With a new CEO at the helm, St. Vincent”™s Health Services is on a mission to make its system more patient friendly by finding new ways to get closer to patients, both physically and digitally.
Rather than continuing to build a health care system around one big hospital, CEO Stuart G. Marcus said the focus is now on building an IT infrastructure to support a system of interconnected clinics and services, spread throughout the region.
“The goal is to increase access for patients in their community,” Marcus said. “That means going where the patients are, based on their convenience, not ours.”
Officials were expected to break ground on the latest urgent care center in Stratford last week. But beyond physical structures, St. Vincent”™s is also considering new ways to deliver care outside the typical brick-and-mortar facility.
Via patient-centric services such as house calls, video chatting platforms and mobile clinics, Marcus said one of the keys to reducing health care costs is to make preventive care more accessible and convenient for patients. Since many people will wait until an aliment needs immediate attention to seek care, Marcus said the cost of care would reduce dramatically if more people used primary care physicians rather than emergency rooms.
“The question is, how do you check on a diabetic patient to prevent gangrene?” he said. “We don”™t want patients to be so sick that they need an acute care hospital.”
Before assuming the role of president and CEO Jan. 1, Marcus served as the president of St. Vincent”™s Medical Center and in several other roles within St. Vincent”™s oncology department.
By increasing home-care services for the chronically ill, health care providers could more effectively remove hazards in patients”™ homes, educate them on proper nutrition and minimize medication side effects, he said.
The hospital plans to launch a new electronic medical records system in May, which is the first step in implementing more innovative technologies, Marcus said, like those that would allow patients to stay home. That could mean filling out a survey before scheduling an appointment or using a video-chat platform when it”™s not necessary to be sitting in the same room as a provider, like for some behavioral health appointments.
The problem is providers don”™t get reimbursed for preventive care.
“They get reimbursed when they fall and show up with a sprained ankle,” he said. “So the incentives aren”™t necessarily aligned.”
Like most health care systems, St. Vincent”™s is paid on a fee-for-service basis. Some insurance companies are beginning to see the long-term savings of preventive care, he said, but it will take a greater public demand for real change to take hold.
“There”™s a lot of progress we can make to putting resource in place to keep people healthy,” Marcus said. “The goal is to make health care more convenient for the patient and the community. Not to increase the site in Bridgeport, but to bring services in to the community and go to patients homes.” (Neither, he said, should the hospital be ignored.)
“The pace of change is increasing,” he added. “But this is a multiyear change that we”™re going to be going through.”