The poll of 1,000 U.S. adults finds strong support among those who have used the program, with more than 80% saying they’d use it again.
One of the more popular arguments for launching a hospital at home program is that patients prefer to be treated from the comfort of their own home rather than stay in a hospital. A new survey proves that point.
According to a survey of some 1,000 U.S. consumers aged 40 and older, more than 80% of respondents who have taken part in such a program have had a positive experience, and 84% said they’d participate in the program again to get home sooner.
By contrast, less than 2% reported a negative or very negative experience, and about 16% said they were not likely to try the program again.
The survey, sponsored by digital health company Vivalink, adds fuel to efforts to make Medicare guidelines and reimbursements for the program permanent, and to compel more providers and payers to support the program. Well over 300 health systems and hospitals across the country are receiving Medicare reimbursements under the Acute Hospital Care at Home (AHCaH) model developed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), but CMS is on track to end that program after this year.
CMS support—especially the reimbursements—is crucial to the growth of the strategy. Many healthcare organizations launched AHCaH programs during the pandemic, when CMS unveiled the program to address overcrowded hospitals and inpatient staffing shortages. Without that support, many health systems and hospitals will likely shut down those programs to reduce costs and focus on more business-friendly services.
Proponents argue that hospital at home programs, also called acute care at home programs, can reduce costs by cutting down on expensive hospital-based services, and they will show improved clinical outcomes over the long run. That argument is based in part on the idea that patients are more comfortable at home and will be more likely to follow doctor’s orders and care plans. A more engaged patient, in turn, will heal better and more quickly.
The survey finds that patients are indeed interested in staying in their own beds rather than a hospital room. For example. some 77% of those surveyed said they’d trust their doctor’s recommendation to take part in such a program. And the top reasons they’re willing to do so are the convenience and comfort of home (46%), avoiding exposure to infections in the hospital (23%), and confidence in remote patient monitoring (18%).
The reasons for taking part in a hospital at home program are surprisingly varied, and point to the potential for these programs to treat more patients. Some 30% were treated at home for infectious diseases or respiratory disorders—the reason CMS launched the program in the first place. Roughly 46%, meanwhile, were treated for heart-related conditions, and almost 38% were involved in cancer treatment or recovery.
In addition, almost 38% of respondents taking part in a hospital at home program were being treated for neurological disorders, and 34% were being treated for diabetes.
Finally, just under half of the respondents who had taken part in a hospital at home program said the RPM devices were easy to use, while the roughly 16% who said they wouldn’t use the program again cited difficult with the RPM devices as their biggest problem.
Abbott and the National Association of Community Health Centers and partnering on a national effort to develop and launch innovative programs that use healthy eating and nutrition to combat chronic diseases and other health concerns.
Eight health centers across the country have been selected to test innovative “food as medicine” strategies as part of a national effort aimed at helping providers to integrate nutrition into their care plans.
The Innovation Incubator, launched by Abbott and the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC), will give each health center $30,000 to develop new programs over the next six months. The goal is to create new strategies that can be adopted by the network of 1,400 health centers across the country, as well as other health systems and hospital looking to address a key social determinant of health.
"Food insecurity severely impacts the health of underinvested communities," NACHC President and CEO Kyu Rhee, MD, MPP, said in a press release. "As the nation's largest primary care network, health centers' highly effective and innovative integrated model of care reaches beyond the walls of the traditional exam room to not only prevent illness but also address the social drivers that may cause poor health. Our focus this year is to create sustainable, effective strategies that solve food challenges and improve nutrition."
The effects of food insecurity, which studies have shown affects roughly 13% of U.S. households, go hand-in-hand with clinical outcomes. Chronic diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma, COPD, and cardiac issues are hampered and even worsened by a lack of nutrition. And while the impact is most acutely felt in underserved populations who have problems accessing good food, the concept of eating for good health needs to be taught to everyone regardless of social standing.
Healthcare organizations are embracing food as medicine strategies in an effort to tackle SDOH and bend the curve on skyrocketing costs for chronic care management. Some of the tactics used so far have included programs that deliver healthy foods and prepared meals to patients, partnerships with local food markets, health eating incentive programs, even virtual cooking and nutrition classes.
