Five healthcare CFOs recently discussed concerns ranging from affordable staff housing to inflation with Becker's. Below are excerpts from those talks.
1. Lisa Medovich on the affordable housing options Kerrville, Texas-based Peterson Health is exploring for its staff: I don't think we ever thought a couple of years ago that we would be focusing on housing as part of a service line per se … but we're looking at and exploring alternatives.
There is a university that is within Kerrville called Shriner. We are exploring utilizing and renting out some dormitory rooms — not so much dormitory [rooms], but apartments — that have separate living quarters but shared space for kitchen. We're looking at different Airbnbs and people in the community that are willing to rent because of the fact that it's difficult to find affordable housing. And it also is difficult to rent and find affordable rent. We want to help them with that.
On the horizon, what we're looking at is potentially — not now, maybe five or 10 years from now — building more or less a housing or apartment complex for our folks to live in and/or temporarily live in.
2. Chibueze Okey Agba of Hartford (Conn.) HealthCare on the big trends he is following in healthcare: One of the things that COVID taught us is that some of the old care models are obsolete, and our patients are no longer really our patients. Our patients are now our customers, or they are consumers, and they make decisions on how to receive care. So today we really need to take advantage of what we learned during the pandemic and develop innovative ways to meet our patient/customer needs, including how we communicate with them, including whatever medium they wish to be communicated using. And we really need to adapt our communication medium to how the patients prefer it, whether they prefer email, text messages or phone calls. That's what we need to employ as a way to get to our patients in order to provide them the type of care they need.
3. Lisa Goodlett of Charleston, S.C.-based MUSC Health on the biggest opportunities for disruption in healthcare: I've always been a big proponent of learning from other industries. Recently I was interacting with an investment company, and instead of having to prove my identification, they took my voice imprint, and I thought that was amazing. We need that technology as we're talking to people about their care. How can we do these verifications?
You could check in when you register, and all those complicated steps could be done online, and we could have voice authentication. How do we pick up this technology? For patient refunds, other industries are using ways to interact with customers commercially. We want to get into using Zelle and Venmo and really get out of the paper process [for billing].
4. Joel Day on the priorities of newly launched ScionHealth in Louisville, Ky.: A first priority to our employees within the new organization was to be honest and transparent in sharing that most of their day-to-day activities will remain the same. Our commitment to our patients, employees and local communities still drives daily activities. We also believe that routine, straightforward communication with all of our teammates is crucial to this seamless transition. We are taking time to understand what programs, systems and platforms will work best for ScionHealth, have communicated we’re not making any near-term changes and will focus on leadership stabilization while leveraging the new organization’s project management skill set.
5. Niyum Gandhi of Boston-based Mass General Brigham on the biggest financial concerns facing hospitals and health systems right now: The biggest financial challenge facing hospitals and health systems right now is inflation. Healthcare was not built to withstand inflation at the rates that we are seeing right now. While our costs increase with inflation like those of any organization, our revenues are not indexed to inflation, given the majority of our patients are on government insurance, such as Medicare or Medicaid, and the overwhelming need to keep healthcare affordable and accessible for our patients.
Additionally, in most cities and states, hospitals and health systems are often the largest employers, and we have a responsibility to provide fair wage increases to our employees, especially in times of economic uncertainty. For example, Mass General Brigham has rapidly accelerated wage increases for our lowest-wage employees to help them deal with the quickly rising costs of living. This support is critical given our employees are still bearing the burden of the continued pandemic.