Worth Repeating
“More patients are being discharged soon after surgery, leading to increased recovery time at home. Given that a major concern of postsurgical wounds is prevention of surgical-site infection (SSI), patients need access to advanced wound-care products that provide the same quality as what is available in the hospital. Advanced wound-care products that are easily applied, have long wear time, and can be obtained postdischarge play an important role in recovery and reduction of costs and patient ‘bounce backs’ after discharge.”
Beth Hawkins-Bradley, RN, MN, CWON, Direc- tor of Clinical Operations, Cardinal Health
“Protein residing on an instrument that has undergone the sterilization process poses certain risks. What you thought appeared clean, and under certain testing parameters may even falsely pass as clean, can be far from it. Protein laden instruments may also trap other types of biological matter as well, and thus be rendered unclean. This deserves more attention now than ever from an infection perspective or even worse, prion related occurrences due to Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD) and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD).”
Thomas Overbey, Director of Mar keting for Ultra Clean Systems Inc.
“Healthcare professionals need work spaces that are easy to clean, organized and tailored to their individual needs. Workers need a workstation that is easy to use, move and adjust, in order to concentrate on the patient and the nursing work. Good ergonomics im- prove working comfort and reduces absences due to illness, consequently improving productivity and creating considerable savings.”
Eric Dotson, General Manager, Sovella
“Not only do we strive to keep products on the shelf, but we also work very hard to ensure that our caregivers have what they need to take care of the ultimate benefactor — our patient. We may never see them, but we know that by making the caregiver’s job easier, they are able to do these things for our patients.”
Keith D. Dabbs, MBA, CMRP, APM,
Sr. Manager, Procurement & Sourcing, Riverside Health System
PEOPLE & OPINIONS
What if healthcare’s future model focused on convenience?
by Mary Beth Lang,
R.Ph., M.P.M.,
D.Sc.
Purchasing News and then introduced in HPN Senior Editor Rick Dana Barlow’s monthly “Fast Foreward” column as a topical franchise. Inspired in part by a presentation on “What if Walmart were an ACO?” HPN strove to apply this concept to other companies, starting in Fast Foreward and continuing through how three prominent corporate entities are impacting healthcare.
T
This “What if…” series has been a delightful endeavor allowing me to initiate provocative concepts under the premise of examining companies that have introduced disruptive innovation across multiple industries, and exploring the notion of what if the company became an ACO? I chose to review Walmart, Apple and Amazon, respectively. Each article expounded on how the
comp any successfully disrupted other industries, presenting an overview of healthcare-related strategies and then a series of questions that providers should consider at the executive level and at the supply chain level.
his “What if ...” article, the last in a mul- tipart series, germinated from a number of discussions last year with Healthcare
care research and care, and how Amazon may revolutionize healthcare purchased services has already been improved by new entrants offer- ing an increased ability to reach more people leading to unprecedented effi ciencies.
Succeeding the traditional model
In the future, traditional healthcare will not be accepted as a model. Consumers are looking for healthcare to be virtual, social, personal and ultimately, convenient.
Mary Beth Lang
When you consider the size, scope and reach of each company, it becomes clear that these three companies have the infrastructure and the vision to enter healthcare and to disrupt existing traditional care models. These sea- soned companies are hardly new entrants to the marketplace but in many respects, they are new to healthcare.
All three companies are acutely focused on exploiting the direct-to-consumer market. They are not encumbered with the health system bricks-and-mortar infrastructure or burdened by the heavy regulations affecting current providers. These companies can capitalize on the most profi table aspects of health and leave indigent and high-cost care to health systems. I purposely use the term “health” instead of “care” as each company is banking on the ability to change the focus from treatment to prevention, and early diagnostics. How Walmart is disrupting primary care delivery, the way Apple is disrupting health-
48 August 2015 • HEALTHCARE PURCHASING NEWS •
www.hpnonline.com
Virtual care is and will be delivered through mobile, digital and wireless devices that will produce seamless sharing of information. We are already seeing these models as evidenced by the increase in “eVisits” as well as diagnostics delivered virtually with an emphasis on convenient care improving the patient experience and interaction, making care personal and delivered just-in-time. Virtual care is adding transparency to cost, quality and outcomes. Personal care offerings, or personal- ized medicine, will reduce the cost of healthcare and improve the patient experience by tailoring medical treatment to the indi- vidual characteristics, needs and preferences of a patient during all stages of care, including prevention, diagnosis, treatment and follow-up. Finally, care is becoming social. As seen in other industries, “crowdsourcing” has entered healthcare. The idea of crowdsourcing is to benefi t from “collective intelligence.” Consum- ers have been using blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Yelp and other sites to research diseases and to participate in communities to learn more about treatment options. Care transparency is being shared through social media at an accelerated pace by consumers who compare their experi- ences and rate providers — ultimately shaping future healthcare-delivery models. Under the traditional system, 65 percent of healthcare dollars are spent on 10 percent of the population. Health systems are aggres- sively redesigning delivery models to address avoidable care, chronic disease management, palliative ICU and end-of-life care to try to bend the cost curve. Health systems are also recasting
PEOPLE & OPINIONS
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56