Healthcare Innovation: Refocus on What Matters Most

Earlier today, I read an article about a patient languishing in the hospital, actually in a storage room, waiting for care than never came. She eventually died from Sepsis. The hospital was overwhelmed with a lack of staff, resources and over 190 patients already waiting in the ER.

If you've spent anytime in a hospital ER lately, this story shouldn't surprise you. You can see firsthand the log jam and learn about the chaotic journey we've created for both provider and patient. Years ago, my wife's 90+ year old grandmother was misplaced in a very well respected hospital because of similar constraints on staff, room and time. Fortunately she was fine but if you watch, listen and observe, you see major problems now and on the horizon.

At the same time we're failing patients, the healthcare industry has seen an explosion of new technologies and innovations over the past decade - artificial intelligence, telemedicine, wearable devices, digital therapeutics, and more. Yet amid all this technological disruption, one undeniable truth remains: if we don't refocus on providers and look at technological advancements as augmentative tools, fragmented care delivery and prohibitive costs will continue.

Healthcare should be about the provider-patient relationship and ensuring people can access quality care when and where they need it most. That is not happening and in fact our current system continues to undermine that important connection and ideology of what healthcare is all about. Physicians, nurses, PT, OT, etc. are all burning out from administrative burdens that have grown substantially, even with supposedly better technology to assist. The constant patient documentation, prior authorizations, and a ton of time spent maneuvering through managed care on behalf of the patient. As they spend their time on this, lines get longer, patients get neglected and the patient experience and quality of care suffers.

It's clear the flow of how care is delivered desperately needs an overhaul. We can't continue piling on more tech complexity and costs without something breaking. You are witnessing that now.

What if instead, our industry's innovation efforts rallied around re-architecting healthcare from the ground up to alleviate the burdens on providers and patients? A system where:

Providers aren't drowning in data entry, but empowered by intelligent workflows and automated tools to focus on clinical care

Patients have a single, unified care journey guided by dedicated care navigators, not fragmented across dozens of disconnected providers

Virtual and in-person care blend seamlessly, triaging the right care to the right channel at the right time based on need

AI and machine learning work behind the scenes to optimize operational efficiencies and individualize care pathways

Providers across the continuum have full patient context at their fingertips, spending less time gathering information and more time treating

Costs bend by streamlining duplicative documents/tests/procedures and improving outcomes through coordinated, proactive care

While patient-facing devices and therapeutics have their place, stabilizing costs and improving outcomes requires fundamental delivery transformation.

Only by redesigning healthcare's core operating model, which currently revolves around the insurance industry, to a provider experience and patient-centric care journey can we truly maximize the potential of innovative technologies. Technology should be there to make the provider better and more efficient. Shiny new apps and solutions may garner headlines, but they'll never realize sustainable ROI if we don't first fix the broken system underneath.

Patients and providers alike deserve better than our current disjointed and expensive sick-care model. It's time for our industry to rise to the challenge and reorient around innovation that optimizes the ways we deliver care itself through smarter workflows, seamless care coordination, better payer models, and prioritized provider experiences.

That's the path to healthcare's sustainable future. Anything else is just putting a bandaid on the wound.