The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center are working closer than ever to deliver the high-value care that health system patients deserve.
Lying three miles apart, The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center have long worked together to deliver high-value care. For instance, Johns Hopkins Bayview once hosted the state’s only regional burn center. But nearly a decade ago, says the medical center’s president, Richard Bennett, leaders at Johns Hopkins Medicine realized that children with burns would benefit from the pediatric intensive care unit and surgical expertise found at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, part of The Johns Hopkins Hospital in East Baltimore. Thus a pediatric burn unit was established there, and Johns Hopkins Bayview focused on adults.
“I think the market demand for value is higher than ever,” says Redonda Miller, president of The Johns Hopkins Hospital. With health care costs at 18 percent of the United States’ gross domestic product, she says, “There’s simply no more money to infuse into health care. We have to be smarter and use the dollars we do have more wisely.”
In many cases, says Miller, it’s not in patients’ best interest to have two smaller programs on two campuses. “We know from medical literature that the more we specialize and concentrate our services within one team, the more expert the team becomes, which produces better outcomes for patients,” says Miller. To that end, all patients receiving solid-organ transplants, eye surgeries or cardiac electrophysiology procedures are now treated at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, while those in need of a sleep disorders specialist, bariatric surgery, total joint replacement, or medical and radiation treatment for new lung cancers are seen at Johns Hopkins Bayview.
In areas where there is a large demand for Johns Hopkins expertise, such as neurosurgery, obstetrics and neonatal intensive care, services are offered at both hospitals but function as one larger unit, adds Bennett.
Integrating pharmacy services across the two hospitals has generated efficiencies and savings. Looking for such opportunities to combine services is a goal of the academic division operating group, which is composed of leaders from both hospitals. Other joint efforts include a value analysis team that standardizes purchases for both hospitals’ operating rooms and a high-value care committee working to reduce unnecessary testing and variations in care.
And last year, Charles Reuland was named executive vice president and chief operating officer of both hospitals to oversee additional integration efforts. “We approach integration from this perspective: Does it add value? We don’t do it just because it’s good to say you did it,” says Reuland.
