“With respect to the workload, I believe we’ll see patients who are farther along in their disease process, in more acute, more dire need for healthcare,” Dr. Lenchus says.
Providers already accustomed to working in teams to improve quality and to communicating with a hospital’s chief medical officer and other C-suite executives over matters of cost will have a clear advantage.
“The ACA is not perfect, and it’s going to take time to figure out what works and what doesn’t, but what we have control over on a daily basis is to really focus on high-quality, low-cost, standardized best practices,” Dr. Hilger says.
What does that mean in practice? “Really work on perfecting or maximizing your transitions of care,” he says. “Really work with care management and social workers, and work with your hospital to try to develop relationships—if you haven’t already—with the primary care systems in your community.”
Bryn Nelson is a freelance medical writer in Seattle.