Vanderbilt University Medical Center staff and faculty are preparing for a new health care landscape, one shaped by a lowered payment regime, greater outside scrutiny of health care quality, new rewards and penalties for hospital and provider safety and quality, and the transfer of financial risk for health outcomes from payers to newly affiliated hospitals and providers.

Vanderbilt faculty, staff and students are invited to register online to attend the 2013 State of the Adult Clinical Enterprise address by David Posch, CEO of Vanderbilt University Hospital and Clinics and executive director of Vanderbilt Medical Group, to be delivered Wednesday, Nov. 6 at two locations — at 7 a.m. in Williamson County at the Franklin Marriott, 700 Cool Springs Blvd., and again at 4 p.m. on the Vanderbilt University Medical Center campus at 208 Light Hall.

As Vanderbilt University Medical Center navigates large-scale operational change through Evolve to Excel (E2E) a number of creative and substantive cost savings initiatives have already been identified. The Medical Center’s first priority remains to achieve savings through efforts that focus on costs associated with supplies and other non-labor expenses.

The way David Posch, CEO of Vanderbilt University Hospital and Clinics, described the health care industry’s current landscape to members of the Patient and Family Advisory Council at the group’s August meeting Tuesday night was by quoting the opening line of Charles Dickens’ “Tale of Two Cities” — “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”