Hoda Asmar, MD, MBA, FAAPL, FACHE, FACP, serves as Chief Clinical Officer for Adventist Health.
On May 3rd, Dr. Asmar will serve on the panel "Change Management and Pharmaceutical Care" at Becker's Health IT + Clinical Leadership + Pharmacy conference. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference, which will take place May 2-4, 2019 in Chicago.
To learn more about the conference and Dr. Asmar's session, click here.
Question: What do innovators/entrepreneurs from outside healthcare need to better understand about hospital and health system leaders?
Hoda Asmar: Innovators and entrepreneurs with no direct experience in healthcare at a granular level commonly fall victim to an oversimplified approach to healthcare. They have difficulties grasping that in healthcare there are different stakeholders of equal power and not a single stakeholder decision making person or group: healthcare has powerful (as they should be) highly trained professionals that expect proof of concept, authenticity and transparent analytics for new solutions, approaches or tools. Testing new ideas or tools in healthcare is not like testing new ideas in a controlled constant environment, it is not a widget factory. Healthcare is still a conservative and traditional industry for many reasons but mostly because of the high-stakes of people’s lives and well-being. The most common mistake is creating a solution looking for a problem. There is a large contingent of non-profit faith-based healthcare organizations and innovators tend to not understand that these organizations are sincere about their mission and culture of service to their communities. It is the disconnect of the higher purpose with the entrepreneurs. Many create solutions for the upper socio-economic strata of consumers but ignore or are oblivious to the needs of the underserved populations.
Q: Healthcare takes a lot of heat for not innovating quickly. What's your take on this?
HA: It depends what you consider innovation and how are you measuring innovation and speed. I see it like “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. My first reaction is yes, healthcare does not transform itself at the speed of other industries. We can be “dinosaurish”. Healthcare is conservative, traditional, stuck in the past in some ways and slow moving.
We could debate that it is related to the healthcare delivery model in the US, the misaligned financial incentives, the various stakeholders with each having its own agenda, but in all fairness it also maybe due to the high-stakes nature of healthcare. It is an industry where harm, or errors have a huge impact on people lives and well-being. Some would debate that healthcare journey on safety, quality and transparency has moved a lot in the past 10 years or so. And, that is innovation! The journey on EHR and medical technology innovation is another example albeit, no one is claiming it is all perfect.
I believe healthcare has innovated more than ever in the past decade, but it still needs to accelerate further, and my definition of innovation is anything that moves the dot on better experience, better outcomes, less harm, and better perception of health as defined by the patients.
Q: Can you share some praise with us about people you work with? What does greatness look like to you when it comes to your team?
HA: What I am proud of my team, peers, colleagues at Adventist Health the most is their passion for patient care irrelevant if they are in roles in direct patient care or not or if they are clinicians or not. They do have a higher purpose that is clear which is to serve and deliver health, wholeness and hope. It is a context that leads to greatness: focused on serving a higher purpose, having passion for your work, understanding that you are part of a team and that success is a team sport not an individual success, modeling expected behaviors and being competent in your role. We hire for fit to mission and culture and expect competency and results.