Our Blog Has Moved

Dear readers,

Last year ECG launched a new website that dramatically improved the presentation and delivery of our thought leadership, including our blog posts. Although we’ve continued to maintain this stand-alone version of our blog, we will no longer be updating this page with new content.

But don’t fret – you can find all of this material, along with a new blog post every week, in the Thought Leadership section of our website.

Thanks so much for reading, and we’ll see you over at our new address!

Staffing Model Innovation in the NICU

Like all healthcare organizations, children’s hospitals face mounting pressure to reduce costs. Hospital leaders face the challenge of hitting ambitious new financial targets without compromising the quality of care. This is an especially delicate balancing act in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), where many of their sickest and most vulnerable patients are located.

In their article Needing More From Your NICU, ECG consultants Shelby Jergens and Clark Bosslet urge NICU leaders to turn a critical eye to their unit processes. They identify three areas that present the greatest opportunity for impactful change—staffing models, compensation methodology, and care coordination—and offer actionable plans based on what they’ve seen work with their clients. Here, Shelby and Clark talk about the work they’ve done with pediatric organizations around staffing model innovation in particular.

Pursuing Success in a Value-Based World

The Affordable Care Act has fended off multiple legal challenges. CMS has already implemented one mandatory bundled payment initiative and is eyeing more. MACRA looms on the horizon.

It’s an understatement to say the healthcare industry is in a period of dramatic change, and the continuing shift to value-based care will require radical thinking on the part of health system executives. But for those leaders willing to embrace change, the evolving landscape offers tremendous opportunity to remake their organizations and achieve new levels of success.

In this brief video, ECG Principal Jim Lord talks about the transition to value-based care and how forward-thinking health organizations can position themselves to thrive.

Collaboration is Critical in Care Model Transformation

Organizations that want to transform the way they deliver care must have their physicians engaged in the effort – from the planning stages through implementation and beyond. Physicians are among the most influential stakeholders in a healthcare organization, and without their buy-in, organizations will struggle to meet the requirements of any new care model.

In a previous blog post, we watched an integrated health system pilot a patient-centered medical home (PCMH) model to great success, only to lose momentum when the model was scaled up across the broader system. Because physicians weren’t engaged in the process, the system failed to achieve true transformation.

In today’s blog post, we’ll see what happens when physicians are empowered to drive care model transformation.

CMS’s Mandatory AMI Bundle Is Cause for Chest Pain

This week the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced a new mandatory bundled payment program for cardiac care. The proposed 5-year demonstration would go into effect on July 1, 2017, in 98 to-be-identified markets. The model would make hospitals financially accountable for the cost and quality of care for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) during inpatient stays and for 90 days following discharge.