Dear Colleagues:
At the end of June, House and Senate leaders on Beacon Hill approved a state budget plan that was designed to stabilize the uncompensated care pool and restore Medicaid coverage under MassHealth Basic to nearly 36,000 people who lost their insurance on April 1.
In the midst of one of the most significant budget deficits in the Commonwealth’s history, a modicum of support for health care was recovered from a precipitous funding gap.
While we can be heartened by legislative action in the face of such dire circumstances, it is clear that BWH and other Partners HealthCare hospitals will continue to bear the brunt of significant State budget cutbacks. As we face these cuts, along with the resonating impact of a slumping economy, our own institutional challenges have increased significantly. BWH, the BWPO and the Faulkner Hospital are in the process of making incredibly difficult choices to determine the landscape of FY 2004. Faced with an extraordinary gap, senior management along with physician leadership are working diligently to balance the hard choices necessary to not only meet our expenses, but to generate the margin necessary to meet our mission.
This environment only accentuates our ongoing need to be attentive to managing those issues within our span of control, such as length of stay, supply costs, as well as clinical laboratory, pharmacy and radiology expenses. In this issue, you will learn about the successful efforts of our Thoracic ICU team to decrease length of stay by approximately 12 percent. It is a study in collaborative, data-driven decision-making and focused attention on protocols to enhance quality and efficiency.
As we meet the challenges of the upcoming fiscal year, we will set in motion the activity necessary to meet our goals and our broader mission of providing exceptional patient care, research and teaching opportunities well into the future.
Sincerely,
Andy Whittemore, MD
Chief Medical Officer