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MedTouch Webinar: The Impact of the Global Financial Crisis on Healthcare, Part II from MedTouch on Vimeo.

The news about the financial sector meltdown is everywhere, but how will it impact healthcare?

In this second part of a special webinar, Paul Griffiths, the CEO of MedTouch, will walk through how the sub-prime crisis led into Wall St. failures, which has spilled over into the bond market, threatening usual routes of funding for healthcare, muncipalities, and non-profits.

We’ll review what hard decisions providers will have to make over the coming year, and talk through some possible short and long term results from the financial bailout.

The Impact of the Global Financial Crisis on Healthcare

What you’ll learn:

* Why the financial crisis started
* Why the crisis will make it harder for hospitals to stay in the black
* Which healthcare providers should do today

Forbes magazine’s recent issue has a cover with a patient escaping from an ER, wearing only a paper johnny, and the text “Stop That Patient!  Big, risky hospitals don’t want you going to small rivals — where you could have safer, better surgery.”  You can read the article, entitled “Bad Medicine“, on Forbes’ website, but the message to me is clear: consumers want to understand the quality of care they can expect to receive before they check in.

I’ll admit to only a cursory understanding of the issues surrounding these physician-run hospitals and the legal implications of referring your own patients to a facility you have an economic stake in.  (Despite protests that such a conflict of interests can lead to unnecessary surgeries, one of the physician-run opponents, HCA, has itself been sued over excessive and unnecessary surgeries resulting from direct compensation plans to physicians under its employ.)

A growing trend we’ve been seeing for years is the need for consumers to understand their healthcare choices, options, and risks.  One of the top reasons that consumers visit hospital websites, according to a 2006 Forester survey, is to research hospital care and quality.  A shockingly small amount of hospitals provide any kind of this information, even spawning a sub-industry as a proxy for quality results — healthcare institutions pay large fees to HealthGrades for the analysis, reporting, and ranking of their hospitals on the numerous lists HealthGrades produce.

And the free market is rushing to fill the gap.  In addition to hospitals licensing HealthGrades results or paying for consumer-satisfaction surveys from Press Ganey, sites like NetDoc or Revolution Health are attempting to make sense of the confusing data surrounding patient outcomes to help consumers make decisions.

But the last line of the Forbes article really caught me and I’ll leave you with it here.   Forbes gives the parting shot in the argument to hand surgeon Blake Curd.  As a summation of why docs should be able to own hospitals, Blake throws down the gauntlet:  “Physicians innovate in health care,” he says.  “Hospital administrators do not.”

You can hear it from the CEO, himself here.

Or read about it on his blog — running a hospital. (See link at right.) The main link today is to a Boston Globe editorial about infection rates.

I’ll be speaking with a client at the Florida Society for Healthcare Public Relations and Marketing show July 19th 2007.

If you’re in Naples Florida, I’ll see you there.