in the home, in the community as well as in the physical space.”

Health leaders can also consider how technology can help hospitals overcome the challenge of nursing shortages.

nurses are being saddled with too many duties that go beyond the scope of nursing

, adding to burnout and driving some nurses away from the bedside. Kalis said leaders need to think more deeply about “the overall clinician experience.”

“Right now it really is important to rethink the overall care model, and actually think of how you can apply technology and people in different ways to improve labor productivity,” he said. “And with that it really requires a deep understanding of clinicians’ needs in operation on the front line, and how you can use technology to augment what they’re already doing, where they’re working together, versus in conflict with each other.”

Hospitals are also being pressed to address health equity and tackle the disparities in outcomes among members of minority groups and those with lower incomes.

CMS leader says health innovation must be available to all

He spoke with Chief Healthcare Executive about controlling costs, thinking about the long-term, labor shortages and what healthcare leaders should be doing. 