b'A NEW Hospital MedicineEquation for aPost-COVID Future Evolving the quality-cost value equation,optimizing inpatient care delivery TOGETHER, WE HEALIVolume 1, Issue 3 scp-health.comBy Stacy Goldsholl, MD, MBAExecutive Vice President, Chief Medical Officer IntroductionHospital Medicine and Critical CareHospital medicine (HM) was born out of a chaoticToday, these combined challenges are forcing an time in U.S. health care, in response to clear hospitalevolution in inpatient hospital care. Hospitals need a needs. The 1990s saw the swift growth of managed carenew answer to the familiar problems of how to provide coupled with an influx of unassigned patients requiring24/7 quality care to patients while maintaining financial inpatient admissions. In response, hospitals sought agilesolvency. Many hospitals are struggling to deliver that, generalists who could care for these complex patients. and yet patients across the country are depending on them more than ever to do so.Amidst early growth in hospital medicine, Dr. Robert Wachter defined the value equation that would provideA strategic solution to these challenges can be found by the framework for both how hospitalist leaders managedonce again leveraging the historical strengths of the agile their own practice, and how hospital executiveshospitalist, while also evolving the equation for hospital evaluated their hospital medicine program.medicine care delivery and deploying a new quality-cost value equation. I remember because I was there, a participant, in one of the very first meetings of the newly born NationalThe result of this new quality-cost value equation for Association of Inpatient Physicians. There, Dr. Wachterhospital medicine will allow hospitals not just to survive defined the hospital medicine value equation as athis chaotic time, but to increase and improve care to product of its quality divided by its cost. 1 their communities. By fractionating the needs of an inpatient hospital program into its constituent parts, Fast forward 25 years, and as physicians, we have nowand then integrating them into a greater whole, we can endured another chaotic time in U.S. health care: evolve the quality-cost value equation across the health A dramatic, COVID-induced exiting of system ecosystem. This advancement is necessary and clinicians from the workforce beneficial for all in the health care ecosystem including health systems, clinicians, and patients.A rise in inpatient acuity combined withgeographically disparate surges in volume This paper will outline methods for taking a deeper look Increased pressure on reimbursement, at the component parts of a strong hospital medicine especially for hospitals dependent on program, while also providing a framework for evolving Medicare rates toward a new equation, implementing innovative programs to increase the quality side, while deploying risk sharing on the cost side of the equation.Together, we healTogether, we heal 1Together, we heal SCP HEALTHIA NEW HOSPITAL MEDICINE EQUATION FOR A POST-COVID FUTURE'