Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaledition.com/i/619635
HOSPITALS WITH WELL—DEVELOPED MEDICAL FITNESS CENTERS ARE DISCOVERING THAT THOSE FACILITIES CAN BECOME THE NEW FRONT DOOR TO THEIR HEALTH SYSTEMS. THE NUMBER OF medical fi tness centers a¬ liated with hos- pitals grew nationally from about 80 in 1985 to nearly 1,300 by 2014. With healthcare reform placing greater emphasis on wellness and prevention, hospitals' or health systems' adoption of medical fi tness centers and programs that promote exercise as medicine can be a natural fi t. "The next step in population health management really is threefold," says Robert D. Boone, MBA, MHA, FACHE, FMFA, President and CEO of the Virginia-based Medical Fitness Association. "It's helping the healthy stay healthy, it's helping those who are at increased risk lower that risk, and it's helping those people who have already developed a chronic illness to manage that chronic illness, and even reverse it in some cases." Medical fi tness centers that are properly thought out can advance those goals without being a drain on hospital resources, observers say. BETTER HEALTH, BETTER BUSINESS " Well-run centers can and do contribute to the bottom line," says Boone, whose organization helps meet the needs of medically integrated fi tness centers. "One of the things that we're seeing beginning to emerge now … is, hospitals have begun to focus on reducing admissions, particularly among their 'frequent fl yers.'" Hospita ls work with their fi tness centers to get newly discharged chronic disease patients into an exercise program that will reduce their likelihood of being readmitted, Boone adds. That makes medical and fi nancial sense, says Bob Coleman, Principal with South Carolina-based Enwright Wellness. "If you're a patient in a hospital and you get discharged and you get readmitted, then Medicare in many cases will not pay for that readmission," says Coleman, whose company's areas of focus include the medical fi tness fi eld. "[Now] once you're discharged from the hospital, they're going to send you to a medical fi tness center and have you under the guidance of a physical therapist, for example, to make sure you don't have a relapse." Frequently, successful medical fi tness or wellness centers are located somewhere other than the hospital, closer to where people live and work, Coleman says. Boone notes that for many wellness centers with which he has worked, real estate agents often drive prospective homebuyers past the centers to showcase them as amenities of the community. Medical fi tness centers can help not only protect a hospital's market share, but they can a lso drive new business. An analogy Boone likes to use is this: If your wellness center has 5,000 members, on average those members are going to come to the center twice a week, 50 weeks per year. That's 500,000 visits and 500,000 opportunities to send the marketing message of the hospital out into the community — to create ambassadors for the hospital's brand. ■ Medical Fitness Centers Tackle Population Health While Generating Revenue BY HANNAH STUART 2 2❱❱❱❱❱ B U S I N E S S O F M E D I C I N E 2 2