Joslin Diabetes CEO faces ‘big challenges’

It’s tough to win in the diabetes business.

It’s tough to win in the diabetes business.

Diabetes is a huge health problem, and Joslin Diabetes Center is a renowned, world-class institution. You’d think it would be a good moneymaker, or at least able to break even. But, as the Boston Globe explains in Big challenges ahead for new Joslin CEO, that’s not the case.

Here’s the part of the article where I’m quoted:

Diabetes typically doesn’t require the kinds of expensive treatments or surgeries used to fight illnesses such as eye diseases and cancers. That means Joslin doesn’t have the same opportunities to generate revenues as other specialty clinics in Boston, such as Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary.

“Diabetes is not as profitable a market as more procedure-oriented specialties,” said David E. Williams, a Boston health care consultant.

Several years into health reform, it seems odd that we’re still rewarding expensive interventions rather than the type of coordinated, prevention-oriented care that Joslin provides. In some fields, prevention has an uncertain payoff, yet for diabetics proper care helps head off terrible and expensive downstream complications such as amputation, blindness, heart disease and kidney failure.

Joslin has a couple other things going against it:

• Big healthcare systems have focused on keeping all care within their own systems, preventing “leakage” to other providers even when those providers are excellent
• Joslin derives a fair amount of its revenue from research. Unfortunately for Joslin NIH rules such as salary caps and COLA freezes make research a loser from a purely financial standpoint. There’s also a lot of competition for grant dollars

Joslin has actually done a good job of recognizing these problems, and has built a substantial commercial business to license its knowhow and brand. But that hasn’t been enough to make up for all of the headwinds.

I am wishing new CEO Dr. Peter Amenta the best of success as he tries to turn this ship around.

Image courtesy of smarnad at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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By healthcare business consultant David E. Williams, president of Health Business Group.