Affordability has been a hot topic this year as consumers face escalating prices when they shop. But for healthcare executives like Lantern Chief Medical Officer, Jason Tibbels, MD, affordability has even greater significance as organizations seek to balance the need to maintain and improve the quality of healthcare with managing escalating healthcare costs.
Tibbels cautioned that it’s important to avoid the temptation to take an overly simplistic approach to what is a complicated issue. He noted that healthcare organizations needn’t spend more to improve care but, as with the real estate industry, location can play an important role in the cost of care.
“I think it’s well established that high quality care lowers costs, whether that’s through reduced re-admissions or identifying and eliminating waste in the system; you can get high quality care at reasonable prices,” Tibbels said. “So much of healthcare prices are driven by the where, as well as the who.”
As an example, Tibbels noted that if you were to use a health system for a procedure, but shifted the location from a hospital to an ambulatory surgical center, it can dramatically reduce costs. Such a move could also reduce the risk of surgical site infections and other risks that undermine outcomes.
To learn more about how Lantern is advancing the debate around high quality care, access the full interview with MedCity News Editor-in-Chief Arundhati Parmar at the INVEST Digital Health conference in Dallas here.