The new healthcare — putting it all together
Having spent nearly a quarter century as a practicing physician and transformer of healthcare, I’ve never been more energized by the promise of a new, reconfigured healthcare experience than I am today. The challenges facing healthcare are well documented and understood, with an unsustainable cost curve and a system that seems to serve neither patients nor providers well. In order to address these challenges, the time has finally come to connect what I see as the three core elements of transformation: people, process and technology.
People
People have always been (and always will be) essential to understanding and redesigning healthcare. You can see and feel the human element in the caring touch of a physician, the gentle reassurance of a caregiver, the genuine connection between a patient and nurse, the heroism of a critical care or operating room team in action, and the eyes of a patient hopeful for continued healing progress. Healthcare is, fundamentally, a human endeavor. Human relationships are at its core. Think of the most meaningful relationships in your life. Do you (or could you) maintain these with a 15 minute face-to-face encounter a few times a year? Chances are, you stay in close contact by sharing stories, images, laughs and experiences across a variety of channels that fit into the frenetic pace of everyday life. Some face-to-face and some not. Apply this to the healing relationships in healthcare, and something magical happens. Something magical in the trust, support, accountability, understanding and connections that are essential elements of the health journey. I’ve seen this firsthand in the redesign of new and transformative models of primary care. This human-powered magic is impossible to ignore, and it will fuel a renaissance of personal and professional joy in frontline clinicians, and delight the patients with whom they collaborate.
Process
The Process of healthcare delivery (and redesign) is complex and challenging. This complexity only intensifies as we broaden the scope and reach and more purposefully involve patients, families, caregivers, community and nontraditional resources. Putting together the pieces in a compelling way is perhaps our biggest opportunity to transform healthcare. This is roll-up-the-sleeves work, but when it comes together, the results are profound. It is rewarding to see a skill-optimized team working collaboratively with the patient as an integral member, rather than just the person at the end of the process. When we focus on both the provider/team’s workflow and the patient’s lifeflow, the outcome is healthcare that just works. Design thinking, delivery science, behavior design, leadership, practice culture, clinical rigor, and personalization are all critical elements of successful process re-engineering. So too is business model innovation, in order to ensure that what makes practical sense also makes business sense.
Technology
Technology is often the focus of conversations about healthcare transformation. This is understandable, given so many advances in recent years. Technology is the great enabler — allowing us to rethink and reimagine the people and process elements of healthcare, and to create new models leveraging people and process. Enterprise Health IT solutions have received much of the focus to date, as a foundational element of the data framework of the future. Patient portals, OpenNotes, wearables, interoperability and patient generated health data begin to provide the foundation for the next generation of care delivery — one focused more intently on the consumers of healthcare. Data science and Artificial Intelligence (AI) will allow us to synthesize inputs from all the traditional and evolving sources of data, and generate meaningful, actionable insights to support clinical care, collaborative decisions and health behavior change. And let’s not forget less revolutionary forms of communication technology — telephones, video chat, online communities and messaging — that facilitate simple communication and enhance healing relationships when supported by the right processes and care models. At the end of every data point is a person trying to live their life, and the last mile of any new approach to care is connecting meaningfully with humans. This, too, is game-changing when translated into action.
Putting it all together
There is no shortage of caring, committed professionals in healthcare. It’s time to leverage that talent and commitment fully by outfitting clinicians, staff, patients and caregivers with the care models, business incentives, and digital tools to create a new healthcare. The next generation of healthcare services — if we get it right — will extend and enhance the most meaningful relationships through team-based care, virtual and asynchronous engagement, community connections, data driven prioritized insights, and more frequent touchpoints that are simpler and less of a burden — for patients and care teams alike. This is the promise and the magic of what we can accomplish in healthcare.
I joined Carium as Chief Medical Officer because I believe deeply in this promise, and in the vision that drives us every day — to empower patients and catalyze the revolution in care delivery that personalized healthcare will help create. If you share this vision, join us on the journey and let’s go make it happen.
