Alex Daneshmand, DO, MBA, FAAP, serves as Vice President, Quality and Patient Safety Officer for Lee Health.
On May 25th, Dr. Daneshmand will give a presentation on "Exceptional Lee Performance Excellence" at Becker's Hospital Review 11th 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 on May 24-26, 2021 in Chicago.
To learn more about the conference and Dr. Daneshmand's session, click here.
Question: What's one lesson you learned early in your career that has helped you lead in healthcare?
Alex Daneshmand: Being raised around the hospital system taught me to look at each member of the healthcare team differently. From the front desk to the provider, we all have a role in delivering the best healthcare possible. Unfortunately, for some people in healthcare, the passion is gone and the work has become routine instead of being a calling. What I learned early on in my career, it is a privileged job for us to help patients and be there in their moment of need. That privilege comes from responsibility and commitment to excellence.
Q: Where do you go for inspiration and fresh ideas?
AD: Look simply to solve problems. Creating innovative ways to deliver care should be fun for providers and staff. However, the complexity and difficulty to remove barriers have become the norm in healthcare. We need to think out of the box. Instead of thinking about all the reasons why we cannot change our system for better, we need to think about what we can do today to change the delivery care model. Put your hat on as a patient and say what do I want to see in my hospital, in my provider’s office. That is how we can innovate a different way to deliver care. If we don’t think that way, Amazon, CVS, and Walmart will continue to create a different alternative for our patients to seek care.
Q: Where do you go for inspiration and fresh ideas?
AD: Removing barriers for coordinated care. We need to make it easy for patients to get the help that they need. Over time, our healthcare has become more complex and difficult to navigate. Therefore, patients are lost in our system and as a result of miscommunication, hand-off complexity, the patients may sustain further injury or harm. We can change that with better communication between providers, improved hand-off and coordinated care between caregivers.
The greatest lessons I learned in healthcare were three things on my first day of medical school: “listen to your patients they will tell you what is wrong, don’t be over-enamored with technology, and give every patient something for their time of need”. More true today!
What do you see as the most exciting opportunity in healthcare right now?
With society’s obsession with technology, now is the time to harness cutting edge technology to facilitate the human interaction, not replace it.
Healthcare has had calls for disruption, innovation and transformation for years now. Do you feel we are seeing that change? Why or why not?
As the saying goes, “One person’s innovation is another person’s disruption”. Transformation may be the most over-used word in healthcare today. True transformation (dramatic change) will come from a grass roots movement (outside the corporate walls) and led by synthetical thinkers who by doing what is best for patients will find it is best for business."