Give patients an honest view of health reform

by Raymond Hino I focus a lot of my blog posts on community engagement and maintaining open lines of communication between our community hospitals and the people that we serve. This is an ever-evolving process. Recently we tried something new to communicate with and educate the public. We held our first ever "Summit on Hospital Finances." We wanted to put on a program that would be worthy of the three-hour weeknight time commitment that we were asking our constituents to make. Here is how it went: The program started with an outside speaker bringing into context where the plight of our local hospital is in the greater scheme of the healthcare environment. It was important for our community to know that what is happening in our area is not only a local phenomenon, but happening all across California and our country. We asked our keynote speaker to inform our audience that we are not alone and not unique in the challenges we are facing. All hospitals and health systems are challenged to change business models, forge new relationships with other providers in the continuum of care, and emphasize quality and outcomes. These are the essentials for all of us if we are to survive under national healthcare reform. The next speaker on our program was our chief financial officer who gave the public an overview of how changes in reimbursement, the economy and healthcare reform have affected our hospital over the past decade. Our goal in this segment was to take the national p...
Source: hospital impact - Category: Health Managers Authors: Source Type: blogs