Read the February issue of JHC; ASCs address staff shortage; New Ochsner executive appointed; plus Jobs!

February 9, 2024

Hello NAW Subscribers -

I hope you like this issue of National Accounts Weekly.

Sincerely,

John Pritchard

President of ANAE

Publisher of The Journal of Healthcare Contracting

Read the February issue of JHC

Read the February issue of The Journal of Healthcare Contracting to learn about the life and career of Banner Health's Senior Vice President of Supply Chain Services, Doug Bowen.

In this issue, you will find stories like:

The Long Game
Senior-Focused CHPs
Supply Chain by the Numbers
Long-Term Supply Chain Preparedness
and more!

ASCs address staff shortage with automation and financial incentives

The “2023 United States Ambulatory Surgery Center Market Report” report has been released this year, and key points include the ambulatory surgery center (ASC) market being valued at $43.1 billion in 2023, and the market value of ASCs continuing to grow due to the shift to care in outpatient settings, technology, and outpatient departments converting to ASCs.

Demand for services provided by ASCs is growing due to the model’s flexibility and decreased costs for both payers and patients. In response to industry-wide staffing shortages, ASCs are offering employees greater scheduling flexibility, adopting workflow automation, and providing signing bonuses, all to attract candidates.

HCA Healthcare appoints Chief Information Officer

HCA Healthcare announced that Chad Wasserman, a nearly 30-year veteran of the company, has been appointed senior vice president and chief information officer, effective February 1, 2024. Wasserman succeeds P. Martin “Marty” Paslick, who is retiring after 38 years with HCA Healthcare.

As chief information officer, Wasserman will lead more than 6,700 colleagues in the Information Technology Group (ITG), which provides global IT strategy, solutions and support for HCA Healthcare and its hospitals and sites of care. He will oversee the group’s array of solutions including infrastructure, cloud, automation, data engineering, software development, enterprise systems and clinical technology initiatives.

Wasserman has been with HCA Healthcare for 28 years and previously served as senior vice president and chief operating officer for ITG. Throughout his career with the company, he has served in a variety of senior leadership positions including vice president of ITG Service Line and Corporate Solutions, vice president of ITG Digital Patient Experience and vice president of ITG Infrastructure Services and Operations. Prior to 2017, Wasserman was chief information officer of Parallon Business Performance Group.

Wasserman holds a masters degree in business administration from Tennessee State University and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Villanova University. He currently serves on the executive committee of the Nashville Technology Council and is an HCA Healthcare Hope Fund board member.

How commercial healthcare providers are helping change the healthcare marketing industry

The healthcare industry is witnessing a continued push towards consumerism. Stakeholders are turning to retail, tech and other sectors for innovation to help solve familiar healthcare problems. Enter commercial healthcare providers (CHPs). They can be defined as retail, payor, senior and tech-based providers changing the landscape of consumer healthcare as people seek convenience and quality in their healthcare experience.

In recent years, retailers have delivered products in a more convenient way, changing consumer behavior. An omnichannel approach has blurred the lines. Consumers can easily research a product and maybe even test it before purchasing it. As this approach has become more comfortable for consumers, they are pursuing it in other areas like healthcare.

Some familiar names in retail like Walmart, Walgreens, CVS and Amazon can be considered retail-based commercial healthcare providers today. Those and other retail-based commercial healthcare providers are acquiring and investing in tech-based startups and senior-focused providers in response to the shift in dynamics – both consumer-centric preferences and an aging population.

Payors like UnitedHealth Group and its Optum division are considered payor-based commercial healthcare providers. They are also investing in tech-based startups and senior-focused providers. Redefining the space is a change to fee-for-value reimbursement models, physician shortages, consumerism and digital disruption.

But how are commercial healthcare providers successfully marketing themselves and their services to the changing landscape? And what can other healthcare stakeholders learn from their entries into the marketplace?

Henry Ford Health's CSC Strategy

Some advantages of a strong CSC strategy include the reduction of supply chain complexity and streamlining operations. Viewed as a strategic asset to health systems, it can leverage operational and logistical scale, minimize risk and help deliver effective patient care.

