We’ve all been in situations where the time was right, where conditions were optimal or good enough to suggest the best opportunity for action. Growing up on a dairy farm, I learned early that nature exerted a stronger hand on our schedules and work than anything humans could muster. Weather was, of course, a constant input to a changing schedule, but the natural cadence of planting, harvesting, calving and other tasks all reinforced the importance of taking advantage of times when conditions are best to accomplish what needs to be done. This early conditioning manifests itself in a growing sense of anxiety and impatience when time passes between the right conditions and an appropriate action.
I’ve lately been feeling that same kind of anxiety and impatience with regard to the healthcare industry. As I begin my term as National Chair of HFMA, the industry is facing a unique and interesting set of circumstances that are hard to ignore:
- Increasing public criticism of the nonprofit healthcare model, targeting executive salaries, misuse of 340B discounts and provider relief funds, and ignoring the charitable purpose of healthcare for those who can’t pay for it. We’re losing the hearts and minds of our neighbors, friends and policymakers.
- Broad financial challenges being experienced by even the most advantaged industry participants — large integrated health systems. Less-advantaged participants face more grave challenges, even existential threats.
- Increasing flows of investment into provider capacity by new entrants such as Optum, Amazon and CVS. As established participants, are we living the innovator’s dilemma in real time?
- Very exciting accelerations of innovation, the introduction of digital and virtual tools at scale, and significant discoveries in genomics and other sciences to advance cures.
- Advancement in leveraging data and technology has real promise to finally move the practice of medicine beyond its almost singular reliance on human effort to provide care.
If you’re not feeling the pressure to transform and adapt, you’re very fortunate. As an Association whose members serve an industry under duress, HFMA exists at the nexus of industry pressure and opportunity to transform. The Association has always sought to play a pivotal role in improving the current state, and now is the time for us to take that effort to the next level.
We’ve spent the past couple of years preparing by outlining our cost effectiveness of health (CEoH) strategy but have yet to fully step into those shoes. We’ve initiated steps to a global presence, but success is far from certain. HFMA’s business model increasingly depends on the support of large-scale industry participants, and it is not immune to industry pressures. Now is the time for all of us, individually and working together as a national organization, to step out and step forward to embrace innovation and visibly advocate for the just cause of CEoH. It seems more clear each day that conditions are optimal for this kind of action. And since it’s what HFMA was built for — to lead the financial management of healthcare — we have no choice.
HFMA, it’s time!
