Alan Lieber serves as President and Chief Executive Officer at Overlook Medical Center.
On April 4h, Alan will speak at Becker's Hospital Review 10th Annual Meeting. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference, which will take place April 1-4, 2019 in Chicago.
To learn more about the conference and Alans session, click here.
Question: What do innovators/entrepreneurs from outside healthcare need to better understand about hospital and health system leaders?
Alan Lieber: In order to innovate and add value it is critical to become an expert on the ever-changing reimbursement system and its impact on providers. Traditionally health systems were rewarded for attracting patients and doing more for them. Now, the reimbursement system has been re-oriented to reward health systems for attracting customers and reducing certain costs of their treatment. Providers are in many different stages of this transition from the old fee-for-service model to value-based payment models and risk-based models. Depending upon where they are on that journey the incentives are mixed. Reducing costs can be incredibly beneficial in certain circumstances and detrimental in others. Innovators who better understand these often confusing and complex structures have a much better chance of adding real value as we all work on improving the health care system in the United States.
Q: What one strategic initiative will demand the most of your time and energy in 2019?
AL: Increasing access to care to our high performing integrated delivery system is a top focus at Atlantic Health System. We are working hard to reduce friction across all consumer interfaces and that requires persistence and focus. We are developing new access points - both physical and virtual. Consumers have high expectations that those access points are more in line with the transactional experiences they have in other areas of their lives, and that their access is technology enabled. And we are working with our physician colleagues to create an integrated care system based on a common set of patient care principles and a common medical record.
Q: Healthcare takes a lot of heat for not innovating quickly. What's your take on this?
AL: There are very few industries as heavily regulated as health care or that have higher stakes than people’s lives. Yes, this can be daunting, but let’s not forget the recent news that doctors have cured a second person of HIV AIDS. I know that innovation happens every day in the care setting – it just may not manifest as an app or something a consumer would see on their smart phone. So, it is easy for some to say that we aren’t innovative or are slow to innovate.
Yes, there are lots of obstacles to healthcare innovation, some of which can be easily reduced with effort. At our hospital we recently setup a 3D printer shop and it is remarkable to see this group develop interesting new products that solve problems we have in the hospital right now, like correcting an issue with hooks on our IV poles. It’s enabled them to iterate the designs over a short period of time and put products into production. We could never do this buying simple things like IV hooks from a supplier. We are applying this iterative process on the software side as well.
The obstacles to innovation certainly include the complex and changing reimbursement system and always our concerns for patient safety. If an organization is willing to set a true north to enhance the value of their services to consumers, many obstacles can be overcome.