Up until last January, HCA Houston Healthcare Kingwood was known as Kingwood Medical Center. With the rebranding, John Corbeil, the CEO of HCA Houston Healthcare Kingwood, said the system is focusing on providing quality and affordable care, improving access to care and creating good experiences across all HCA Houston Healthcare locations.
“We should have access points in the community that can provide care at a lower cost, but that also is the same quality of care that's provided at the hospital at equal to less cost to the patient,” he said.
To help provide more affordable and accessible options to patients in the Houston region, HCA Houston Healthcare will extend health care outside the hospital by acquiring urgent care centers and freestanding emergency rooms, he said. HCA recently acquired about seven MedSpring Urgent Cares around the Greater Houston area, including one on Kingwood Drive, he said.
Additionally, Corbeil said it is important for the community to be educated about the difference between urgent care, freestanding ERs and hospital ERs, as knowing the difference can reduce the cost to patients and hospitals.
At urgent care centers, patients can get access to advanced-practice providers for the lowest cost, he said. Meanwhile, freestanding ERs are non-facility based—meaning they do not have to have to be part of a hospital system, which Corbeil said can sometimes translate to the greatest cost to patients.
Freddy Warner, the chief government relations officer at Memorial Hermann Health Systems, also spoke about health care affordability at the luncheon.
“We spend more in the United States than any other industrialized country on health care; we also spend more on pharmaceutical drugs than any other industrialized nation,” Warner said. “For that, one would anticipate that we would have the best health outcomes in the world, and that is absolutely not the case.”
Warner said factors contributing to the increase in health care costs include the growing and aging U.S. population, an increased use of health care services and an increasing amount of chronic diseases—such as diabetes, hypertension and mental health issues. He said more needs to be done on the federal and state levels to address health care funding.
“We’re aging; we’re spending a lot more money at the end of our lives, and if we don't make any changes right now, [Medicare and Social Security benefits] are not sustainable for the long term,” he said.
Additionally, Warner said he is concerned about the high number of uninsured people in the state and in Harris County. The state has the highest number of uninsured individuals among all states, while Harris County has the most uninsured individuals of any metropolitan area in the county, he said.
Harris County Public Health's first “Harris Cares” health report, which was released in mid-November, showed 1 in 5 Harris County adults lacks health insurance, with some communities having 1 in 3 adults lacking health insurance.
