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���������� Note: HHC—the nation’s largest hospital system—will use a one-year grant to improve internal culture around person-centeredness. Though the below article highlights the system’s recent losses in federal safety net funding, it declines to offer that HHC is set to be the largest benefactor of DSRIP funding in NYS and has already received millions in vital funding and design grant awards from DOH. A new focus on the experience of clients will hopefully benefit the hospital corporations behavioral health perspective, as 36% of mental health and 26% of substance abuse inpatient admissions in NYC occur in its network.

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HHC Gets Grant to Focus on Patients

Crain’s Health Pulse; 10/14/2014

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The Health and Hospitals Corp. is launching an initiative to embrace a patient-centered focus, as the public hospital system faces millions in federal funding cuts triggered by the Affordable Care Act. While HHC’s clinical measures are as good or better than those at private hospitals, patients’ satisfaction is 10 points lower. The system is trying to improve patient satisfaction as a way to retain or attract patients with commercial insurance.

Chicago-based Civic Consulting, which helped turn around the Cook County Health and Hospitals System—formerly led by HHC President Dr. Ram Raju—received a $150,000 grant from the ���������� Community Trust to make HHC more patient-focused. The consulting firm “will suggest practical improvements to make the patient experience more positive, such as simplified referrals and easier appointment scheduling procedures,” according to the grant summary.

“The plan will incorporate elements of employee training used by for-profit companies that rely on customer satisfaction as a primary mechanism to ensure market share,” the summary reads. After training, HHC will survey patients in the departments of general medicine, surgery and gynecology to test their satisfaction with employees.

Irfan Hasan, a program officer at the trust, said he was optimistic that HHC could make the transition to patient-focused care, citing last year’s success of MetroPlus, the system’s insurance plan, as one example.

“HHC serves the population that we’re more interested in,” he said. But compared with voluntary hospitals, some of which have also struggled with shrinking margins, HHC “has even less deep pockets to put in the right-sizing and the culture change that needs to happen.” The one-year grant calls for HHC to implement the changes at the two facilities with the highest volume before moving to the rest of the system.

If the program successfully draws commercially insured patients to HHC, it could mean millions in added revenue. Even as more ����������ers buy insurance, HHC, the city’s designated safety-net provider, will continue to treat the bulk of the uninsured and undocumented. It will need to find new revenue to offset the loss of the federal funds that previously paid for much of that care.

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