HEALTHCARE INTERVIEW
Efficient care Rather than building more hospital wings and buidings, emphasis on efficiency could help drive costs down
John Couris CEO & President Tampa General Hospital What are the most in-demand services for the hospital and what does that say about healthcare in Tampa Bay? Overall, we are growing in almost every area. Part of it is population growth and the other is that we are a tertiary, quaternary hospital that takes care of rare and complex cases. We have patients coming from all over the state and in some cases all over the country to Tampa General Hospital. By the end of September, we had already performed 100 liver transplants for 2019. That puts us in the Top 10 programs in the country. But the real story is that we had a zero 30-day mortality rate, which is critically important for liver transplants. We are very proud of that. There are many things that we can’t control as a hospital. We are always looking to recruit and maintain top talent. We focus on how to do a better job on capacity and care navigation. What happens with healthcare in places like Florida, and in Tampa is that hospital wings and buildings are being built all over the place under the argument that the communities are growing. Plus, there is a need to increase bed availability. I think that is the wrong way to go about it. When you do that, you are adding to the cost of healthcare unnecessarily. When you build new buildings, you are having only a short-term positive economic impact. Our attitude here is to find ways to make our 3 million square feet more efficient and more patient-centered. We focus on finding solutions to drive the cost of healthcare down and the quality up. If we can modernize and reengineer our work, getting better at what we do through efficiency and quality of service without having to build unnecessarily, and putting equipment and people and processes at the right place and time, we can lower costs and pass on that value to the patient. How is new technology being deployed at Tampa General Hospital?
Our new CareComm center is an 8,000-square-foot technology hub that deploys artificial intelligence, predictive analytics and reengineering to rebuild healthcare from the inside out. We were the first in Florida, the first in the southeast and the fourth in the world to employ this model. It is actually one of the main drivers behind our listing as one of the Becker’s Top 40 most innovative hospitals in the country this year. CareComm includes 38 LCD displays that monitor the ebb and flow of the entire institution, 30-plus team members from 10 departments running 20 artificial intelligence applications, all managing the flow of the medical center. We have been able to eliminate a half day of stay, and we have been able to take $10 million of inefficiencies, real money, out of the system, and that is only in the first 10 months. www.capitalanalyticsassociates.com
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