Ash Goel, MD, senior vice president and CIO of Kalamazoo, Mich.-based Bronson Healthcare, joined the Becker's Healthcare podcast to discuss the differences in healthcare systems across the world and his perspective on using technology to bridge gaps in care.
Dr. Goel has practiced medicine in the U.S. and abroad as a hospitalist, including in his home country of India. He also was medical director of the hospitalist program and vice president of information systems at Cheyenne (Wyo.) Regional Medical Center. Below is an excerpt from the podcast. Listen to the full episode here.
Question: Are there ways to bridge the gaps in access to care, whether it's in a country like India or the U.S.? Especially during the pandemic, it seems like the challenges are insurmountable given the number of people who are being served versus the resources in the healthcare system. Are there ways to bridge those gaps, or is it really an uphill battle to close the gaps in care, no matter what we do?
Dr. Ash Goel: There are certainly ways to bridge this gap. The way I see healthcare changing for us is around rationalizing the care we give. The one thing I know to be different between practicing medicine in the U.S. versus other parts [of the world] is around the approach to what is an expectation versus what is a medical necessity, and how we bridge that gap of resources to provide appropriate care. Then building on those models of care in a way that is open and transparent and matches patients' needs to the ability for our systems to deliver care. It's almost like a supply and demand equation; we have to match and balance out where we provide services and how to fund those services.
The payer models in U.S. healthcare are so skewed to reward a certain aspect of healthcare delivery that it does not engender preventative care and wellness in the way that it could. Rather, it creates this constant churn and expectation for us to do more. Changing that [mindset] to thinking that less is more effective, is something I believe can be done with the resources we have and incentivizing both the health systems and the payers to go in the right direction.
Part of the reason I took the role I'm in right now, in information technology, is because I believe the largest gaps we have had are around flow of information and process, which I think technology can bridge and help stretch resources further if we can eliminate redundancies.
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