2012 Healthcare Advantage Conference
2012 ADVANTAGE CONFERENCE CONNECTS THE DOTS
From May 7–9, 2012, Thomson Reuters hosted its annual Healthcare Advantage Conference at the JW Marriott Orlando Grande Lakes in Florida. Themed "Connecting the Dots," the conference focused on providing attendees with tools and insights to connect the dots across the healthcare landscape. Once the complete picture came together, attendees could better navigate the issues and solve problems — they were even able to create opportunities in ways they never thought of before.
This year's general sessions featured a remarkable lineup of industry thought leaders.
- David Blumenthal, MD, MPP, a nationally known health services researcher and authority on health IT adoption, and former National Coordinator for Health Information Technology under President Barack Obama, spoke on The Post Modern Healthcare Dilemma. Regardless of who is president and what happens with reform, he said, we will have some tough choices to make and have to focus on improving the performance of our healthcare system. He said that focus could save about $306B over next several years.
- The lively debate between Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PHD and Gail Wilensky, PHD, was a real crowd pleaser. The two experts left no stone unturned. They tackled issues including early retirement’s effect on Medicare, industry consolidation, healthcare access, opposition to Obamacare, whether a federal tax on cigarettes should pay for Medicare and Medicaid, employer coverage costs, and even predicted the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision.
- Don Berwick, MD, a leading advocate for high-quality healthcare and founding CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement who was also the recent Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, covered the topic Talent, Teamwork & Intelligence: How to Avoid Disaster in Healthcare. He said it was important to get back to the basics and outlined six “wedges” to focus on to control costs without harming anyone: over-treating (ex: antibiotics), coordination failures, failure of execution (ex: CLABSI), excess administrative costs, excessive health care prices, and fraud and abuse. He closed with principles to help the industry accomplish those goals: put patients first, protect the disadvantaged, start at scale, return the money, and act locally.
- Ray Fabius, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Thomson Reuters, gave a presentation entitled Beyond the Politics: Enduring Healthcare Trends to Shape Strategic Planning. He tied it to the overall history of healthcare reform, culminating in the Supreme Court decision. Regardless of the outcome of that decision, he believes reform is in motion and these five trends will endure: building collaborative relationships, striving for perfection, paying with integrity and on merit, promoting transparency and accountability and improving health and wealth.
Each day, the general session presentations were followed by industry-specific breakout sessions and networking events. The events of the week culminated on the final evening with the Healthcare Advantage Awards dinner, which honors Thomson Reuters customers who use our solutions and services to improve their business results and quality of care.
Pitney Bowes, a $4.9 billion global provider of integrated mail and document management solutions, was named the overall Healthcare Advantage Award winner for 2012 for instituting changes that enabled their overall healthcare spend to come in 16 percent under budget. They topped a list of accomplished organizations who won awards throughout the evening.