The participating health centers are Affinia Healthcare in St. Louis; Asian Health Services in Oakland; Cabin Creek Health Systems in Charleston, West Virginia; Delaware Valley Community Health in Philadelphia; White Couse Clinics in Richmond, Kentucky; Mainline Health Systems in Monticello, Arkansas; Tri-Area Community Health in Laurel Fork, Virginia; and Urban Health Plan in New York.
They’ll be launching experimental projects over the next six months, and will be called on to create pitches for one of two additional awards in the fall. The NACHC will share the results of the programs with its network of community health centers, affecting some 31 million people.
"In response to higher rates of both food insecurity and chronic illnesses that can be better managed through healthier diets, Urban Health Plan and many of our community partners in the Bronx have prioritized making healthy food accessible to residents through food pantries, farmers markets, and regular food distribution events," Paloma Izquierdo-Hernandez, the health center’s president and CEO, said in the press release. "We're planning to bring in local chefs to help educate our community on preparing healthier meals with a focus on affordable and culturally relevant foods that can be found locally.
The incubator, in its second year, was launched by the NACHC’s Center for Community Health Innovation, which has been instrumental in getting health centers to tackle the digital divide through telehealth, patient portals and digital and health literacy programs.
The health system, participating in the HealthLeaders Virtual Nursing Mastermind program, sees the innovative program as just one part of a lasting ‘connected care’ digital health transformation strategy.
At Houston Methodist, virtual care is ingrained into care delivery, and virtual nursing is part of the connected care process, rather than some shiny new thing. The trick, say health system leaders, is to combine short-term ROI that shows financial benefits with long-term results that demonstrate true value-based care.
Stave Klahn, Houston Methodist’s System Clinical Director for Virtual Medicine, says the virtual nursing program was launched in June 2022, and now comprises 35 nurses and 30 FTEs across 1,400 beds in seven hospitals. The program, he says, includes many KPIs, with an understanding that each little change in the process of care can contribute to value down the road.
“We really focus heavily on time durations of each activity that we do,” he says. And to get results, one looks at the “so many feeder things that lead up to that.”
Houston Methodist is one of a dozen health systems across the country that participated in the HealthLeaders Virtual Nursing Mastermind program, which consisted of three virtual roundtable and a two-day live event this past week in Atlanta. The goal of the program is to foster intensive discussions around virtual nursing, diving into what makes a program work, how to overcome challenges to sustainability, and what metrics to track to measure success or identify pain points.
Klahn and Sarah Pletcher, MD, MHCDS, Houston Methodist’s SVP and Executive Medical Director for Strategic Innovation, say the program started with the intention of improving nurse well-being by fine-tuning workflows, and added goals from that point. Alongside addressing admission and discharge times, key elements of a patient’s length of stay, they’re looking at care coordination and management and documentation compliance.
Analytics and reporting are part of the process, Klahn says, because “you’ve got to demonstrate ROI early on.”
Pletcher says the program has to be flexible and nimble. While health system leadership is focused on reducing costs and saving money, virtual nursing programs should be showing off a mixture of hard and soft ROI—appealing to the hearts and minds as well as the wallets. And always be ready to try new things.
“You may get credit for helping with something in the beginning but then a year later people forget or are looking for new value,” she says.
Houston Methodist’s program is one of the more advanced in the country, with a dedicated virtual nursing workforce (Klahn says they look for nurses with at least two years of experience and a wide range of backgrounds) and a central virtual operations center, as well as opportunities for virtual nurses to work from home. They’re also in the final stage of installing wall-mounted technology in all of their patient rooms and using wearables to track patient vital signs.
Klahn says it’s important to include the nurses in each phase of planning a virtual nursing service, and show them the value of virtual nursing so that they’ll support it. That includes clearly identifying the roles for both virtual and floor nurses. ’Customers’ of any new care models like virtual services do notice when they’re included in the design process, and they’re more comfortable with suggesting tweaks and new ideas for making processes more efficient.
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The retail giant is folding its nearly two-year-old Amazon Clinic business into Amazon One Medical, saying the move makes things easier for consumers accessing care.
Amazon is consolidating its healthcare services under one brand, bringing its on-demand virtual care offering together with its primary care platform.
Amazon Clinic, which launched nearly two years ago to give members access to virtual care visits for more than 30 non-acute health issues, is being rebranded as Amazon One Medical’s pay-per-visit telehealth service. The platform, available in every state, offers single-visit prices of $25 for a messaging visit or $49 for a virtual visit, alongside monthly and annual subscriptions.
