Menu

Isaac Rife

About Isaac Rife

Posts by Isaac Rife:

RCMD Partner Spotlight

Partner Spotlight: RCM&D

We recently sat down with Scott Martin, Cyber Practice Leader and Client Service Team Lead at RCM&D. We discussed what RCM&D offers, how it can help hospitals and health systems, and more. Read our full interview below.

image of Bryan Hudson              image of Scott Martin

Bryan Hudson             Scott Martin

Bryan: So, Scott, to start, can you share with our members, who is RCM&D?

Scott: RMC&D is an employee-owned insurance brokerage with over 135 years of experience. Throughout our history, we’ve supported our client partners’ risk management and insurance needs throughout the mid-Atlantic and across the globe.

Bryan: We know that RCM&D works with a variety of industries. How do you support hospitals and health systems specifically?

Scott: With over 90 years of experience in supporting hospitals and health systems, we have developed significant depth throughout our client service teams. These teams support hospitals and health systems facing today’s ever-evolving risk landscape and are designed to help manage the total cost of risk. The resources within our healthcare practice include brokers (property and casualty and employee benefits-focused), clinical risk managers (who hold nursing and risk management licenses), claims consultants (attorneys), captive consultants and more.

Bryan: If you could tell our health system members only one thing about RCM&D, what would it be?

Scott: Our goal with all client partners is to develop a relationship of trust, and ultimately, to be viewed as a member of the organization’s risk management team. We believe this is accomplished by partnering our clients with a team of professionals that have dedicated and specialized healthcare experience.

Bryan: There has been a lot of change and disruption in our lives in the last 3 years. What do you see changing in the insurance landscape?

Scott: We have all seen significant disruption and change over the last three years, some more than others. The insurance industry has not been immune to this disruption, whether it’s caused by the moving target that is cyber risk, social inflationary pressure impacting the claims experience, or the continued impact of natural disasters, the insurance and risk landscape continues to shift rapidly. While these changes can negatively affect insureds in terms of rates or breadth of protection provided, they have also accelerated advances in risk management tools designed to help organizations better prepare themselves to face risk.

Change and disruption will continue, and the evolution of cyber risk will be replaced by something else before we know it. However, the advancement of innovative risk management tools aimed at supporting organizations interested in better managing their total cost of risk is what we are excited about.

Bryan: Thanks for taking the time to chat with us, Scott. To wrap up, what are you most looking forward to in 2023, both from RCM&D’s perspective but also on a personal level?

Scott: In 2022, many of us began to readjust back to pre-pandemic norms (in-person meetings, onsite risk control visits, conferences, etc.). Some are still searching for the right balance. In 2023, at RCM&D we are excited to reconnect with the hospitals and health systems we support. We look forward to coming back to the facilities and rejoining your teams and leaders to support the collaborative effort to ensure the stability of your organizations.

On a personal note, 2022 was filled with some readjusting as well: welcoming twins to the family in late 2021. Entering the new year with sleep patterns finally beginning to normalize, I’m looking forward to coaching soccer for my three and four year old children, watching the twins become fully mobile, and taking gracious grandparents up on offers to give mom and dad the opportunity to get away and to remember how grateful we are for our circus.

Medicine Doctor Using Modern Computer With Virtual Innovaton Pat

IQVIA INSTITUTE REPORT: The Global Use of Medicines 2023 (Outlook to 2027)

Reaching a post-pandemic era is an alluring prospect for almost everyone around the world after the disruptions of the past three years. The outlook for global spending on medicines has become clearer as the traumas recede and uncertainties give way to more predictable challenges. Policymakers across developed and emerging economies are shifting from crisis to rebuilding modes with a focus on longer-term issues of sustainability. Complex trade-offs remain, and improved efficiency and quality of healthcare informed by evidence-based decision-making will inform the critical decisions in the coming decade.

