Jackson Memorial Hospital in Crisis

Jackson Memorial Hospital, one of our finest teaching hospitals in the U.S., is stuck in a perpetual financial crisis caused, among other reason, by poor management. The proposed solutions do not follow surgical precision thinking but can only be compared with brute amputations threatening to destroy this great institution. The current management lacks strategic vision and obviously does not understand that the rapidly changing health care market demands flexibility and quick adaptation to evolving concepts of care delivery and reimbursement. This requires the development of team based care harvesting the creativity and experience of the highly skilled workforce. Therefore, it's counter-intuitive to reduce the number of experienced health care workers who are needed to develop and sustain new care delivery systems such as the Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH). The Patient Centered Medical Home is a model of care where each patient has an ongoing relationship with a personal clinician who leads a team that, together, takes responsibility for patient care. The clinician-led care team is responsible for providing all the patient's health care needs and when needed, coordinating care across the health care system. The comprehensive care provided by the medical home leads to better health, longer lives, higher patient satisfaction and less expensive care. Other hospital systems in the U.S. are successfully pursuing such concepts and are being rewarded financially. For example, all 11 hospitals and six large community health centers of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation have received medical home designation for delivering accessible, comprehensive and family-centered primary care to New Yorkers that aims to reduce avoidable healthcare costs over time. The special designation was granted by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) to 616 primary care physicians who collectively care for nearly 100 percent of HHC's primary care population of more than 477,000 adult and pediatric patients. All of the HHC facilities received "Level 3" designation, the highest ranking, which will qualify HHC for more than $15 million in Medicaid reimbursement rate increases every year. Jackson Memorial Hospital can lead the field in health care innovation and its not too late to implement changes. But we need a management team that can translate vision into reality. Yours Bernd