Yinka Ojutalayo, PharmD, MBA, BCPS, serves as Director of Pharmacy at Anna Jaques Hospital of Beth Israel Lahey Health.
On May 3rd, Yinka will serve on the panel "Pharmaceuticals and Clinical Leadership - Key Ideas for 2019" 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 Yinka's session, click here.
Question: What do innovators/entrepreneurs from outside healthcare need to better understand about hospital and health system leaders?
Yinka Ojutalayo: As we are starting to move from a fee for service to a value-based model, healthcare leaders are starting to put more emphasis on patient outcomes as opposed to volume. They are also looking for opportunities to reduce their 30 days readmission rate by focusing on quality and continuity of care. Population Health has also become an increased focus for many health care leaders. Some organizations such as Trinity Health, have built this into their DNA and organization structure. Other healthcare organizations have also implemented a risk sharing approach due to the proliferation of ACOs. This requires an integration of social services with health care and is becoming increasingly important. Healthcare cost in the United States remains the highest in the world. Our health outcomes and access to health care is one of the poorest among wealthy nations. As an entrepreneur, there is an opportunity to innovate in the many facets of healthcare that improves patient outcomes. The focus should be on a “hollistic” approach to patient care and if successful, the reward would be outstanding.
Q: Healthcare takes a lot of heat for not innovating quickly. What's your take on this?
YO: I agree that innovation in healthcare does not happen quickly and I believe it is partly due to regulations, culture, misaligned incentives and the complexity of the human body. It is important to fully understand the results of any innovation in healthcare because it can lead to patient harm. These regulations are enacted to protect patients and to “do no harm”. However, I think we should continue to evaluate these regulations in areas such as oncology and rare disease where patients cannot afford to wait.
It is also important to remember that innovation does not have to be novel and the culture in healthcare is to develop novel ideas, drugs, procedure etc. I believe that there is an opportunity to disrupt various aspect of our healthcare delivery system which will allow us to become more efficient and deliver better quality of care. I am optimistic and believe that we will start to see a faster pace of innovation in healthcare. Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers us an opportunity to innovate quickly and efficiently. AI can help in many aspects on healthcare innovation, from drug delivery to analysis of “big data”. AI would allow us to finally be able to utilize these data and possibly innovate at a faster rate or respond faster. Amazon recently invested $2million to test artificial intelligence at BIDMC. Furthermore, Harvard Medical School and BIDMC also developed AI methods aimed at interpreting pathology images.
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?
YO: My organization just completed one of the largest health system mergers in the United States to form Beth Israel Lahey Health. The merger included 2 academic hospitals (Havard Medical School Teaching Hospitals) and 11 community/specialty hospital. Under the leadership of Dr. Tabb, our mission was to create a different kind of healthcare system that delivers high quality healthcare. I had the opportunity to join the pharmacy executive and design team in preparation for our merger.
Greatness to me means focusing on providing quality and safe patient care. Challenging ourselves to deliver better quality care that our patients deserve. This was evident by the focus and dedication of key stakeholder in each organization working together to create a state-of-the-art healthcare delivery system. We are embracing population health as an organization and challenging the status quo in Massachusetts. I was able contribute and learn from other pharmacy leaders in the organization. We are poised to set the tone for what healthcare delivery should look like in the future. I am excited about the future of these organization and look forward to making a difference in patients’ lives.