The largest driver of medicine spending through the next five years is still expected to be global COVID-19 vaccinations, but leaving aside the pandemic, global spending on medicines continues to be driven by innovation and offset by losses of exclusivity and the lower costs of generics and biosimilars.

In its report, The Global Use of Medicines 2023 (Outlook to 2027), the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science quantifies the impact of these dynamics and examines the spending and usage of medicines in 2022 and the outlook to 2027, globally and for specific therapy areas and countries. It intends for this report to provide a foundation for meaningful discussion about the value, cost, and role of medicines over the next five years in the context of overall healthcare spending.

Key findings:

  • The COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact pharmaceutical markets globally, and is estimated to expand the net cumulative pharmaceutical market by $500 billion from 2020 through 2027
  • Highest volume growth is expected in Latin America, Asia and Africa, driven by a mix of population growth and expanded access. North America and Europe will see very low growth
  • Demand for innovative drugs will drive oncology spending to approximately $370 billion by 2027, almost double the current level
  • Biotech will represent 35% of spending globally in 2027 and will include both breakthrough cell and gene therapies, as well as a maturing biosimilar segment

The study was produced independently by the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science as a public service, without industry or government funding. The contributions to this report by Mohit Agarwal, Aurelio Arias, Urvashi Porwal, Jamie Pritchett, Sarah Rickwood, Priya Srivastava, Durgesh Soni, Alan Thomas, and dozens of others at IQVIA are gratefully acknowledged.

To learn more visit The IQVIA Institute here or view the entire report here.

graphs showing that global spending, including COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics, to exceed pre-pandemic outlook by $497Bn to 2027

Vizient group buys

Vizient Announces Group Buys Effective January 1-March 31, 2023

Vizient is pleased to offer significant savings on purchases of capital assets through its National Group Buys program. Group Buys are available each quarter from participating suppliers on select product categories. For a limited time, they provide substantial cost savings and value-added benefits through negotiated pricing discounts.

Beginning January 1 and ending March 31, 2023, VHHA members and affiliated organizations can receive savings on mammography equipment and imaging supplies, among other items. Participating suppliers include:

Click here for a full list of suppliers and products included in this Vizient group buys promotion, or contact your Vizient representative for more information.

AMN physician appt wait times

2022 Survey of Physician Appointment Wait Times and Medicine and Medicaid Acceptance Rates

New Survey: Physician Appointment Wait Times Getting Longer

By Kurt Mosley

The time it takes to schedule a new patient physician appointment continues to rise.

That is one key finding of the new AMN Healthcare/Merritt Hawkins 2022 Survey of Physician Appointment Wait Times and Medicare and Medicaid Acceptance Rates.

First conducted in 2004, the survey tracks the time it takes to schedule a physician appointment in five medical specialties in 15 major metropolitan areas.  The average wait time has increased by 8% since 2017, the last year the survey was conducted, and by 24% from 2004, the first year the survey was conducted.

The 2022 survey indicates that it now takes an average of 26 days to schedule a new patient physician appointment in 15 of the largest cities in the United States, up from 24.1 days in 2017 and up from 21 days in 2004.

The survey includes physician appointment wait time data for Washington DC in five specialties: obstetrics/gynecology, cardiology, orthopedic surgery, dermatology, and family medicine.   The average wait time for all five specialties in Washington DC is 18.0 days.

The average wait time for a cardiology appointment in Washington DC is 36 days, the average for orthopedic surgery is 5 days, the average for dermatology is 12 days, and the average for obstetrics/gynecology is 29 days.

Major cities like those included in the survey have some of the highest ratios of physicians per capita in the country, yet the survey indicates physician appointment wait times are increasing.  That is a sobering sign for the rest of the country where there often are few physicians per population than in large cities.

Appointment Wait Times Down in Family Medicine

Family medicine is the only specialty in which average appointment wait times were down relative to 2017, according to the survey. The average wait time for a family medicine appointment is 20.6 days for all cities, down from 29.3 days in 2017, a 30% decrease.  The average wait time for a family medicine appointment in Washington DC is 8 days.

