[{"innerBlocks":[],"name":"core\/freeform","postId":2015,"blockType":{"name":"core\/freeform","keywords":[],"attributes":{"content":{"type":"string","source":"raw"},"lock":{"type":"object"}},"providesContext":[],"usesContext":[],"selectors":[],"supports":{"className":false,"customClassName":false,"reusable":false},"styles":[],"variations":[],"apiVersion":3,"title":"Classic","description":"Use the classic WordPress editor.","category":"text"},"originalContent":"Atul Gawande, MD, the newly named chief executive officer of the non-profit healthcare venture started by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase, contends that the objective of modern care is not to \u201crescue\u201d patients from \u201ccatastrophic\u201d health episodes\u2014but an ongoing process that takes into account patients\u2019 physical, cognitive and emotional life goals that clinicians never ask them about.

\u201cTo measure and manage that over time is going to be highly technologically enabled in order to make that possible,\u201d Gawande said on Thursday at the 2018 AHIP Institute & Expo in San Diego. \u201cWe need to act through the data, tracking you with your life on how you\u2019re doing against those goals, and when our treatments are benefitting and when they\u2019re not.\u201d

Gawande, who starts as CEO of the Amazon-Berkshire-JPMorgan venture on July 9, spoke at AHIP\u2019s conference the day after the three companies announced they had selected the prominent surgeon, writer and public health innovator to lead their new healthcare firm.

Also See:<\/b> Health insurers support CEO pick to head Amazon-Berkshire-JPMorgan venture<\/a>

The as-yet unnamed firm, which will be headquartered in Boston where Gawande is a surgeon at Brigham and Women\u2019s Hospital, is aimed at improving healthcare for the three companies\u2019 combined one million-plus U.S. employees.

\u201cSystem science and innovation is the next massive, major opportunity to advance human wellbeing in health,\u201d he added. \u201cPatient-reported outcomes are fundamentally important. In a world where people are accumulating chronic illnesses, if the only goal is that they survive longer, you can spend an infinite amount of money without ever knowing it is making any contribution.\u201d

Gawande sees patient-generated information as critical to reporting what their \u201creal outcomes are, such as how they are doing physically, cognitively, as well as emotionally\u201d which will be measured against their goals. In that regard, he said that digital health tools are \u201cgoing to be really crucial\u201d to gathering the data, emphasizing that these tools \u201chave to make it easy\u201d for people to use.

At the same time, Gawande argued that work must be done to make it easier for clinicians to work together in that environment. Some of the solutions are \u201clow tech,\u201d such as checklists, he observed. However, it will also require communication tools as well as artificial intelligence to \u201csubstitute for parts of that\u201d capability, according to Gawande.

\u201cYou need to connect the pharmacist, the primary care clinician, the cardiologist, and, so on,\u201d he added. \u201cMaybe there\u2019s an AI tool for that, but mostly it\u2019s about enabling people to communicate together, create plans and test those plans against what\u2019s really happening\u2014while understanding the costs that go along with those decisions.\u201d

While Gawande spoke in a previously scheduled AHIP general session on end-of-life care, he told the audience that he recognized that his talk perhaps will \u201ctake on some greater significance\u201d in light of his new job.

Gawande, the author of Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, a book that addresses hospice care and the current state of care with regard to age-related frailty, illness and death, made the case that in researching the topic, it became painfully obvious that the \u201ctop-down\u201d approach to healthcare is not succeeding.

Citing a 2012 National Academy of Medicine report, he noted that 30 percent of healthcare spending is wasted and is of no benefit. \u201cI didn\u2019t quite believe it then\u2014but now I do,\u201d said Gawande. \u201cWe often fail to deliver\u2014on the right thing, the right way, at the right time\u2014and are often doing things that are of no value whatsoever.\u201d

The high cost of healthcare is the \u201csymptom\u201d of an industry plagued by inadequate systems, according to Gawande, who is a professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health and the Department of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. He referenced the fact that there are \u201cmore than 70,000 different ways that the human body can fail\u201d as indicated by ICD-10 diagnosis codes.

