Timothy Craig Allen, MD, JD, FACP, serves as Professor of Pathology for University of Mississippi Medical Center.
On May 2nd, Dr. Allen will give a presentation on "Diagnostics in Modern Healthcare (Radiology + Pathology)" at Becker's Health IT + Clinical Leadership + Pharmacy conference. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference, which will take place May 2-4, 2019 in Chicago.
To learn more about the conference and Dr. Allen's session, click here.
Question: What one strategic initiative will demand the most of your time and energy in 2019?
Timothy Allen: Communication is everything! Developing communication skills—my own and my team’s—is a priority for me in 2019. It is too broad an area to tackle all of it all at once, so I am working with my teams to consider what pathologists’ most important communication growth needs are, how we can address those needs successfully and efficiently, and how we can measure our success in advancing our communication skills in each of the areas we choose to take on. And next year and continuing years, I and the team must continue to examine ourselves to continuously improve our communication skills.
Q: Healthcare takes a lot of heat for not innovating quickly. What’s your take on this?
TA: Technology innovation has, and continues to, change and grow rapidly. That those technological advances have not translated into similarly fast healthcare technology innovative advances is, to me, due to two significant things, neither of which is an easy fix, but both of which can be nullified with a reasonable amount of teamwork. The first thing is that the health care electronic medical record was thrust into the healthcare arena in an embryonic stage, and as a result has cost physicians and hospitals significantly as they work to best use tools that are not yet ready for primetime. That issue can resolve itself by continued hard work from all stakeholders in building new, upgraded electronic medical record systems that will fully serve the healthcare industry. The second thing will likely be harder to get our collective arms around, and yet we must. For efficient, cost-effective, patient-safe healthcare technology to effectively invest itself into the healthcare industry, now and in the ongoing future, there will be required a new regulatory paradigm to replace the current government-centered command and control regulatory system with which we are all familiar. There is simply too much knowledge that is involved and that is not capable of being harnessed by one group, such as a government regulatory agency, as has traditionally been the case. Instead, for healthcare technology success, there will need to arise a healthcare technology regulatory system developed by all stakeholders—government, yes, but also hospitals, patient advocacy groups, technology developers and producers, and physicians—to provide the best regulatory regime based on the entirety of knowledge held by all the stakeholders. This new regulatory regime will be foreign and perhaps difficult to conceive of by some; however, without it healthcare technology will become more and more deeply mired in inefficient, costly, and even dangerous world of healthcare technology which will sow uncertainty and waste, and will quash continuing technology investment.
Q: Tell us about the last meaningful interaction you had with a patient.
TA: All my patient interactions should provide meaning to my patients, as they do to me. The last patient interaction highlights something I believe can provide better patient care for folks who can’t easily get to their doctors. And further, provides the patient and the patient’s family with a good understanding of the disease process, the plan of action going forward, and the reassurance that there is a caring physician team involved fully in the patient’s care. My most recent patient interaction was via a patient-centered team teleconference; these 10-minute team teleconferences—with the patient and patient’s family sitting in their homes—allows the physician team to discuss and illustrate diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis, answer the patient’s questions clearly and uniformly, provide significant reassurances, and plan follow-up. I am working to expand these opportunities, including by addressing physician payment issues and accreditation issues related to them. Then my meaningful patient interactions will continue and grow!