Implementing a New Service Line Model to Support Growth and Serve Patients.

SUMMARY: Many healthcare organizations are reinvesting in clinical service lines to differentiate themselves, standardize evidence-based care, and add value. Typically, service line structures are built around hospital-based procedures and are accountable solely to local operations. That can be a blueprint for missed growth and lost value.Banner Health, based in Phoenix, Arizona, with operations in six southwestern states, has pivoted to a systemwide service line strategy to foster growth and support value-based care. Service lines are now organized to maximize both revenue and quality across the continuum of care, to the benefit of both the system and its patients. The new, team-based structure allows Banner Health to respond nimbly to changes in the healthcare environment because it is based on the ways patients access the system. In 2021, just two years into this complex transition, the results have demonstrated that this service line model can achieve measurable benefits that include growth; improved financial performance, safety, and clinical outcomes; and increased collaboration in value-based payment models-all helping the system to realize its mission of making healthcare easier so that life can be better for our patients.

Electronic medical records: a path forward.

Health systems are moving to implement comprehensive electronic medical record (EMR) systems, or significant pieces of them, in the belief that EMR can be integrated into clinical practice and lead to improved patient outcomes and enhanced safety. There are substantial roadblocks to implementing EMR, including significant cost, the competency needed to implement, the political environment, organization infrastructure and culture, and how organization leaders understand return on investment. Complicating factors include the drive to implement EMR to meet meaningful use standards to qualify for a federal incentive program and recently publicized studies that question the value equation of the EMR as it relates to patient care improvements. We offer our experiences on the successful implementation of the EMR across the large health systems we lead. We offer practical advice and tips on how to achieve successful implementation, evidence that successful implementations improve patient care and safety, and a glimpse of how EMR is a significant foundation in a future of collaborative models that provide continuum-based care.