MEDICINE LIFE

1. Cultivating curiosity at all levels helps leaders and their team members adapt to whatever comes their way. When we are curious, “we tend to think more deeply and rationally about decisions and come up with more creative solutions,” Gino explains.
2. Leaders can drive curiosity—and improve performance—through subtle management shifts and organizational design.
3. Curiosity increases efficiency and helps minimize risk. It helps decrease decision-making errors as it forces us to challenge assumptions as opposed to simply assuming our assumptions
4. It helps contributes to workplace improvements as team members are driven to find creative solutions to challenges facing an organization and become conditioned to seek improvements.
5. Curiosity facilitates better communication and reduces group conflict as team members are better able to see different perspectives and work collaboratively to solve problems.

While most Floridians have never heard of CON, this regulation has a tremendous impact on the health and well-being of all of the state’s residents. In simple terms, the CON program is a regulatory process designed to limit health care costs and promote planning for new health care services and facilities.

Some elected officials would like to see CON repealed, arguing that deregulating health care would reduce costs and improve quality. I, along with a large majority of my colleagues, disagree. While deregulation may lower costs in a free market, it’s important to remember that hospitals don’t operate in a free market. We don’t set the cost of our services, and we treat everyone regardless of their ability to pay.

We believe that deregulating health care is not good for our community and state. It could trigger a chain reaction that would cause three problems for residents: an increase in health care costs, a decline in the quality of care and a decrease in access to care.

I am the first to admit that CON is a complex issue. It can certainly be hard to understand in a snappy sound bite, and even harder to imagine how it could affect you and your family. So, let’s consider it from the patient’s perspective and examine what things could look like in Florida if CON is repealed:

Stephanie comes to the hospital to have an outpatient knee replacement procedure performed after the repeal of CON. While CON was in place, her insurer had a set rate it paid for the procedure. But without CON, an influx of new providers could pour into the community and force significant consolidation — meaning health systems could add a number of hospitals across a geographic area, allowing them to negotiate higher reimbursement rates from insurance companies. This higher insurance cost could be passed along to Stephanie through premiums and deductibles. At the end of the day, she could actually pay more for her procedure in a post-CON world. This is the increase in cost of care.

Mike schedules his brain surgery at his local hospital, an institution he knows and trusts. However, if CON goes away, the number of these surgeries that the hospital performs may drop dramatically. Imagine going from more than 2,000 brain surgeries each year to half as many because new rival hospitals in town do the same procedures. If cases decrease, the hospital’s medical team won’t work together as often. The number of procedures a medical team conducts correlates to quality and outcomes. An increase in volume equates to a higher quality; it’s the old adage practice makes perfect. Lower volume potentially means lower quality. This is the decline in quality of care.

Patty is having a baby, but she might not be able to go to her local hospital to deliver because the hospital could be forced to discontinue its obstetrics program. With CON in place, many hospitals cross-subsidize obstetrics programs with more profitable programs. But if CON is repealed, the decrease in patient volume and revenue from those services could force the hospital to eliminate several services that make little or no money, including those needed by Patty. This is the decrease in access to care.

As you can see, the repeal of CON has the potential to negatively impact Floridians in a variety of ways. The bottom line is that everyone in our community deserves access to the best, most affordable health care and CON helps to ensure that.

For decades, the most vulnerable Floridians have depended on the state’s safety net hospitals to save their lives and care for their health. Each year, these hospitals care for large numbers of low-income children, sick babies, senior citizens and pregnant women. Safety net hospitals provide a critical public service that the state has historically supported with vital funding.

Now, Florida’s for-profit hospitals want to raid $318 million in state tax dollars that goes to help these safety net hospitals care for those who need help the most. Hospitals owned by out-of-state corporations want to pad their profits with tax dollars that have long been used to safeguard Floridians’ health. These hospitals are asking the state Senate to risk the lives of our vulnerable residents in order to pump up their stock prices.

We respectfully ask our senators to consider our perspective that this is bad policy: If the for-profits get their way, the impact on the safety net hospitals would be devastating. For Tampa General Hospital, the largest hospital in the region serving those most in need, it would mean additional cuts of $14.4 million.

To continue reading the full column in the Tampa Bay Times, please click here.