Dive Brief:
- NYC Health + Hospitals, which is on the brink of a controversial new EMR launch, is banking on the $764 million implementation as part of a five-year strategy to turn around the financial situation of the city's strapped public health system.
- The system finished its last fiscal year with a $58 million operating loss and expects its 2017 loss to shoot to $1.2 billion, The Wall Street Journal reports, which is partly attributed to the loss of some federal reimbursements.
- System head Dr. Ramanathan Raju is following a plan he announced last year and dubbed Vision 2020 in an effort to achieve financial stability amid the system's imperative to treat patients regardless of their ability to pay.
Dive Insight:
The system's plan is based primarily on improving efficiency through means including its launch of the Epic EMR, as well as growing its base of patients with health coverage, including those with Medicaid, and growing enrollment in its MetroPlus Health Plan.
The health system wants to grow its patients served from its current 1.4 million annually to 2 million by 2020, and wants to grow its health plan enrollment from 487,000 members to a million by 2020.
The system is particularly engaged in a struggle with uncompensated care because its patients tend to have more chronic health conditions and receive less regular primary care. The bright spot so far is that the system has reduced its number of uninsured patients to 421,647, down from 469,239 in 2014 and 475,627 in 2013, which officials attribute to increased coverage under the Affordable Care Act.