Hartford Business Journal Special Editions

16 | HARTFORD BUSINESS JOURNAL • OCTOBER 2, 2017 Industry Lookbacks Health Care & Bioscience The biggest trend of the last 25 years for the Connecticut hospital sector has been an increase in complexity and consolidation, according to Jennifer Jackson, president and CEO of the Connecticut Hospital Association. "Health care has become much more complicated," she said. "We've dramatically changed how we deliver care and how we think about delivering care." The industry as a whole has "moved from a very paternalistic system," with a top-down approach to caring for patients, to a system that is now "centered around patient and family engagement." Such an approach, according to Jackson, is more customized and complex. Helping drive that complexity are the numerous regulations that impact the state's healthcare providers, including the 1996 federal privacy law HIPAA. "[HIPAA] is a very complicated regulatory scheme and it requires a tremendous amount of work for comply," she said. As HIPAA has made compliance costlier for healthcare providers, electronic medical records (EMRs) have come on the scene, promising greater efficiency. It's rare to find a doctor that's still using paper records. In fact, it's not unusual today to have a flat screen computer monitor in an exam room for a routine annual physical. While the health industry keeps pace with the promise of technology, it's also had to keep up with changes in how we as a nation think about health care and how it should be paid for. "The industry is moving from doctors being paid to take care of sick people to having payments structured around how we help people reach their optimal health," Jackson said. "It's actually a really exciting time in health care." All that complexity — including passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 — has made it harder for community hospitals to survive and set off a consolidation wave that has swept through the healthcare industry. Now major systems — Hartford HealthCare, Trinity-Health Of New England and Prospect Medical Holdings — own most of the hospitals that operate in Greater Hartford. Bioscience breakthroughs Another area of excitement in the state's healthcare sector has been the growth in bioscience, which received a significant boost earlier in the 21st Century. The state approved stem cell funding research in 2005 at a time when the federal government banned supporting such research. Since that initial legislation, Connecticut has allocated $78.7 million to stem-cell research. Susan Froshauer, president and CEO of Connecticut United for Research Excellence (CURE), the state's biosciences cluster, said Connecticut's approval of stem cell funding was an important milestone. "It raised a flag that said Connecticut believes in stem cell research. That initial investment allowed faculty to access more federal grants and we brought a lot of talent to Connecticut." Today, some 12 years later, "you are beginning to see the fruit of that. There's a real culture here of expertise and exquisite science, which will yield treatments and medicines." One of those "fruits" Froshauer mentioned is the Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine, a Maine-based nonprofit genomics research firm that opened a 183,500-square-foot facility in Farmington in 2014. Within 10 years, Jackson Lab, which received millions of dollars in state investment as part of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's ambitious Bioscience Connecticut initiative adopted in 2011, is expected to have 300 biomedical researchers, technicians and support staff at the Connecticut facility. Laying the groundwork in the state for new players like Jackson Lab are the foundational bioscience companies, including Pfizer and As bioscience grows, healthcare's complexities spur consolidation By Christina H. Davis Special to the Hartford Business Journal Dr. James P. Cardon is Hartford HealthCare's chief clinical integration officer and has been on the front lines helping the care provider adapt to rapid changes within the industry. SECTION SPONSOR:

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