Becker's Hospital Review

66 There's an element of preventive care in this process, as well, as patient navigators can help ensure patients have access to healthcare information in a timely manner. Let us return to the example of the Medicare submarket. In the patient outreach process, hospitals can use data to determine if Medicare patients have scheduled their annual wellness visits. The data can also inform providers about how many Medicare patients are also diabetic, and how many of them have not scheduled an office visit in more than 180 days. Patient outreach allows providers to go beyond the identification of a submarket, such as one that is 80 percent Medicare patients, to better understand those patients' utilization rates, care patterns and historical health information. This in-depth understanding of the patient base can empower hospitals and health systems to better attune their "customer service" by providing services like care navigators, web-based appointment scheduling and transportation. 4. Adopt a customer opportunity perspective. Hospitals and health systems need to detach themselves from historical data. Rather than basing market share strategy on patient utilization rates in the past, Mr. Thomas recommends hospitals continually collect and refine data to incorporate new metrics to better understand patient patterns. He raised just a few questions hospitals should be asking as they build a market strategy: "How many patients did the system see last month? How many patient visits were made to the emergency department versus the physician group? What percentage of the market population does that represent?" says Mr. Thomas. He also says that market share strategy is moving from encounter-based care to capturing patients providers may not necessarily encounter in traditional care settings. "How many patients have visited the hospital who haven't had wellness visits in 12 or more years? Those are the metrics providers need to start looking at, and they need to ask themselves, 'Who is missing?' It's not about the patients who are there, but who are missing," says Mr. Thomas. For instance, when a woman delivers a baby at a hospital, the health system should refocus its strategy on how to form relationships with that mother, father and children — the complete family unit versus an individual patient. "We're taking something from the banking business here," says Mr. Thomas. "We're looking at market share from a patient perspective to a customer Executive Briefing: Population Health opportunity perspective. That doesn't mean utilization has to increase, by the way. You want the right utilization at the right time in the right setting under the right practice economics." 5. Disrupt the notion of "patient loyalty." The danger all health systems face is to assume that physicians and patients are not portable, says Mr. Thomas. In the past, the healthcare industry warmly embraced the idea of patient loyalty. The concept of people calling healthcare providers "my physician" or "my hospital" was beloved. But this notion of loyalty, as comforting as it may be, does not belong in a system's market share strategy. Mr. Thomas says hospitals and health systems should remain uncomfortable, and build their strategy in a way that assumes patients and physicians are inconsistent. "The 'preferred hospital' or 'preferred doctor' has a velocity of churn that, historically, was not seen or understood," says Mr. Thomas. "A patient's choice of a health system can be driven by a bigger set of economics than ever before. Patients, physicians, cases — they could all leave. You might have the only hospital in town, but you should treat patients as if they may go to a competitor's physician tomorrow. Year-over-year loyalty should not be relied upon. Base no assumption on historical loyalty." Conclusion By incorporating these retail strategies, hospitals can better meet submarkets' unique needs, proactively direct and manage their care patterns and identify patients that may be potential customers, even though data shows they have been absent from their healthcare years. These retail principles also promote a convenient care experience, which will drive patient visits in a very organic way. But most importantly, hospitals should not rest on their laurels or assume they will retain their position as a preferred provider in their market. "Hospitals and physicians today both have significant incentive to provide high quality care in the marketplace, and align themselves to make the patient the prime customer," says Mr. Thomas. "If they do not work together, there are massive differences, such as poor care coordination and patient dissatisfaction. Then, another healthcare provider comes in and says, 'How do we make this better?' The idea of [health systems] staying where they are — it's not an option." n MedSynergies partners with health care organizations and physicians to coordinate care by providing a complete alignment strategy based on its MSIGHT solutions suite. Leveraging its knowledge and experience in physician practice operations and health system consulting, MedSynergies improves processes, optimizes technology and builds on trusted patient relationships, enabling hospitals and physician practices to offer quality health care. Founded in 1996, MedSynergies is privately held and headquartered in Irving, Texas. MedSynergies currently partners with hospitals and health networks and serves more than 8,000 providers across the United States. For more information, please visit www.medsynergies.com.

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