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2010 TEHAMA COUNTYMEDICAL GUIDE 5 Daily News photo by Julie Zeeb St. Elizabeth Community Hospital President and CEO Jon Halfhide gives a presentation Tuesday at a Red Bluff Rotary meeting on the challenges of today’s health care. Fixing the health care system By JULIE ZEEB DN Staff Writer St. Elizabeth Community Hospital President and CEO Jon Halfhide gave a presentation Tuesday at a Red Bluff Rotary meeting on the challenges facing today’s health care industry. “Healthcare is changing,” Halfhide said. “If we want a sys- tem that’s worth a darn in 10 to 15 years we need to start mor- phing.” Halfhide said the current system is broken and unsustainable and that doing the same thing while expecting new results is insanity. The three key areas that need to change are expanding cover- age, financing the coverage and changing how health care providers deliver the coverage, he said. One of the challenges today’s health care providers face is a shift in payer with Medicare reimbursement dropping 42.9 per- cent while use of Medi-Cal, which pays significantly less, is up 24.1 percent, he said. “We continue to look at the horizon and we’re not sure where we’re at yet,” said Kris Behrens, St. Elizabeth’s marketing and community relations manager. Adding to the financial strain is the 35 percent of people coming through the doors and not paying, which means the cost is shifted to everyone else, Halfhide said. While use of the Medicaid program is expanding, it has little benefit to providers, since at best it barely covers costs, he said. Halfhide and Behrens spoke of the challenges recruiting physicians to a rural area. Physicians have a strong desire to care for their patients without interference of hospital administration, but many physi- cians can no longer afford to be independent providers, who face monthly overhead expenses of $30,000 or more and receive dwindling reimbursement for services, Behrens said. “For this reason, more and more physicians are considering moving to an employment model, whereby they receive a salary for services rendered and the hospital or foundation picks up the overhead cost and administrative role,” Behrens said. The employment model is especially important for hospitals recruiting specialists to a rural area, she said. Halfhide looked at the treatment of and readmission rates for chronic conditions, such as diabetes. “If patients are back through our doors within 30 days for the same condition, we haven’t done our job,” Halfhide said. Halfhide said there is a need to figure out how to help people manage chronic conditions so people aren’t ending up in the emergency room. “The future of the health care reform payment system indi- cates that hospitals will no longer be paid based on quantity of care and procedures, but rather quality of care,” Behrens said. “As an accountable care organization, we will be paid for keep- ing people healthy and the payment structure is reduced if we see those same patients for specific chronic diseases on multiple occasions within a given time period.” Halfhide spoke to the need of integrating systems of different hospitals and care providers. Plans to integrate systems are already in the works for St. Elizabeth, and the other Catholic Healthcare West North State hospitals, to go live Feb. 28, 2011 with Medi-tech, an electronic system that allows hospitals to share information, such as lab notes and physicians notes and patient history, he said. The project will protect patient privacy while increasing quality of care by reducing errors, streamlining provider processes and transferring to multiple providers in the more complex cases, Behrens said.

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