On May 25th, Kerry will serve on the panel “Virginia Mason’s Involvement of Physicians in Growth” 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 Kerry’s session, click here.
Question: How can hospitals reconcile the need to maintain inpatient volumes with the mission to keep people healthier and out of the hospital?
Kerry Shannon: You really can’t reconcile these things because the relationship between them is forced by phenomena that should not be related. We are essentially saying that the burden to support hospital buildings and employees is to be borne by people getting medical interventions they don’t need. That is pretty perverse, don’t you think? The system needs to work for the people it serves.
Q: What’s one lesson you learned early in your career that has helped you lead in healthcare?
KS: It’s a blend of “eyes on your own yoga mat” and the golden rule. Professionally, I grew up in consulting which can be pretty competitive. I learned that both joy and professional rewards came from working hard on behalf of clients and treating everyone as you wish to be treated without getting distracted by workplace dynamics.
Q: What do you see as the most exciting opportunity in healthcare right now?
KS: The most exciting opportunity is to figure out how to advance the best health interests of individuals when so many factors make it look nearly impossible. We all understand the financial pressures, workforce shortages, regulatory burdens, technology demands, patient expectations, etc. and we gyrate around them with largely good intentions. The challenge is to find that set of great minds and tools who will leverage science, reality and imagination to get us to the next generation of providing care.
Q: Healthcare has had calls for disruption, innovation and transformation for years now. Do you feel we are seeing that change? Why or why not?
KS: We are seeing activity and invention but not significant impact. There are many things that are extremely exciting and incrementally altering components of the healthcare system. Personalized medicine, AI, telehealth are a few examples – all of which are burdened by a reimbursement system and prevailing mentality in conflict with the consistent delivery of appropriate care. 25% of Medicare spending goes to care for people in the last year of life. People are attracted to sexy technology and magic bullets but until we really change engrained behaviors around things like futile care at the end of life transformation remains out of reach.
Key Steps to Improve Regulatory Compliance and How to Avoid Ending Up on the Front Page of the Newspaper
At Becker's 4th Annual CEO + CFO Roundtable, taking place November 2–5 in Chicago, more than 1,500 hospital and health system executives tackle decisions that determine whether organizations thrive or merely survive: protecting margins under cost pressure, choosing where to grow, renegotiating payer relationships, stabilizing the workforce and proving real ROI on technology. This is where leaders work through them together, face-to-face. Apply for complimentary registration now.
