Posts Tagged ‘Wellness’

On Cancer Research, Incentives and Cures

September 18th, 2011

From a blog entitled TTAG, The Truth About Genetics, comes a scathing indictment of the American Cancer Society. Truthfully, some of the contents are infuriating, but especially so, because as a co-founder of a research institute, I’ve lived them. First hand. When I saw that  the American Cancer Society’s two CEOs make a combined $1.6 million dollars in salary, I wasn’t shocked. Heck, the president of a 120 bed hospital who retired recently made almost that much. ACS is a big organization with lots of moving parts. It takes talented people to run big organizations, and they typically don’t work just for food.

From the TTAG  blog:

Today, ACS’s revenue is $1 billion, and the amount that goes to research is a measly 16%. Research is not the primary goal of ACS, and one of the great things they do is help patients undergoing chemotherapy by buying them plane tickets and paying for their costs. But, even when you consider other program costs like cancer treatment for patients, ACS has the lowest score for charities in terms of efficiency: 1-2 stars out of 4. (24.78%, according to CharityNavigator.org)

See also:

Once again, no surprise. The main issue that I had with the ACS was that their research funding, as meager as it is, goes to the “Good Ole Boys,” the group that is already part of the NIH/NCI club. Okay, you say, they have to have some standards. The Komen people don’t follow that same “Good Ole Boy” path, and thank goodness. They look for good science wherever they can find it.

So, what’s the real reason that I get upset? I sometimes think I’ve written too many posts about this already, but let me say it one more time: Unless and until we realign the system that currently is used to fund basic science in this country, we will never find true cures for cancer. There is very little to no incentive to cooperate, to work together, to encourage scientists to share and to reward them with grants for cooperating.  In fact, the entire system actively discourages it. It is a “Diva”-based system, that encourages silos of power around individuals.

Bottom line? We have a healthcare system that does not support wellness and prevention, but  instead financially rewards sickness and continuous testing and care for what may have been preventable ailments, and we have a research system that discourages cooperation and collaboration. We have a pharmaceutical industry that is interested in financial blockbusters…just like the movie industry.  We have a political system that caused our country’s credit rating to be downgraded and the price of money to escalate, and finally, we have an infastructure that is crumbling.

The good news, however, is that we still are the United States of America, and if we work together T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R  this can all be fixed.  It’s time for those of us who understand this to be heard.

Health 2.0 Leadership (1 of 2) from Nick Jacobs, FACHE on Vimeo.

Sandpaper sheets, green jello and patients who leave with infections they didn’t have when they were admitted. Hospitals DON’T have to be this way. Nick Jacobs FACHE reveals how, as CEO, he transformed a rural, critical care hospital from near bankruptcy to a consistently profitable, internationally-recognized model of patient-centered care and innovation. By creating a hospital environment that embodies healing in every aspect of its operations, Nick’s hospital also achieved one of the lowest acquired (nosocomial) infection rates in the U.S. for five years running.

Share

40 comments »

Posted in Healthcare, Partnerships, Public Health

Tags:

ACO’s or SSP’s: “Change or Die”

September 6th, 2011

“Walk the Walk” author Alan Deutschman’s previous book kind of said it all in the title, “Change or Die.” In that book, Alan carefully lays out the statistical survivability matrix, and poses the question:

Alan Deutschman - Author of Change or Die and Walk the Walk - Nick Jacobs, HACHE - Healing Hospitals

Alan Deutschman

“What if you were given that choice? For real. What if it weren’t just the hyperbolic rhetoric that conflates corporate performance with life and death?…What if a well-informed, trusted authority figure said you had to make difficult and enduring changes in the way you think and act? If you didn’t, your time would end soon — a lot sooner than it had to. Could you change when change really mattered? When it mattered most? “

Then, he articulates the actual outcomes of studies. Talk about “tough love.”

“…The odds? You want the odds? Here are the odds that the experts are laying down, their scientifically studied odds: nine to one. That’s nine to one against you. How do you like those odds?”

So, as a nation, as healthcare leaders, as human beings in a country that is currently facing the realities of potential economic disintegration, we are faced with what can only be described as another enormous challenge: a financially unsustainable healthcare system. Regardless of your politics, regardless of your personal beliefs regarding the competency of the federal government and its ability or inability to fix anything, the law has been passed, the train is moving and it’s moving directly toward you and your hospital.

