Inflation, care transformation and workforce shortages are of high importance for three hospital CFOs, they said on recent episodes of the "Becker's Healthcare Podcast."
Here are excerpts from each of their episodes:
Question: From your vantage point as CFO, what are some of the trends that you're following most closely in healthcare today?
Lisa Goodlett. CFO of MUSC Health (Charleston, S.C.): Right now, I'm giving a lot of attention to inflation. Obviously, the news today with the activities between Russia and Ukraine are disappointing, and that's going to put more stress on our resources. Not only the supply chain, but just coming out of the impacts of COVID, so really economic and inflationary pressures. We will have to find ways to replenish all the COVID funds that have flown through the federal and state level. So there are going to be challenges when our reimbursement stream has really been somewhat steady over the past eight or 10 years. … No. 2 on our list is really work fatigue and finding that right balance between, how do we have a remote working staff?
Download the episode here.
Question: As you look at this year, what trends and issues are you following?
James Dietsche. Executive Vice President and CFO of Bellin Health (Green Bay, Wis.): This has definitely changed within one year. So we still have our eye on the ball up from a long-term basis really in care transformation. So that doesn't change. … We are trained to transform our organization away from obviously that inpatient, that hospital-centric care to ambulatory care and delivering care at a more hopefully patient-centered [model] and an effective way from a satisfaction perspective, kind of throughout our broad geography.
So those things for us really mean continued investments in care transformation. Obviously virtual care is big for us. We continue to expand through primary care and specialty care providers, our ability to connect with people where they reside.
The other thing I would say that really didn't exist before, and I would say is new for all of us, is the inflationary pressures that we're seeing, that really none of us — unless you're really, really senior — have experienced through our work careers. So that's not only inflation pressures on labor, it's inflation pressures on projects, facilities, things of that nature. And then supplies and just the reliability of those systems.
Download the episode here.
Question: What are your top one or two priorities that are consuming most of your time today?
Greg Hoffman. CFO of Providence (Renton, Wash.): Number one is workforce. It's not only the challenges of the current shortages as we navigate yet another surge and wave in the pandemic — but most importantly, it's just ensuring we're taking care of the well-being of our caregivers. I mean, that's top of mind for us. It is a very stressful time. There's a lot of burnout.
Number two is really understanding, what is the post-COVID baseline going to be? I think many positive things were accelerated across COVID. Think of things like telehealth, hospital at home, the shift from inpatient to outpatient. The potential of other things were highlighted: the use of data and analytics across the pandemic, value-based-care. These are all positive trends, I think, for the industry that are quickly coming ahead, and we're going to continue to see significant transformation and innovation ahead.
But we're also now seeing significant inflation. So our [third] priority is really charting our path forward across the next several years.
Download the episode here.