The following interview appeared a few days ago.
One-on-One With Virtua Health CIO Al Campanella,
Part I
Virtua is a multi-hospital healthcare system headquartered in Marlton, N.J. A non-profit organization, it employs 7,900 clinical and administrative personnel and has 1,800 physicians as medical staff members. Virtua is an early adopter of clinical and digital technologies, led on the IT side by CIO Al Campanella. Recently HCI Editor-in-Chief Anthony Guerra caught up with Campanella to see if HITECH was changing his strategic plans.
GUERRA: Can you give me the 10,000-foot overview of Virtua?
CAMPANELLA: Sure. Virtua has four hospitals with a little over 1,000 beds. We have a little over $1billion in revenue. We own 150 physician practices. We also have two nursing homes, a very large home health agency with 400 nurses, and we have two large ambulatory care centers.
GUERRA: And I would imagine there’s a large population of physicians down there that are independent and refer to the hospitals?
CAMPANELLA: Yes. We have 1,100 office-based physicians who are completely voluntary, and then we have another 600 that are employed by other health systems that also admit here, or they are hospital-based physicians such as anesthesiologists and pathologists, so roughly, 1,700 altogether. And then, separately, we have 150 employed physicians.
GUERRA: The employed physicians – the office-based physicians that are owned – are they allowed to refer patients to other hospitals or do they have to refer inside the Virtua network?
CAMPANELLA: No, they don’t have to refer to us. If we offer the service, then they’re encouraged to refer the patient here, but if we don’t offer the service, then of course, they can refer elsewhere.
Read the rest of the long and really spot on interview here:
If ever there was a truer word spoken about obtaining physician buy-in and adoption - this is it!
“Al Campanella says physicians aren’t opposed to the concept of EMRs, they just don’t want to make less money because of them.”
This is absolutely central to getting physician adoption in countries that have ‘fee for service remuneration - as Australia does.
The bottom line is that you hit the bottom line you loose - improve it you win with all but the tiny handful of zealots for technology who simply don’t care and love blinking lights!
And to provide maximum value as we go onto the new year here is the best paragraph I have seen for all of us who have staggered through the recent - and ongoing, believe me, GFC.
From Alan Kohler in the Eureka Report a day or so ago.
“I’m not suggesting that not losing money and diversifying to protect your capital from ignorance is a new idea. In 1933 Will Rogers famously said: “I'm not so much concerned about the return on my money as the return of my money.” And, of course, Warren Buffet’s two big rules of investing are: “Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget Rule No. 1”
The core lesson here is to never take one’s eye off the ball - and with health IT the ball always has major elements of making sure the clinicians can feed the nippers!
And as another wise person once said - How do you get doctors to do what you want? Simple, stuff their mouths with silver!
The inevitable implication here is that you have to spend up front to get things to happen. Ms Roxon and Ms Halton seem to have missed that fundamental point.
Not hard at all really - and never to be forgotten.
David.
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