Accretive Health CEO Mary Tolan: Healthcare Costs are This Generation's Cold War

In a recent video interview with the Wall Street Journal’s Dennis Berman, Accretive Health CEO Mary Tolan discusses the future of our nation’s healthcare system and the challenges hospitals and physicians face in balancing the delivery of quality care and the costs associated with providing it.

Ms. Tolan was in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2013.

In the interview, Mr. Berman asks Ms. Tolan why she thinks 2013 is different from decade’s past on the question of controlling healthcare costs. According to Tolan, “The promising thing that’s really happening right now, Dennis, is that incentives are shifting. And for the first time we’re really giving providers accountability and incentives for managing patient care in its entirety….And once we change incentives we have the beginning of new possibilities.”

When asked about how those new incentives might actually work in the real world, Tolan said, ”This is the kind of change that could be very good for physicians too….In the new world, with the new types of accountable care and with value-based incentives, [physicians] are going to really have the time to spend with the sickest patients, and that’s going to change everything. And if [physicians] can succeed at that [they] don’t have to be the kind of person who sees their reimbursements going down.”

Click below to watch the complete interview.

About Accretive Health

Founded in 2003, Accretive Health’s mission is to help healthcare providers strengthen their financial stability and deliver higher quality, more accessible care to its clients’ patients and the communities they serve.  The majority of the hospitals that Accretive Health serves are non-profit, faith-based hospitals or teaching hospitals, deeply rooted in values of stewardship, generosity of spirit, leadership and dedication to their communities.

With approximately 2,900 employees, Accretive Health serves many of the top-rated hospital systems in the country and is committed to providing solutions that assist them in the delivery of quality healthcare services and maintaining financial stability.