District Hospital Health Care Issues
As a nation we face an unsustainable growth in our healthcare expenditures which have grown from 7 to 16% of our 2006 GDP — $2.1 Trillion in too short a timeframe. We have been unable to develop the proper structure to provide high quality, affordable health care insurance for everyone in the country. This challenge has not been solved anywhere around the world; while US’ healthcare expenditure as a share of GDP is the highest, the expenditure growth rate is comparable among most developed countries over the past several decades.
The mission of our hospital must be to focus on providing the best quality health care for the most people in our district – now and far into the future. We have undertaken important scenario planning analysis that will enable us to respond to different potential structural changes in the health care industry and reimbursements as defined by lawmakers in Washington and Sacramento. It is not our charter to solve these broader problems, but to anticipate the needs of the community and prepare to serve this community as it evolves. The board’s responsibility is to be the long term steward of this community asset and ensure, as we approach our 50th anniversary during the upcoming term of office, that we remain a vibrant, independent institution for the next 50 years.
I am a strong believer that in addition to the magnificent work the Auxiliary does — contributing tens of thousands of hours each year worth millions of dollars — we must expand the engagement of business and community leaders as participants on the hospital's major committees such as Executive Compensation, Concern and the ISSC. We have the unique privilege as providing services to an area that includes world class companies like Google, Apple, Intuit and Hewlett Packard with commensurate leaders with deep “best-practices” experience, many of whom would like the opportunity to participate in this local not-for-profit institution in a way that can best leverage their professional skills.
In order to improve health care access, afordability and value we must also explore options to expand our services physically beyond our campus. There are a number of high quality providers of health services throughout the district with whom we could partner. |
