Local hospital leaders discuss health care reform

VALPARAISO | Leaders of the region's hospital systems agreed Wednesday a key component to decreasing health care costs in the future revolves around region residents living a healthy lifestyle and participating in wellness prevention programs.

"How is it we educate the population to living a healthy life and visiting their physician?" asked Jonathan Nalli, CEO of Porter Health System.

G. Thor Thordarson, the president and CEO of LaPorte Regional Health System, Dr. James Callaghan, the president of St. Anthony Memorial, and Nalli discussed a variety of topics as a panel for the Porter and LaPorte County Hospital CEO Summit.

The event, hosted by The Times Media Company, included topics ranging from how aging baby boomers will affect the health care system to how to deal with a "looming doctor shortage." But one of the main topics during the panel was the importance of preventative health care and how it could lower health care costs.

During the discussion, Jodi Juhl, the panel facilitator and assistant news director and anchor at Lakeshore Public Television, asked the audience of local professionals if they truly take care of their health the way their doctor advises. Only about a third of the audience raised their hands.

"This is so indicative of what they face every day," Juhl said, adding if it's an uphill battle for a group of well-educated professionals to live healthy, it's likely even more difficult for lower-income Northwest Indiana residents.

Thordarson said it's a misconception people weren't getting health care before this reform bill was signed; patients were receiving care, but it was at the back-end such as visiting an emergency room well after a sickness has settled in instead of seeing a family practitioner at the initial sniffle.

"Hopefully there will be a shift from 'after the fact' and move to the promotion of a healthy lifestyle," he said. "There are a myriad of problems that are all preventable."

Callaghan said employers who offer health care insurance are getting into the game, offering a lower-cost plan to those employees who live a healthy lifestyle, such as not smoking.

Thordarson said a financial incentive from employers to employees for healthy living and physician visits is the kind of shift he'd like to see.

The hospitals are backing up what they're saying with their their own employees, working with them to stop smoking and providing exercise programs.