With passage of the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act in 2010, sea changes are occurring for hospitals and healthcare systems, for physicians and for how they interact. Although the PPACA mostly takes effect in 2014, key provisions are starting to take effect. Once fully in force, the impact of this landmark legislation on provider organizations and physicians will be significant and lasting.
Physician behavior needs to align with organizational goals and objectives. At the same time, the organizations must support a culture of physician engagement and promoting achievement of individual and system-wide performance goals.
Towers Watson, in their September 2011 report “Preparing for Industry Transformation: The Changing Hospital/Physician Relationship,”
lays out the challenges facing hospitals and physicians (and admittedly does a bit of hard sell to organizations to hire them as consultants).
Success in this new environment is focused on delivering a full continuum of care and will depend on integrating care delivery practices in order to improve outcomes at the same time as reducing costs. Providers and delivery systems will experience increasing accountability, making it crucial that physicians have an active. central role in assuring the sustained success of the transformation process.
“The cultural drivers of a new hospital/physician model should focus on commitment and education, not compliance and enforcement,” Towers Watson notes. “The hospital or system that gets this right will be a successful player in the post-reform era.”
At the core of this success is a fundamental redefining of the hospital/physician relationship in the face of entrenched obstacles. Today’s model is based on contracted services that reward fragmentation and role specialization. Tomorrow’s model, Towers Watson states, will be a value-based model with shared accountability.
Complementing this report, Towers Watson has produced:
• A survey, “Readiness for Change: New Directions for the Hospital Industry,” which we reported on in September
• A report, “Transformation in the U.S. Hospital Industry”
• A more general link to their research and reports on healthcare and healthcare reform
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