The decline in family medicine appointment wait times can be attributed to a major shift in how patients access primary care that has taken place over the last several years. A growing number of patients are accessing primary care through urgent care centers, retail clinics, and telemedicine, venues that typically are staffed by nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs).

The number of urgent care centers and retail clinics is growing rapidly, creating a new front door to the healthcare system. As a result, accessing a family physician, while still challenging, can be less difficult.

The survey includes appointment wait time and Medicare and Medicaid acceptance data from 1,034 physician offices located in 15 metropolitan areas, including Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Minnesota, New York City, Philadelphia, Portland, San Diego, Seattle and Washington, D.C.

A complete copy of this new AMN Healthcare/Merritt Hawkins thought leadership resource can be obtained here. Additional questions can be answered by contacting Kurt Mosley at kurt.mosley@amnhealthcare.com

**

Kurt Mosley is Vice President of Strategic Liaisons for AMN Healthcare and can be reached at kurt.mosley@amnhealthcare.com.

A Sterile Drug Is Taken In Gloves With A Syringe From A Glass Vi

Vizient Announces Group Buys Effective October 1-December 31, 2022

Vizient is pleased to offer significant savings on purchases of capital assets through its National Group Buys program. Group Buys are available each quarter from participating suppliers on select product categories. For a limited time, they provide substantial cost savings and value-added benefits through negotiated pricing discounts.

Beginning October 1 and ending December 31, 2022, VHHA members and affiliated organizations can receive savings on capital equipment, imaging supplies, and surgical equipment, among other items. Featured suppliers include:

  • GE Healthcare
  • Steris
  • Carestream
  • Ansell
  • US Foods, Inc.

Click here for a full list of suppliers and products included in this promotion, or contact your Vizient representative for more information.

post-discharge call

Post-Discharge Call Pilot Programs Lead to VHHA Shared Services Partnership

In an effort to support patient experience improvement efforts, VHHA Shared Services partnered with PREMEDEX to launch two pilot programs at Augusta Health and Sentara Obici. These pilot programs are currently underway and will result in a case study highlighting the findings and experience of both member hospitals. VHHA Shared Services has further entered into a strategic partnership with PREMEDEX to build on the experience of these pilot programs across Virginia. PREMEDEX offers a post-discharge call follow-up program that helps hospitals meet experience, outcomes, referral management, and recognition initiatives. This partnership aligns with additional efforts by the Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association to continually improve patient experiences at its member hospitals.

“We’ve been pleased with the positive preliminary findings we’ve seen from one of the pilot programs,” says Kelly Parker, CEO of VHHA Shared Services. “These initial results strengthened our desire to enter into a partnership with PREMEDEX and further expand our collaboration with VHHA’s and our members’ quality and patient safety goals.”

Operating under the hospital’s brand as a seamless extension of the team, PREMEDEX provides one-on-one calls to patients who have been discharged in an effort to support care transitions and ensure patient understanding of discharge instructions. Their high-touch service impacts both experience and outcomes by communicating with both the patient and caregiver, sharing and reinforcing information, and offering assistance where additional support may be required.

By helping hospitals connect with their patients, they better capture the patient experience and perspective on a recent hospital stay as well as increase patient satisfaction and reduce readmissions and penalties incurred from low patient feedback scores.

Preliminary findings from the Augusta Health post-discharge call pilot program demonstrate the increase in patient satisfaction scores and can be viewed in this case study.

image of phone, tablet, and laptop

IQVIA Releases Report: Empowering Patient-Driven Research to Improve Patient Outcomes

The Essential Role of Patient Organizations in Improving Patient Outcomes

The landscape for patient advocacy organizations is changing radically as these groups increasingly become the critical connectors and conveners of healthcare transformation and the development of innovative, breakthrough therapies. This is reflected in the fundamental shift from developing drugs and treatments for patients to developing drugs and treatments with patients.

