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After spending nearly 3 years in Washington working on current health policy issues, Dr. Patrick Conway, a pediatric hospitalist, is eager to get back to caring for patients.
In 2007, he began a 1-year appointment to the White House Fellowship Program, a nonpartisan program that pairs young people from a cross-section of professions with senior leaders in the federal government. After a year working with then Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt and Dr. Carolyn Clancy, director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Dr. Conway was offered a position as chief medical officer in the secretary’s policy division at HHS. In that role he worked on quality measurement and links to payment, health information technology, comparative effectiveness research, and the hot topic of the day – health care reform.
Today he is back in the trenches, working as director of the hospital medicine division at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. Dr. Conway said the experience in Washington gave him a better sense of the big picture, and he wants to apply that broader view to how he does things in Cincinnati. With that in mind, he and his colleagues in hospital medicine are considering starting an intermediate care unit and are investigating a potential regional expansion to more community hospitals. Dr. Conway said he wants to develop a long-term vision for how to improve outcomes for children, while performing his essential day-to-day responsibilities.
“Even though taking care of 25% of the kids who come to our $1 billion health care system is a huge chore, I’m also looking at what we need to do in the future,” he said.
A large part of that effort will involve measurement. As part of the strategic planning process, the hospital medicine group is identifying key conditions, such as asthma, where physicians think they can make substantial improvements. Dr. Conway said they will track performance in those key areas.
He also wants to measure performance at the individual physician level. Right now, hospitalists at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital typically don’t know their individual performance metrics, but Dr. Conway said that needs to change. He wants all the Cincinnati Children’s hospitalists to get a report card that lets them know how they are performing on measures such as readmissions, billing, and adherence to clinical practice guidelines.
“I’m a big believer in physician feedback,” he said.
Dr. Conway will be bringing his insider’s view of health care reform to his work in Cincinnati, but he said all hospitalists should be thinking about how the recently enacted Affordable Care Act will affect them. His personal opinion is that some of the key elements will offer opportunities for hospitalists to shine.
For example, the Affordable Care Act puts an increased focus on reducing hospital readmissions, which is an area where many hospitalist programs are already doing a lot of work, Dr. Conway said. “I think we have a huge potential role to play in decreasing readmissions and improving transitions of care,” he said.
Another area where health care reform will touch the lives of hospitalists is in value-based purchasing for hospitals. Under this initiative, Medicare will pay hospitals more if they provide higher-quality care, and less if they don’t. That means that if a hospitalist group does a consistent job of improving care, it will have a significant impact on the hospital’s bottom line, which in turn is likely give hospitalist groups greater leverage in negotiating their contracts, he said.
“By definition, some hospitals will win and some hospitals will lose,” Dr. Conway said. “However, potentially almost all, or most, hospitalist programs will win through our focus on delivering higher-quality care to patients.”
Patrick Conway
After spending nearly 3 years in Washington working on current health policy issues, Dr. Patrick Conway, a pediatric hospitalist, is eager to get back to caring for patients.
In 2007, he began a 1-year appointment to the White House Fellowship Program, a nonpartisan program that pairs young people from a cross-section of professions with senior leaders in the federal government. After a year working with then Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt and Dr. Carolyn Clancy, director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Dr. Conway was offered a position as chief medical officer in the secretary’s policy division at HHS. In that role he worked on quality measurement and links to payment, health information technology, comparative effectiveness research, and the hot topic of the day – health care reform.
Today he is back in the trenches, working as director of the hospital medicine division at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. Dr. Conway said the experience in Washington gave him a better sense of the big picture, and he wants to apply that broader view to how he does things in Cincinnati. With that in mind, he and his colleagues in hospital medicine are considering starting an intermediate care unit and are investigating a potential regional expansion to more community hospitals. Dr. Conway said he wants to develop a long-term vision for how to improve outcomes for children, while performing his essential day-to-day responsibilities.
“Even though taking care of 25% of the kids who come to our $1 billion health care system is a huge chore, I’m also looking at what we need to do in the future,” he said.
A large part of that effort will involve measurement. As part of the strategic planning process, the hospital medicine group is identifying key conditions, such as asthma, where physicians think they can make substantial improvements. Dr. Conway said they will track performance in those key areas.
