How will Newton-Wellesley Hospital (NWH) maintain its private practice convention while remaining effective and competitive in a health care business demanding increasing integration between physicians and hospitals? This is the choice facing Newton-Wellesley Hospital president Mike Jellinek in 2009, as several tendencies- lower revenues and higher prices, shifting workforce demographics, and changing compensation models -threaten to disturb NWH's organizational model. Similar to other U.S. community hospitals, NWH has historically been staffed mostly with private practitioners; nevertheless, in recent years Jellinek has taken several steps toward further integration, such as hiring primary care physicians and hospitalists, and even proposing creation of a physicians' organization (PO)-a move its veteran private professionals sharply oppose.
Newton-Wellesley Hospital Case Study Solution
In 2009, NWH is distinguished for high quality care and is not fiscally weak; yet, given external pressures, most at the hospital agree that reforms are needed to improve doctors and the hospital's profitability while maintaining maximum-quality patient care. Diverging views over the best way to enhance the hospital has exposed differences between the administration and some private practice physicians. The crux of their incongruity centers on one question: how to make the organizational alterations required to keep NWH competitive and effective in the face of a diminishing earnings growth rate, while honoring its custom of doctor independence.
PUBLICATION DATE: May 14, 2009 PRODUCT #: 609088-PDF-ENG
This is just an excerpt. This case is about TECHNOLOGY & OPERATIONS