Amit Vashist, MD, is the senior vice president and chief clinical officer at Johnson City, Tenn-based Ballad Health.
Dr. Vashist will present "Ballad HAI Journey" at Becker's 10th Annual CEO + CFO Roundtable. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference on Nov. 7-10 in Chicago.
To learn more and register, click here.
Becker's Healthcare aims to foster peer-to-peer conversation between healthcare's brightest leaders and thinkers. In that vein, responses to our Speaker Series are published straight from interviewees. Here is what our speakers had to say.
Question: What is the smartest thing you've done in the last year to set your system up for success?
Dr. Amit Vashist: One of the biggest things we have done in the last year, which I helped lead, is setting up the center for clinical transformation and outcomes optimization. It's called the Ballad Health Center for Clinical Transformation and Outcomes Optimization. It will hone the Ballad’s clinicians' work in mitigating unwarranted clinical variation, creating zero harm and a top decile health system, and achieving high reliability. It will seek to examine and learn from the lessons and setbacks we have endured in the clinical space in the wake of the pandemic and seek to create a resilient, nimble and clinically agile health system.
Q: What are you most excited about right now and what makes you nervous?
AV: I'm most excited about rebuilding and thinking of healthcare in a new paradigm from the lessons we have experienced and continue to learn from the pandemic. Hopefully, some of those lessons that may have come to us will stick to building better systems of care that lead to better outcomes for our patients and our communities.
What makes me most nervous is the emotional and behavioral toll the pandemic has taken upon us, not just as a community but on our healthcare providers and frontline clinical caregivers. We talk about things like labor shortage and there is a deeper reason than just "We're not getting paid fair enough." People simply feel burned out and defeated. They have seen a lot of death and suffering. So I worry about the long-term emotional and behavioral impact of the pandemic, particularly on healthcare frontline caregivers.
Q: How are you thinking about growth and investments for the next year or two?
AV: I think a lot of investment, the way we are thinking about it is, how do you design systems of care that are present outside the four walls of the hospital, things precisely like digital healthcare, wearable patient solutions, hospital at home, remote patient monitoring, so that no matter where you are in your healthcare journey, you're entitled to receive the best possible healthcare in the most appropriate setting at the lowest cost of care.
Q: What will healthcare executives need to be effective leaders for the next five years?
AV: For any healthcare executive to be impactful and effective, it is crucial to learn and develop an understanding of new developments, policy changes and technological developments in healthcare. However, more importantly, healthcare leaders will have to create the skillsets that will enable them to unlearn some of the deep-seated beliefs in healthcare that promote the status quo and prevent disruption. Incrementalism is one such thing that comes in the way of making rapid strides in healthcare. Suppose we are to truly and boldly change the face of healthcare, leading to better outcomes for our patients and communities and lowering care costs. In that case, we need to roll up our sleeves and strive to achieve truly audacious and meaningful changes in healthcare, not just tiny baby steps that land us nowhere.
Q: How are you building resilient and diverse teams?
AV: The most resilient and diverse teams are horizontal and non-hierarchical, where everybody has a sense of psychological safety and freedom to “say something when you see something.” Everybody's listening to each other. Everybody brings diverse talents that complement each other's strengths and weaknesses. You may be a housekeeper in a hospital, but you are as important as the CEO of a hospital. Belatedly, having utmost mutual respect for everybody on a team has become all too important.