2025 Health Care Outlook: Michael Calhoun

How do you plan to address the evolving needs of patients, particularly as the population ages or chronic conditions increase?
One of the things is to focus on primary care services and getting further upstream with patients before their condition worsens. As the patient ages, we need to be better about making sure that they regularly see a physician, particularly a primary care physician, and that we do a good job of addressing and diagnosing chronic conditions earlier so we can get ahead of them. The other thing is just addressing social needs. There’s more of a focus on that with health care and social drivers of health. At CMH, we also have long-term care services. Long-term care facilities are going to be an important part along with home care and keeping people in their homes safely. To be honest, that’s probably one of my main concerns is just how are we going to keep up with the demand of the aging population when we already are struggling with workforce shortages and resource needs the way it is.

CMH is amid a $100 million expansion of its Bolivar hospital, as well as building a dialysis center. What is the importance of these kind of investments, not only for CMH but all local health systems?
You have to invest in your facilities because they become the house where you provide this care. For us, at the hospital, we really couldn’t add anything onto our current structure without having to address our plant facilities infrastructure. It was time for us; we were way outgrown. Our ER was probably 40% to 50% too small the way it currently is for the volume that goes through it. We really had to do something, but I think investing in the facility allows there to be a place for this quality health care to happen for the next generation to come. For us, we’ve now got the nephrology service line, and sometimes patients were having to travel. They spend a lot of time in those dialysis facilities, and so we want a place that’s close to their home, that’s comfortable for them where they can get as good or better care than they would get if they travel. That’s the vision of this [dialysis center] project.

What are the biggest potential or ongoing industry disruptors?
One of the main disruptors is the misalignment of the way services are paid for and the services that need be provided. It kind of sometimes puts payers and providers on different sides of the table. The disruption can be when payment for services gets in the way of the care that’s needed. Where there’s misalignment, it’s a disruption. The overregulation of health care can sometimes be a problem where you’re tying up much needed nursing resources to respond to regulatory requirements that aren’t providing value. I personally am not as concerned with some of the outside entities coming into the health care space because I think that they just challenge us to make us better. When it comes to providing medication access, there’s fear that Amazon is going to take the care provision over. The people that we have in our communities are still going to be needed for the personal touch. If we can leverage technology, even if it is through Amazon, or maybe we make our own pharmacy services more like Amazon, that’s better for the patient. They get things right away that they need, and that’s going to make their health better.