Patrick Woodard, MD, MHA, serves as Chief Digital Officer at Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare.
Patrick will serve on the panel "Top Health IT Priorities and What It Costs to Achieve Them" at Becker's Hospital Review 12th 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 in Chicago from April 25-28, 2022.
To learn more about the conference and Patrick's session, click here.
Q: What technologies and innovations are you most excited about in healthcare right now?
Patrick Woodard: This is not a technology per se, but the continual move towards consumerism is the most exciting shift in healthcare today. We still have a long way to go, but a move towards effective consumerism is an acknowledgement that medicine needs humanism to be successful. Our relationships rely on it. To build towards our patient’s health literacy, to drive active engagement in their own health, and to create trust, consumerism is a prerequisite. It is seeing patients as worthy of the effort. It is intentional inclusion.
Relatedly, the more technology can step out of the exam room, the better. Healthcare demands that we connect as individuals. The less our tools interfere, the better. Technologies are starting to enable more natural human-human interactions while meeting the needs of clinicians, health systems, and patients. Ultimately, our clinicians come to work every day to take care of others—not to document—and the more we can help them do the meaningful work, the better. These enabling technologies like ambient AI and natural language processing are starting to get to a place that makes them clinically useful. I cannot wait to see what some of our clinicians can do when supported this way.
Q: What will the lasting legacy of COVID-19 be on the healthcare system?
PW: It would be remiss to omit the obvious impact of telemedicine and virtual care on the way we deliver care. We were on track for an eventual shift to virtual care, but the necessity and rapid speed forced this fundamental shift. But part of the challenge is that in many cases, because it was implemented rapidly, there may be need to be some remediation efforts to align the tools to organizational strategy. Telemedicine is certainly here to stay. But for a provider organization, is it fully insourced? How much do you invest in hospital at home versus remote patient monitoring versus chronic care management? We now have an opportunity to step back and say, “We are doing this today. How do we want to do this tomorrow?”
The other challenge, perhaps more pressing, is that of staffing. Burnout was already present and COVID-19 only heightened that. It pulled the covers off what was already there. It is our role, as healthcare leaders, to create positive, inclusive environments for our staff. They need tools that make their job easier, not more complex. We owe it to our front-line staff to ask the hard questions. To make platform decisions. To focus on integration and efficiency. To create joy at work. After all, they trust us with half their waking hours.
Q: What advice do you have for emerging healthcare leaders today?
PW: Three things. Be authentic, think holistically, and do the right thing.
Be authentic. Now, more than ever, it is important to trust those you work with. To trust their expertise, their experience, and that in an increasingly complex environment, that your colleagues will carry their weight. A critical element of creating trust is also believing that what you see is what you get: that there’s not some other version of a leader that you’re not seeing. This authenticity requires bringing enough of your whole self to work that you can foster healthy, human relationships (this is health care after all). It is enabling your team to do the same.
Think holistically. It is about acknowledging your limits. We are tempted to make quick decisions because the pace and complexity of health care demands speed. But are we including enough viewpoints to know that this decision is the right one? Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner write in Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction that the best future-oriented thinkers are able to incorporate conflicting facts into their prediction and adjust accordingly. It is okay to be wrong the first time around. It is not okay to stick to it blindly. Solicit additional inputs, trust your experts, and remember your first (and second and third) responsibility as a leader is to your organization and your team.
Do the right thing. On my wall near my garage door, I have an enamel plaque that asks me each day, “What good shall I do today?” I don’t always have the answer when I walk out the door, but asking myself that question at least sets me in the right frame of mind. As a leader, your role is fiduciary. The adage is old: the harder thing to do is typically the right one. Do not forget it. Choose beyond yourself. Create for the future. Take the heat. Your successors will thank you.