Over the past three years, we have repeatedly presented money-saving and money-making ideas to help begin to position your healthcare organization for the impending tsunami of change that has been launched. As a veteran of TQM, Six Sigma, Baldridge, and a half dozen other consultant-delivered “fixes,” I’m sure I can hear the words going round and round in your head, but, not unlike the clamor that arose from the HMO/PPO days of yesteryear, this ACO/SSP challenge has to be met and dealt with intelligently, and it has to be done in such a way as to not destroy your hospital or health system.

Let’s face it, we’re all pretty smart folks. We’ve all been in permanent white water for years, and the last thing that many of us want to take on is the ole captain of the ship without a rudder, during a hurricane while the lighthouses are being moved around on the shore.  But, once again, it’s here. It’s upon us, and we must deal with this challenge in an intelligent manner.

One possible alternative for smaller organizations is the SSP, a Shared Savings Program, the alternative put forth by CMS, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, to a full-blown ACO, an Accountable Care Organization. Either way, however, SSP or ACO, the primary, overarching goal is to try to improve quality, decrease costs, and provide patient-centered care in a meaningful way. Not unlike the old HMO/PPO days, the effort requires infrastructure (and plenty of it…the average participant in the demonstrations spent about $1.7M on this one, single aspect of managing the healthcare new world order.)

What do you need? Well, you need 5,000 patients, to start. Then:

  1. Decide if you will use Medicare only or other patient groups.
  2. Determine the exact service area that you will target.  How many square miles?
  3. Decide which reimbursement model will work for your organization, i.e., an SSP that is more risk-based, or capitated.
  4. Figure out which provider groups will be involved.
  5. Examine IT reporting capabilities and process improvement methodologies.
  6. Identify patient-related strategies such as enhanced experience for the patients or faster throughput as well as reduction in errors.
  7. Then, dig deep into the organizational strategies for improvement.

Infographic: Medicare Margins - Nick Jacobs, FACHE - SunStone ConsultingLet’s face it. From 2001 until 2008, total Medicare inpatient margins for acute care hospitals have decreased every single year.  (Source: Journal of Healthcare Management)   Reimbursements have decreased while your bad debt has increased.  So, regardless of your tolerance for risk or change, cost control simply must become the culture of every healthcare organization in the United States. We have seen the variances in costs based on geography in this country and treble charges in one area as opposed to another will not go on into the future. Joel Allison, CEO of Baylor Health has stated that this movement is “All about…focusing on wellness, on prevention.” (Arnst, 2010)

We need our primary care docs, we need physician participation to a far greater degree than we currently have, and, at the same time, the physicians must be partners in the effort.  Employing physicians is also a critical element.

SunStone Management Resources can assist you in this effort on numerous levels, but the time to act is now!

Share

78 comments »

Posted in Healthcare, Hospital Administration

Tags:

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

September 9th, 2010

American Healthcare Magazine - September 6, 2010 - Nick Jacobs, FACHE - HealingHospitals.comThe Modern Healthcare edition of September 6, 2010 has a cover headline that reads: “Passing the Buck,” and the descriptor goes on to explain that “Yet a new report says workers’ share of benefit costs is skyrocketing.”  The actual opening line of the article starts with “Workers are shouldering more of the costs of health coverage than ever before amid stagnant wages and a weak economy”…

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Patient Advocacy, a subject about which I am passionate. So, this blog is about patient and employee advocacy that also provides additional resources for hospitals to help them address the current economic challenges.

Every year when we looked at our medical insurance costs at my hospital, a politically incorrect friend would jokingly suggest that we begin an annual, required participation August Tennis Tournament for our high-utilization employees, but only after the temperatures reached at least 95 degrees.  “It would be a thinning of the herd,” he would jokingly say with an elf-like smile on his face.  We would then get serious and dig into a long list of creative ideas aimed at helping contain these costs so that we would not have to lower benefits or pass the charges on to the employees.

Included in these lists were some rather simple ideas such as offering, in a structured manner, the wellness options covered under our health insurance umbrella and generally rewarding our employees for taking better care of themselves.  We significantly reduced fees for the workout facility (1/3 of the regular cost ), provided personalized counseling from our dietitians, had a weight loss contest and gave rewards for taking classes on stress management, smoking cessation, diabetes control and exercise.