“It’s simply too hard to get the medical care you need, when you need it, and affordably—long waits, high costs, and impersonal care make it unnecessarily difficult for many patients today,” Neil Lindsay, senior vice president of Amazon Health Services, said in a blog on the company’s website. “We’re focused on improving both the occasional and ongoing medical care experience.”
The announcement—coming on the same day that Walgreens announced plans to rid itself of VillageMD and close a significant number of pharmacies in the U.S.—gives the retail giant a more focused footprint in the increasingly volatile primary care market. And it gives health system and hospital leaders a clear model to compare or contrast their own direct-to-consumer strategies, particularly in telehealth.
The challenge for industry decision-makers is understanding where Amazon is competitive with traditional brick-and-order healthcare organizations, and why. Analysts have often said the retail giant could be a true disruptor in the space by offering more convenient access to care to consumers put off by the bloated hospital or clinic healthcare experience.
And yet Amazon has had as many misses as hits in the space, including the failed Haven and Amazon Care programs. Health system and hospital executives argue that primary care is a very difficult field in which to establish a foothold, particularly for organizations that focus on profit rather than long-term health and wellness.
The group, comprised of health systems and vendors, has released an Assurance Standards Guide for AI in healthcare and is seeking public comments for the next 60 days.
A coalition of health systems and AI companies working with the federal government on AI standards is seeking public comments on a new draft framework for responsible use of AI in healthcare.
“Shared ways to quantify the usefulness of AI algorithms will help ensure we can realize the full potential of AI for patients and health systems,” Nigam H. Shah, MBBS, PhD, chief data scientist for Stanford Health Care and a co-founder and board member of CHAI, said in a press release. “The guide represents the collective consensus of our 2,500 strong CHAI community including patient advocates, clinicians and technologists.”
Formed in 2023, CHAI includes Stanford, the Mayo Clinic, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Google, and Microsoft. It now boasts more than 2,500 members and has been working with the National Health Council and health standards organization HL7.
CHAI executives say the guide, part of a package of documents called the Assurance Reporting Checklists, aligns with the National Academy of Medicine’s AI Code of Conduct, the White House Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, several frameworks from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Cybersecurity Framework from the Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Strategic Preparedness & Responses.
Also included are six use cases for AI:
Predictive EHR Risk Use Case (Pediatric Asthma Exacerbation)
Imaging Diagnostic Use Case (Mammography)
Generative AI Use Case (EHR Query and Extraction)
Claims-Based Outpatient Use Case (Care Management)
Clinical Ops & Administration Use Case (Prior Authorization with Medical Coding)
Genomics Use Case (Precision Oncology with Genomic Markers)
“We reached an important milestone today with the open and public release of our draft assurance standards guide and reporting tools,”. Brian Anderson, MD, CHAI’s president and chief executive officer and an associate professor of biomedical informatics at Harvard Medical School, said in the press release. “This step will demonstrate that a consensus-based approach across the health ecosystem can both support innovation in healthcare and build trust that AI can serve all of us.”
UPMC has sold a virtual consult tool developed during the pandemic to virtual care company eVisit and, along with MedStar Health, is investing in the company to foster future innovation opportunities.
A virtual consult tool developed by UPMC during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic is being sold to eVisit to enhance its inpatient telemedicine platform.
At the same time, both UPMC Enterprises and MedStar Health are investing in the Arizona-based virtual care company “to pursue co-development opportunities.”
The transactions point to the shifting nature of health system-based telemedicine and the value of hospital-vendor partnerships in expanding enterprise-wide platforms. More and more healthcare organizations are the seeing the benefits of developing and marketing their own capabilities to companies who can then integrate those tools into a much larger platform.
"Our guiding mission at UPMC Enterprises is to develop solutions to the clinical needs identified by the thousands of physicians at UPMC who provide lifesaving care to our patients," Brenton Burns, executive vice president at UPMC Enterprises, said in a press release. "When we create something like the teleconsult technology that so brilliantly achieves that goal and becomes a vital part of our clinical operations, we look for partners who can help us make it available to clinicians and patients outside our walls. We're excited to have found that partner in eVisit. Bringing these two technologies together creates a powerful end-to-end virtual care platform."
