In between my first and second year of medical school, I had the opportunity to intern at Marshall|Steele, a healthcare consulting firm, in their patient outcomes division in Chicago during the summer. Marshall Steele, an orthopedic surgeon, created his firm with some close business associates based on his expertise in his field involving knee and hip replacement. Their idea was simple, yet revolutionary- implement joint replacement destination centers which standardized the surgical procedures while adhering to best practices. The Marshall|Steele group perfected the standardization of knee and hip replacement, making it an art that could be reproduced on a daily basis by any proficient orthopedic surgeon in the country.
The Mashall|Steele group implements joint replacement centers throughout the nation providing centers a solid procedure base with standardized protocols, patient education, therapy and rehabilitation protocols, cross functional teams, marketing coordination, as well as patient outcomes based benchmarking. Fortunately, I worked along side Dr. Marshall Steele's son, Dr. David Steele. We worked as a team with the patient outcomes group consisting of Somu, Allie, and Laura to come up with ideas that would help perfect the art of tracking patient outcomes. David was constantly thinking of ways to make centers compete in order create superb benchmarks. One of the most fun ideas we created was the DCS, a rating system similar to the BCS for college football which gave us a means of ranking centers according to their performance in a weighted algorithm of patient outcome measures. This gave us a means to benchmark the destination centers.
I also had the privilege of interviewing and working with joint replacement centers to write various white papers on subjects such as continuous passive machine usage in knee replacement surgery, as well as case studies on Marshall|Steele's best performing centers.
I came away from the experience realizing that I was witnessing a revolutionary idea in medicine. By standardizing protocols and following patients with data, the group is setting a gold standard for evidence based medicine. Finally, we’re seeing a group that incorporates evidence based medicine into the output process of medicine through measures of patient outcomes. Ten years from now, this is how hospitals will be reimbursed- through payments from government and third parties based on patient outcomes such as length of stay, patient satisfaction, rehabilitation measures, accountability of patients, infection rates, complication rates, and the ability to return to normal functioning. Reimbursement will require hospitals to track patient outcomes. I can also see where hospital reimbursement will be packaged to ensure that hospital systems strive to be as lean as possible with a set dollar amount of reimbursement. This allows hospitals to standardize and cut out excess cost, as well as redundancy. We already see third party systems will to increase reimbursement by a few percentage points when they meet the highest quality of care measures which are consistent with destination centers of excellence implemented by Marshall|Steele. A perfect example of this is centers that are eligible for Blue Distinction
Marshall|Steele is in the process of developing a software product which allows surgeons to track patient outcomes including patient satisfaction and surveys through an apple ipad application. The idea is to tailor the questionnaires of patients before and after a surgery for each hospital system where they have implemented their replacement center. Tracking outcomes to ensure safety, quality, and successful procedures through products like those being utilized at Marshall|Steele will be the standard for quality care in American healthcare in the very near future. JACHO core measures will soon have a new addition known as core outcomes.
Interested in Marshall|Steele? Visit their website. https://www.marshallsteele.com/
I came away from the experience realizing that I was witnessing a revolutionary idea in medicine. By standardizing protocols and following patients with data, the group is setting a gold standard for evidence based medicine. Finally, we’re seeing a group that incorporates evidence based medicine into the output process of medicine through measures of patient outcomes. Ten years from now, this is how hospitals will be reimbursed- through payments from government and third parties based on patient outcomes such as length of stay, patient satisfaction, rehabilitation measures, accountability of patients, infection rates, complication rates, and the ability to return to normal functioning. Reimbursement will require hospitals to track patient outcomes. I can also see where hospital reimbursement will be packaged to ensure that hospital systems strive to be as lean as possible with a set dollar amount of reimbursement. This allows hospitals to standardize and cut out excess cost, as well as redundancy. We already see third party systems will to increase reimbursement by a few percentage points when they meet the highest quality of care measures which are consistent with destination centers of excellence implemented by Marshall|Steele. A perfect example of this is centers that are eligible for Blue Distinction
Marshall|Steele is in the process of developing a software product which allows surgeons to track patient outcomes including patient satisfaction and surveys through an apple ipad application. The idea is to tailor the questionnaires of patients before and after a surgery for each hospital system where they have implemented their replacement center. Tracking outcomes to ensure safety, quality, and successful procedures through products like those being utilized at Marshall|Steele will be the standard for quality care in American healthcare in the very near future. JACHO core measures will soon have a new addition known as core outcomes.
Interested in Marshall|Steele? Visit their website. https://www.marshallsteele.com/
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