In this ongoing series, our CEO Justin Dearborn reacts to conversations happening in the industry that are helping us better understand the consumer’s point of view in healthcare.
Bob Riney became President and CEO of Henry Ford Health System in 2022, highlighting a career of more than 45 years of service at the health system.
In an interview that originally aired on the Healthcare Rap Podcast, Bob spoke with our Chief Marketing Officer Jared Johnson and his co-host Zain Ismail about a compelling vision for providing quality care amidst a challenging landscape and what has to happen for the hospital-centric business model to remain sustainable.
This conversation is even more relevant today, and it illuminates some shared beliefs that align with Praia Health's point of view. We pulled out some key insights from the episode. For each one, read what Bob said, followed by Justin's commentary today.
Bob:
“Disruptors to the industry are coming in at a rapid rate, and they're trying to get at just the most lucrative parts of the industry from an economic standpoint. If you're a for-profit company, it makes sense that that's what you would do. But that erodes the whole goal of connected, team-based care, and it potentially causes patients to go back to various places for care that are not well connected.”
“We [health systems] want to be that connector. We're trying to partner with companies that value our obligation to put health over treatment. Right now, we're still an industry that focuses on treating someone after they are facing something severe. We need to help people lead healthier lives. So if we can work with companies that share those values, I don't think that we should do everything alone anymore.”
Justin’s commentary:
We could not agree more with Mr. Riney. One of the underlying motivating factors for Providence to build Praia was a recognition that health and well care would become more distributed and involve numerous “partners” where a partner is best suited to provide relevant care and recommendations. In addition to partnering with entities that have shared values, health systems need to also ensure that the experience is as frictionless as possible driving loyalty back to the system. The first step in a frictionless framework is not to require a patient to create 5, 10, 15 new login credentials.
Bob:
“There's an arms race to adopt both AI and digital solutions. And one of the things that we're going to have to do as an industry is see if it works and fail fast. Because not everything is going to work. On the AI side, I think that will help us with the complex issues inside our hospitals that potentially give physicians and clinical leaders a new set of tools when they're looking at options and strategies for complex care.”
Justin’s commentary:
We love it. One of the wonderful aspects of digital solutions is that performance is quickly and easily measurable and hypotheses can quickly be proven or revised. Are outcomes improving, is patient satisfaction improving, is conversion increasing? We intuitively know that consumers and patients want a personalized interaction with their physicians. They want to feel like the physician and provider knows them. A generic one size fits all digital message or offering undercuts the desired outcome.
Bob:
“I think we have to help people redesign their job when we've implemented new technologies so they feel good about the new aspects of their job, as opposed to feeling threatened by the elimination of some things that they've done. Human beings are all to some extent adverse to change and worry about what's in it for them. It's a very human thing to worry about.”
Justin’s commentary:
Additionally, we like to emphasize the ability to grow capacity and services through technology enablement to help combat the growing staff shortage crisis.
Bob:
“Now when I go online and make a patient appointment for myself, I can also pre-register, pay the co-pay, go through my pharmaceutical reconciliation, and update all of my profile information so that when I go see the physician, there's not a waste of time of those things. For the first several months after this technology was implemented, I would show up at a clinic and still get asked exactly the same things by the medical assistant or clinic receptionist. After a couple of times, I finally came back to the team and said, ‘We haven't completed the continuum. We haven't helped the individuals redesign their roles so that they are excited about the things that they now have time to focus on.’ I think that's a perfect example of the change management cycle that we just have to work through.”
Justin’s commentary:
And this is just the tip of the iceberg in a consumers wellness journey. 80% of the journey is impacted outside of the clinical interaction but needs to be connected. A system can’t simply push the administrative burden to the patient without providing some tangible benefit. There is a reason the phrase ‘people, process, and technology’ is said in that order. Any change first involves the people it is impacting and the process and technology has to be understood by the end user.
Bob:
“It’s going to sound simple, but tell them that it's okay. Healthcare has been horrible at failing fast. Partly there's just a lot of ego that gets involved with not wanting to admit that something that you recommended or supported isn't doing everything that you hoped it would. So we have to change that psychology. And we have. We make sure that we're celebrating not just the development of a pilot, but the sunsetting of a pilot if it's not working, because we want to reward the fact that we made a very good decision based on data, and now we're making an equally good decision based on data to pivot. It’s the nature and evolution of technology.”
Justin’s commentary:
By reducing the friction and effort required to deploy new pilots and technologies, Praia is set up to help health systems cycle through more pilots. This de-risks the investments needed to pilot a solution, making it easier for ideas to fail fast or succeed at scale.
Comments in this article were made in good faith based on statements that are publicly available and are not intended to imply any endorsement, promotion, or other affiliation between Praia Health and Bob Riney, Henry Ford Health System, or the Healthcare Rap Podcast.
