Our experience at Non-Profit Healthcare Investor Conference

CHRISTUS Health was recently invited to present our story at the 10th annual Non-Profit Healthcare Investor Conference in New York City. Over 500 bankers, investors, bond-holders and bondraters were in attendance.

As one of 28 health systems invited to present, the CHRISTUS team described an overview of what CHRISTUS Health looks like after its first decade, summarizing the work of Futures Task Force I and the resulting strategic direction to transition our portfolio to 1/3 acute care in the U.S., 1/3 non-acute care in the U.S. and 1/3 international, and our desire to move from expensive acute care to less expensive chronic disease management, senior independent living and health and wellness services. The four Directions to Excellence were then highlighted, stressing our goal for sustainability being a high quality low cost provider.

Six continuing trends which are shaping health care were then enumerated, including:
• Pressure on reimbursement
• Accelerated shift to ambulatory driven by new technologies
• Inpatient roles continue to change
• Physician-hospital relationships reshaped
• Increased demand for transparency
• Impact of aging baby boomers

The Futures Task Force II process was then highlighted followed by detailed data showing our financial picture over the last several quarters as we traversed the almost perfect storm of the financial crisis as well as the real storms in September – Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. This section included a presentation on our:
• Interest Expense Trends
• Bond Portfolio Transition
• Quarterly Statement of Operations
• Admission Growth – 3.3 percent
• Surgeries Growth – 2.4 percent
• Key Indicator Trends
- Operating revenue per adjusted discharge
- FTE per adjusted occupied bed
- Labor expense per adjusted discharge
- Supply expense per adjusted discharge
• Operating Margins
• Operating Cash Flow
• Funded Status of Pension Plan

I also gave a brief description of our key visions in health care for 2016 and beyond, which include:
• Some diseases will be “cured”
• Trauma leading cause of death age < 55
• Some diseases treated by alternative medicine
• Increase in global warming related illnesses
• Home health and remote monitoring drive retail orientation
• Increase in retail services including e-commerce
• Increase in philanthropy
• Improved disease management through provider-payor partnerships
• Innovations in physician employment models
• System integration of medical tourism and international strategies
• Integrated EMR and IT strategies
• Expansion of non-acute programs and partnerships