Ram Raju, MD, president and CEO of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corp., is changing HHC's corporate structure, according to a POLITICO New York report.
Here are five things to know about the change.
1. Dr. Raju is getting rid of HHC's traditional network model, which is geographically focused. He plans to replace it with three service lines: inpatient care, long-term and post-acute care and ambulatory care, according to the report.
2. Each service line will have an executive vice president, who will report directly to HHC's central office.
3. Dr. Raju said the idea behind the change is to get rid of some bureaucracy so ambulatory and post-acute services can grow more quickly over the next five years and have equal weight with the HHC board as inpatient hospital care operators, according to the report. "We believe ambulatory care, which is so important to us, unfortunately right now is buried inside inpatient care in the middle of the organization," he said, according to POLITICO New York. "The inpatient care cannibalized ambulatory care for resources. … The grass does not grow under a big tree."
4. The change in organizational structure will take effect in January.
5. HHC, the largest public health system in the U.S., is currently projecting a $1.5 billion budget deficit in 2019. The restructuring is the first concrete step Dr. Raju is taking to combat this, by implementing his so-called 2020 vision, which aims to create a financially stable public hospital system by the beginning of the next decade, according to POLITICO New York.
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