Today, patient advocacy organizations are helping to close the gap between the rapid advances in science and human biology understanding and the slower progress seen in most other parts of the health system. The vital role of patient organizations is manifested in multiple ways, ranging from the translation of scientific breakthroughs to improve available therapies through patient-centered drug development to getting those therapies to the patients who will benefit from them. The involvement of patient groups is also critical in the development and use of diagnostics, the embrace of digital technologies, and the development of meaningful datahubs or registries to securely accumulate data. Furthermore, patient organizations have important roles to play in the development and application of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), the increased focus on tackling the fundamental issues of disparities and racism, the redesign of care delivery and flexibility in site of care and shaping the regulatory environment in which all of this takes place.

To further advance the understanding of the changing role of patient advocacy organizations in healthcare transformation, the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science, in conjunction with IQVIA Healthcare Solutions, convened an invitation-only summit for patient organization leaders held on December 1, 2021, and titled Patient Advocacy Summit – Helping Nonprofit Organizations Support Patients through Advocacy-Led Research and Data Initiatives. The event brought together more than 100 participants along with 28 speakers from patient organizations and foundations to participate in thought-provoking conversations, to explore ideas and best practices around relevant and timely patient-driven research and health data topics, and to consider ways to empower patient advocacy organizations. In addition to invited speakers from these organizations, the summit also included experts from IQVIA who drew upon their experience in applying unparalleled data, technologies, and capabilities to advance the success of patient advocacy organizations in meeting the needs of their members.

Providing an overview of the major themes and key takeaways from the sessions at the summit and outlining the essential role of patient organizations in improving patient outcomes, the full summary can be found here

Portrait of mature female doctor on hospital corridor. Confident

New Physician Recruiting Data and Insights from Merritt Hawkins

New Physician Recruiting Data and Insights from Merritt Hawkins

By Kurt Mosely

Every year for the last 29 years, Merritt Hawkins, a division of AMN Healthcare, has released its Review of Physician and Advanced Practice Practitioner Recruiting Incentives. Each Review is based on real-world physician and AP recruiting data Merritt Hawkins derives over a 12-month period from April 1 of a given year through March 31 of the following year.

The recently released 2022 Review is based on a representative sample of over 2,600 recruiting engagements and, like previous reviews, tracks physician and AP starting salaries, signing bonuses, relocation allowances and related incentives. Over the years the Review has provided benchmark data that many hospitals, medical groups and others now use to determine if their recruiting packages offer customary and competitive incentives.

Salary Insights

According to the new Review, orthopedic surgeons are offered the highest average starting salary among physicians and APs at $565,000, exclusive of signing bonuses and other incentives, up from $546,000 the previous year.

2022 Physician Recruiting Incentives GraphicClick to enlarge

Average starting salaries for most other specialties included in the Review also were up from last year. Urologists are offered an average of $510,000 to start, up from $497,000 last year, gastroenterologists are offered $474,000, up from $453,000 last year, while radiologists are offered $455,000, up from $401,000 last year.

The new Review indicates that demand for physicians, and the salaries they are offered, have rebounded dramatically from COVID-19. Patient backlogs, an aging population and widespread chronic medical conditions have caused a strong surge in physician demand.

Need for Medical Specialists Rising

The Review also indicates that demand for medical specialists such as gastroenterologists, orthopedic surgeons, oncologists, pulmonologists, neurologists, and psychiatrists is rising, while demand for primary care physicians such as family physicians and internists has declined. The majority of Merritt Hawkins’ search engagements (64%) over the prior 12 months were for medical specialists, while only 17% were for primary care physicians. The remaining 19% were for advanced practice professionals such as nurse practitioners (NPs), physician assistants (PAs), and certified registered nurse anesthetists (CRNAs).

