by
Sean Ruck, Contributing Editor | May 31, 2019
From the May 2019 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Houston Methodist Hospital sits in the heart of the Texas
Medical Center, one of the premiere medical centers
in the world. The hospital has been named the best
hospital in Texas by U.S. News & World Report for
seven years in a row.
HCB News: What are your patient demographics like?
MB: We are a regional healthcare system, in that we serve the Greater Houston area. To put that into perspective, the Greater Houston area geographically — our geographic reach — is bigger than the state of New Jersey. So it’s a very large geographic area. Houston is the most diverse city in the country, which is one of its wonderful strengths. Our patient population really mirrors that.
HCB News: What is the makeup of payors?
MB: I think you’d see a very traditional makeup. Our number one payor, as with almost any adult care hospital in the country, is Medicare. Broadly, our number two payors would be all of the commercial insurers, all the large and many of the smaller insurers.
Dr. Thomas MacGillivray, Houston Methodist’s chief of
cardiac surgery and thoracic transplant, performing surgery.
HCB News: Why do patients choose Houston Methodist?
MB: We talk about our vision for the second century. We’re 100 years old in 2019 — we can come back to that. But our simple vision is six words: Unparalleled safety, quality, service, and innovation. So really, we seek to be an independent academic medical center and community hospitals that are literally second-to-none. We start with safety because that is the most important thing when you talk about hospital care. But following that, the utmost quality of care in a spiritual environment that’s caring and serving. We’re also an institution that values innovation and is always pushing the envelope to define tomorrow’s healthcare and train tomorrow’s doctors.
I’d also point out that as patients do their research when choosing a hospital, we are consistently, year after year, ranked as the number one hospital in the state of Texas from U.S. News & World Report. We are very proud of that fact. With our philosophy of focusing on the fundamentals, accolades tend to follow.
