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Major forces combining to reshape care delivery
What will be the role of humans in the future health system?
At first blush, this is a peculiar question. Health care is all about humans. How could one doubt their presence or role? It is working with and for people that attracted many to this profession.
On the cusp of a significant health system reformulation, it is the very question that hospitalists now must ponder. Just as ATMs replaced bank cashiers, online shopping replaced retail stores, and autonomous cars will soon replace drivers, the human landscape of health care is about to change. What pressures will force the changes?
On one hand, there is increasing demand. The Affordable Care Act opened the insurance door for people previously uncovered. Aging is delivering the baby boomer bubble into their sicker years. Hospitalists witness this phenomenon every day in the ballooning parade of patients they serve. At times, those pressures can overwhelm.
On the other hand, the political will to provide government subsidized health coverage is waning. Washington is tripping over itself to dismantle Obamacare with glancing concern for how it will inflate the ranks of the uninsured. Employers are eager to free themselves from the burden of providing increasingly expensive health coverage benefits. By removing the mandate to buy health care insurance, the current political health system architects are liberating the healthy paying population from their contributions to the overall insurance pool. Simply put, there is and will be less money and less of all that it buys.
Combine building demand with decreasing budget into a system that does not follow general market forces: You get that earthquake. A consumer can forgo that new phone in hard times but not that cardiac procedure. People will be caught in the fissures of the system. Waits, quality, burnout, morale problems, and financial losses will all trend in the wrong directions. The process will evolve in slow motion. Some might argue that we have already arrived.
Enter entrepreneurs, technologic advances, and a growing savvy and willingness to engage tech solutions to everyday problems. If Alexa can turn on your toaster, could it take your blood pressure? If a robot can vacuum your rug, could a different robot provide personal care services? And, if an algorithm can drive your car, could it similarly diagnose what ails you?
On Jan. 30, 2018, one of the greatest disrupters of all time, Amazon, announced that it is joining forces with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase to leap into health care. While they are initially experimenting with health care changes for their corporate employees, the ultimate marketwide goal is to apply technology to both reduce costs and improve patient care. Warren Buffet, Berkshire Hathaway’s founder, said in a statement, “The ballooning costs of health care act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy.” (And yes, I imagine that many hospitalists would take umbrage with that characterization.) In addition to the Amazon alliance, CVS Health and Aetna also recently agreed to join forces.
The rising health care interest by Amazon begs the imagination. Technology already is far along in automating routine procedures, elevating patient safety protocols, and recalculating patient flows and information. This added corporate interest and investment will further expand new ideas and innovative technologies. And, for sure, it will challenge long held beliefs and practices that shape the health system we have today.
Hospitalist insight needed
What is the role of hospitalist leaders in this shifting equation? Hospitalists already can claim significant credit for introducing major changes in the landscape of hospital care in this country, with all the concomitant improvements in the efficiencies and quality of more integrated service delivery. Can you also guide the system in strategically selecting where and how technology can best be applied to automate and reconfigure service delivery?
The most important questions are: What is it that humans in health care uniquely do that cannot otherwise be accomplished? Are we able to hold onto the humane sides of health care, even as we seek to introduce cost-saving efficiencies?
Top of mind come the most personal sides of health service delivery: touch, empathy, understanding, and care itself. Next come human analysis, understanding, and translation. And beyond that, leadership, direction, and the vision to craft a health care system that meets our societal expectations – not just for the wealthy who cannot afford it – but for everyone.
It would be easy to dismiss this conversation. Society never decided whether those bank tellers, travel agents, or journalists were critical to our functioning. Along these same lines, you and your patients are more than mere algorithms.
As I often share in my leadership seminars, one key function of leaders is to identify and ask the right questions and to be at the decision-making table. What are those questions?
As a hospitalist leader, which part of your work and your activities could be eased by automation? Where might technology ease pressures and enhance your interactions with patients? How do we improve the efficiencies and effectiveness of health service delivery while we preserve the very human qualities that are fundamental to its values? No patient wants to speak to a physician who stares at a computer screen without eye contact, reassurance, or genuine interest. We can do better than that.
Business stakeholders in the system – and clearly, they are positioning and are powerful – will hold great sway on the contours of our future health care system. They could see humans – with all their costs, imperfections, and distractions – as replaceable.
Know that as you lead and pose your questions, there are people interested in listening. Certainly, the tech industry is looking for opportunities to generate broad market appeal. Similarly, health system decision makers looking to enhance how the system functions likewise seek guidance on what could – and could not – work. And who knows: Those decision makers could very well be you.
This is a conversation the country deserves. There is nothing more intimate, more personally important, and more professionally satisfying than the genuine person-to-person quality of what we do in health care. What we arrive at in the end should be achieved by intent, not by accident.
Dr. Marcus is coauthor of “Renegotiating Health Care: Resolving Conflict to Build Collaboration,” 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2011) and is director of the program for health care negotiation and conflict resolution, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston. Dr. Marcus teaches regularly in the SHM Leadership Academy. He can be reached at [email protected].
