CEO Notes

John Murphy, MD, President and CEO, WCHN

First I want to say ‘thank you’ to all of you who are working to make both the New Milford Hospital and Norwalk Hospital affiliations successful. I know the work takes your valuable time and effort. It's a further demonstration of your commitment to serving our patients and our communities.

Next, I’d like to respond to the most profound question you have asked me: Why was the affiliation important? What was the point?

Our affiliation addresses a major issue facing our society – health care is simply too expensive. Our patients, our payers and our regulators are demanding that we provide better value. Value, as you know, is the integration of quality and cost and our affiliation directly addresses both.

An obvious result derives from the economies of scale we gained. We can eliminate redundant expenses and invest our limited resources more efficiently to insure our continued economic viability. Scale also provides us with the opportunity to make use of highly specialized resources that we could not otherwise have access to because, as a larger network, those resources will now be shared and thus, affordable.

These added resources will be available for your research, education and most importantly for your care of patients. Scale also means richer collaborative opportunities and enhanced professional development options for you.

In Matt Miller’s CMO Notes above he describes the several ways physicians and practices can align and collaborate with our hospitals and with each other. Collaboration is an absolute necessity. You are well aware that the fee-for-service model will be replaced by a value-based that will hold us accountable for both quality and costs. We won’t just be directing admissions, visits and procedures, we will ultimately be managing the health of a defined the population. These groups could be the covered lives of an insurer, a company’s employees, or a cohort of patients with similar conditions. The term you will be hearing more and more is ‘population health management.’ You will also be hearing more about “Patient Centered Medical Homes” and new investments in the state-of-the-art technologies we will need to facilitate this robust clinical and administrative collaboration.

A future based on accountability will involve all of us in new types of reimbursement models with new metrics focused more on outcomes than process. These risk contracts will reward physician and hospital networks that deliver demonstrated value – high quality at affordable price.

With your help and support, our affiliation positions us for this future and heightens our ability to fulfill our mission - improving the health of the people we serve.

Finally, I want to encourage your further questions. Seek out your clinical and administrative leadership or contact me so that we can maintain our forward progress.

John Murphy, MD