UC medical centers must work together to improve quality, cut costs
May 23, 2014 •
The University of California’s five academic medical centers need to pick up the pace in their working together as a system to improve quality and reduce costs.
That’s the message UC Health Senior Vice President John Stobo delivered to UC Regents at their May 15 meeting in Sacramento.
With reimbursement for clinical services under enormous downward pressure, decreasing the costs associated with providing those services is critical, Stobo said. Without action, UC medical center expenses are projected to exceed revenues in 2017. That would have a significant effect on UC Health: The financial success of UC medical centers helps sustain UC Health’s three-part mission of clinical care, research and education, including pivotal support to UC’s medical schools.
“While each medical center needs to do what it can individually to contain costs, only by working together and leveraging the scale we have as a system can we collectively contain costs to adjust to the decreases in revenue,” Stobo said. “It’s time for us to look at a new model.”
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