Trios Health: The future of health care may shift, but commitment remains
The health care industry is changing in many ways at a rapid pace, with some clear national trends emerging that will shape how we do things here at home.
The past year for Trios Health has been about alignment with the broad market and the health needs of our local community.
One thing we see on the horizon is the growing role of technology in the delivery of health care services. Telemedicine, which uses telecommunication technology to provide medical support from a distance, will become a more prevalent service option that we need to plan for.
Online patient access to health records is also becoming a mainstream offering as patients and providers alike desire more timely, complete information and better accountability. Many health care organizations, including Trios Health, have introduced web-based patient portals to meet this need and streamline the process of sharing information.
That said, as a health care organization evolves to offer a variety of complementary services, information systems deployed at each point of service may not always readily compatible for funneling information to a single platform. Aligning disparate health care information technologies takes a substantial investment of time and money, two things also stretched thin in today’s environment. We are committed to aligning our information system investments over time because it’s important to meet the increasing demand for this level of transparency and accessibility.
Another interesting trend in health care is consolidation. In an industry experiencing the squeeze from all directions, many smaller or struggling organizations find themselves forced to align with or sell to those with deeper pockets and broader networks.
We’ve seen examples of this in our own health care market just in the past year or so, and while there are some benefits to such mergers, it results in a shift in emphasis from the patient to the corporation. The local voice and needs become more difficult to hear from afar, even if the operational decision became necessary to a system’s future viability.
As things change all around us, Trios Health remains firmly committed to this community just as it has for almost 65 years. It will come with its fair share of challenges, but we’ll continue to rise to them while keeping the community’s best interests at heart.
We’ll also continue investing time and other resources in beneficial ways. This includes expanding our clinical training programs for medical students and graduates, so that we can be part of the solution to the looming doctor shortage. Trios Health was the first in our area to establish medical residency programs in 2013, and our first class of family and internal medicine residents will finish their three-year program this summer as a new class begins its journey.
Programs like this provide new doctors with a rich experience that will help them deliver excellent patient care when they move on in their careers. Over time, we’ll also see some of those providers choose to stay local. We’re pleased that additional residency programs are now happening locally, because training the next generation of providers is becoming more important to the future of health care.
Trios Health will also continue improving patient access to primary and specialty providers and supportive services, as well as accommodating technology improvements. We made great headway on this in 2015 with the opening of the new multispecialty, multiservice Trios Care Center at Southridge in Kennewick.
We’ve come a long way, and there is much more change on the horizon in the short- and long-term. We recognize that it’s our job to make sure we keep up and get ahead where we can, and we’ll accomplish that by remaining community minded, compassion driven, and physician connected in all we do.
This story was originally published March 22, 2016 at 10:33 PM with the headline "Trios Health: The future of health care may shift, but commitment remains."