At Becker's Hospital Review's 9th Annual Meeting, Regent Surgical Health CEO Chris Bishop said big retailers like Walmart and Amazon are poised to make a huge impact on healthcare in the next five years and highlighted the industry's rapid transition to value-based care.
In a session called "Double Your Ambulatory Platform by 2020," Mr. Bishop said the days of Medicare paying twice as much for a procedure in the HOPD setting versus an outpatient setting are numbered. He noted primary hip and knee joint replacements are projected to double in the outpatient setting by 2026.
While health systems have historically viewed ASCs as competition or developed hub-and-spoke platforms primarily to feed back into the hospital, leaders need to adopt a new mindset in this changing landscape.
Mr. Bishop said the key "is to think through, 'How do we disrupt our own health systems to ensure that we're driving the change and that it's not being done to us?'"
To stay ahead of major changes, he said, health system leaders can grow their ambulatory platforms using three key strategies:
1. Find an expert(s).
Individuals with expertise in certain areas can help a system contemplate change, Mr. Bishop said.
2. Turbo charge development.
Despite their large infrastructure and complicated decision-making protocols, health systems need to quickly change strategic direction or risk falling behind and losing out on resources. They can start by setting a five-year objective and defining the system's current position.
3. Assess physical assets.
Rather than creating a hub-and-spoke model funneling service to the inpatient setting, health systems should make their ambulatory platforms part of a "spiderweb" approach.
"The mentality now, frankly, needs to be, 'how do I get more care out of the inpatient setting to the outpatient setting?'" Mr. Bishop said.
To explain how this model would look, Mr. Bishop mapped out a network of assets complete with diagnostic imaging, a medical office, an emergency department, urgent care, an ASC and — uniquely — a cardiac ASC, which Mr. Bishop said should be included in health systems' five-year plans.