MDNews - Greater Kansas

the first administrative fellow at Mayo Clinic and went on to a career serving in leadership positions, including chief financial officer at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville and seven years as chief administrative officer of Mayo Clinic in Rochester. He also served a stint as executive director of the Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center, working with leading health care experts to shape health care reform. Dave Strohm, Chair of Via Christi's Board of Directors, describes Korsmo's style as, in a word, interactive. "Jeff is very good at communicating his vision of health care at Via Christi and engaging those around him in discussion and analysis," Strohm says. "The result is a fully committed team with input into the process and ownership of the strategy." While Korsmo has no designs on creating a "Mayo of the Plains," his vision for Via Christi draws from a number of key lessons he learned during his 28-year tenure at Mayo Clinic. A key part of his vision comes from Mayo Clinic's primary value, "the needs of the patient come first." "People come to us in their times of need, whether it's for routine health care or significant, com- plicated medical conditions," says Korsmo. "They entrust their health and their lives to us. The only way we earn this trust is to be centered on the needs of the patient." This means, he says, "The design of Via Christi's systems of Jeff Korsmo, President and CEO of Via Christi Health care, the design of everything we do and every decision that we make in the organization, should have the patient and his or her family squarely in front of us guiding our decision." This applies to care delivery, billing and collections, and even housekeeping, he adds. After all, Korsmo is after what the Institute for Healthcare Improvement calls the Triple Aim. "The Triple Aim is the improvement of the health of populations, improving the patient experience and lowering the per-capita cost of care," he explains. This, he says, means delivering higher-quality care that is safe, effective, timely and equitable. It means doing it with great service and being responsive to the unique needs of individual patients, residents and their families and reducing the total cost of health care over time. A key to achieving the vision Korsmo holds for Via Christi is forming an integrated, clinician-led organization. "Those who are trained to care for patients are the ones who know best what our patients need and how to best meet those needs," he says. "In the Via Christi that we are creating together, our clinicians, led by physicians, will make those key decisions and work as teams to deliver integrated care." Jack Shellito, M.D., is Chief Medical Officer of Via Christi Clinic and serves as interim leader of Via Christi's Physician Services division. He calls working with Korsmo "a privilege and great fun." "He strongly believes that ongoing clinician involvement in decision making will be crucial to drive learning, quality and value in patient care," Dr. Shellito says. "He has already made great progress in these efforts because his innate sincerity and honesty come through to all of the physicians in the community." Cardiologist Darrell Youngman, D.O., of Cardiovascular Consultants describes Korsmo as having "excellent breadth and depth of vision, which he keeps in mind at all times." Dr. Youngman adds that Korsmo also has "an excellent commit- ment to very high-level values." Carla Yost, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Nursing Officer at Mercy Regional Health Center in Manhattan, has seen Korsmo walk the talk. Early in his tenure, he visited Mercy, requesting to participate in the hospital's "quality huddles." "As the new CEO, he walked the patient care unit and huddled shoulder to shoulder with nursing staff, pharmacists and case managers," Yost says. "While staff members were initially timid and unclear about his presence, he told them, 'I want to see the great work you are doing to improve patient care.'" Staff quickly realized, Yost says, "Jeff's pursuit of quality aligned with theirs." Key decisions include determining not only the best care for the patient, but also how to redesign health care to address underlying trends that demand major change, Korsmo says. These include the unsustainable growth in the cost of health care, 10,000 baby boomers a day becoming eligible for Medicare, the increasingly global arena in which businesses compete, and our federal and state governments' fiscal crises. In his public-policy work at Mayo Clinic, Korsmo worked with health care leaders around the country to come up with principles for changing health care. They developed four cornerstones: significantly improving the quality of care, improving the coordi- nation of care across the spectrum, changing the way we pay for health care to reward better outcomes, safety and service while lowering costs, and giving all American access to health care. The latter means having health insurance, but the group did not argue for that insurance to be provided under government programs. The key variable in reforming health care, Korsmo says, is replacing our fee-for-service system, which encourages more tests and more procedures, with a system based on rewarding value, or "safe, high-quality, affordable care delivered with great service." Korsmo cites studies showing that 30% of the health care provided in the United States is unnecessary. "Most of the Affordable Care Act focused on increased access to health care and included relatively little to change the way we pay for health care," he says. "Changing the payment mechanism will change the overutilization of care that happens in this country and will begin to bend the cost curve." Korsmo believes that Via Christi, with its expansive continuum MDNEWS.COM ■ MD NEWS Greater Kansas | 7 Photos provided by Via Christi Health

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