On June 3, Sean Reinhardt, MD, stepped into his role as chief medical officer at Doylestown (Pa.) Health after having joined the system in 2007.
Becker's sat down with him to talk about his priorities and passions in his new position, as well as what may lie ahead for the health system and the industry.
Question: What is your top clinical priority for the year?
Dr. Sean Reinhardt: There's a strong chance we're going to merge with the University of Pennsylvania Health system, and my clinical priority is to maintain the unique culture of Doylestown Hospital while adopting the clinical strengths and support of that entire network. What I would love to do is to somehow marry their scale and support to our hometown feel. I would love for the people in our community to be able to get 95% of their healthcare here, and for the rare or very advanced conditions be able to get easily and quickly downtown.
Q: What is the greatest challenge facing the industry?
SR: The greatest challenge is the increasingly escalating cost of healthcare. It will eventually, if not already, reach a point where it's unsustainable for the nation. I read something recently that said, if the U.S. healthcare system was its own country, it would have the third largest GDP in the world. Whether we can continue to do that going forward with everything else going on in the world is a challenge.
Q: What is something your system is doing that you're most proud of?
SR: Doylestown has always been a leader in value-based care, where we try to find the highest-quality, lowest-cost option for every patient. We've been on the forefront of value-based care and we try to leverage our strengths to provide the best quality in the most economical way. We have a series of partnerships with other healthcare systems and insurance companies in the region where we agree to provide value-based care, and on the back end, we have a robust analytics team that analyzes the data to help drive the change we need. There's meetings and reviews, and it's constantly analyzed and updated and adjusted so that we can do that.
Q: What is the first step other systems could take to start providing value-based care?
SR: The first step is to pick one area that you're already quite good at and focus on that so that you can learn the ground rules of how value-based care works, and then expand from there. It's a day-to-day commitment to place the patient and the quality of care at the center of everything we do.
Q: What are you most passionate about as a leader?
SR: I am most passionate about supporting the physicians and nurses in their effort to provide the best care to their friends and neighbors. Doylestown is not an enormous hospital. We all live here. We all work here. The people coming into the hospital are our friends, neighbors, their parents. I'm passionate about being able to say to the community and to the medical staff that we are delivering the best possible care to people we know and love.