As he thanked BWH employees at his final Partners Town Meeting held at BWH, Partners President and CEO Samuel O. Thier, MD, reported out on the achievements of the system after eight years. Thier was joined at the October 8 annual meeting by James Mongan, MD, the current president of MGH, to whom Thier will hand the reins of Partners HealthCare in January 2003, and BWH President Gary Gottlieb, MD, MBA.
“I am very pleased with the condition of Partners HealthCare at eight-and-a-half,” said Thier. “While there were many challenges early on, we have established a formula for success that enables us to serve the community, continue medical education and grow research.” The early target of building a system with 1,000 primary care providers has held steady, creating an important part of the regional care system.
In 1994, admissions Partners-wide were 117,000. In the past eight years, that number has grown to 160,000. The number of health center patients has tripled, growing from 60,000 in 1994 to 200,000 in 2002. Research dollars supporting the institutions were at an all-time high this year, at $680 million, and the institutions surpassed their philanthropic goal of $150 million.
The challenge moving forward, according to Mongan, is the balancing of progress with available resources.
Both Thier and Mongan stressed the importance of long-term care and the need to build relationships with facilities like skilled nursing organizations and home health care providers to provide the full continuum of care and ease the transfer of patients to a more appropriate setting with lower costs. One such effort supporting this need is an information systems initiative, known as 4NEXT, that enables providers to log on to a computer program to identify appropriate long-term care services.