Two factors account for this shift. One is an aging population that needs more specialists to care for ailing internal organs, musculoskeletal conditions, and neurological problems. The other is the growing use of NPs and PAs to provide primary care, often in “convenient care” settings such as urgent care centers, retail clinics, and through telemedicine.

The Review includes a wide range of additional data and analysis. Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association Members can obtain a copy of the review by contacting Dan Fisher with Merritt Hawkins at daniel.fisher@merritthawkins.com

**

Kurt Mosley is Vice President of Strategic Alliances with Merritt Hawkins and AMN Healthcare. He can be reached at kurt.mosley@amnhealthcare.com.

Doctors Appointment

Healthcare, Poverty, and COVID-19

Healthcare, Poverty, and COVID-19

By Kurt Mosley

As my dear grandmother once told me, “money is honey, but health is wealth.”

Truer words have not been spoken, and today the connection between wealth (or the lack of it) and health is becoming more apparent.

When considering what makes people in the United States healthy or unhealthy, most Americans are likely to cite lifestyle choices, such as diet and exercise, and genetics as the determining factors, but not poverty. Read on

doctorcrop

2022 Survey of Locum Tenens Staffing Trends: Moving Toward a More Flexible Physician Workforce

New Survey Reflects a Flexible Physician Workforce

By Kurt Mosley

Nearly 90% of healthcare facilities used locum tenens physicians and/or advanced practice professionals to fill gaps in their staffs last year, according to a new survey from AMN Healthcare’s Locum Tenens division, VHHA Shared Services preferred vendor for locum tenens staffing (formerly known as Staff Care).

The company’s 2022 Survey of Locum Tenens Staffing Trends indicates that 88% of hospitals, medical groups, and other healthcare facilities used locum tenens physicians, nurse practitioners (NPs), and/or physician assistants (PAs) sometime in the prior 12 months, primarily to address staffing shortages. The survey suggests that physicians are part of an increasingly flexible healthcare workforce that can deliver care when and where they are needed most.

COVID-19 Driving Use of Locum Tenens Providers

Anesthesia providers, including anesthesiologists and certified registered nurse anesthetists (CRNAs),  were the most utilized type of locum tenens healthcare professionals last year, the survey indicates, suggesting that procedures requiring anesthesia have rebounded from COVID-19-related lows. Hospitalists were the second most utilized type of locum tenens provider, due to the large volume of hospital inpatient work created by COVID-19. Psychiatrists were third on the list, as COVID-19 has increased the incidence of mental health problems nationwide and has highlighted the dearth of behavioral health professionals that preceded the pandemic.

Health Facilities Taking Steps to Address Staffing Shortages

The survey asked hospital and medical group managers to indicate what their facilities are doing to address staffing shortages. The majority (54%) said they are adding new incentives, such as signing bonuses, to their recruiting packages. An additional 49% are implementing new retention efforts, including offering retention bonuses to providers. Forty-three percent are adding temporary staff while 35% are expanding telehealth services.

AMN Healthcare’s 2022 Survey of Locum Tenens Staffing Trends (formerly conducted by Staff Care, a division of AMN Healthcare) is based on responses from 202 hospital, medical group, and other healthcare facility managers.  The complete survey report can be seen here. For further information regarding this survey, please contact Greg Khan at greg.kahn@amnhealthcare.com

**

Kurt Mosley serves as Vice President of Strategic Alliances for Merritt Hawkins and AMN Healthcare’s locum tenens staffing division (formerly Staff Care.)   He can be reached at kurt.mosley@amnhealthcare.com.

Load More

Connect




Visit

VHHA Solutions
4200 Innslake Drive, Suite 100
Glen Allen, VA 23060-6712

VHHA-Solutions
Connect

LinkedIn

Mail

VHHA Solutions
P.O. Box 31394
Richmond, VA 23294-1394

Clients

Members
Partners
Login
VHHA Corporate Network Application

Legal

Website Design &
Development by Brandmint
Terms of Use
Made in Rochester, NY
Copyright © 2022
Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association