Three health care trends underlie the recently announced plans of two local hospitals to create a countywide health care system, according to a health policy and administration professor at Penn State.

The increasing need for hospitals to adopt information technology, assume financial risk based on patient outcomes and to coordinate care across a variety of settings is forcing hospitals all across the country to consolidate, said Dennis Shea, in the aftermath of the announcement by Altoona Regional Health System and Nason Hospital.

The Affordable Care Act has accelerated the trend, he said.

Hospitals need to get bigger so they have the extra resources to handle the changes, he said.

They need those resources to afford the expensive investments in information technology, to take on the risk of getting paid based on patient outcomes and to vertically integrate - providing neonatal to nursing home services - which allows them to coordinate care better, according to Shea.

"These are three very powerful forces," Shea wrote of IT, risk acceptance and care coordination in an email. "Organizations that are able to pull this all together will be able to give much better health care at lower cost."

They can provide "a connected range of services" helping patients transition from hospital to rehab to home "without slipping backward" into expensive repeat hospitalizations, he said.

They can also maintain the kind of continual research that allows them to keep up with best practices, he said.

There will be problems with hospitals left behind, Shea noted.

"These trends make it very, very difficult for smaller organizations to thrive," he said.

Originally posted here:

Professor talks about alliance of Nason, ARHS