Mihil Patel, MD, serves as an Orthopedic Surgeon at OrthoIndy.
On October 11th, Dr. Patel will serve on the panel "Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Healthcare for 2019" at Becker's Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle 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 October 9-12, 2019 in Chicago.
To learn more about the conference and Dr. Patel's session, click here.
Question: What does healthcare need more of? Less of?
Mihir Patel: We will need more talented young adults who want to pursue a career in healthcare. With the population trends of this nation and the world, healthcare will be in demand for decades to come. However, healthcare is in competition to attract these young talented folks with many attractive industries. To that point, healthcare needs to continue to adapt to the ever changing needs of the consumers as well as the providers. The spotlight will always be on the well being of the patient and the provider/patient relationship. CMS, under the direction of Ms. Seema Verma over the past nearly 3 years, has streamlined regulations. The FDA has decreased time to approvals for medicines and medical devices for patients and providers. Technology companies through artificial intelligence have infinitely improved back office operations for providers. Healthcare needs to continue to focus on making decisions that enhance the provider/patient relationship because that will continue to attract top talent for future generations.
Q: What one topic or issue you’ve been investing time in to better understand as of late?
MP: Physician wellness is one of the top issues that we have been researching. Over the past decade, cumbersome EMRs have frustrated many productive physicians and extenders leading to loss of productivity that infested into many of their personal lives. Either one had to reduce the number of patients by approximately 25 percent or spend 25 percent more time clicking away in the EMR, usually in the evenings at home after dinner. We have found that physician wellness directly correlates to EMR misery. Spending time with the family, reading for pleasure, and hanging out recharging for the next day happens when one is not filling out boxes in an EMR looking at the computer screen. Finally, a new wave of technology companies through artificial intelligence are fulfilling the needs of the providers by creating nifty solutions that will reduce EMR misery, improve wellness, and allow providers to completely focus on the provider/patient relationship, not the computer screen. Cumbersome EMRs may still exist but providers have virtual assistants who do the data entry. Now, providers can do what providers want to do, talk to patients and figure out how to get them better without having “click anxiety”, reducing EMR misery, and improving physician wellness.
Q: What contributes to better conversations between a health system financial and clinical leaders?
MP: Aligning incentives between financial and clinical leaders contributes to the success of organizations. Many of the most successful companies that maximize returns actually have more of team approach to improvements than top down by listening to those in the specific areas that need help. With the ability to trend the data quite easily now, one can prioritize the list very efficiently, leading to shorter times to implementation and success. For example, throughput in many clinics and operating rooms usually is a complex operational diagram but on any given day one part may be underperforming. With data from clinical leaders and analysis of the data from financial leaders, trends for rate limiting points are easily identified and remedied leading to better patient satisfaction scores, improved outcomes, and higher staff satisfaction and retention rates. Many of these factors will lead to the continued success of patient care in healthcare.
What contributes to better conversations between a health system's financial and clinical leaders?