Tony Snyder serves as Chief Executive Officer for Pomerene Hospital.
On April 12th, Tony will speak on a panel at Becker's Hospital Review 9th Annual Meeting. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference, which will take place April 11-14, 2018 in Chicago.
To learn more about the conference and Tony's session, click here.
Question: All healthcare is local. What about your market influences your organization's business or operations most?
Tony Snyder: The largest influence on our local market is most likely the makeup of the county's population. The total population is approximately 50,000, of which 49 percent is Amish. This segment has been our focus for nearly 10 years as we have built an Amish Service Program specifically designed to serve the healthcare needs of the Amish in a culturally sensitive manner and to keep appropriate healthcare services local. Our service offerings include on campus housing, transportation, bundled payments, and an Amish Advocate who assists individuals with several access matters. This strategy has been successful with keeping care local and improving access, cost and outcomes.
Q: Who or what are the disruptors that have your attention? Why?
TS: Telemedicine and telehealth are recent innovations that have the potential to be major disruptors. If the Triple Aim is our goal, telehealth can drive improvements in the way we deliver care (increased access), and can help make care more efficient, thus addressing the issue of cost. Convenient and quick care are highly sought-after traits when it comes to primary care. Teleheath can help provide both in addition to reducing the cost of a visit to a provider.
Q: Please share a new consumer-centric capability your organization has built or tapped into within the past 18 months.
TS: Corporate health and wellness is an area that has gained our attention in the past 18 months. We view this as a component of our population health strategy and started with our own employees. We were able to raise awareness within our employee group of the importance of wellness by offering educational programs, fitness center memberships, biometric screenings and health-risk appraisals. After a couple of years, we enjoyed several successes in turning around health risks within our employee population. The word of these successes spread quickly in the community and we now have ten corporate clients taking advantage of this program.