St. Vincent’s vice president for corporate development, Kirk Allen, spoke to leaders in St. Clair County about healthcare reform on Tuesday at the monthly Mayor’s Association meeting.

Since preparations are being made for the grand opening of the new St. Vincent’s Hospital in St. Clair County on Dec. 10, Allen provided commissioners, judges, mayors and other community leaders in attendance from all over the county with an inside look as to how St. Vincent’s is planning ahead for health care in the future.

“The current state of healthcare is unsustainable,” Allen said.  “There will need to be reform of some kind, regardless of who is in office.”

Allen presented statistics to community leaders with regards to trends in healthcare costs.  In 2002 15 percent of household income was applied to healthcare costs.  In 2020 it is expected that 45 percent of household income will be consumed by healthcare costs.

But costs are not the only factor driving healthcare reform.  The ways in which patients are receiving treatment continues to change.  Allen says the demand and growth for outpatient care will overwhelm the decline for inpatient care.  Procedures and treatments that people once sought out and received hospital or inpatient care for can now be treated as outpatient procedures.  Changes in technology have made it easier for many procedures to be done through outpatient care.  From 2011-2021 overall outpatient care is expected to increase by 21 percent and overall inpatient care is expected to decrease by 11 percent.

The new St. Vincent’s hospital in St. Clair County was designed with the increasing need for outpatient services in mind.

“There are 40 beds in the new facility, and seventy percent of our facility is devoted to outpatient care,” Allen said.  “We hope this will be a model for the future.”

According to Allen a value driven model needs to be sought after in healthcare reform, meaning a balance between cost and result needs to be created.

“We have to think differently about how we care for people,” Allen said.  Healthcare is increasingly challenging.  More than 20 million people remain without coverage.

“We choose to close our eyes and do look at moving [healthcare] in the direction we need to,” commission chairman Stan Bateman said.  “We have to have healthcare, and I know St. Clair County is moving in the right direction with this new facility.”