He also wants to measure performance at the individual physician level. Right now, hospitalists at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital typically don’t know their individual performance metrics, but Dr. Conway said that needs to change. He wants all the Cincinnati Children’s hospitalists to get a report card that lets them know how they are performing on measures such as readmissions, billing, and adherence to clinical practice guidelines.
“I’m a big believer in physician feedback,” he said.
Dr. Conway will be bringing his insider’s view of health care reform to his work in Cincinnati, but he said all hospitalists should be thinking about how the recently enacted Affordable Care Act will affect them. His personal opinion is that some of the key elements will offer opportunities for hospitalists to shine.
For example, the Affordable Care Act puts an increased focus on reducing hospital readmissions, which is an area where many hospitalist programs are already doing a lot of work, Dr. Conway said. “I think we have a huge potential role to play in decreasing readmissions and improving transitions of care,” he said.
Another area where health care reform will touch the lives of hospitalists is in value-based purchasing for hospitals. Under this initiative, Medicare will pay hospitals more if they provide higher-quality care, and less if they don’t. That means that if a hospitalist group does a consistent job of improving care, it will have a significant impact on the hospital’s bottom line, which in turn is likely give hospitalist groups greater leverage in negotiating their contracts, he said.
“By definition, some hospitals will win and some hospitals will lose,” Dr. Conway said. “However, potentially almost all, or most, hospitalist programs will win through our focus on delivering higher-quality care to patients.”
Patrick Conway
After spending nearly 3 years in Washington working on current health policy issues, Dr. Patrick Conway, a pediatric hospitalist, is eager to get back to caring for patients.
In 2007, he began a 1-year appointment to the White House Fellowship Program, a nonpartisan program that pairs young people from a cross-section of professions with senior leaders in the federal government. After a year working with then Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt and Dr. Carolyn Clancy, director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Dr. Conway was offered a position as chief medical officer in the secretary’s policy division at HHS. In that role he worked on quality measurement and links to payment, health information technology, comparative effectiveness research, and the hot topic of the day – health care reform.
Today he is back in the trenches, working as director of the hospital medicine division at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. Dr. Conway said the experience in Washington gave him a better sense of the big picture, and he wants to apply that broader view to how he does things in Cincinnati. With that in mind, he and his colleagues in hospital medicine are considering starting an intermediate care unit and are investigating a potential regional expansion to more community hospitals. Dr. Conway said he wants to develop a long-term vision for how to improve outcomes for children, while performing his essential day-to-day responsibilities.
“Even though taking care of 25% of the kids who come to our $1 billion health care system is a huge chore, I’m also looking at what we need to do in the future,” he said.
A large part of that effort will involve measurement. As part of the strategic planning process, the hospital medicine group is identifying key conditions, such as asthma, where physicians think they can make substantial improvements. Dr. Conway said they will track performance in those key areas.
He also wants to measure performance at the individual physician level. Right now, hospitalists at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital typically don’t know their individual performance metrics, but Dr. Conway said that needs to change. He wants all the Cincinnati Children’s hospitalists to get a report card that lets them know how they are performing on measures such as readmissions, billing, and adherence to clinical practice guidelines.
“I’m a big believer in physician feedback,” he said.
Dr. Conway will be bringing his insider’s view of health care reform to his work in Cincinnati, but he said all hospitalists should be thinking about how the recently enacted Affordable Care Act will affect them. His personal opinion is that some of the key elements will offer opportunities for hospitalists to shine.
For example, the Affordable Care Act puts an increased focus on reducing hospital readmissions, which is an area where many hospitalist programs are already doing a lot of work, Dr. Conway said. “I think we have a huge potential role to play in decreasing readmissions and improving transitions of care,” he said.
Another area where health care reform will touch the lives of hospitalists is in value-based purchasing for hospitals. Under this initiative, Medicare will pay hospitals more if they provide higher-quality care, and less if they don’t. That means that if a hospitalist group does a consistent job of improving care, it will have a significant impact on the hospital’s bottom line, which in turn is likely give hospitalist groups greater leverage in negotiating their contracts, he said.
“By definition, some hospitals will win and some hospitals will lose,” Dr. Conway said. “However, potentially almost all, or most, hospitalist programs will win through our focus on delivering higher-quality care to patients.”
Patrick Conway