The healthcare sector is experiencing a perfect storm.
Over the last decade, the average hospitalist subsidy has doubled, according to the Society of Hospitalist Medicine, but hospital financial margins are tight. At the same time, physician workloads are crippling due to COVID-19, as well as required administrative paperwork.
During a September webinar hosted by Becker's Hospital Review and sponsored by Ingenious Med, Steven Liu, MD, founder and chief medical officer of Ingenious Med, facilitated a discussion exploring how hospitalists can grow their value in collaboration with their health systems. Participants included:
- Dipali Ruby Sahoo, DO, MBA, FACP, SFHM hospital medicine performance director, TeamHealth in Knoxville, Tenn.
- Jason Haley, assistant vice president of revenue cycle/CBO operations, LifePoint Health in Brentwood, Tenn.
Four key takeaways were:
1.) To improve value, providers are focusing on efficiency. TeamHealth has created performance improvement teams comprising physicians, nurses and administrators. "We have a dedicated team for hospital medicine that goes to different facilities and works with the hospital medicine group to break down barriers related to increased length of stay or other system inefficiencies. Our goal is to help the hospitalist team and facility achieve their goals around improving patient care," Dr. Sahoo said. On the business side, LifePoint Health consolidated its business offices two years ago to address tracking and fragmented systems, processes and reporting.
2.) It's necessary to proactively address employee burnout. The prolonged nature of the pandemic means workplace stress is continual. "As many as 80 percent of physicians report that feelings of burnout have made them want to quit practicing medicine," Dr. Liu said. TeamHealth closely monitors productivity and quickly identifies when sites need help. Dr. Sahoo said, "We try to match supply and demand across the country. At the beginning of COVID-19, we flew physicians from Florida to New York. Now we're flying physicians from New York to Florida."
Mitigating burnout goes far beyond staffing. It's important to continually discuss burnout and ensure that clinicians know about resources available to them. TeamHealth provides leadership guides related to wellness and resiliency, as well as webinars, protocols and algorithms to assess clinician burnout.
3.) Flexibility is essential. LifePoint Health's revenue cycle team is dealing with many of the same pandemic-related stresses as the clinical staff. In response, the company is committed to flexible schedules. LifePoint Health also is using technology to support employees. "We introduced Ingenious Med to our providers, and they enjoy the simplicity of the mobile phone app," Mr. Haley said. "It's enabled them to be more flexible, and our revenue cycle staff and coders also use it."
4.) Data and KPIs are useful tools to quantify and improve value. Ingenious Med enables TeamHealth to harness data from its health IT systems and create comparisons at the national, health system or facility level. "It provides each individual facility leader with metrics they need to work on and areas where they're adding value," Dr. Sahoo said. On the revenue cycle side, LifePoint Health is focusing on collections per work relative value unit to demonstrate the health or collectability of the work being done. Mr. Haley said, "We learned through COVID that traditional KPIs like AR days are less relevant because the mix changes so dramatically."
"With all of the changes expected post-COVID-19, being flexible is paramount," Dr. Sahoo said. "Clinicians must be included in the change process, including hospitalists, to ensure that we meet our goals and metrics successfully."
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