Using Epidemiologic models to quantify and respond to physician resource need

The medical staff resource represents the single most important asset of a hospital and the greater community. Reinvesting in this asset is critical to maintain and expand programs and services, assure access under healthcare reform and respond to ever increasing disease burden. With more and more medical staff members considering retirement or alternatives to traditional practice, hospitals will be facing potentially significant short falls in meeting community health responsibilities. Recruitment initiatives are expensive, time consuming and teaming with complex legal and regulatory issues including, in some specialties, a lack of candidates. The service area population is aging, presenting with multiple chronic conditions requiring effective coordination of care with many community members' ability to afford appropriate care limited.

Unfortunately, traditional community need models do not adequately quantify these variables. The Cleveland Clinic Regional hospitals, as part of a region-wide medical staff resource analysis responded to these complexities by developing an epidemiologic model to correlate community need for physicians with disease burden trends and population dynamics. Population based prevalence models were developed for core service lines to estimate 10 year disease burden. These estimates were correlated against current staffing levels to identify potential staffing gaps. Model variables included the dynamics of the aging population, the impact of technology and innovation on service demand, sub specialty staffing constraints as well as the impact of healthcare reform on access to care. This methodology is being employed to develop chronic care clinics to meet the anticipated logistical issues associated with healthcare reform.