These are challenging times for health care in America, as opportunities associated with medical advances must be balanced with growing demand and cost. These conflicting pressures place health care on center stage for the general public and for policymakers. Hospitals – the hub of the nation’s medical care delivery system – occupy a central role in these considerations.
Hospitals are enduring
American institutions that constantly are adapting to a changing and dynamic health care environment. Generally, policymakers and hospital managers are compelled to focus on immediate issues. However, this conference will look beyond the immediate issues of today, and focus on developments that will shape the hospital of the next decade. I will explore the possibilities of this future and attempt to better understand the forces that will influence the future of American hospitals
Government policies have left many health care institutions under-funded at a time when the state’s population, diversity, and need for health services have rapidly increased. Hospitals that are not in the red operate on paper-thin margins.
Hospital boards and executives acknowledge the thicket of questions, from operational to financial to ethical, that surround the transfers. Each said the decision to surrender decades of independence hasn't been a matter of choice but of necessity (Eliezer, 2003).
"The small, independent community hospital can't survive on its own into the next century," said Gary Sloan, who is now CEO of both Brookside Hospital in San Pablo and Pinole's Doctors Hospital following for-profit Tenet's acquisition of Brookside (Eliezer, 2003). For many embattled independent hospitals, in fact, the only remaining question is which direction they should turn for a merger that will ensure at least short-term survival.
Despite everything else that has changed in the world of health care, many others share his view that it is important that hospitals remain as far as possible from the profit motive.................
