Interview: Mike Murphy

San Diego Physician: What do you see as the biggest challenges facing Sharp HealthCare today and in the coming years?

Murphy: There are numerous challenges facing Sharp HealthCare and the industry at large. The most daunting challenge is ensuring positive economic returns. Positive economic returns are essential to reinvest in the organization. For Sharp HealthCare to fulfill its mission and vision, we must invest huge economic resources in our people, technology, and infrastructure. Obstacles to generating positive economic returns include healthcare workforce shortages, unfunded legal and regulatory mandates, the growing uninsured, inadequate reimbursement for healthcare services (e.g., Medi-Cal and Medicare), and proliferation of high-cost technology.

SDP: What do you see as the biggest challenges facing San Diego County’s physicians?

Murphy: The physician community’s economic challenges parallel the greater healthcare community’s. Physicians are confronted with declining reimbursements, increasing personnel costs, and growing technology expenses. San Diego also is increasingly challenged with physician shortages. The high cost of living in San Diego coupled with low physician reimbursement is exacerbating present day shortages. Today’s physician shortages will worsen when “boomer” physicians start to retire and demand for healthcare increases with an aging population.

SDP: What do you see as the biggest challenges facing San Diego County’s healthcare system?

Murphy: In addition to the challenges already mentioned, San Diego hospital and community capacity issues are significant. The South Bay community is significantly under-bedded and confronted with significant economic challenges that preclude investment in facilities to meet present and future healthcare needs. San Diego is also confronted with aging hospitals, which are not designed to care for present-day patient populations. Specifically, emergency and critical care bed shortages exist throughout San Diego. The construction of new hospitals is almost cost-prohibitive given today’s economic challenges of the uninsured and under-funding of government-sponsored healthcare programs.

SDP: What are your chief concerns with San Diego County’s healthcare marketplace?

Murphy: Our chief concerns are related to the economic strength of San Diego healthcare systems, workforce shortages, infrastructure planning, and community partnerships. Community partnerships are essential to ensure that “at-risk” populations are cared for and cost-effective healthcare systems are present. It is also essential that healthcare systems, county government, physicians, and health plans work together to ensure San Diego healthcare needs are met.

SDP: What healthcare reform proposals or concepts do you favor?

Murphy: At the top of our list is the need for programs that adequately cover the uninsured while also meeting the needs of all stakeholders in the healthcare system. We believe that government-sponsored programs need to adequately pay for the care their beneficiaries receive in order to reduce healthcare cost-shifting. We favor a solution that provides all patients a vehicle to access physicians and hospitals. We also favor a system that does more to connect patients with high-cost chronic conditions to regular management of their conditions, providing them with better outcomes and more cost-effective delivery of care.

SDP: If you had five minutes alone with every physician in the county, what would you want them to know?

Murphy: I would want physicians to know that the future of healthcare in this country, in a very large part, is dependent upon physicians and healthcare systems developing and maintaining strong, mutually beneficial relationships. Collectively, we need to chart the future course of healthcare delivery and its economic strength. Together, we can ensure the delivery of high-quality, cost-efficient care — apart, that common goal is at risk.

SDP: What do you feel is the difference between Sharp HealthCare and the other healthcare systems in the county?

Murphy: San Diego is very fortunate to have wonderful healthcare providers doing the best that we can for the communities we serve. I am very proud that Sharp has been on a journey that has allowed us to prioritize our actions and investments in a manner that focuses on striving to be the best place to work, practice medicine, and receive care.

I think that our people, from physicians and staff to volunteers, are second to none. Their commitment to quality and patient safety and their achievements in those areas are outstanding. I feel fortunate that we have followed a deliberate path to invest in our facilities, our people, and our medical and information technologies to bring the best tools and facilities that we can bring to our patients and the people who provide the care.

SDP: Describe the relationship between Sharp HealthCare and the San Diego County community.

Murphy: Our mission to provide cost-effective, high-quality care services and our vision to be the best place to receive care, work, and practice medicine are taken seriously by everyone at Sharp every day. We believe being the market share leader in San Diego is evidence that the community feels we have delivered on our mission and vision. Additionally, our recent success with our Transforming Health Care Campaign has been a testimony of the community’s belief in Sharp HealthCare. The positive, supportive, and mutually beneficial relationships we have developed with community clinics, healthcare associations, the business community, and vendors also demonstrate the type of relationship Sharp HealthCare has within the greater community.

SDP: Do you think Sharp HealthCare has a disproportionate share of under funded patients in the county? Is there a problem with other systems “dumping” onto Sharp?

Murphy: Sharp HealthCare is very proud of its history and ability to deliver on its not-for-profit mission and provide services to all patients who present. We remain concerned, however, that the increasing volume of uninsured patients and the continued shortfall in Medicare and Medi-Cal funding will compromise our ability to appropriately invest in our people, facilities, and technology.

Several providers, including Sharp, do provide for a disproportionate share of the uninsured and underinsured services to the community, and we believe that a level playing field among all healthcare providers in San Diego would be more appropriate. It’s simply the right thing to do.

Presently, Sharp HealthCare provides more care to Medi-Cal recipients than any other healthcare system in San Diego.

SDP: How do you see the Sharp Rees-Stealy Medical Group, Sharp Mission Park and the Sharp Community Medical Group within the overall San Diego County medical community?

Murphy: We’re very proud that our three medical groups, comprised of approximately 1,500 physicians, have been recognized for years among the top-performing medical groups in the state in terms of quality and outcomes. They have a long history in San Diego and play an integral part in healthcare delivery to the community and Sharp. They, along with our many other independent physicians who choose to practice at Sharp, are leaders in their field and make a difference for their patients every day.

SDP: What has “The Sharp Experience” effort meant to you and to Sharp’s overall place in the community?

Murphy: The Sharp Experience has been the guiding framework for Sharp HealthCare to transform the healthcare experience for San Diego. It has been a cultural transformation that takes us toward achieving our vision of being the best place for our patients to receive care, our employees to work, and our physicians to practice medicine. The Sharp Experience emphasizes meaningful, purposeful, and worthwhile work. We see ourselves at Sharp HealthCare being on a journey that will never end as we continuously strive to get better for our patients, physicians, and employees.

SDP: Are there any questions we’ve been remiss in not asking? If so, what are they, and how would you answer them?

Murphy: I want to reemphasize the need for all of us in the medical community to work together and find real answers to the many challenges we have in common. We’re proud of the relationship we have with our physicians, and a big part of our success is our ability to work with our medical groups and our organized medical staffs to prioritize our thinking, strategies, and projects while remaining focused on doing the right things for our people and patients. We need to continue to do that with all physicians and stakeholders in an industry that seems to be facing ever-increasing challenges.