Steven Eastaugh, ScD

Three thousand healthcare managers and leaders in the United States and around the world have had their careers shaped in part by Steven Eastaugh, ScD, who has taught health finance and economics for more than 32 years. He is currently a Professor in the Department of Health Services Management and Leadership at George Washington University.

Current Advisor for Obama on Healthcare Reform
A nationally-acclaimed speaker, consultant and agent of change, Dr. Eastaugh has traveled to some 30 countries as part of his health services research. He is the author of nine books, including his latest, Health Care Finance and Economics. The text, which provides a complete understanding of financial management and health economics, will help readers meet the considerable challenge of cutting costs while enhancing service quality. His other books include Health Care Finance: Cost, Productivity, & Strategic Design, Facing Tough Choices: Balancing Fiscal and Social Deficits, and Financing Health Care: Economic Efficiency and Equity. He is also the author of more than 120 journal articles.

Helped Develop National Health Insurance for South Korea.
In 1989, Dr. Eastaugh was instrumental in developing national health insurance for South Korea. His knowledge of healthcare practices in other countries has made him a requested speaker around the world.
Prior to coming to George Washington University, Dr. Eastaugh taught at Cornell University and was senior staff health economist at the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a graduate of Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard JFK School of Government, Harvard Economics Department, and has a Doctor of Science in Public Health from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. His main research interests include health finance and economics, capital budgeting, financial ratio analysis, profitability and liquidity, cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness and technology assessment.

The recipient of numerous awards, including the American College of Healthcare Executives Edgar Hayhow award for "Best Health Care Article of the Year," Dr. Eastaugh has been a forceful advocate for universal affordable health insurance, which he believes can be funded through dramatic reductions in healthcare paperwork and administrative costs. He works actively with a number of professional organizations, including the American Public Health Association, the American College of Healthcare Executives, the Association of University Programs in Health Administration, and the Operations Research Society of America.

Quality: Payers Pay Extra For It
Payments for top quality ratings or quality improvements are your new key to promote both sustainability and competitive position. By October 2012 40% of payers will offer bonus payment rates for quality ratings from private payers like Wellpoint, to the federal Medicare program.

The 34 quality metrics include preventive health, patient severity, care coordination and patient safety. A special emphasis on a reduction in unnecessary hospital readmits could save Medicare $25 billion and private insurers $30 billion.

We need a lean quality health care system, with better coordinated care, capable of bending the cost curve (slowing, but not eliminating medical cost inflation). Over 30 additional metrics for population health and patient satisfaction will also be under evaluation. Medicare annual bonus checks will approach $1 billion in 2013, and $4 billion by 2017. The new health care system will emphasize patient outcomes, promote health, enhance value, and customize care for the patient. The new incentives of VBP Value-based Purchasing will also be outlined.

Cost-Benefit Analysis: The Value of Life & Limb
Cost-benefit analysis becomes critical as the cost of new biomedical technology skyrockets beyond any recent projections. A good analysis must: (1) make the evaluation as complex as necessary, (2) assign values to resources that reflect their opportunity costs, (3) avoid zero counting of resources, and (4) avoid double counting of resources. We are going to have to develop and disseminate better information; some small fraction of what we now spend on healthcare could be better spent in other areas. Our methods to evaluate the value of life have improved for collecting better data and incorporating intangible life valuations into the calculus for weighing benefits against costs.

Strategic Marketing in Selecting Your Service-Mix
Do not confuse bad performance with destiny. You can improve your position with the right management and incentives. One must manage risk in today's rapidly changing marketplace by surveying product, place, price, and promotion. The benefits and costs of both specialization and diversification are surveyed. Increasingly, specialization helps trim expenses and enhances service quality.

Future Options for Healthcare Reform
Our past solutions are our current problems. The consumer marketplace system encourages demand and diversity, whereas the control system leads to uniformity and possibly rationing. American business is increasingly looking to Europe and Asia for global budget strategies to contain price, quantity, and total expense. Can we continue our tradition of resisting a comprehensive single system, given that it is very expensive and duplicative? Current policy trends point in all different directions like a pile of jackstraws.

Enhancing Productivity
Enhancing productivity better balances all factors of service delivery to get the greatest output for the least input effort. The best productivity programs are rapid, large in scale, cost beneficial, and provide benchmarks for assessing future performance. Programs that focus on the activities of individuals ignore the two greatest keys to improvement: work-team organization and acuity-driven workload staffing. Gainsharing incentive compensation plans can foster long term productivity gains.

Will Managed Care Evolve or Wither?
Physicians and patients are increasingly dissatisfied with managed care. Some HMOs and PPOs have made the ultimate cost sacrifice by simply closing down. In order to survive, managed care must improve customer relations, trim paperwork, develop new service-lines, and utilize life-cycle costing. Employers and the public want their healthcare to offer a delicate balance as a social good and a consumer good.

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