April 2nd, 2013 Meeting at Assembly Steakhouse Englewood Cliffs

Warren Geller, New CEO of Englewood Hospital and Medical Center was introduced by Rotarian Eddie Hadden, a member of the hospital’s Board of Directors, who described Mr. Geller’s career in the hospital management field, culminating, first in his filling their new Chief Operating Officer’s position a few years  earlier and now to CEO of the hospital.

Mr. Geller briefly described the hospitals aim of “Quality leading to growth” and listed many forms of recognition

the hospital had received for quality attainments in various facets of patient care.

He stressed the importance of their recognizing that at the end of all the equipment, training, medical skills and financing in the hospital was the patient and his or her satisfactory outcome.

He described the various components of the “Affordable Care Act (Obanacare)” and the challenges raised for hospitals:  the necessity to find ways to find ways to reduce costs.  He explained that the only way to do so was to change from a “pay for procedure” to a “pay for value” –meaning payment for a healthy result.

To this end, the trend in hospitals today, and particularly in Englewood, is to bring together pre-hospital care, hospital care, and post hospital care under one system of management through the hospital.

This has required the hospital to spend millions on electronic records of doctor and hospital patient care  as well as getting involved in preventive efforts in the family at home and elsewhere.

Throughout his talk we were impressed with Mr. Geller’s passion for the topic and his apparent belief that hospitals in general and Englewood’s in particular, were going to succeed in the new environment created by ACA, and that health care for all Americans would progress to greater coverage, better results, and lower costs.