As a physician executive, Deepa Kumaraiah, MD, is constantly thinking about ways to protect her clinicians time.
Dr. Kumaraiah, senior vice president and chief medical officer at NewYork-Presbyterian in New York City, strives to do this by thinking strategically about which technologies and innovations will work for clinicians and make their lives easier, rather than add a burden to their work day.
"We talk about technology and how technology can make things easier, [but] sometimes technology can make things harder — it can add to the workflow," she said. "How do we ensure that what we're putting into place works for our clinicians, makes it easier for them to do their work? And if it's not working, we eliminate it or we modify it."
Dr. Kumaraiah shared with Becker's how she thinks clinicians can be most supported, what drove her to healthcare and her best leadership advice for physician executives.
Question: What piqued your interest in healthcare?
Dr. Deepa Kumaraiah: I think I sort of have a classic tale. I'm an immigrant child. My father was a physician. I always felt that his ability to care for people at their worst time was something that — if I could emulate 10 percent of what he was — I would have sort of been successful in my career. And as I became involved in healthcare and understood how much of the system was not just about how incredible your physician is, with the sort of individual patient and family and how much of the system's issues can impact an ability to deliver care, it made me more and more interested in being involved, not only in care delivery, on a one-on-one basis, but also on how can we make the system easier and better for clinicians and patients.
Q: What has been your biggest accomplishment thus far?
DK: I still think back to COVID. It's still so top of mind and I think the ability of figuring out staffing models across the enterprise, which is one of my roles at NewYork-Presbyterian. We had to move our physicians, our advanced practice providers, our nurses across the enterprise to serve New York and the New York metro area when it was falling apart during COVID-19. And to be a part of that when everybody was sort of sitting at home and wanting to understand … still is the biggest accomplishment that we were able to care for those droves of patients that were coming in in a way that was, I still feel, up to our quality standard and that we were able to support, not only the city, but then thinking about how we're supporting our clinicians in the post-COVID era because people are so burned out. I think one of my roles as the CMO is to think about how we can put systems into place to make it easier to be a clinician these days. How do we support our teams, because all of that is very hard on patients and families when they come in, and it's equally as hard on our clinical teams when they feel that they're working at a completely different pace because it just happens to be this thing, this period of time. How do we best support our teams to be the best that they can be for their patients in their communities, and then to be able to be the best for themselves and their own families?
Q: If you could eliminate one of the healthcare industry's problems overnight, what would it be and why?
DK: I would say the ability for the payment system to pay for cerebral work. So a lot of the times one of the things that our physicians say is that the work they do that is in service of patients, when that's thinking about how do I get them to the right disposition with the right set of social support services at home, that's not really truly reimbursed by the payment system. So to do what's right, is often is not in the financial contract to the system and we do it because it's the right thing to do, but if I could find a way to eliminate that structure so that it wasn't only procedural activity, but also, we call it cerebral activity, but at the activity of thinking about the whole patient was actually a reimbursed, clinical activity would be much better for for all patients and for all healthcare.
Q: What are your goals for the next six months as chief medical officer of NewYork-Presbyterian?
DK: It is to continue to support my clinical teams, my physicians, my advanced practice providers, my trainees, my nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian. We talk about technology and how technology can make things easier, [but] sometimes technology can make things harder — it can add to the workflow. How do we ensure that what we're putting into place works for our clinicians, makes it easier for them to do their work? And if it's not working, we eliminate it or we modify it.
So we are continually looking for ways in this very tight labor market to bring technology to bear that supports our teams at being the best that they can be for their patients. We will keep doing so. We continue to also think about ways that we can focus on giving our teams time. The most successful physician executive is one that finds a way to give our teams back time, time to be with their patients, time to be with their families, time to be thinking about how they can continue to change the field and innovate and bring new technologies to bear.
Q: What is the best leadership advice you've ever received?
DK: I think some of the best leadership advice I had is meeting your teams where you are. The best leaders are the ones that are standing on the floors, rounding with their teams, experiencing exactly what it is that our front-line teams are dealing with on a daily basis. It's why I continue to clinically practice, because seeing patients and experiencing — first of all, I love seeing patients and I love teaching, but there's an element of experiencing what life is like when half of your staff may be brand new to a nursing unit and there's nothing like living it and being able to relate to the teams and then creatively think with them.
Advice I always give to others is the job that you may want to have probably doesn't exist today. The job I'm sitting in, as I meandered my way through NewYork-Presbyterian, wasn't one in many instances that ever existed. But I had a problem I wanted to solve, was very sort of vocal about these things that I cared about and spoke to many leaders and was able to create that path. But I always say, think about the problem you're trying to solve and the role that may help do that may not exist today, but continue to advocate for that and you never know where you end up.