GRAPEVINE, TEX. – Hospitalists will have new opportunities to show just how indispensable they are as the provisions of the Affordable Care Act go into effect, according to Dr. Robert Kocher, who helped formulate the health reform law that was enacted last year.
Dr. Kocher, an internist who previously served as a member of President Obama's National Economic Council, said that hospital administrators will be looking to hospitalists to help them cope with elements of the health reform law such as requirements to reduce readmissions and possible participation in accountable care organizations.
The new law also makes “productivity adjustments” that cut Medicare payments to hospitals, he said.
Thus, hospitals will be under pressure to be as efficient as possible and hospitalists will be in a position to help reduce costs in various ways, from reducing redundancies on care teams to improving handoffs, said Dr. Kocher, a principal at the Center for U.S. Health System Reform at McKinsey & Company.
Hospitalists have an opportunity to show their worth as hospitals try to better use technology to drive down costs. “Technology lowers prices in every other part of the economy, but it doesn't in health care,” Dr. Kocher said. “There's no reason why that shouldn't be possible in health care.”
And physicians shouldn't drag their feet in preparing for the implementation of the new law, because despite efforts to repeal it, it's here to stay, Dr. Kocher predicted. “I doubt this Congress is going to meaningfully change the law,” he said.
The one place where the law could be threatened is in the courts, he said. Several challenges are winding their way through the federal court system, and legal experts expect that the issue of the law's constitutionality will end up before the Supreme Court.
A ruling from the high court is likely to be very close, but it's unclear what direction it will go in, Dr. Kocher said. Even if the court were to strike down the law's mandate that individuals purchase health insurance, there are other ways in which the government could incentivize people to buy coverage, he added.