Hospitals—and health care options—are changing

While traveling last week, I noted an article in USA Today about the challenges facing independent hospitals (click here to see the story).

Implications: I was born and raised in a small Midwestern community… one that lost its town hospital in the late sixties. A larger city about fifty miles to our south had a comparatively massive hospital complex, and a new superhighway suddenly linked our small town to that more sophisticated treatment. (Doctors could earn much more in the major medical center than in a small town practice, another factor leading to the closing of the local hospital.)

It seems that similar circumstances are hitting more hospitals these days. But instead of changes in physical infrastructure (a highway that carries patients to alternative medical centers), it seems these changes are in the financial and regulatory infrastructure of healthcare. Insurance and government requirements are increasingly difficult for the local hospital to fulfill.

I was interested to see how the facilities mentioned in the article are re-inventing their approach to health care, capital improvements and physician staffing. This article is a great example of organizations that are tuning-in to changes in the patient and competitive landscape, and adapting to those new circumstances as best they can.

Those who fail to evolve amid this change—among customers and conditions—won’t have a very good prognosis.

Mike Anderson