Drug and medical device companies should be banned from offering free food, gifts, travel and ghost-writing services to doctors, staff members and students in all 129 of the nation's medical colleges, says the Association of American Medical Colleges. The proposed ban is the result of a two-year effort by the group to create a model policy governing interactions between the schools and industry. Schools can ignore the association's advice, but most follow its recommendations. The rules would apply only to medical schools, but they could have enormous influence across medicine, said Dr. David Rothman, president of the Institute on Medicine.
The Federal Trade Commission said it supports a bill that would eliminate Florida's certificate of need requirements for hospital construction. In written testimony to the state Senate, the FTC said certificates of need can be detrimental to competition and healthcare consumers. Florida's current CON law "places significant regulatory burdens on the development or improvement of a very broad class of healthcare facilities that otherwise might develop dynamically in response to market needs," according to the FTC statement.
The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center is getting set to attach its gold-and-white "UPMC" logo to all three sides of the 64-story U.S. Steel Tower, giving the region's largest employer visibility for miles around. UPMC is paying for the design, fabrication, erection and maintenance of the sign, but declined to discuss the $750,000 figure it submitted to the city planning commission for the sign's development. UPMC runs 20 hospitals in the Pittsburgh area and the new signage provides "tangible evidence of Pittsburgh's transformation into an international center of medicine, technology and education," according to a UPMC statement.
Politics is the art of numbers. Polls turn into voters, and power to govern often is the sum of the number of voters who care about a particular issue.
Few seem to care about healthcare.
At least no one outside of the people most affected by it—the uninsured. An Associated Press exit poll this week of Democratic voters found that 14% rated healthcare as the most important issue, trailing far behind the economy (55%) and Iraq (27%).
It does not take a statistician to know that there are an estimated 45 million of the 303 million Americans without health coverage, which makes for a percentage of roughly 14%. A true statistician may argue that extrapolating a preference poll and comparing it to a statistical designation is at best a mere coincidence. But scientific or not, the numbers hint that healthcare has so far failed to latch on as an issue with sustainable heft in the presidential campaign beyond those Americans most directly affected by it.
The reasons why are varied. Few would suggest that healthcare would or should trump either an ongoing war or a deteriorating economy as the issue of most concern to the American public. Indeed, I suspect that $4-a-gallon gasoline will still be on voters’ minds as they drive to the election precincts this fall.
The endless war of attrition on the Democratic side is preventing either candidate from seizing the high ground on healthcare, and pundits seem to suggest that the fight will continue at least until early summer. Meanwhile, much of Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain’s healthcare fix is still a work in progress.
In the 2004 election, much of the steam on healthcare got lost behind same-sex marriage and other hot buttons that are easier to punch. Healthcare also lacks the immediate, universal pain points that hit everyone at the same time—like gas prices that cause travel, food and other out-of-pocket costs to rise quickly. The numbers of uninsured creep up and healthcare costs continue to rise. So having healthcare polling in the low double-digits this late in the 2008 campaign sets the debate up for much the same result as 2004 with no real mandate from voters for reform.
So what could change the picture and raise healthcare as an issue between now and then? If Hillary Clinton manages to capture the Democratic nomination, then the healthcare debate becomes a polarizing debate between Clinton’s universal coverage versus McCain’s quality and cost focus. Both candidates will attempt to tie in the rising cost of healthcare a threat to national prosperity, and perhaps rightly so. And it could get ugly. It could make Harry and Louise look like Ozzie and Harriet.
The Boston Marathon attracts thousands of runners from all over the world every year. Monday’s race was no different. My starting-line neighbors included a nice couple from Utah, a fast-looking Swede, a Canadian decked out in maple leafs down to her socks, and about 30 runners waving Japanese flags.
As I looked around at all these travelers, I couldn’t help but wonder why someone would travel—from Japan no less—to run 26.2 miles? The only thing worse than the run itself would be boarding an airplane for home at the end of the day or sleeping in a hotel bed. “It’s so inconvenient,” I thought. “It would be like traveling to Thailand for heart surgery.” Oh, wait.
This month’s Fast Company magazine features the world-famous Bumrungrad International, a posh, high-tech 554-bed hospital in Bangkok. Between 2001 and 2003, foreign patients at Bumrungrad more than doubled to 430,000, and, according to the article, the majority of the hospital’s revenue is generated by overseas patients.
Patients travel to Bumrungrad because it offers brand-new facilities, all digital records, and treatments, like stem cell therapy, that aren’t available in the U.S. Even open heart surgery has been replaced by a better, quicker, and safer procedure.
Experts predict “medical tourism,” a seemingly crazy idea for retired bargain hunters, will soon become “globalized healthcare.” It won’t just be for the adventurous or the uninsured; it will be for everyone.
This week’s news supports those predictions. South Carolina-based Companion Global Healthcare added three Singapore hospitals to its network, making international care an option for more than one million members of Blue Cross Blue Shield and BlueChoice HealthPlan of South Carolina.
If you’re a senior leader at an American-based hospital, the news that global healthcare is becoming more accessible should make you worry.
Convenience, after all, is your core strength. International hospitals, no matter how good they get, won’t ever be “home.” And for a lot of patients, the promise of newer hospitals and expanded treatment options doesn’t compare with the convenience and familiarity of their local hospitals.
So, as international care becomes more accessible, it’s more important than ever for leaders of American hospitals to make sure their facilities really are convenient. Scheduling appointments and accessing test results must be faster and easier than boarding a plane to Thailand. Appointments must be available in a reasonable timeframe. Doctors must return calls and e-mails (they do at Bumrungrad). And safety, good customer service, and transparency must be guaranteed.
As CEOs increasingly spend their time focused on high-level strategic plans, they’d be wise to pay attention to their hospitals’ day-to-day details and how they affect convenience. Because, while you’re adding service lines to compete with your competitors across town, hospitals across the world are getting patients in and out faster, marketing to patients better, and, now, making it easier to pay. Like traveling to run the Boston Marathon, flying to Thailand for healthcare suddenly seems a lot less crazy.
Molly Rowe is leadership editor with HealthLeaders magazine. She can be reached at mrowe@healthleadersmedia.com.
Akron (OH) General Medical Center is expanding its outpatient center in Stow, OH, and considering adding inpatient services at its Summit County facility. Construction of a $7.6 million addition to the Akron General Health and Wellness Center-North will begin in summer 2008. The four-story, 42,000-square-foot addition will house cardiac testing and rehabilitation, neurology, a vision center, physician offices, pulmonary testing, a restaurant, a pharmacy and
other yet-to-be-determined stores.