UPMC developed the technology in 2020 to facilitate virtual consults between bedside clinicians and specialists in stroke, neurology, critical care, psychology, and toxicology. The idea behind the tool was to help clinicians in rural locations and those beleaguered by a crush of pandemic patients to access help on demand, improving care management and speeding up care coordination. According to the health system, the tool has facilitated 40,000 consults and curbed wait times by 92%.
Bolting that capability onto eVisit’s virtual care platform will give more health systems the opportunity to use it. That includes Maryland-based MedStar Health, which has worked with eVisit since 2018 and collaborated with the vendor to develop its MedStar Health Connected Care transformation model.
"Our growing partnership with eVisit continues to redefine what is possible with care delivery powered by the best digital innovation and expertise," William Sheahan, the health system’s chief innovation officer and executive director of the MedStar Institute for Innovation, said in the release. "As we expand our work together, we sharpen our focus on acute care to strengthen newer capabilities such as virtual nursing, while continually pushing past boundaries through bold new innovation and action across the continuum of care."
The California health system is partnering with Best Buy Health to launch a remote patient monitoring platform to serve patients living with hypertension.
UC Davis Health is partnering with Best Buy Health on a remote patient monitoring program targeting hypertension control.
The Sacramento-based health system has signed a deal with the retail giant’s care-at-home business, Current Health, to supply RPM equipment, including digital blood pressure cuffs and scales, and a monitoring platform to selected patients. All data collected from that platform is then integrated into the health system’s EHR platform and accessed by the UC Davis Health Connected Care Center.
“Our integrated approach will provide patients with blood pressure monitoring and clinical support in real-time,” Bruce Hall, UC Davis Health’s chief clinical officer, said in a press release. “This collaboration is another example of how we are finding innovative ways to make health care more convenient, and more accessible to every patient, no matter who they are or where they live.”
The partnership is the latest in a series of collaborations for Best Buy Health and Current Health, which bring a consumer-facing retail strategy into the mix for health systems eager to improve care management at home as they more programs and services out of the hospital setting. The company is working with Baptist Health, OSF HealthCare, Geisinger, Atrium Health, Mount Sinai, NYU Langone Health, and Mass General Brigham, which signed a deal last September to support its Home Hospital program.
The UC Davis partnership takes aim at a condition that kills roughly 860,000 Americans each year, according to the American Medical Association, but can be easily monitored and even controlled through an RPM platform that gives care teams and on-demand link to patients at home.
Through that platform, the care team can track each participating patient’s blood pressure and weight throughout the day, and intervene with care recommendations or even adjust a care plan if a patient’s readings trend in the wrong direction.
The Best Buy link takes the technology and the monitoring workflow out of the hands of the care team, allowing them to focus on patient care, and puts it in the hands of Current Health staff, who visit the patient’s home 9much like the well-known Geek Squad) and set up the patient for the RPM platform, then make sure that platform is collecting and sending data properly.
In the long run, UC Davis Health can use that platform to add other care management services, such as offering group classes, one-on-one coaching and other resources. The health system also plans to expand the RPM program to serve patients living with other chronic conditions.
Cleveland-based University Hospitals is partnering with Aidoc to help radiologists screen CT scans and make care delivery more efficient
Clinicians dread the missed spot on a CT scan or X-ray that leads to a serious health concern. Now health systems are using AI to make sure those mistakes don’t happen.
University Hospitals recently announced a partnership with AIdoc to deploy the company’s aiOS platform across all 13 hospitals and dozens of outpatient facilities in the Cleveland-based health system. The technology aims to assist clinicians by giving them another tool to analyze images.
‘[We’re] looking to see if we’re finding things that we would have otherwise not seen,” says Donna Plecha, MD, the health system’s Chair of Radiology. “We work with AI – it is not replacing our reads. And I think most studies that look at AI with a radiologist, that combination usually does better than either one by itself.”
The distinction—is AI artificial or augmented intelligence?—encapsulates both the promise and the peril of the technology, which has drawn comparisons for its effect on healthcare to both the printing press and the Terminator. Advocates say AI will work best as a tool that clinicians can use to improve their work and their workflows, rather than a replacement for a doctor or nurse.
Plecha notes the difference, saying clinicians will always be reviewing AI output for accuracy. She says the presence of false negatives and false positives in early AI results supported that position.
