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MeSSaGe froM the Ceo & ChaIrMan
Transitioning Into the Future
the pace of change in health care, from funding, to reimbursement, to technology, to regulatory demands, to market forces, has increased dramatically.
Now, even the strengths we’ve nurtured over the years in the McLaren system will no longer be enough over the long term. Yes, we’ve shaped nancial, structural and talent resources that
allow us to react nimbly. But the speed of these transitions, and the high stakes for health care in our service areas, mean that even a fast reaction may not be fast enough.
In the high tech industry, there is a tough, but realistic rule of long-term business survival. Even if your current business model
is successful, someone or something will replace that model — so why not make that transition yourself, rst? Take a hard look at the good work you’ve accomplished — and then shake it up yourself for something better.
Are there real and fundamental risks? Yes. But these risks are necessary in the fast-evolving health care eld. Our goals for health
care have long been to deliver quality and value, but the benchmarks used by payers and regulators in measuring these outcomes have grown ever tighter. For example, patient satisfaction and engagement have always been important in the McLaren Health Care system.
But new Medicare rules strictly quantify these measures, grade
them — and base our reimbursements on them. This is not for added funding, by the way — we lose current Medicare monies if we don’t excel. The federal HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) structure dictates patient ratings we must achieve on such measures as pain management, nurse communications, and even room noise, with funding at stake. Patient satisfaction and quality of care are now solid market di erentiators.
While our McLaren facilities achieve some very good scores through these measures, there remains some inconsistency. In a major health care system that has grown through acquisition, serving 57 Michigan counties with 22,000 employees, we cannot a ord such variation in the comprehensive transition of our business and clinical models we must achieve.
Repeatability, nding the best way to do something and doing it the same way again and again, whether preventing infections, reducing hospital readmissions, or scheduling a mammogram, raises the quality of care. Such “systemness” has been our goal for many years now. As with our “rapid response” e orts to manage change, we’ve seen results, but likewise, a more radical, transformative approach is needed.
The last year has seen us focus on this journey toward transition, with good early results. We’ve engaged the Studer Group, one of America’s foremost health care strategic consulting rms, to help us nurture and
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2015 ANNUAL REPORT