Revisiting an example of a real need for regional planning: hospital and wellness services

I have written about this topic quite a bit over the years (e.g., "Area Health Care Planning" and "Disruptive innovation (once again)").

Besides the competition between Holy Cross Hospital and the Washington Adventist Hospital system in northern Montgomery County, and the concerns of Prince George's County interests with the relocation of the Washington Adventist Hospital from Takoma Park to White Oak and the potential negative impact on the Laurel Regional Hospital, a positive income-generating unit of the troubled Prince George's Hospital System, the United Medical Center in DC is continuously troubled ("Ward 8 hospital seeks $15M from D.C." and "D.C. Wire: Barry, Catania come close to blows" from the Post), meanwhile Prince George's County is looking to get out of the financial turmoil caused by the loss-running PG Hospital System, and is repositioning ("Prince George's County survey intended to gauge state of health care" from the Post).

Meanwhile DC has been developing a pretty good array of community health clinics, although they don't function as an integrated system in the same way that the Denver Health System has created an integrated system of community health clinics and main hospital, and developed best practice and reduced costs at the same time.

See "Denver Health Becomes Profitable After Using Toyota as a Template: Lean manufacturing has made Denver Health a model for public health care" and "Mile-High Health Reform" from Governing Magazine.

Of course, that pesky state line between DC and Maryland makes addressing health care, hospital care, and wellness care cross-jurisdictionally almost impossible.

But no one should be surprised that both the United Medical Center and the Prince George's County Hospital System, predominately serving the area's poorest residents, are experiencing serious financial trauma.