On the fragmentation of care delivery — and how to empower patients to remain in charge
Santanu (San) Banerjee is VP of Product Development for CVS Health’s Health Services Business Unit. In that role, he is responsible for building digital products that power their community health clinics, health-in-the-home, and virtual care offerings. Prior to his role at CVS Health, San was Chief Digital Officer at Texas Health Resources and Head of Consumer Digital Strategy & Solutions at Humana. Before his time in healthcare, he held digital leadership roles in the Financial Services industry. San holds dual MBAs from Southern Methodist University and the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. He lives with his family in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Author’s Note: I first met San in 2017. I had recently started in a new role at Aetna/CVS Health. We needed to reimagine our digital experiences for seniors — and build out our Product Management function. When I interviewed San, I was blown away by his insights about the space. Things didn’t work out then, but we stayed in touch. Years later, he eventually joined CVS Health in a different role, and we reconnected. San was generous with his knowledge and his time, meeting with my team and I multiple times. We have remained in touch since I left CVS Health — bonding further over our shared caregiving journeys for our India-based parents. Most recently, we spoke on December 14, 2023 about some of the exciting work San was leading in the care delivery space. Excerpts from our conversation are below.
What do you remember about how we met?
A few years ago, I was asked to speak with Aetna about a Medicare-related job opportunity. I think we met as a result of those conversations. I still remember that it was a very candid conversation. I’m a person who’s like a sponge — and I was trying to absorb as much as I could about what Aetna is doing in Medicare. You were very upfront that there was a lot of work to be done — that there was ambiguity in the space. It left a very positive impression in my mind.
I said to myself — “I don’t know where this conversation is going to go, but I like it!”
What do you love about what you do?
For the last decade, I’ve been at the forefront of digital product development in the healthcare space. Previously, I worked in financial services. When I was at the crossroads, choosing between staying in financial services or moving to healthcare, the words of a mentor of mine came to mind:
“You can stay in Financial Services and make people wealthy. Or, you can be in Healthcare and really help people to be healthy.”
I didn’t know what I was walking into then! Healthcare is an industry where there are no dearth of problems to solve. The industry is not the same as it was 10 or 15 years ago. If somebody’s looking for a challenge, this is the industry to be in.
You are intellectually challenged every single day. The people who work in this industry genuinely love what they do. They’re in the game to have an impact and change the way things happen today. At the end of the day, you can see the things that you do can help deliver meaningful changes to people’s lives. You can relate to that directly. And that is very rewarding.
What is something cool you are working on now?
“Our healthcare system is extremely complex — and we sometimes forget the patient’s point of view.”
There are a lot of large enterprises with a lot of services for patients. But consumers may not know what is available, how to access those services — they don’t get to the right access point at the right time. People are still struggling. There’s so much cognitive load — they do not know what to do at the moment they need care. We keep talking about patient access — but patient access has not been solved yet.
So one thing I’ve been working on is an integrated patient scheduling experience to improve care access. I want the scheduling experience to be a little more personalized, a little more condition-driven — to enable patients to act in the right way.
Why does this work matter now?
Healthcare delivery is becoming more and more fragmented — more and more “unbundled.” There are more and more “point solutions.” Now, there may be spots of brilliance in these separate bundles that are being sold at separate service levels. Yet, the overall effect is that with unbundled care — it is more and more difficult to consume these services. But consumers want to consume these services on their own terms — there is a whole tsunami of consumer demands!
“These two competing trends are running right up against each other — and now we have a serious problem to solve.”
What helps to maximize the impact of the work you do?
“As we build these experiences, we have to keep our eyes and ears open to really understand what consumers are looking for.”
Even if we release a small MVP experience, we have to continuously iterate with data and consumer research. Consumer research is not just about the beginning of the initiative — it is a continuous process. And we have to keep in mind that what we are building is not a one-size-fits-all. Everybody’s journey is different — so personalization is necessary. That’s how we will be able to multiply our impact.
How will this change the world?
“In the world that I envision, I see healthcare delivery as a marketplace where the rules are defined by the patients and the consumers.”
It’s a world in which its not the doctors seeing the patients, but the other way around — patients are seeing the doctors. It’s a world in which everything in healthcare as we know it today will be challenged. We may be very far from that vision today, but I believe that the vision will come to life.
For the marketplace vision to become a reality, we need the ability for different healthcare players in the marketplace to interoperate with one another. Unbundling — which happens in a lot of industries — is good from a competition and service perspective. But interoperability between the players is essential — so they can meaningfully exchange data and records with each other.
The US government is already taking steps in this direction! The healthcare system in the US may be very complicated — but I think we are still very lucky to have what we do have. We have to be grateful for what we do have and continue to improve it.
Disclaimer: At the time of this writing, San Banerjee was an employee of CVS Health. All opinions expressed in this article and any corresponding comments are the personal opinions of the original authors, not those of CVS Health.
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