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Friday, February 25, 2011
Local Leaders Can Fix Health Care
By Dr. Richard Carmona And Dr. Gary Goldstein
Humana Inc.
In health care today, innovation is essential in making a real difference in improving people's health and well-being. Most leaders in the health care marketplace understand this, but are often so deeply involved in their own specific sector's priorities that they don't utilize a broader perspective about industry progress.
A unique two-day learning exercise sponsored by Humana offers the experience of taking a larger look at the health care industry and better understanding each others' roles in the health economy in order to build the groundwork for future collaboration.
This just happened in Santa Fe through Humana's Health Economy Simulator, where doctors, hospital administrators, brokers, community health agency leaders, and business and community leaders traded their everyday roles for a new professional persona — the doctor became a major employer, the hospital CEO became the insurance provider, and so on. In their new "roles," participants learned about the challenges each faces as they work within the health economy.
Participants divided into teams to build a health care system for fictitious counties. Using an elaborate computer-based simulator, they saw how a single action can affect the entire health ecosystem. For example, when they changed the way employers offered benefits, the simulator showed how that would affect everything from hospital profitability to population growth to business recruitment. By the end of day two, each team had created a three-year plan that cut costs, improved health outcomes, covered more people and enhanced the health care system.
By creating teams of multiple health care stakeholders and presenting them with unfamiliar challenges and responsibilities, this simulation required a new level of collaboration and empathy among groups that are often thought to have competing interests.
When all sides of the health care discussion understand how individual decisions and actions affect the whole system, it's easier for each to make choices that foster positive change. The issues plaguing health care are national, but the solution is local, and improvement will take leadership in innovation and the collective effort of the entire health care stakeholder community.
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