This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Hospital medicine will prevail if it is part of the health care solution
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
ORLANDO, Fla. – Society of Hospital Medicine incoming President Nasim Afsar, MD, MBA, addressed 4,000 hospitalists here and said the future of hospital medicine is population health management.
“We have to look at how do we deliver the highest quality care for the most appropriate cost throughout the entire continuum of person’s life,” Afsar, chief ambulatory officer and chief medical officer for ACOs at University of California Irvine Health, said during her presentation.
During a national meeting in January, she heard CEOs of health systems discuss how they are looking at their hospitals transitioning from “profit centers to cost centers” and “how some of them are working towards the day when their hospitals are going to be empty.”
She said that with buzzwords like “hospital at home” and “virtual hospitals,” hospitalists should consider the future of hospital medicine as a specialty.
“We cannot ignore the single irrefutable fact that has emerged — value will prevail. And the only way for us to deliver true high value care is through population health management,” Afsar said.
She said to answer this insurmountable challenge, hospitalists must “define and deliver value for our hospitalized patients every single day,” and “we have to look at what population health management means for our specialty and make sure we are connecting with our ambulatory colleagues who ultimately are providing the largest part of care for our patients.”
“We will prevail because of our perseverance and passion to be part of the solution to the challenges in health care,” Afsar said. “We’ve done that before and we will do it again.”
Her last thought was that as hospital medicine moves towards the future that “we not be confined by our name — hospitalists — but by the core values that have defined us over the years — innovators, problem solvers, collaborators and patient advocates.” – by Joan-Marie Stiglich, ELS
Reference:
Afsar N. President-elect’s address. Presented at: Hospital Medicine 2018. April 9-11; Orlando, Fla.
Disclosure: Afsar reports no relevant financial disclosures.