Health systems cannot afford to wait on innovation, according to Cliff Robertson, MD, president and CEO of Saint Francis Health System.
While industries such as retail, banking and air travel have undergone digital transformations, healthcare has been slower to adapt, he said.
Dr. Robertson, a family medicine physician, became CEO of Tulsa, Okla.-based Saint Francis in 2021. The system, which employs more than 12,000 people, is anchored by the 1,112-bed Saint Francis Hospital — the largest hospital in Oklahoma.
Becker’s connected with Dr. Robertson to discuss the strategies he prioritizes in his role and the biggest challenges he sees in healthcare today.
Editor’s note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: What is something the healthcare industry is not talking about enough?
Dr. Cliff Robertson: The fundamental challenge with healthcare in the United States is cost.
In today’s political environment, there’s a lot of discussion about reimbursement, but really, the opportunity we have on the delivery system side, as well as everyone else in the healthcare industry — pharma, device manufacturers, health plans, PBMs — is to address cost. We have a good health system, but it is becoming increasingly unaffordable for our country in general.
Q: What is an unpopular (or uncommon) leadership or healthcare opinion you have?
CR: It ties back to cost. I’m a physician by training, so my bias is always a little bit oriented from the clinical perspective, but I think we as an industry need to disrupt ourselves.
I don’t believe we as health systems are doing enough to change and innovate the model of care we provide. Part of that’s because we are still beholden to payment rules that are antiquated from decades ago. Part of it is that we have our own inertia, and it’s tough to disrupt yourself.
Q: How can healthcare leaders start the process of disruption and innovation?
CR: I look at other industries. There are healthcare systems around the country doing more innovative things, but it’s still a combination of changing the payment model and incentives while delivering care in new ways.
For example, a lot of health systems are now focused on care outside of hospital walls and are trying to understand how to deliver hospital-at-home models. But that concept has been around for decades and probably didn’t get fully embraced until the pandemic.
Digital video technology has also been around for a long time, and healthcare was a late adopter. We tend to be a little more conservative and go a little slow, and I don’t think we can afford to allow our inertia to prevent us from innovating and finding more cost-effective, high-quality care models.
Nearly every industry — from shopping to air travel to banking — has embraced digital interaction. We’ve been slower to embrace changing how we think about engaging our patients in our communities. You could point to almost any other industry and say they’re moving faster than we’ve moved in healthcare.
Q: If you could share one strategy with other health system CEOs, what would it be?
CR: From a traditional strategy standpoint, access is the most important. If you’re going to focus on one thing, it should be improving access — democratizing access to information, to care, to necessary services. That feels like the ultimate strategic focus that all organizations need.
My personal strategy is that my role has to be as much about telling the story and communication as it is about anything else. Health systems have to do a much better job of helping our front-line caregivers and those that support our front-line caregivers understand not only the direction we’re going as an organization, but also helping them understand what that means to them. Any change management process is really about stakeholder engagement.
I do weekly unscripted video blogs for staff and always close them with my core belief: “If we can just stay focused on delivering great patient care, all the rest will take care of itself.”
Sometimes I say that to remind us all that our No. 1 focus is caring for other human beings. All the rest — Medicaid cuts, new technology — will work itself out as long as we’re focused on delivering great patient care.
