Executives from hospitals and health systems across the country shared their expertise on the role of innovation with Becker's Hospital Review in September.
Here are seven pieces of wisdom and advice from those leaders:
Thomas J. Graham, MD, director of strategy and innovation in orthopedic surgery, NYU Langone Health (New York City): "Contrary to popular belief, innovation does not increase the cost of healthcare. It's incumbent on innovation leaders to consistently emphasize and defend this fact. We have to show that innovation delivers the margin of difference to address the modern challenges related to access, outcome experience and cost … We need to remind everyone in the ecosystem that innovation is hard: It's nonlinear, long to success and fraught with failure. Often, it's as much about the journey as the result."
Rebecca Kaul, chief innovation officer, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (Houston): "Impacting our patients in meaningful ways is the most important goal. We approach this by starting with strategy development, then designing the optimal experience, and only then finding the novel technology to enable that experience."
Rich Roth, chief strategic innovation officer, CommonSpirit Health (Chicago): "Personalization and choice are impacting all components of our society. In healthcare, we are seeing people increasingly choose primary care access models that uniquely fit who they are as individuals. That's why health systems need to focus on a '31 flavors strategy.' It's important to maintain traditional primary care models that many patients will continue to rely on, but we should also partner with novel population-specific groups to better serve patients along the continuum."
Chris Coburn, chief innovation officer, Partners HealthCare (Boston): "Our entire team is energized to be an element of moving innovation between the academic and commercial sectors. They live at that point of interface where they have the ability to help take an academic insight and see it deployed on the industry side. They all contribute in one fashion or another and derive great satisfaction from contributing to the health of patients by translating innovation from our faculty into products that will improve lives."
Kent Lehr, vice president of strategy and business development, UnityPoint Health (Des Moines, Iowa): "If your goal is 'not to fail,' then you probably won't push yourself far enough to succeed. You have to think bigger. … Embrace doing things differently, and be willing to try new innovations — even those that could ultimately fail or that might not work for 99.9 percent of a patient population or providers."
David Sylvan, vice president and executive director, University Hospitals Ventures (Cleveland): "Consumerism is one of the last few bastions of industries, from the retail world to hospitality and beyond, that healthcare has yet to crack. There are massive improvements that we can make in that regard, and a lot of the innovative tools we look at aim to improve the patient's experience, both within the hospital's four walls as well as in their homes."
Mark Coticchia, corporate vice president of innovation, Baptist Health South Florida (Coral Gables): "Top-down commitment is required for innovation to permeate the organization. In the most innovative cultures, the C-suite not only endorses innovation, but personally participates in and experiences the impact it brings."
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