We offered psychological counseling for our employees who were suffering from stress related issues.  Our food service vendor, CURA, made sure that “no transfats” were a part of the hospital’s meals, that there were always low-fat vegetarian choices on every menu, that snacks were reasonable and that our vending machines had healthy choices. We also celebrated life and work on a regular basis.   We had cook-outs, off-stage break rooms, massage, aroma, Reiki, pet and music therapy.  We provided drum circles, non-denominational spiritual services and meditation classes; kick boxing, Pilates, pool therapy, and employee parties.

So, short of forced tennis matches, how else can we control these costs?  The following is a summary of a program that SunStone Consulting is currently offering with two other business partners, CBIZ and InforMed.

Over the past 6 years, the average annual health insurance cost increase for InforMed-supported patient advocacy programs has run at 4.5%, compared to the 10-12% trend for all employers.  In the case where a hospital with 1,500 employees is paying out about $10,000,000 a year for employee health insurance, a 5% savings over a three year period would generate $3.3 million in savings.  Let me repeat that:  By lowering those  premium increases by 5%, there would be over three million extra dollars available for hospital financial needs and co-pays and deductibles for the employees would not have to continue to escalate by 13 to 15% annually.

The Patient Advocate logo (California) - Nick Jacobs, FACHEThe care management “engagement” rate of all the major insurance companies is about 30%. That means that the insurance company-based “help programs” are about 1/3 effective in even reaching the employees.  This non-insurance company based program, however, has a 70% engagement rate of identified large claimants, more than double the insurance company’s rate, and with over 1 million employees in this program, they produce a 98% patient satisfaction rate.

By employing local, trained, patient advocacy nurses, paying physicians a monthly stipend out of the savings to help manage these patient/employees, and then helping those high utilization patients legitimately navigate through the nine to fifteen physicians with whom they interact on an annual basis, health systems are seeing tremendous savings.  (Kind of the Best of Managed Care scenario.)

These are clear, actionable items that will positively change a bottom line quickly and permanently without having to increase the financial burden on the employees.

Why not try it?  It works.

Share

17 comments »

Posted in Hospitals, Leadership, patient-centered care

Tags:

And one more thing . . .

August 12th, 2010

These blog posts are supposed to be directed toward creating healing hospitals. That objective seems to be compromised from time to time as I post genuine opportunities for hospital CFO’s and CEO’s to trim monies from their budgets, to find money that their hospitals should have received, or to initiate new ventures that will create additional, positive economic yields for their facilities.  I’m sorry, but I just can’t help myself.

One of my “gifts” as a CEO was to always find ways to pay for the challenges that we faced so that new ideas, new modalities and  new healing techniques could be introduced to our healthcare environment.  I even wrote a book about it. Interestingly, the biggest push back that I experience when presenting to my former peers is that bottom line, no nonsense question: “How the heck are we supposed to pay for this stuff?”

The Benefits of Healing Hospitals

View more presentations from Nick Jacobs.

Over the years I’ve prepared charts, graphs, and narratives demonstrating the dramatic growth patterns, the huge economic surpluses, the wonderful bottom lines that were generated by embracing a “healing” philosophy, but those of you who have been lured by “snake oil salesmen” in your past lives are very leary that my passionate dialogue is simply that, dialogue. You have  no  reason to believe me when I say that improving your employee morale will improve your patient satisfaction scores. Of course it’s common sense, but if you’re too nice to your employees, they’ll think you’re a push over and they’ll take advantage of you, right?  Well, after 22 years of niceness, the one thing I can tell you is that niceness can be confused with weakness, and that needs clarification early on in your journey.

You see, my recent devotion to the economics of healthcare was prompted by the knowledge that you will be treating much larger quantities of patients for less reimbursement. Consequently, new streams of funding will be imperative. For example, the annual amount of discretionary healthcare dollars spent on integrative and holistic medicine is well into the double-digit billions of dollars.  Logic would tell you that at least a percentage of these dollars could be spent at your facilities.  The downside is that your patients have not been used to paying cash for anything except co-pays, but the reality is that “they will pay,” if the service is meaningful, helpful, and healing; money simply becomes a way to get them there.

