Bulletin for August 29, 2013
Upcoming Rotary Programs and Events
September 5, 2013: Vince Otoupal, UVU Athletic Director will indroduce
his plans for the future of UVU Athletics.
September 12, 2013: Pete Codella, Marking and PR Specialist will
talk about social media marketing for businesses.
September 19, 2013: Natalie Gochnour, Economist for the Salt Lake
Chamber and Associate Dean in the David Eccles
School of Business will talk about Utah's Economic Future.
September 26, 2013: Jeff Rust from Corporate Alliance will
talk about Building Successful Business Relationships.
Report of Provo Rotary Meeting Held August 29, 2013
Speaker
Joey Hansen introduced our speaker Scott Pingree, Chief Financial Planning Officer for Intermountain Healthcare's Urban South Region.
Mr. Pingree talked about the problem that healthcare costs are too high and are continuing to rise. Although Utah's costs are one of the lowest in the country at $5,000 per person per year, compared to Massachusetts as an example at $9,000 per year. And 1% of patients account for 25% of costs and 20% of patients account for over 50% of costs nationally. And for the top 1% most of those costs are inside hospital costs. The conclusion was that a relatively few patients are accounting for a large percentage of healthcare costs.
Scott Pingree suggested that those costs could be reduced with better doctor care coordination with patients, better lifestyle choices and patients patients taking better care of themselves. He estimated that 40% of all good or bad health results were the result of lifestyle choices. He suggested that a key to improving the national pictures would be if patients took better care of themselves and had the tools to do it with.
