The upsurge of a healthcare executive professional : John Adlesich on healthcare industry trends: Cooperative competition, or coopetition, is a key trend in health care. While some providers view big-box stores, nationwide pharmaceutical chains and other new entrants as threats, other organizations see opportunity. Their strategy is to leverage the capabilities of these power players to lower the cost of care, increase downstream market capture and focus on core specialty services while remaining highly connected to the patient. Offload financially draining services. Organizations like CVS and Walmart now offer basic primary care, simple diagnostic services and chronic disease management — services that health systems have struggled to provide and do so profitably. Identifying opportunities to partner with retail organizations to fill this gap can help simplify organizational services, increase access and provide better patient care at a lower cost.

John Adlesich about healthcare industry trends: COVID-19 tops the Biden administration’s priorities and will likely do so for the foreseeable future. Vaccine distribution will dominate the first six months of 2021, with federal effort focused on the expansion of testing, contact tracing, and better public health reporting from states and localities up to the CDC and other federal agencies. Data collection and expanded use of data will be critical to the Biden administration’s ongoing COVID-19 response. The administration proposes funding to states and localities for their public health response infrastructure (including registries, reporting, surveillance, and dashboards). The administration also plans to expand the availability of platforms that ensure patient data security and to expand data use rights to enable use and disclosure for research and surveillance. These actions will accelerate research on effective clinical interventions and treatment pathways, expand patient monitoring, and help public health reporting and tracking vaccine distribution.

John Adlesich thinks that 2021 is a crossroads year for the healthcare industry. While a balanced approach is important, there is no question that US-based sources for many products are lacking to non-existent. To remedy this imbalance, we may see tax incentives and low-cost loans that would enable American manufacturers to invest in new automation technologies, to help level the playing field with overseas companies that have access to cheap labor and fewer regulatory barriers. There may also be new requirements that government purchasers such as the Veteran’s Administration and Department of Defense purchase at least a portion of the medical products they use from domestic suppliers. More, too, should be done to incent our health care providers to purchase domestically. Such moves would go a long way to creating the demand necessary for added domestic investments. When added incentives are required, the private sector will continue to step in to reward manufacturers that place a premium on geographic diversity for their supply chains. For instance, after learning that 90 percent of all face masks were produced in China, leaving the US highly susceptible to shortages, Premier and 16 leading health systems pooled resources to take a minority stake in Prestige Ameritech, one of the nation’s only domestic producers of face masks and other personal protective equipment. In exchange for the cash infusion and long-term purchasing commitments, the company is now making 3.5 million masks per month that it ordinarily would have had little incentive to make. In November, we followed that initiative with a partnership with 34 members to invest in DeRoyal Industries for the domestic production of isolation gowns that have increasingly been difficult to find.

John Adlesich currently works as administrator at Marquis Companies. His latest healthcare industry experience includes positions as executive director at Powerback Rehabilitation Lafayette (Genesis Healthcare) between Aug 2020 – Jan 2021, administrator at Mesa Vista of Boulder between Mar 2019 – Aug 2020, chief executive officer at Sedgwick County Memorial Hospital between Jul 2018 – Feb 2019, interim chief operating officer at Toiyabe Indian Health Project between Mar 2018 – Jun 2018.