Wellness Wheel - Image credit: Marquette UniversityIf you, however, don’t believe that massage is good for you, don’t believe that some people respond well to acupuncture or Reiki, don’t care that aroma therapy, floral essences, or pet, music and humor therapy have a place in “legitimate medicine,” that’s a problem, a personal problem.  Go on vacation to some place like Canyon Ranch, and let go for a few days.  Allow yourself to be open to new modalities.  The body and mind can work extremely well together . . . if you’ll just give them a chance.  More importantly, you can generate additional funds for your facilities that will result in additional growth in market share, in patient loyalty, and in patient and employee  satisfaction.

So, this week’s tip . . . financial transaction services: Over 1/4 of your facilities daily financial transactions are completed electronically.  We are currently providing the interface for your financial transactions that will reduce your costs of doing electronic business exponentially.  It is seamless, requires no interruption of your current banking relationships, and invisible to the patients and your staff, but why, for example, would you pay 4.5% if you could complete the same transaction for 2.5%?  It’s savings that can contribute to your bottom line to allow you to supplement your staff with those individuals who can add additional depth, healing activities, and peace of mind to your patients’ experiences.

It’s all good.

Share

6 comments »

Posted in Healthcare, Hospitals, Integrative Health

Tags:

What’s Still Missing?

April 3rd, 2010
We are on a not-so-merry-go-round which, even after health care reform, continues to promote a system of illness incentives  that are improperly reimbursed, improperly addressed, and inappropriately segmented. We continue to consider body parts as if they are not connected to or a component of the whole.
Wellness Wheel - Image credit: Marquette University

Tort reform still has virtually no teeth.  This causes physicians to practice sometimes over-the-top medicine in self-defense. When will it be time to begin to throw the switch and teach patients what we already know so well; that wellness, wholeness, and health can change the quality of our lives completely? Our medical schools need to embrace wellness and prevention as a path to health. Not unlike indigenous man, it is time that we begin to realize that our brains do have something to do with our bodies.  We live in a commodity driven society which does not always promote the best, most healthful food, even miminal exercise, stress management, or self-nurturing. Instead, because of those quarterly reports to the stockholders, these companies promote what is the most lucrative and often the easiest to sell.

Oprah.com - Health and Wellness - Nick Jacobs - HealingHospitals.comWe know that drinking a soft drink with 10 teaspoons of sugar is not healthful. We clearly understand that quadruple cheese anything might eventually catch up with us, or that Uncle Buck’s 72 oz. steak can’t really be good for our arteries. Fried and buttered everything, a total lack of exercise, and more stress than anyone can ever dream of will not extend our lives

One night a few weeks ago I couldn’t sleep, and at 3:00 AM, I looked up and saw an apparition… Oprah. There she was, talking about food. The person she was interviewing said, “Oprah, in the 1960’s, our food cost us 18% of our annual income. ” Maybe that’s why there weren’t more restaurants at that time. Families were stretched just eating at home. He went on to say that, “In the 60’s, healthcare costs us 9% of our income.”  Finally he said, “Now healthcare costs us 18% of our income, and food costs us 9%.”

So, that’s the trade off. We can buy good, farmer’s market-type healthy, organic food and have low healthcare costs, or we can buy manufactured, additive filled food, and pay more for our healthcare.  How much further down this cul de sac must we go as a country before we begin to realize the path to health and wellness or longevity?

Health and Wellness - Nick Jacobs - HealingHospitals.com

Share

6 comments »

Posted in Diet, Healthcare, Integrative Health

Tags:

Carrots or Sticks?

January 30th, 2010

When you do the math, you can rather quickly determine that, as the aging process continues with the Boomer generation, federal funding for health care and Social Security will become more and more scarce. At the same time, we have all read the sobering national statistics regarding unnecessary deaths from hospital missteps. The CMS (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services) previously introduced a form of pay for performance, or –more accurately– no pay for performance, which has already caused a great deal of change in the American Healthcare System.

As is widely known by now, CMS has decided to literally stop paying for the treatment costs of preventable medical complications.  This actually may seem like an intelligent idea. This approach is referred to by some as visibility for good care, and there is no doubt that it will represent the beginning of a stampede from the third-party insurance payers to follow the CMS “Big Dog.”  In fact, several companies have already announced that they will not be reimbursing hospitals for similar errors, as well.  The truth of the matter, however, is that this step does not even begin to address the problem.

