It’s generally accepted that in many industries, having competition leads to better outcomes for both businesses and consumers. While we’ve nearly uniformly agreed that monopolies are bad, the positive impact of competition isn’t always so clear cut.
Recently, University of Michigan researchers published the results of a study in JAMA Surgery that looked to assess the relationship between the amount of competition a hospital faces and their surgical outcomes. It turns out that even within an industry specialty like surgery, the answer varies but overall, the news was good for patients and providers in low-competition areas.
There was no difference in 30-day mortality for half of the procedures examined and found no difference in the quality of surgical care for 10 high-risk procedures. This still leaves individual procedures did show variance, with lower 30-day mortality rates for high-competition hospitals performing pancreatectomies, rectal resections, and lung resections. Those same hospitals though, had high mortality rates for mitral valve repairs and carotid endarterectomies.
For an individual patient in need of a transplant, it would certainly make sense to evaluate metrics like these for their specific surgery. For the transplant market as a whole, it raises new questions regarding what the factors are that influence improving patient results.
The study adds another data point to discussions regarding health system mergers and acquisitions as well. States like Minnesota have passed laws making sure that further consolidation won’t be anti-competitive but perhaps everyone can rest a bit easier knowing that competition isn’t the be-all end-all of quality and outcomes.
Even if competition was the recipe for increasing quality, it’s something that is in short supply for hospitals. An editorial published with the study notes that only 10% of US hospitals are in a market that is considered ‘highly concentrated’ (markets with an HHI value of more than 2,500). This should allow healthcare leaders to focus their efforts, knowing that creating competition won’t solve quality issues.
It’s easy to understand how competition can be helpful; Extract isn’t a large conglomerate, but we make sure we can outperform our competitors in our areas of expertise. It’s why we have some of the largest counties and health systems in the US as customers. Not all improvements are born out of competition though and particularly in the healthcare space, providers have an intrinsic motivation to provide the best outcomes and care.
Certainly, at a corporate level there may be fights over profits, market share, and how best to attract patients, but those discussions happen largely above the heads of the clinicians who are actually shaping patients’ outcomes. Finding the factors that motivate clinicians, researchers, and technologists is a way hospitals can improve without relying on factors outside of their control.
Just as important as understanding what motivates your team is to remove their roadblocks. The topic of burnout is inescapable, but it’s important to look at each contributing factor rather than thinking that employee satisfaction itself is an issue that can be solved wholesale. Even at Extract, we know we can’t provide solutions for everyone in healthcare and perform at the level of excellence we’re accustomed to, so we focus on removing common roadblocks in document intake. We automatically:
Classify incoming documents by type
Capture and validate index data
Identify and deliver discrete results to the EMR, LIS, etc.
Route documents for signatures, DMS, appropriate department, etc.
If you’re ready to accelerate your incoming documents like outside labs, ROI requests, referral packets and more, we’d love the opportunity for a quick call or demonstration of our software. Your staff will have more discrete data with less effort for another arrow in your quiver of fighting burnout.
About the Author: Chris Mack
Chris is a Marketing Manager at Extract with experience in product development, data analysis, and both traditional and digital marketing. Chris received his bachelor’s degree in English from Bucknell University and has an MBA from the University of Notre Dame. A passionate marketer, Chris strives to make complex ideas more accessible to those around him in a compelling way.