“I think they’re realizing how careful they have to be and not believing everything that AI is marking,” she says.
As for the potential, UH officials point to the opportunity for AI to pick up on infinitesimal aspects of a CT scan or X-ray that might bypass the naked eye. That tiny spot could be a sign of a pulmonary embolism, aortic dissection, vertebral compression fracture, or pneumothorax. Identifying those and other acute health concerns early means the patient is moved more quickly to the appropriate care provider and treated more quickly and efficiently.
“The technology identifies both expected and unexpected findings, helps physicians prioritize urgent cases, and ensures all flagged conditions are reviewed by the care team,” the health system said in a press release announcing the partnership.
Plecha says the health system will review all the data collected by the AI platform for accuracy and outcomes before expanding the platform to other departments and use cases. That review process will also help clinicians better understand how to use AI and what to look for.
Aside from improving accuracy and care team efficiency, Plecha says the tool will also help University Hospitals make the most out of its limited supply of radiologists, addressing workforce shortages that are plaguing health systems and hospitals across the country. It will, she says, enable radiologists 9and, eventually, other clinicians) to work with more confidence and at the top of their license.
The idea of using AI to improve workflows isn’t new. Texas-based CHRISTUS Health, in announcing a partnership this week with Abridge to implement a clinician conversation tool, noted the effect on “cognitive load,” or the amount of mental effort needed to complete a task.
According to CHRISTUS officials, the AI tool helped reduce physician burnout by some 78% during a pilot earlier this year. With the AI tool, they said, physicians were under less stress and were able to perform their task better and more efficiently.
“I feel much less distracted with patients since I can focus on the conversation and history without pausing to take extensive notes or re-ask questions I missed during notetaking,” Myriah Willborn, MD, a family medicine doctor at the CHRISTUS Trinity Clinic in Corpus Christi, said in a statement issued by the health system.
The concern, of course, is that clinicians become too reliant on the technology, expecting it to be perfect and catch anything they miss. That’s where continuous review comes into play, along with the understanding that clinicians always have the final say in care and are using AI only as a tool to improve their decision-making.
To that end, Plecha says she sees a future where AI not only reads an image, but combs through all other information databases, from the EHR to other tests and exams, even outside sources reflecting social determinants of health, to form a more complete picture of the patient and recommend diagnoses and other treatments.
“In the future it’s going to be impossible to be a radiologist and not use AI,” she says.
The founder and CEO of a medical device company has been convicted of selling an implantable medical device to providers that didn't work at all—and then creating a replacement part that was also fake.
Healthcare executives looking to embrace the latest in implantable technology for patient care need to make sure their vendor partners are trustworthy.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in southern New York has secured a six-year prison sentence for the founder and CEO of a medical device company that sold a fake neurostimulator to healthcare providers and instructed them to bill insurers, including Medicare, for thousands of dollars in reimbursements. The device contained a plastic part that was purposefully too long, forcing providers to spend thousands of dollars to buy a replacement plastic part from the company that still didn’t work.
Laura Perryman, 55, of Delray Beach, Florida, founder and CEO of Stimwave, was sentenced to six years in prison and three years of supervised release by U.S. District Court Judge Denise L. Cote for healthcare fraud and conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and wire fraud following a two-week trial.
“Laura Perryman callously created a dummy medical device component and told doctors to implant it into patients,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a press release. “She did this out of greed, so doctors could bill Medicare and private insurance companies approximately $18,000 for each implantation of that dummy component and so she could entice doctors to buy her device for many thousands of dollars.”
“Perryman breached the trust of the doctors who bought her medical device, and more importantly, the patients who were implanted with that piece of plastic,” Williams continued. “This prosecution and today’s sentence are part of this Office’s ongoing work in combating fraud in the healthcare system and protecting patients from being exploited for money.”
According to the press release, Stimwave created and marketed an implantable neurostimulation device called the StimQ PNS System, which was supposed to treat chronic pain by stimulating certain peripheral nerves via an electric current. The device featured a so-called Pink Stylet, which was implanted in the patient to receive the electric impulses from another part, called the Lead.
Law enforcement officials said Stimwave sold the device to providers roughly between 2017 and 2020 for about $16,000 and told them they could bill insurers through two separate reimbursement codes for as much as $24,000.