The problem is not about penalizing hospitals, it’s about creating an incentive system that is not disease and sickness based.  Until the pyramid is flipped, we will not see the necessary changes to halt this financial slide to economic oblivion.

Sanjay Saint, MD, MPH

About 9% of U.S. hospitals presently use daily reminders to help physicians remember which patients have urinary catheters in place.  According to the University of Michigan’s Sanjay Saint, a professor of internal medicine, about 74% of hospitals don’t keep tabs on how long the catheters are in place.  But the real issue is that about 98% of hospitals and physicians don’t completely address issues of wellness and prevention that can allow us to remain well until we die because there is little or no incentive to do so.

Logic would dictate that because financial reimbursements will be connected to these hospital-created mistakes, infections or injuries, someone will surely pay more attention to the current misses.  But what if the entire system was based on keeping people healthy?  What if all of our focus was on exercise, appropriate food consumption, and stress management?

Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending upon your perspective – the United States has become the most proficient country in the world when it comes to capitalism, and much of capitalism is based on manipulating people to get them to consume what will bring the financial success and rewards to the corporations.  If you doubt this, just go to Eastern Europe to see what is happening in an environment with unregulated tobacco advertising.  The circle has started all over again.

In the old carrot-and-stick arrangement, there will be plenty of hits.  Wouldn’t it have been interesting, though, to reward hospitals where mistakes are almost nonexistent so that the less successful medical centers might line up to learn from them, or to reward docs and hospitals for helping to keep people healthy all the time. Carrots work, too, and with much less grief.

Carrots and (Celery) Sticks

What’s the old line?  “We’re going to beat the troops until morale improves.”

Share

18 comments »

Posted in Boomers, medical errors, Wellness

Tags:

Interesting Words to Think About

September 25th, 2009

The time has come to realize that the old habits, the old arguments, are irrelevant to the challenges faced by our people. They lead nations to act in opposition to the very goals that they claim to pursue — and to vote, often in this body, against the interests of their own people.  They build up walls between us and the future that our people seek, and the time has come for those walls to come down.  Together, we must build new coalitions that bridge old divides — coalitions of different faiths and creeds; of north and south, east, west, black, white, and brown.

The choice is ours.  We can be remembered as a generation that chose to drag the arguments of the 20th century into the 21st; that put off hard choices, refused to look ahead, failed to keep pace because we defined ourselves by what we were against instead of what we were for.  Or we can be a generation that chooses to see the shoreline beyond the rough waters ahead; that comes together to serve the common interests of human beings, and finally gives meaning to the promise embedded in the name given to this institution:  the United Nations. (President Barack Obama’s Speech to the United Nations)

Obama Speech UN 2009

Interestingly enough, there were 22 years in a row when I could have made the same speech (Okay, it would not have been rendered  as eloquently as the President’s, but the content would have been similar.)  The most disconcerting thing about this statement is that I was referring to the internal stakeholders of many hospitals.  One of my favorite statements during those years because of all of the infighting was that “We are not the enemy.”

An enormous amount of energy is expended in almost every healthcare organization on internal power struggles.  In many cases these struggles revolve around issues relating to money.  Questions like “Should the radiologist or the cardiologist be permitted to perform one particular test?”  Turf battles over procedures always seem to be part of the equation.  Other struggles revolve around perceived power relating to whatever positions are held because someone wants more control of larger pieces of the budget.

Power, control, greed?  All of these traits are part of the human experience, but when an organization expends much of its energy on these issues, the result is wasted time, wasted resources, wasted anguish, and, in many cases, lower quality outcomes.

Watching old movies of workers in factories during World War II have always fascinated me because we, as a country, had found a common enemy toward which we could focus our angst.  The fact that health care never seemed to be able to embrace illness as the common enemy always created intrigue for me. Yes, we would rally and work together when emergencies hit, but the other daily activities became somewhat mundane and boring, and our instinct seemed to be to revert to power, control, and greed.

