From their thoughts on how to implement the right tech-enabled healthcare tools to what sets their digital strategy apart from others, here are five quotes about the role of innovation in healthcare that hospital executives shared with Becker's Hospital Review in November:
Richard Zane, MD. Chief Innovation Officer at UCHealth (Aurora, Colo.): Our guiding principles are simple: Digital health must be easier and not harder, fewer clicks and not more, the path of least resistance, bulletproof, and must enhance human connectivity and not decrease it. The bottom line is that if a tool does not make providers' jobs better and easier and does not improve our patients' experience and lives, then it needs to stay on a shelf.
Jason Joseph. Senior Vice President and Chief Digital and Information Officer at Spectrum Health (Grand Rapids, Mich.): Our approach is focused on the premise that tech strategy isn't just about layering on new technologies simply to enable features or solutions, but about intelligently designing digital platforms that are as simple and connected as possible. This allows us to digitally transform our business and drive change management activities without focusing so much on the tools and technology.
Jon Manis. Senior Vice President and CIO of Christus Health (Irving, Texas): Adopting modern care and compensation models that utilize available technology tools and digital channels will increase access, improve satisfaction and reduce costs. It should also help to reduce physician burnout and improve job satisfaction. How would physicians feel about their profession if they were able to work regular hours and maintain both their status and standard of living by spending more high-quality time with fewer patients — the clinical exceptions — that actually need to be seen in person?
Ed McCallister. Senior Vice President and CIO at UPMC (Pittsburgh): What sets UPMC's tech strategy apart from others is the scale of our investments in both core technology infrastructure and technology innovation that is enabling the transformation of care. Thanks to the support from our leadership and our partnerships with clinicians, we have invested more than $2.4 billion in technologies over the past five years.
Daniel Durand, MD. Chief Clinical Officer at LifeBridge Health (Baltimore): We need to keep ourselves honest by relentlessly focusing on measuring each innovation across the full "quintuple aim" of improved population health outcomes, decreased total cost of care, enhanced patient and provider experience and equity in all of these measures between populations. If, after a reasonable implementation period, a specific digital or virtual innovation fails to sustainably create more healthcare value than it consumes, then it's likely an example of digital gone too far, or at least too far ahead of its time.