Soon after receiving the device, providers told the company the Pink Stylet was too long to be safely implanted in patients. After a while, Stimwave—which didn’t lower the price of the device or alert providers to the problem—created a White Stylet as a replacement and sold it to providers for another $16,000.
“Perryman directed that Stimwave create the White Stylet — a dummy component made entirely of plastic, but which Perryman misrepresented to doctors as a receiver alternative to the Pink Stylet,” the press release stated. “The White Stylet could be cut to size by the doctor for use in smaller anatomical spaces and was created solely so that doctors and medical providers would continue to purchase the device for use in those scenarios and continue to bill for the implantation of a receiver component.”
According to law enforcement officials, Perryman oversaw training for doctors in how to use the device and also told others in her company to vouch for its effectiveness.
The lesson learned is that healthcare providers should do due diligence on vendors offering the latest medical devices with promises of improved clinical outcomes. And remember that plastic does not conduct electric currents.
Healthcare transformation is an evolving strategy. Some say a slow-but-steady approach works. Others—not so much.
Healthcare transformation is all the rage on the conference circuit these days, but are health systems and hospitals really transforming anything?
The litany of pain points within healthcare is long, from workforce shortages to soaring costs to ineffective outcomes. To address those issues, healthcare executives are looking at new technology like AI and virtual care. Some are looking for small, incremental gains, while others say the entire care delivery system has to change.
But Arthur Gianelli, MA, MBA, MPH, FACHE, chief transformation officer for New York’s Mount Sinai Health System, points out that technology may have caused just as much harm as good. For example, he says, EHRs transformed the healthcare industry “the wrong way.”
During a HealthIMPACT Forum this past week in New York City, Gianelli said the EHR is a great tool for collecting information, “but right now it has made the lives of our practitioners demonstrably worse.” Clinicians, he says, now spend as much time in front of computers as they do in front of their patients.
As a result, the industry sees transformation as a return to the past, when patient and clinician faced each other and talked about health.
That said, technology has the potential to improve healthcare—if executives know how to use it. And that comes with practice.
“You want people to try, to experiment, to potentially fail and to try again,” he said.
What’s the fix? Call your baby ugly.
Sachin Jain, MD, MBA, FACP, thinks healthcare hasn’t done enough yet to transform—and it’ll take a lot more pain and suffering to move the industry in the right director.
Jain, president and CEO of the SCAN Group and Health Plan and a long-standing voice in the healthcare field, is critical of efforts by health systems and hospitals to enact change because, he says, they haven’t really changed anything yet.
“Why have we made changing healthcare harder than putting a man on the moon?” he asked.
In a colorful appearance by video at the HealthIMPACT Forum, Jain said the industry has “normalized the abnormal” and put the wrong people in charge of care, creating a generation of people trained not to ask the tough questions—such as, why is healthcare having such a hard time defining value-based care?
It’s a question many healthcare innovation leaders are asking as disruptors like Walmart, Walgreens, and CVS Health all struggle with their primary care strategies. The popular response to this has been “Healthcare is hard,” but why is it hard? Have years and years of pay-for-procedure and episodic healthcare clouded the playing field so much that healthcare executives can’t understand what constitutes value?
Jain argued that healthcare leaders have to get serious about change, to the point of shutting down programs that aren’t working and enduring declining revenues and job losses. But healthcare, he said, has a very hard time shutting down anything.
“You can’t change without changing,” he said. “It starts by calling our baby ugly, and that’s really, really hard to do because it’s our baby.”
Jain likens AI to the printing press in its potential to transform an industry but says healthcare leaders have to ask the tough questions now, cutting programs and positions that aren’t working.
“When people talk about workforce strategies, a lot of times it’s because you have a [horrible] workforce,” he said, using a NSFW phrase.
To Gianelli, that means moving away from the same old conversations about financial benefits and looking more closely at what healthcare should be doing: Making people healthier. AI could do that, he says, and it could also “change the types of people that we actually need in the organization.”
He described transformation as a culture, rather than a strategy, and said healthcare organizations need to enact change not in the boardroom, but on the floor. That means pulling nurses, doctors, and patients into the conversation.
“Clinicians in a hospital attach to purpose,” he said, emphasizing the idea that everyone needs to be on the same page to enact change.
Jain said that will be tough.
“We’ve eroded people’s purpose,” Jain added. “And we’ve tried to solve the problem by giving doctors tchotchkes on recognition day.”