title: What's in a Name? The Necessary Transformation of the Academic Medical Center in the Era of Population Health and Accountable Care.
abstract: Academic medical centers (AMCs) and the physicians and other professionals who lead them need to recognize they are in a business that is making a transition from a system of "sickness" care to one of "health" care, accountable for the health of defined populations and for the value (quality divided by cost) of the services provided. This change has profound implications for how AMCs conceive themselves, how they function, and how they are paid for the work that they do. A failure to recognize how the disruption of the mission of AMCs is changing may impair them as irrevocably as other changes caused the demise of Kodak, once the world's leader in the manufacture and sale of photographic film and cameras. Leaders of academic medicine need to understand, respond to, and ultimately lead the transformation of our system of health. In this Commentary, the authors review the pressures driving these changes and potential responses to them-a process already under way. They summarize the issues in the question "Should the words 'health' and 'system' take the place of 'medical' and 'center' in our institutions' names and, more important, in how we conceive of what we do?" The authors propose the name "academic health system" to better identify primary objectives to measure success by the health of patients.
authors.affiliation: V.J. DiSesa is chief operating officer, Temple University Health System, and vice dean for clinical affairs and professor of surgery, Temple University School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. L.R. Kaiser is chief executive officer, Temple University Health System, senior vice president for the health sciences, Temple University, and dean and professor of surgery, Temple University School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
authors.forename: Verdi J
authors.initials: VJ
authors.lastname: DiSesa
authors.forename: Larry R
authors.initials: LR
authors.lastname: Kaiser
mesh_terms: D000046:Academic Medical Centers / Q000458:organization & administration*; D060866:Accountable Care Organizations / Q000458:organization & administration; D003695:Delivery of Health Care; D017048:Health Care Costs; D006293:Health Promotion / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006301:Health Services Needs and Demand; D006801:Humans; D009275:Names; D011634:Public Health; D012051:Reimbursement Mechanisms; D014481:United States