Henry Ford Health’s mission is to provide quality healthcare by placing “each patient first,” serving metropolitan Detroit and southeast Michigan. It opened its 45,000-square-foot CSC this past September with an aim toward high density items and physician preference items (PPIs).

“What we’ve done uniquely with physician preference items is driving additional value through reduced PAR levels within our hospitals, reduced prevalence of product expiry and greater resiliency by reducing supply disruption,” said Joe Pettinato, vice president, supply chain operations for Henry Ford Health.

From a resiliency perspective, Pettinato said Henry Ford Health is able to better prepare for known or expected supply disruptions at a much lower cost and more reliably than before, while also eliminating the prevalence of substitute product that is typically at higher cost than its contracted standards.

Henry Ford Health’s CSC has five full-time employees and will ramp up as business and volume grows. “Our business practices are established, and it’s gone exceptionally well since we started,” Pettinato said.

“It gives us more options for our vendors and helps reduce their cost structure too,” Pettinato continued. “Shipping larger quantities into a singular facility benefits vendors by having the ability to participate in a bulk buy program or agreement that decrease their transactional costs.”

The CSC includes PPIs on the first floor and pharmaceutical distribution on the second floor with an additional 45,000 square feet. It’s smaller than other health system CSCs but aims to drive value through its unique design and resiliency strategy.

OpusVi joins TITAN-AUXO team to supply workforce development solutions

OpusVi™ (formerly Dignity Health Global Education), a leading workforce development solutions provider backed by CommonSpirit Health, Providence Health and Premier Inc., announced it is part of the TITAN-AUXO team, which was selected to partner with the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) through the VHA IDIQ initiative.

OpusVi proudly supports the VHA and its mission, dedicating efforts to help Veterans by providing in-demand healthcare workforce development solutions to the full VHA ecosystem through their Integrated Critical Staffing Program initiative. This partnership underscores a joint commitment to enhancing the capabilities of healthcare professionals who serve the nation’s Veterans.

Banding Together

Value-based care is a highly sought after goal – yet often an elusive one – for healthcare providers of all shapes and sizes. No where is this more evident than the rural setting, where large geographic distances, reduced access to services, rising costs and lack of scale all come into play for providers.

To tackle those challenges, an alliance of 23 rural hospitals in North Dakota recently announced the formation of the Rough Rider High-Value Network.

The network, based in Cando, N.D., was formed to strengthen rural healthcare for providers and patients throughout the state. The network announced its formation at the end of 2023 as a collaboration between individual and independent critical access hospitals that all collaborate to address rural health challenges and enhance community health.

The hospitals work together on clinical and operational initiatives to strengthen the availability, affordability, and quality of care in communities across the state of North Dakota.

“The Rough Rider Network consists of 23 hospitals that came together to capitalize on the economies of scale that they all represent in unison. The goal is a triple aim of improving access to care, quality of care, and reducing the cost of healthcare,” said Alfred Sams, president, Rough Rider High-Value Network. “Those goals rely on being able to tackle all of the barriers in being an independent hospital, but also coming together and being able to pool resources with other hospitals while maintaining independence.”

The Rough Rider Network is committed to enhancing the sustainability of rural healthcare throughout North Dakota. Uniting a network of critical access hospitals and clinics, the alliance aims to combine resources while remaining independent.

High Vacancy: The State of Office Space in the United States

In the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses in just about every industry had to make some hard decisions on whether on personnel in their office spaces. This led to a greater decision where businesses switched operations from in-office to remote work, redefining what the work environment looked like for most of the pandemic.

Now, office spaces throughout the country stand empty and unused. Recent data published by Moody’s Analytics shows that nearly 20% of office space in major cities in the United State were vacant by the fourth quarter of 2023, which is the highest percentage on record. Moody’s has been running surveys like this since 1979. There was a significant peak in the 80s and 90s after a long period of overbuilding office spaces took place, but even those percentages barely crept over the 19% mark.

Many organizations are going back and forth over how to move forward with remote work options, a hybrid experience, or a mandated return to the office. UPS recently announced that it was eliminating the remote work option for its employees, requiring all corporate employees to return to the office five days a week starting in March.