The great plagues of Europe in the 14th century gave birth to the Renaissance, ushering in a new era of advances in surgery, anatomy, physiology, and medical research. Now, it’s up to healthcare leaders and clinicians to ensure a similar revelation comes from the Covid-19 pandemic. The obvious starting point is an outdated, patient-unfriendly health care delivery system that marginalizes people of color and underserved communities.
Challenging healthcare orthodoxy
To follow in the footsteps of the European Renaissance, healthcare leaders and clinicians need to push for the creation of an all patients, not just those with greater means. This would be a huge step toward correcting the blatant health disparities that have caused the pandemic to disproportionately damage Black, Hispanic and Indigenous peoples.
The Covid-19 pandemic could challenge entrenched norms that perpetuate health disparities, including:
- Our facility-centric model requires patients to travel to a provider for care.
- It is believed that inpatient-level care can only be provided in hospitals.
- Our industry fails to address the social determinants of health.
Challenging these health care “orthodoxy” can feel like an uphill battle. Yet we are morally obliged to seize every opportunity to correct inequality. We must start by creating a strong culture of ownership that embraces what is best for each patient, every time.
What does the healthcare system need to seize this opportunity and drive the next renaissance? It takes leaders like us. The following three steps will propel us towards a revitalized delivery system.
1. Create a culture of ownership
To end health inequalities, we must accept that we are responsible for all patients — especially the most vulnerable. The best way to promote this form of ownership is to focus on the shared values that draw us all into healthcare.
Physicians, senior providers, nurses and administrators can unite around our shared desire to help patients. As leaders, we can simulate this shift by placing the patient at the center of our decision-making and setting similar expectations at every level of the organization, with the goal of enabling our care teams to be the best they can be. I call this ownership mindset a culture of excellence, where each of us, as providers, has a responsibility to inspire and challenge each other.
Could this patient-first approach be dangerous in today’s tough fiscal climate? Our experience in more than 450 practice locations shows just the opposite. We’ve found that doing what’s best for patients also benefits hospitals and clinicians. For example, connecting with patients can help combat clinician burnout during a pandemic. We found that emergency physicians who conducted telehealth follow-up even referred to the task as a “feel-good transition.” It is clear that spending time with grateful patients who would otherwise have limited access to care, elevate physicians and increase the meaning of their work.
2. Involve clinicians in strategic planning
When redesigning care delivery, our leaders cannot ignore the expert views of our clinicians. Doctors, senior providers and nurses have seen first-hand the barriers patients face in accessing care. Therefore, it is wise for us to identify and recruit clinician champions in our strategic planning and targeted change programs.
For example, if clinical leaders are concerned about long wait times for behavioral health patients in the emergency department, they can hold clinician roundtables to better understand the problem and address solutions. These types of meetings often lead to the infusion of new programs within the hospital system, giving clinicians the tools they need to correct areas of concern and deliver better care.
3. Invest in front-line innovation
Because providers see access challenges up close, they often have simple but powerful ideas on how to overcome these barriers. Therefore, the most cost-effective way to redesign healthcare is to empower clinicians to innovate. Healthcare organizations often experience high ROI when they dedicate time and resources to promising vendor-led projects.
By leveraging passionate front-line suppliers who have partnered with leading companies across industries, we can greatly help develop future care innovations that meet today’s patient needs and anticipate future expectations.
In our experience, front-line solutions range from building systems to help improve after-care treatment adherence to ideas that improve clinical outcomes while increasing patient confidence and satisfaction. Doctors are eager to share solutions – you just need to give them the chance.
Revival takes courage
It is never easy or comfortable to speak out against established orthodoxy. While we’re unlikely to spend his dying days in prison like Galileo did, we can expect resistance from within our organization and from the wider healthcare industry. However, the Renaissance might never have happened if courageous scientists, artists, scholars and philosophers had not raised their voices against the status quo.
Covid-19 has opened a similar window of opportunity. For the benefit of our most vulnerable patients, let us not miss this once-in-a-century opportunity to bring about radical change and usher in the Age of Enlightenment.
Photo: FG Trade, Getty Images
