Elaine Cox, MD, serves as Chief Medical Officer at Riley Children's Health.
On May 24th, Dr. Cox will serve on the panel "How to Build and Sustain High-Performing Teams - What’s Your Top Piece of Advice? How Do You Balance Consensus vs. Direction?" 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. Cox's session, click here.
Question: What, from your perspective, is the biggest challenge about the future of work for hospitals, and what can they do about it? (i.e. automation, desire for more flexibility, clinician shortages, etc.)
Elaine Cox: I actually think recruiting and retention of all kinds of employees is going to be a major problem going forward. Healthcare is both emotionally stressful as well as dangerous in terms of workplace violence so maintaining engagement will be difficult. Take physicians—it takes a long time, incurs large debt, and is incredibly stressful. It will be hard to maintain the pipeline of the brightest to continue to choose medicine as a profession which means we will have to work harder to instill the fervor of higher purpose into the conversation to recruit and try new strategies to maintain engagement and joy in the workplace.
Q: How can hospitals reconcile the need to maintain inpatient volumes with the mission to keep people healthier and out of the hospital?
EC: There has to be an overall commitment to making this happen. I think the many professionals throughout healthcare agree that this should be the goal but who will lad? Who will finance? What will the incentives be to make this shift? For this transformation to happen it will take alignment from everyone—hospitals, payers, government and the community. This is a monumental paradigm shift and will take time and the proper incentives as well the most informative data set to do it.
Q: What's one lesson you learned early in your career that has helped you lead in healthcare?
EC: I think for me it was an appreciation that nothing stays the same and change can be a time to embrace great opportunity. We used to hang out our shingles and stay put for 30 years but healthcare always has some great new discovery or innovation. If one can be open to new things, opportunities arise all the time that you could never have predicted. If you embrace them, guaranteed you will learn something and it can be an exciting ride.
Q: What do you see as the most exciting opportunity in healthcare right now?
EC: I really believe the opportunity to form new partnerships especially from non-traditional partners to innovate and disrupt is great and , quite frankly necessary. To innovate on how and where good care can be delivered in this age of AI, technology, and evolving therapies is exciting. With great cures coming down the pipe that will be massively expensive, we have to rethink the how or we will not be able to sustain medical care at the quality we desire for our citizens.
"What's one lesson you learned early in your career that has helped you lead in healthcare? The most important lesson I learned early in my career was that healthcare is a fast-changing world and the imperative was clear; in order to lead effectively I must master the art of change leadership. I learned to focus on people and processes to drive successful change. As a Revenue Officer and Chief Transformation Officer driving big change to help hospitals transform their bottom lines from red to black, I learned to engage the management team early on, along with getting key people into key positions (or removing them, in some cases) then the process part of change goes much smoother. It's important to break big projects down into small wins to build momentum and celebrate the small victories.
Where do you go for inspiration and fresh ideas? Beckers, of course! In all seriousness, the conference speakers are the best in the industry and the sessions are relevant to leaders in hospitals both large and small. And I don't have to look any further than my inbox daily for the most recent healthcare news and best practices.
What do you see as the most exciting opportunity in healthcare right now? The most exciting opportunity in healthcare today is the move to value-driven care with the patient at the center focusing on wellness and prevention instead of treating signs and symptoms with volume-driven sick visits and hospitalizations. Accountable care, the merit-based incentive payment system (MIPS) and value-based payment programs are driving providers from volume to value-based care with incentives to reward both the physician and the patient!
Healthcare has had calls for disruption, innovation and transformation for years now. Do you feel we are seeing that change? Why or why not? Yes, hospitals that are driving change and transformation are receiving high marks in quality and patient-satisfaction. They are investing in technology to coordinate care and making access easier for their patients. At the same time, they are educating and preparing their workforce to be responsive to innovative change. The age of volume-driven fee-for-service medicine is gradually giving way to value-based care. Hospitals must transform to become organizations that reward value instead of volume and develop delivery methods that use evidence-based practices, procedures and technologies to attain optimal outcomes and achieve greater efficiencies. Many primary care providers have heard the call for value and are joining ACO's and working to meet this demand. Sadly hospitals that haven’t transformed to ensure the highest quality patient-centered care and the most competitive prices are being bypassed by the primary care physicians, the patients and the payers. "