Health Reform Could Mean An Increase in Patient Volume for Hospitals

With a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s health care system, Congress would be giving the health care industry as many as 32 million additional paying customers in the next few years. That means 32 million more paying customers for hospitals.

According to the New York Times, “Hospitals and drug makers, which supported the final legislation, would be clear beneficiaries, analysts say, even if the outlook for insurers was less certain.”

The article goes on to say that hospitals have little to fear. The number of newly insured is expected to decrease significantly the amount that hospitals now lose each year when they provide care to people with no means to pay. The questions become:

• Will an increase in Medicaid patients, which typically pays less than the costs, be a mixed blessing?
• Are hospitals already treating these patients with no reimbursement?

ABC News states:

“Increased insurance coverage will go a long way toward easing hospitals’ financial pain. With the expansion of Medicaid and a mandate to buy coverage, hospitals will erase most of their bad debt within five years.”

So what does this mean for you? Coverage isn’t required until 2013, which leaves plenty of time to put plans in place to address the reform. What to look for:

• Check projections for how increased coverage affects your hospital
• Target your marketing: Just because 32 million more people may have coverage doesn’t mean you need to market them
• Check your Medicaid reimbursements: Medicaid reimburses well for some DRGs. These would be ideal DRG’s for a marketing campaign.

Let me know, how will health reform affect your hospital?

How Changes in Physician Practice Ownership Will Affect Your Efforts to Build Clinical Volume

A transformative change is taking place in the way medical services are provided: Private Practices are becoming Health System owned.  This affects the way you do hospital marketing more than any other trend or legislation in your lifetime.

For the last 50 years practices have been owned by doctors about 70% of the time. Since 2007 that number has been dropping like a rock as physicians are choosing to be employed by health systems.

This is happening at the same time as a big increase in self referral to providers. For instance, more than 82% of women do their own research before they discuss medical issues with friends and then later with doctors.

What used to fill our hospitals is physician referrals. Now what fills beds is consumer self referrals based on their own research.

Doctors that are now employees have technological (EMR) and financial incentives to refer within the system. Consumers self-referral is continuing to increase. So you should devote less resources  to physician referral marketing and more resources dedicated to consumer marketing.

This is great news. Why? Because physician referral patterns slowly change- if at all. And consumers are quickly informed and will make a decision. This means you can drive profitable increases in clinical volume relatively quickly. Said another way: your job just got easier.