Major forces combining to reshape care delivery
Major forces combining to reshape care delivery
What will be the role of humans in the future health system?
At first blush, this is a peculiar question. Health care is all about humans. How could one doubt their presence or role? It is working with and for people that attracted many to this profession.
On the cusp of a significant health system reformulation, it is the very question that hospitalists now must ponder. Just as ATMs replaced bank cashiers, online shopping replaced retail stores, and autonomous cars will soon replace drivers, the human landscape of health care is about to change. What pressures will force the changes?
On one hand, there is increasing demand. The Affordable Care Act opened the insurance door for people previously uncovered. Aging is delivering the baby boomer bubble into their sicker years. Hospitalists witness this phenomenon every day in the ballooning parade of patients they serve. At times, those pressures can overwhelm.
On the other hand, the political will to provide government subsidized health coverage is waning. Washington is tripping over itself to dismantle Obamacare with glancing concern for how it will inflate the ranks of the uninsured. Employers are eager to free themselves from the burden of providing increasingly expensive health coverage benefits. By removing the mandate to buy health care insurance, the current political health system architects are liberating the healthy paying population from their contributions to the overall insurance pool. Simply put, there is and will be less money and less of all that it buys.
Combine building demand with decreasing budget into a system that does not follow general market forces: You get that earthquake. A consumer can forgo that new phone in hard times but not that cardiac procedure. People will be caught in the fissures of the system. Waits, quality, burnout, morale problems, and financial losses will all trend in the wrong directions. The process will evolve in slow motion. Some might argue that we have already arrived.
Enter entrepreneurs, technologic advances, and a growing savvy and willingness to engage tech solutions to everyday problems. If Alexa can turn on your toaster, could it take your blood pressure? If a robot can vacuum your rug, could a different robot provide personal care services? And, if an algorithm can drive your car, could it similarly diagnose what ails you?
On Jan. 30, 2018, one of the greatest disrupters of all time, Amazon, announced that it is joining forces with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase to leap into health care. While they are initially experimenting with health care changes for their corporate employees, the ultimate marketwide goal is to apply technology to both reduce costs and improve patient care. Warren Buffet, Berkshire Hathaway’s founder, said in a statement, “The ballooning costs of health care act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy.” (And yes, I imagine that many hospitalists would take umbrage with that characterization.) In addition to the Amazon alliance, CVS Health and Aetna also recently agreed to join forces.
The rising health care interest by Amazon begs the imagination. Technology already is far along in automating routine procedures, elevating patient safety protocols, and recalculating patient flows and information. This added corporate interest and investment will further expand new ideas and innovative technologies. And, for sure, it will challenge long held beliefs and practices that shape the health system we have today.
Hospitalist insight needed
What is the role of hospitalist leaders in this shifting equation? Hospitalists already can claim significant credit for introducing major changes in the landscape of hospital care in this country, with all the concomitant improvements in the efficiencies and quality of more integrated service delivery. Can you also guide the system in strategically selecting where and how technology can best be applied to automate and reconfigure service delivery?
The most important questions are: What is it that humans in health care uniquely do that cannot otherwise be accomplished? Are we able to hold onto the humane sides of health care, even as we seek to introduce cost-saving efficiencies?
Top of mind come the most personal sides of health service delivery: touch, empathy, understanding, and care itself. Next come human analysis, understanding, and translation. And beyond that, leadership, direction, and the vision to craft a health care system that meets our societal expectations – not just for the wealthy who cannot afford it – but for everyone.
It would be easy to dismiss this conversation. Society never decided whether those bank tellers, travel agents, or journalists were critical to our functioning. Along these same lines, you and your patients are more than mere algorithms.
As I often share in my leadership seminars, one key function of leaders is to identify and ask the right questions and to be at the decision-making table. What are those questions?
As a hospitalist leader, which part of your work and your activities could be eased by automation? Where might technology ease pressures and enhance your interactions with patients? How do we improve the efficiencies and effectiveness of health service delivery while we preserve the very human qualities that are fundamental to its values? No patient wants to speak to a physician who stares at a computer screen without eye contact, reassurance, or genuine interest. We can do better than that.
Business stakeholders in the system – and clearly, they are positioning and are powerful – will hold great sway on the contours of our future health care system. They could see humans – with all their costs, imperfections, and distractions – as replaceable.
Know that as you lead and pose your questions, there are people interested in listening. Certainly, the tech industry is looking for opportunities to generate broad market appeal. Similarly, health system decision makers looking to enhance how the system functions likewise seek guidance on what could – and could not – work. And who knows: Those decision makers could very well be you.
This is a conversation the country deserves. There is nothing more intimate, more personally important, and more professionally satisfying than the genuine person-to-person quality of what we do in health care. What we arrive at in the end should be achieved by intent, not by accident.
Dr. Marcus is coauthor of “Renegotiating Health Care: Resolving Conflict to Build Collaboration,” 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2011) and is director of the program for health care negotiation and conflict resolution, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston. Dr. Marcus teaches regularly in the SHM Leadership Academy. He can be reached at [email protected].
