On October 10th, Dr. Bhushan will serve on the panel “Improving Patient Satisfaction and Service Quality Through Healthcare IT” at Becker’s Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle 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 October 9-12, 2019 in Chicago.
To learn more about the conference and Dr. Bhushan’s session, click here.
Question: What is the No. 1 principle you uphold and practice to effectively lead a team?
Bharat Bhushan: Be open and honest: Clear and open communications have immense benefits. It should be obvious to everyone who is doing what, and why. Keep all team communications, facts and status reports in the open and visible.
1. Conduct daily “stand-up” short sessions.
2. Use pictures, images, mockups, etc. to make things clearer.
3. Make it easy to understand the purpose of every work product.
4. Hold disciplined weekly progress report sessions.
5. Avoid private communications.
Q: As a leader, how do you stay connected to the actual work that is being done – and not just by watching others execute, but by executing yourself? If so, how do you balance between leading and executing personally?
BB: Management is about controlling tasks and creating order in an environment, while leadership is about influencing and motivating staff.
A large part of being a productive leader is to build and foster relationships with employees, and to encourage employees to build solid relationships with one another. Healthy relationships in the workplace build an environment where employees want to complete their tasks and are not forced to do so. Finding a balance between management and leadership can come down to healthy relationships, inspiring staff and a productive environment that fosters growth and achievement. The two main pillars to foster healthy relations are Accountability and Empowerment. Hold your employees accountable for their tasks and to-do lists. This goes together with understanding your employees’ task lists and timelines and when necessary offer guidance to your employees but let them make decisions when possible. This makes them feel valuable and encourages them to learn more, which they will grow to appreciate.
Q: What does healthcare need more of? Less of?
BB:
A) Healthcare spending:
U.S. far outspends its peer nations when it comes to healthcare costs per capita. Why does the United States spend so much more? The biggest reason is that U.S. healthcare delivers a more expensive mix of services. Compared with the average OECD country, the U.S. delivers almost three times as many mammograms, two-and-a-half times the number of MRI scans, and 31 percent more C-sections. Does the more expensive mix result in better health outcomes? There are no definitive studies to answer this question. However, it appears that the systems in the other countries are more effective because their life expectancy is higher.
A second important reason for higher healthcare spending in the U.S. is higher prices for inputs such as drugs and the services of specialist physicians. The prices of branded prescription drugs in the U.S. are, on average, about double those in other countries. The lower prices and specialits fees are achieved by negotiation and controls by governments who typically pay for about 75 percent of all medical care. Government in the U.S. pays about 50 percent, which still confer considerable bargaining power, but the government is kept at bay from exerting it by legislation and a Congress sensitive to interest-group lobbying.
The third important reason for higher spending in the U.S. is high administrative costs of insurance. Many of our peer countries have lower administrative costs through more coordination and standardization. Some countries have a single national system or several regional healthcare-insurance systems, even when the provision of care is primarily a private-sector responsibility.
The complexity of private-sector insurance is not in the public interest. Each company offers many plans that differ in coverage, deductibles, co-pays, premiums, and other features that make it difficult for buyers to compare the prices of different policies. For most goods and services, wider choice for consumers is assumed to contribute to well-being. In the case of health insurance, the customer knows more than the insurance company about his or her likely use of care, resulting in adverse selection.
Why the healthcare costs so much less in other high-income countries, the answer points to a larger, stronger role for government. Governments usually eliminate much of the high administrative costs of insurance, obtain lower prices for inputs, and influence the mix of healthcare outputs by arranging for large supplies of primary-care physicians and hospital beds while keeping tight control on the number of specialist physicians and expensive technology.
B) Preventive Medicine/Predictive Medicine/Personalized by use of Big Data
According to the information provided by the World Health Organization, 80% of premature heart diseases, strokes and type 2 diabetes can be prevented. In addition, 40% of cancer would be prevented if the risk factors were eliminated.
Predictive medicine is one of the greatest changes we’re going to see in the system. The IoT (Internet of Things) technology has been a big part of our lives for quite some time. This technology is becoming part of the healthcare industry. Instead of having a nurse checking on the patient’s vital functions several times a day, networked machines will be sending the needed data to a control room. Proper action will be taken when some of the vitals are showing irregular activity. In near future, IoT will make another important change: it will personalize health.
According to a study called Big Data Analytics in Healthcare, big data science will help healthcare providers to make better decisions regarding patient treatment. Data is used during diagnosis, treatment and prognosis. Deep learning algorithms will greatly increase the accuracy in diagnosis. These systems will learn from previous scans, and they will make adequate diagnosis suggestions to doctors and technicians.
Everything we talked about so far leads to an important conclusion: the healthcare system is being directed towards prevention and timely diagnosis. Instead of expecting patients to show up with a problem that already shows symptoms, technology, and data science will enable them to recognize a problem before it gets acute. It’s All About Prevention. We know that “Prevention is better than cure”
C) Holistic Medicine
The silo mentality has been part of healthcare since ages. The issue is being targeted by introducing holistic healthcare in the place of episodic healthcare. The episodic approach ignores the patient’s overall health, and the doctor focuses on a single issue. The holistic approach requires sharing all information and storing it into their healthcare record. A collaborative team will be connected through a system, so each doctor will have access to all healthcare needs of the patient. This comes in the form of an SBAR (situation-background-assessment-recommendation) tool. It connects healthcare practitioners and enables efficient communication between them. They can collaborate through checklists, guides, and standardized forms that are required for reporting on the patient’s health. There is no place for silos in medicine. Communication between caregivers is essential, and it simplifies all processes from diagnostics to treatment.
