For years, we’ve heard that outpatient services and home care are the future of health care in the U.S. To a certain extent, that’s true. We’ve seen tremendous growth in outpatient care across the country. Procedures that were once provided in inpatient settings are now provided in ambulatory surgery centers and physician offices. Payers, providers and patients are all pushing for care that can be provided at a lower cost, in a more convenient setting and in a manner that gets patients back home sooner.
The growth in outpatient care has resulted in more post-op care being provided to patients at home. And in recent years, we’ve seen hospital systems explore providing hospital care at home. The growth in outpatient and home care has prompted some in the industry to claim that inpatient hospital care is dead.
But if you look more carefully, inpatient hospital care isn’t dead—it’s evolving. Successful hospital systems are focused on treating higher acuity patients and providing more specialized inpatient care. Successful hospitals are also focused on developing a robust hub and spoke model that captures outpatient volume, while driving patients who need inpatient care to the hospital.
Here are five things to know about developing a successful hub and spoke model.
- The Basics – The hub and spoke model isn’t new. It’s a strategy used by hospital systems for more than 40 years. The hub is the hospital, and the spokes are a network of strategically placed outpatient clinics within the community. The outpatient clinics are designed to capture patients who need different services and levels of care. The goal is to create a comprehensive network of care within the community served by the hospital.
- The Hub – The type of hospital that serves as the hub can vary. A critical access hospital can successfully serve as the hub in a hub and spoke model. An academic medical center or regional medical center may be the hub as well. The spokes will look different in each scenario.
- The Spokes – The outpatient clinics that serve as spokes within the hub and spoke model can vary based on community needs. We often see successful hospital systems creating a network of ambulatory surgery centers, urgent care clinics, free-standing emergency departments, physician offices, multi-specialty clinics, imaging centers, lab sites, behavioral health and rehabilitation facilities.
- The Data – Successful hospital systems are focused on getting the ratio of outpatient facilities to each inpatient hospital right for their organization. In our experience, hospital systems aren’t bold enough in their goals to create a robust network of outpatient facilities. One of the national hospital systems has publicly announced its strategic plan to create a robust hub and spoke network. The system recently announced a goal of establishing 20 outpatient locations per hospital.
- The Plan – Developing an outpatient network plan for a hospital can be daunting. It requires a market study focused on reviewing the services offered by the hospital, market demographics and patient payer mix data. This is where we can help. If you’re thinking of reviewing your outpatient strategy, please reach out to us. We’d love to hear from you.
For additional information on this topic, please contact:
- Andrew Dick at adick@hallrender.com or (317) 977-1491;
- Joel Swider at jswider@hallrender.com or (317) 429-3638;
- Chirag Patel at cdpatel@hallrenderas.com or (312) 659-9914;
- John Marshall at jmarshall@hallrenderas.com or (317) 670-8527; or
- Your primary Hall Render or Hall Render Advisory Services contact.
Hall Render blog posts and articles are intended for informational purposes only. For ethical reasons, Hall Render attorneys cannot—outside of an attorney-client relationship—answer specific questions that would be legal advice.
