Thursday, April 30, 2015
Cost and Culture
I like aphorisms and one of my favorites is this – no
hospital administrator ever got his portrait in the lobby for saving money.
That one has been apt for a long time and still is, but
things seem to be changing. Here are a
couple of quotes from an editorial that appeared in the March 16 issue of
Modern Healthcare:
“Over the past two years, conventional wisdom presumed
without offering much in the way of evidence that the lingering recession and
the rise of high-deductible and narrow network plans explained the slowdown of
healthcare spending, now in its fifth year.”
“Indeed, most economists and the media echo chamber
repeatedly said rapid spending growth would resume once the economy picked up
steam.”
“But now, finally, the Mr. Joneses at the Congressional
Budget Office have come around to admitting that something is happening here,
even if they don’t know what it is.”
One possibility is that there has been a shift in the
culture. Somehow, public concern about
cost, the inclusion in Obamacare legislation of cost-reduction measures, more
aggressive tactics by insurance companies, the growth of so-called value based
payment mechanisms and other factors seems to have made it acceptable for
management to be more aggressive in pursuing cost reduction measures, even when
that gores somebody’s ox.
Culture is a powerful thing and may someday even get a
cost-reducing administrator’s portrait in the lobby.
