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Move Illuminates Growing Shift In Health Care Delivery In The Bay Area And Beyond
Today, Monday, Oct. 26, people watching local TV will experience the launch of an advertising campaign showing that UCSF’s clinical enterprise provides transformative care for patients. But the campaign carries a bigger message about the profound shift in national health care delivery.
The featured patients, who experienced catastrophic injuries or illnesses, have gone on to live empowered lives. There’s Miguel, who lost both legs above the knee when he was struck by a car; Max, whose bone cancer was undiagnosed for seven years; Annie, a speech language pathologist and rock climber whose hip was preserved without hip replacement, and Laura, whose stage IV breast cancer was treated by a clinical trial using precision medicine, based on groundbreaking research by the head of the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Individually, the vignettes are compelling; together, they show a mosaic of the impact that UCSF has had on people with serious, and less serious, illnesses or afflictions.
But more broadly, the ad campaign — which will extend to BART stations on Nov. 1, San Francisco Muni on Nov. 2 and Bay Area billboards on Nov. 16 – formally announces the evolution of UCSF’s clinical enterprise into an integrated health system, UCSF Health. It also marks the evolution of UCSF’s patient care services, from a program that 10 years ago consisted of two hospitals to a system that today spans both sides of the bay and includes adult and pediatric primary and specialty services.
The evolution was driven by the need and opportunity for UCSF to become more agile in the face of dramatic changes in health care. The result is that one of the nation’s premier academic medical centers, known for providing the most innovative, high quality care, has taken steps that will allow it to function in a cost-competitive manner, and to provide expert care — with an increased emphasis on wellness and the continuum of care, as well -- to more communities in the Bay Area and beyond.
The newly branded enterprise includes UCSF Medical Center, UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland, the UCSF Faculty practice group, Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital and Clinics, Benioff Children’s Physicians foundation and joint ventures with John Muir Health, including an accountable care network set to begin enrolling patients in 2017, affiliation with Hospital by the Bay, as well as other partner and affiliated hospitals and healthcare providers throughout the Bay Area.
“The need to become more agile, and the demands of our patients, purchasers and evolving health care system, have driven us — but also allowed us — to develop a health care system that is highly attuned to meeting the needs of all of our stakeholders in the Bay Area and beyond,” said Mark Laret, president and chief executive officer of UCSF Health.
The tangible changes represented in UCSF Health are significant:
Notably, while over the last several decades UCSF’s research enterprise has grown into one of the nation’s strongest, in the last decade the clinical enterprise has grown from a budget of $1 billion per year with standalone hospitals on its Parnassus and Mount Zion campuses to a $3 billion per year budget. This reflects, in part, an increase in admissions of 51 percent, and an increase in outpatient visits of 85 percent, from 2005-2014.
UCSF Health is not the first health system to emerge in the Bay Area. But its tactics and mission are distinct from others in the Bay Area:
Other factors that distinguish UCSF Health:
UCSF is a leading university dedicated to transforming health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. Founded in 1864 as a medical college, UCSF now includes top-ranked graduate schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy; a graduate division with world-renowned programs in the biological sciences, a preeminent biomedical research enterprise and UCSF Health.
UCSF Health includes two top-tier hospitals, UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals, the UCSF Faculty practice group, Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital and Clinics, Benioff Children’s Physicians foundation and joint ventures with John Muir Health, including an accountable care network set to begin enrolling patients in 2017, affiliation with Hospital by the Bay, as well as other partner and affiliated hospitals and healthcare providers throughout the Bay Area.