Exploring Technology's Impact on Healthcare

Mike Maron, President & CEO, Holy Name Medical Center, joins Steve Adubato to discuss the future of healthcare in New Jersey and the nation. They explore technology’s impact on healthcare accessibility, as well as the primary care physician shortage in the state.

6/15/19 #106

 

 

 

 

Excerpt:

"Welcome to Think Tank. I'm Steve Adubato. We're coming to you from the Agnes Varis NJTV Studio in Newark. It is our honor and pleasure to introduce Mike Maron, who is President and CEO, Holy Name Medical Center. Good to see you Mike. Good to see you Steve. Thanks for having me. It's our pleasure. It's part of a... this entire program is on the future of healthcare. We actually started a conversation from Mike... I don't know, many months back? Yeah. Affordability, accessibility, medical education, let's go through it. Here we go. Okay. By the way, there's a panel discussion right after this. Make sure you stay tuned. Where is New Jersey, and where is the nation, when it comes to the question of affordability in healthcare? Well affordability is a big debate. We're in a transformational stage from an old fee-for-service type medicine to something different. No one's really quite sure what that something different is going to be. We've seen recently, with the presidential campaigns heating up, a national dialogue around Medicare for All, or universal health coverage. By the way, stay on that. Mm hmm. When you hear Medicare for All? Yes. You think? Bad. Very bad. Make the case. Well you need to have... come... so it's a couple of things. First off, the case has already been made. If you want to look at it, just look at the Veterans Administration system, right? All run by the government for many many years. An absolute disaster. Very expensive. Very bloaty. Veterans can't get access, they don't get timely care. So what went wrong? We're just gonna replicate that if we keep pushing in Medicare for All. The system works. Medicare is one of the worst payers. In the overall system... "Worst" meaning? Meaning they don't... they pay less than cost. They pay on a methodology that is now two decades old and has never been updated. What are the implications of that for healthcare organizations? Well the implication is that healthcare organizations will have to make money to survive someplace else. And as you get with the aging baby boomers and more and more people on Medicare, where... that someplace else is getting... Well where's the else, Mike? Well it's commercial payers. It's people like you and I, who are still working and getting insurance and our... But our employers are paying? Our employers are paying. That's right. That's right. So you don't jump up and down and go, "Hey great! Medicare for All!" It sounds great. The economics more complicated? Much more complicated. Okay. Much more complicated. Let me... by the way, I should have disclosed this early on..."