Becker's Hospital Review

20 2015 YEAR REVIEW in having done so since 2006. It was fascinat- ing to watch the arguments unfold, hoping that reasoned law would trump politics in this watershed decision. e fact that nay- sayers are still tilting at the same windmill with different lances deflects from the task at hand of improving access to care for millions of deserving citizens. Mike Robertson: e [revised] guide- lines set forth by the American Cancer So- ciety in October illustrates a larger trend in healthcare where patients are encour- aged to do less preventive screening. As healthcare professionals, we know early detection is the key to beating many dis- eases and want to arm our patients with tools like education, resources and screen- ing mechanisms that give them the chance to stop the spread of the disease before it starts. Richard Rood- man: e impact of the Affordable Care Act resulted in two ripple events having a tsunami ef- fect, at least here in the Northwest, if not nationally. e first is Obamacare, which has facilitated access to a huge num- ber of people who heretofore did not have access to healthcare. e second effect of the ACA — probably more indirectly — is a tidal wave of interest among employers such as Boeing and the state of Washing- ton, as well as insurance companies, to drive healthcare reform in the form of ACOs. Tomi Ryba: e Supreme Court's de- cision to uphold the Affordable Care Act reinforced the premise that all Americans have a right to healthcare coverage. We need to remain constant in our endeavors to ensure access to primary care and hos- pital services and support providers in car- ing for the newly insured. Cherie Sibley: e 2015 event I would highlight is the success in the state of Kentucky with the healthcare exchanges enroll- ment. Kynect is a state system that has provided more than 500,000 Kentuckians with affordable health insurance. Dr. Earl Steinberg: I would say the HIMSS meeting in Chicago last spring. It fascinated me the most for two reasons. One was the level of interest and the prog- ress being made in EHR interoperabili- ty and openness, which I think is hugely important. is is something that's been discussed for years. As a result of SMART on FHIR, which integrates apps with EHRs and other health IT systems, substantial progress has been made. e other is the progress being made in data analytics and leveraging it in clinical workflow. Dr. Susan Tur- ney: e contin- ued transformation of health IT has fas- cinated me in a big- time way. How we interact with pa- tients is bigger than ever before. Tech- nologies are allow- ing us to chip away at some of the big re- search around access, the distribution of providers, shortages that exist as well as collaboration. Telehealth and mobile im- aging have been around for 20 years, but the rate of change that's occurring now is really nothing like before. Chris Van Gorder: ere are events that take place in healthcare every day that fascinate me, along with advances in medicine and science that certainly de- serve to be listed. But I've always been fas- cinated watching the worldwide response to national and international disasters. It's amazing to see the world's healthcare re- sources come together to help. is year we deployed our medical response team to Nepal, partnering with the Internation- al Medical Corps and our colleagues from Massachusetts General Hospital. Our responders were flown in by he- licopter to small mountaintop villages and cared for more than 2,000 patients. While very few of those patients will know which organizations sent those doctors, nurses and support people to care for people on the other side of the world, I was proud of each and every volunteer and staff member — from our organization and many others. In a world that seems to be in a constant state of conflict, we still have organizations and people who put caring and mission before self. Kate Walsh: 2015 was the year the dis- ease of addiction came to the fore- front as a serious public health issue. It has been amazing to me how an issue that has been in the shadows for too long quickly evolved to be front and center. In my home state of Massachusetts, we've seen leaders in healthcare, public safety and government come together to tackle this complex problem. at gives us an op- portunity to try bold new approaches and novel techniques like the primary care- based addiction treatment model our care- givers pioneered at BMC that has now ex- panded across the state and to sites across the country. We won't solve this problem overnight, but I'm proud of the way our community has come together to address what has really become a crisis. n "The whole healthcare system's reaction to Ebola fascinated me."

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