What will be the role of humans in the future health system?
At first blush, this is a peculiar question. Health care is all about humans. How could one doubt their presence or role? It is working with and for people that attracted many to this profession.
On the cusp of a significant health system reformulation, it is the very question that hospitalists now must ponder. Just as ATMs replaced bank cashiers, online shopping replaced retail stores, and autonomous cars will soon replace drivers, the human landscape of health care is about to change. What pressures will force the changes?
On one hand, there is increasing demand. The Affordable Care Act opened the insurance door for people previously uncovered. Aging is delivering the baby boomer bubble into their sicker years. Hospitalists witness this phenomenon every day in the ballooning parade of patients they serve. At times, those pressures can overwhelm.
On the other hand, the political will to provide government subsidized health coverage is waning. Washington is tripping over itself to dismantle Obamacare with glancing concern for how it will inflate the ranks of the uninsured. Employers are eager to free themselves from the burden of providing increasingly expensive health coverage benefits. By removing the mandate to buy health care insurance, the current political health system architects are liberating the healthy paying population from their contributions to the overall insurance pool. Simply put, there is and will be less money and less of all that it buys.
Combine building demand with decreasing budget into a system that does not follow general market forces: You get that earthquake. A consumer can forgo that new phone in hard times but not that cardiac procedure. People will be caught in the fissures of the system. Waits, quality, burnout, morale problems, and financial losses will all trend in the wrong directions. The process will evolve in slow motion. Some might argue that we have already arrived.
Enter entrepreneurs, technologic advances, and a growing savvy and willingness to engage tech solutions to everyday problems. If Alexa can turn on your toaster, could it take your blood pressure? If a robot can vacuum your rug, could a different robot provide personal care services? And, if an algorithm can drive your car, could it similarly diagnose what ails you?
On Jan. 30, 2018, one of the greatest disrupters of all time, Amazon, announced that it is joining forces with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase to leap into health care. While they are initially experimenting with health care changes for their corporate employees, the ultimate marketwide goal is to apply technology to both reduce costs and improve patient care. Warren Buffet, Berkshire Hathaway’s founder, said in a statement, “The ballooning costs of health care act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy.” (And yes, I imagine that many hospitalists would take umbrage with that characterization.) In addition to the Amazon alliance, CVS Health and Aetna also recently agreed to join forces.
The rising health care interest by Amazon begs the imagination. Technology already is far along in automating routine procedures, elevating patient safety protocols, and recalculating patient flows and information. This added corporate interest and investment will further expand new ideas and innovative technologies. And, for sure, it will challenge long held beliefs and practices that shape the health system we have today.
Hospitalist insight needed
What is the role of hospitalist leaders in this shifting equation? Hospitalists already can claim significant credit for introducing major changes in the landscape of hospital care in this country, with all the concomitant improvements in the efficiencies and quality of more integrated service delivery. Can you also guide the system in strategically selecting where and how technology can best be applied to automate and reconfigure service delivery?
The most important questions are: What is it that humans in health care uniquely do that cannot otherwise be accomplished? Are we able to hold onto the humane sides of health care, even as we seek to introduce cost-saving efficiencies?
Top of mind come the most personal sides of health service delivery: touch, empathy, understanding, and care itself. Next come human analysis, understanding, and translation. And beyond that, leadership, direction, and the vision to craft a health care system that meets our societal expectations – not just for the wealthy who cannot afford it – but for everyone.
It would be easy to dismiss this conversation. Society never decided whether those bank tellers, travel agents, or journalists were critical to our functioning. Along these same lines, you and your patients are more than mere algorithms.
As I often share in my leadership seminars, one key function of leaders is to identify and ask the right questions and to be at the decision-making table. What are those questions?
As a hospitalist leader, which part of your work and your activities could be eased by automation? Where might technology ease pressures and enhance your interactions with patients? How do we improve the efficiencies and effectiveness of health service delivery while we preserve the very human qualities that are fundamental to its values? No patient wants to speak to a physician who stares at a computer screen without eye contact, reassurance, or genuine interest. We can do better than that.
Business stakeholders in the system – and clearly, they are positioning and are powerful – will hold great sway on the contours of our future health care system. They could see humans – with all their costs, imperfections, and distractions – as replaceable.
Know that as you lead and pose your questions, there are people interested in listening. Certainly, the tech industry is looking for opportunities to generate broad market appeal. Similarly, health system decision makers looking to enhance how the system functions likewise seek guidance on what could – and could not – work. And who knows: Those decision makers could very well be you.
This is a conversation the country deserves. There is nothing more intimate, more personally important, and more professionally satisfying than the genuine person-to-person quality of what we do in health care. What we arrive at in the end should be achieved by intent, not by accident.
Dr. Marcus is coauthor of “Renegotiating Health Care: Resolving Conflict to Build Collaboration,” 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2011) and is director of the program for health care negotiation and conflict resolution, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston. Dr. Marcus teaches regularly in the SHM Leadership Academy. He can be reached at [email protected].