Presbyterian's Jim Hinton

New Mexico Business Journal, Sept, 1996

NMBJ: Has the governor consulted you about any of these matters?

Hinton: I have personally found Governor Johnson to be very open to listening to these issues. He seems to be sensitive to the private sector's views, and I feel very comfortable with his recent moves. And I think with Alex Valdez he has the right guy to push this through from a state government standpoint.

NMBJ: The health services industry has undergone tremendous changes in recent years. There are lots of high-tech treatments available now, but at what cost? Has medicine advanced too far too fast?

Hinton: The history of health care in this country is a fascinating one, but there is no question that one of the hallmarks of our industry is a combination of societal expectations for the best, the most, the newest, and medical schools and technology that respond to that demand. So it has been a combination of supply and demand that has driven up the overall cost of care and the overall proportion of health care that is represented in our gross domestic product. A lot of people look at that and say that the recent numbers, 15 or 16 percent, is too high, but I think that is a value judgment. This country values its health care and it values its research and development, and I think the reason that this country tends to spend on average more than other countries is that we tend to be the world's resource for research and development. We train more medical students. Our pharmaceutical companies do more research. Our technology companies produce more technology. And when you strip that out of it, I don't think our health care is that unreasonably priced.

NMBJ: Yet the public remains very much concerned about health care costs. Are doctors and other health care professionals overpaid?

Hinton: There is a lot of industry bashing going on right now. It has been interesting that you don't hear as much today about doctors making too much money. You hear about CEOs from the HMOs that are withholding care and are getting $20 million for their shares of stock in U.S. health care, and I think that the tension in medicine about individual compensation is a result of us as a society being unclear as to whether health care is a social good or a business.

People don't talk that much about lack Welch's salary at General Electric, because you know it's capitalism and it's the American way and if he can run a business and make $100 million, then more power to him. When we start talking about health care, because of this societal aspect, then we get into value judgments about the people who are in it and how much money thay should make. I'm not dodging the question. I think there are people who are making too much money in health care. I think there are some people who are not making enough money in health care.

NMBJ: Are there things that hospitals could do to reduce costs?

Hinton: I think that the opportunity is for hospitals to quit focusing on costs per se and focus on quality outcomes and be held to a standard of reporting those outcomes that they heretofore have not been. The reason I'm comfortable with that is that my view of the world is that higher quality and lower cost go hand in hand, and that if we focus on doing the right things for the customers, the cost side of it will take care of itself.