Maybe, just maybe, we could find a way to marshal the medical staff, employees, and administration, the volunteers, and patient families to work together every day in every way to create an actual healing environment where patients can be surrounded with the energy of love, kindness, respect, dignity, and healing.  Maybe this environment could be the goal of every hospital executive, and they could begin and end each day by focusing on setting the example for the creation of a healing environment.

Share

8 comments »

Posted in Healthcare, Hospital Administration, Leadership

Tags:

Healthcare Reform? Blow it up, and Start from Scratch!

June 20th, 2009

Healthcare Reform? The premise and the incentives are wrong.  We treat sickness (which can be a good thing), however, we do it to the almost total exclusion of encouraging and incenting wellness. While in the Netherlands a few years ago, I asked a very comfortably-situated business person why she and her entire family all rode bikes. She smiled and explained that the millions of bikes in the Netherlands are a way of life because they keep people healthy.  Of course, we don’t have to ride bikes, but why not?  “It is much less costly.  It gets us where we want to go, and it is so much better for our bodies,” she said.

Photo credit: Amsterdamize
Photo credit: Amsterdamize

After going to doctor after doctor in my early thirties and then again in my early forties for a recurring and seriously painful back problem, someone suggested a Chicago-trained chiropractor.  After a very quick, one time manipulation, he said, “Follow me, please.”  When we descended the stars of his office, in front of me was literally an entire homemade work out facility.  This particular center seemed to emphasize strength training.   The Doc walked me over to a row of three machines and said, “If you use these three machine or their equivalent, just the way I show you, you will never have to come back here again.”  Then he said, “Oh, and if you drop fifteen pounds, you may be able to get off those blood pressure pills, stop taking that stomach medicine, and feel better about yourself in the process.”

The Dr. Dean Ornish Coronary Artery Disease Reversal Program is completely about health and prevention.  It is about wellness; treating yourself with the love and respect that you deserve, being kind to yourself, yet being disciplined enough to get you where you need to be in order to enjoy a healthy, pain free life.

We spend only 4% of our health care dollars on prevention.  That may sound like a lot to some of you, but do the math.  Take 4% and multiple it times $2.2 trillion …or possibly soon $3 or $4.0 trillion.  Every physician should endorse a workout facility and work to send you there, and every physician should receive bonuses for having you use it.  A primary care physician in Britain can make about $320K a year, which includes incentives directed toward encouraging healthy living for their patients.  Our primary care docs make, what, $130,000, $150,000, $180,00 in comparison?   Would you really care if your physician could make almost twice as much if you were living a wonderful, healthful, reduced stress life?

There is absolutely NO DOUBT in my mind that the reason I’m typing this here today and not deceased at age 58, like my father, is because of the work of people like Drs. Ornish, Benson, Jonas, and Weil.   It is not because of my old donut shop, the nachos and cheese, the automobiles, my Lazy Boy, or the grueling work habits that we Americans think of as normal.

And what about death?  I have to tell you that death happens to all of us.  (Sorry.)  When it happens may depend a great deal upon our recognition of that fact, but it is not avoidable.  So, why is it that we, as a society, reject death as evil, and ignore its possible existence?  How could we cut billions and billions of wasted healthcare dollars?  Hospice is the answer.  Don’t commission oncologists for drug use when there is absolutely no hope that the patient will live.  Don’t pay radiologists for radiation treatments that will not work in preventing death.  Don’t reward hospitals financially for readmission after readmission for people who should have been told to mark  their DNR’s months earlier.  Face death as part of life.

healthy_food

Finally, look at the food and restaurant industry.   For every restaurant or food company that pulls a killer food and replaces it with the reasonable alternatives, reward them through the $3 or $4 trillion health budget.  You can buy veggie hot dogs on the streets of Toronto.  (Try Morning Star Farms brand veggie hot dogs.  They rock.)

In closing; diet, exercise, stress management, balanced lives, less capitalistic rewarding of killer diets, higher reimbursements in healthcare for the “right stuff,” and acknowledgement that this will eventually end, can make it all work so much better, so much cheaper, so much easier.  Did you have your pneumonia shot yet?  Well, actually, you may not need one if you start taking care of yourself.  I’m going downstairs to workout now.

Next time?  Tort reform.

Share

221 comments »

Posted in Healthcare, Integrative Health, Nutrition, patient-centered care, Wellness

Tags: