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Wright speaks about health care trends

Photo by Wayne Towner Albert Wright, president and CEO of West Virginia Health System and WVU Medicine, speaks Tuesday about what he sees occurring in health care in the future at WVU Medicine Camden Clark Medical Center’s first physician service awards dinner at Grand Pointe Conference Center.

VIENNA — WVU Medicine Camden Clark Medical Center held its first physician service awards and retirement recognition dinner at Grand Pointe Conference Center in Vienna on Tuesday.

Over 40 community physicians were honored for years of service, ranging from five to 47 years, and another 14 were recognized for their contributions as they retire.

The guest speaker was Albert Wright, president and CEO of the West Virginia University Health System and WVU Medicine.

Wright, who holds a Master of Health Administration degree from The Ohio State University and a Doctor of Pharmacy from the University of Florida, spoke on the state of health care and trends for the future. Wright titled his presentation “From Now to Near to Far” and talked about health care and medicine as it looks now, how it is expected to change in the mid-term and possible trends in the future.

“There are some interesting things happening in health care right now,” he said, describing mergers occurring at and among various corporations and companies.

He also talked about what he expects the health care system to look like in five, 10 and 15 years.

“What’s interesting is that when you are going from now to near to far in health care, today we live in a volume world. It’s a lot of things we do to people and we’re incentivized to do things to people,” he said. “We’re moving into a value world where it’s value over volume and how we keep people healthy.

“We’re going to live in those two worlds for a while and you’re going to have a foot in each world,” Wright said.

With WVU Medicine’s recently announced acquisition and partnership of The Health Plan in Wheeling, Wright said a shift will be occurring from what is called an “integrated delivery health care system” to an “integrated delivery and financing system.”

“Today, a lot of the things we do in health care are either beneficial for the insurer or beneficial for the health care system, but not both,” he said. “We’re going to create a system that’s beneficial to both.”

Looking ahead, Wright believes such an effort will benefit everyone.

“This partnership, this integrated delivery and financing system will allow us to shift resources upstream to incentivize our hospitals, our providers and insurers to keep people healthier. That is going to be transformational for us,” he said.

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