Innovations Benefiting Patients and Communities

Episode Takeaways

1. Rasu Shrestha, MD, MBA, enterprise executive VP and chief strategy and transformation for Atrium Health, joins Gil to discuss healthcare innovations and inventions that benefit patients and communities. Dr. Shrestha also served as chief innovation officer for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, where he drove innovation strategy and transformation.
2. We can’t generalize when we’re talking about not for profit vs. for profit healthcare systems. Not for profit isn’t a financial goal, it’s a tax status that’s reflected by what you do to live up to it. Not for profit health systems aren’t all the same, but what differentiates the ones that do it right is the stickiness to their stated mission. They uniformly translate their values to their strategic priorities and ways of working. Few are getting it truly right, but clarity of mission must drive the business model.
3. We talk a lot about healthcare transformation. It’s not a future event. It’s happening now and we have to catalyze it. We have to understand and grasp the urgency of the now. Particularly after living through the pandemic, it’s glaringly obvious that we continue to hit the snooze button on innovation and transformation. Complacency is dangerous.
4. The status quo is comfortable, especially for large, profitable, successful organizations. Healthcare is hard; the economics don’t always make sense. We’re challenged to broader our collective apertures to capture the bigger picture. Broadening our view with the whole person at the center of the care experience. What we’re doing right now is more of the same, but if we can focus in on the person as a whole, it moves the dialogue and economics from sick care to well care, from surviving to thriving.
5. It’s not just about adding years to life, its about adding life to years. When you look at the continuum of the patient as a consumer and a patient and how we in the system – no matter where that may be – think about that experience, choices that we make matter a great deal. Care is a really important part of it, but we sometimes don’t think about all the rest of the important things that influence behavior, affecting individuals on their life through journey and leading to good health.