Zeev Neuwirth, MD, serves as Senior Medical Director of Population Health for Atrium Health.
On May 3rd, Dr. Neuwirth will serve on the panel "What does "Patient Experience" Mean Today? How Does it Relate to Engagement?" 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. Neuwirth's session, click here.
Question: What do innovators/entrepreneurs from outside healthcare need to better understand about hospital and health system leaders?
Zeev Neuwirth: There are at least three things innovators/entrepreneurs need to better understand about hospital & health system leaders: First - understand what pain points and needs are top priorities. If the need you're filling is low on the list of priorities, that's not helpful to them, or to you. What high-priority need are you solving? If your product or service is lower on the list, consider a different stakeholder in healthcare - perhaps a payer or employer. Second - understand that any new device or therapeutic or approach must somehow fit into the rest of care delivery. If it's difficult to adopt or adapt your new product or service for physicians and providers, it will be much slower going. Third - new technologies cause red flag concerns around safety, etc... Most systems, in my experience, prefer to be 'fast followers' rather than on the bleeding edge. Peer reviewed studies and examples of others using it are super helpful. Also, making your new product or service easier to understand for non-tech people is also helpful.
Q: Healthcare takes a lot of heat for not innovating quickly. What's your take on this?
ZN: Innovation in healthcare has been slow because the market, up until very recently, hasn't required it to be anything other than slow. If you don't need to invest heavily in R&D and you don't need to innovate rapidly to succeed, why do that?? That is all about to change. In fact, it's already inflected. The market forces are now demanding innovation on numerous fronts, in terms of accessibility, affordability, customer experience and outcomes of care in terms of costs and quality. The mergers that are occurring and the crossing over of payers, employers and non-traditional new entrants into healthcare delivery is going to completely change the landscape and pace of the adoption of innovation in healthcare delivery. Just look at the shock waves that the Haven (Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan Chase) has sent through the industry - just with their announcements alone. They haven't even put anything on the market yet, and it's led to new mergers as well as other major market responses.
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?
ZN: Even with all the challenges and frustrations in healthcare, it's such a privilege to be part of this industry - especially at this moment in time. We have the opportunity right now to inflect the course of healthcare history - both on the national and global level. The opportunity to make a significant difference is breathtaking. The moment is ripe for a fundamental reframing of healthcare and of health. There is a rapidly growing national and global epidemic of chronic disease, as well as the growing disparities of care and health. We now have the technologies and other enablers, as well as abundant resources to actually make a significant positive difference - in the social determinants of health as well as in chronic disease and in disease prevention.
I am beyond impressed with my colleagues - the providers and staff who daily do the incredibly hard work of providing medical care for people and their families; as well as my colleagues who are now reaching out into our communities to tackle the challenging social determinants of health. Greatness is realizing that we have huge populations of people to provide care for, but to always remember that it's at the individual level that care is offered. My colleagues remind me each and every day that healthcare is not transactional. It's relational, social and experiential! One example of that is our care management and community health programs in which we focus on individuals who have been in the emergency room dozens of times in the past few months. We've seen miraculous changes in people's lives by taking a multi-disciplinary approach - providing easy access to primary care, providing housing, providing access to healthy foods, making medications affordable, and providing relatively low cost but high impact behavioral health support. We look at our outcomes in terms of swaths of populations but we change people's lives through caring relationship.