Cost Effectiveness of Health Report, March 2022

The March 2022 edition of HFMA’s Cost Effectiveness of Health Report addresses a key prerequisite to achieving cost-effectiveness: engaged caregivers. The lead story details how one health system has responded to its nurses’ need for increased scheduling flexibility, and a commentary explores steps for enabling physicians to play a leadership role in promoting CEoH. Also included is a Q&A exploring activities on the world stage aimed at achieving the United Nation’s sustainable development goals for healthcare and health equity – and how U.S. organizations can play a role.

Workforce issues

How to future-proof your travel nurse and clinician staffing
By Liz DeForest
Nursing and clinician staff have long faced pressures, exacerbated by the pandemic, that have caused many of them to experience burnout and some to leave the profession. Recognizing such concerns among its staff, including a desire for greater flexibility in scheduling and types of assignments, Trinity Health in Livonia, Michigan, developed an innovative in-house travel staffing approach that would address the concerns and promote increased nursing staff engagement with its health system, without which it could not deliver the highest possible quality of care.

Health equity

Q&A
How U.S. healthcare can play a larger role on the world stage
By Eric C. Reese, PhD
Judy Kuriansky, PhD, a professor of psychology, NGO representative to United Nations and trustee of the United African Congress, shares her insights and experiences from working to improve healthcare equity and access among populations in the world who are “furthest behind,” which is a priority in the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Kuriansky describes recent international efforts aimed at promoting the United Nations 2030 Agenda, and she address ways U.S. health systems could play an important role in such efforts.

Physician issues

Commentary
Bringing the healthcare back to healthcare
Martin H. Bluth, MD, PhD
Affording greater freedom to physicians to practice medicine by easing administrative strictures on them may be the best strategy for ultimately promoting cost effectiveness of health, says Martin Bluth. But physicians also should be well educated in the economics and business of healthcare.

Operationalizing value-based primary care: lessons from the field
Sponsored by Kaufman Hall
Matthew Bates
The primary care physician’s office has a pivotal role to play in efforts of hospitals, payers and other healthcare stakeholders to transition healthcare payment to arrangements that reward providers for the value of the care they provide. However, to successfully execute a value-based primary care model, organizations should be mindful of the all-too-common pitfalls that they may encounter along the way.

Quality and performance improvement

Cracks in the Foundation (Part 3): Overcoming healthcare’s services-need mismatch
By David W. Johnson
Clinical care only accounts for 20% of health outcomes, yet this area is where America disproportionately invests its healthcare resources. To overcome U.S. healthcare’s services-need mismatch, there should be a greater investment in healthy multipliers that help to address the social and economic factors, health behaviors and the physical environment that drive the remaining 80% of health outcomes.