\u201cThere\u2019s no industry that has to do 70,000 different services in every community and do it well and without wasting resources and humanely\u2014for everybody,\u201d he observed. \u201cHow do you fix that? It\u2019s hard. But, what I can tell you is it\u2019s not working the way we want it to. Now that smoking is down and cardiovascular disease is the No. 1 killer in the country, controlling high blood pressure is the biggest opportunity to save lives.\u201d

However, Gawande said that only 40 percent of Americans are having their blood pressure elevation recognized and are getting the appropriate treatment. In addition, when it comes to healthcare spending, he contends that two-thirds of major complications and deaths are avoidable.

\u201cOverall, the lack of execution in delivering already existing medical discoveries is responsible for at least a third of deaths under the age of 75\u2014not only in the United States but even in Europe,\u201d according to Gawande. \u201cWe are still in a stage of very primitive thinking about how you create delivery, how you create performance\u2014whether you\u2019re an insurer, you\u2019re a health system or you\u2019re just a doctor trying to get it done.\u201d

To solve this challenge, he believes that healthcare must transition from \u201cdelivering components for human beings to delivering outcomes, which require systems that utilize all those components to the best possible results.\u201d In addition, Gawande said the industry needs to do a better job of educating and training medical professionals to deliver care.

\u201cModern delivery and performance depends on us systematizing the care, making it so it\u2019s not just that you should do X\u2014treat the blood pressure appropriately and so on\u2014but that the norm is to do it,\u201d he added. \u201cThat\u2019s the puzzle for us in healthcare. It\u2019s ultimately about making the right care the easy thing to do.\u201d

Gawande emphasized that the kinds of changes he envisions are a \u201clong target\u201d for the Amazon-Berkshire-JPMorgan venture, with the \u201cexpectation that we\u2019re going to take on the kinds of problems we\u2019re talking about over the next decade,\u201d marked by \u201cgradual\u201d progress, not \u201cinstant\u201d solutions.

\u201cI feel incredibly lucky in this role that I will get a million new patients,\u201d he concluded. \u201cWe will come to a place where we can generate scalable solutions that change the practice of medicine anywhere. We, as a society, are headed towards being able to do that. It\u2019s a long road, but it clearly is possible.\u201d","saveContent":"Atul Gawande, MD, the newly named chief executive officer of the non-profit healthcare venture started by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase, contends that the objective of modern care is not to \u201crescue\u201d patients from \u201ccatastrophic\u201d health episodes\u2014but an ongoing process that takes into account patients\u2019 physical, cognitive and emotional life goals that clinicians never ask them about.

\u201cTo measure and manage that over time is going to be highly technologically enabled in order to make that possible,\u201d Gawande said on Thursday at the 2018 AHIP Institute & Expo in San Diego. \u201cWe need to act through the data, tracking you with your life on how you\u2019re doing against those goals, and when our treatments are benefitting and when they\u2019re not.\u201d

Gawande, who starts as CEO of the Amazon-Berkshire-JPMorgan venture on July 9, spoke at AHIP\u2019s conference the day after the three companies announced they had selected the prominent surgeon, writer and public health innovator to lead their new healthcare firm.

Also See:<\/b> Health insurers support CEO pick to head Amazon-Berkshire-JPMorgan venture<\/a>

The as-yet unnamed firm, which will be headquartered in Boston where Gawande is a surgeon at Brigham and Women\u2019s Hospital, is aimed at improving healthcare for the three companies\u2019 combined one million-plus U.S. employees.

\u201cSystem science and innovation is the next massive, major opportunity to advance human wellbeing in health,\u201d he added. \u201cPatient-reported outcomes are fundamentally important. In a world where people are accumulating chronic illnesses, if the only goal is that they survive longer, you can spend an infinite amount of money without ever knowing it is making any contribution.\u201d

Gawande sees patient-generated information as critical to reporting what their \u201creal outcomes are, such as how they are doing physically, cognitively, as well as emotionally\u201d which will be measured against their goals. In that regard, he said that digital health tools are \u201cgoing to be really crucial\u201d to gathering the data, emphasizing that these tools \u201chave to make it easy\u201d for people to use.

At the same time, Gawande argued that work must be done to make it easier for clinicians to work together in that environment. Some of the solutions are \u201clow tech,\u201d such as checklists, he observed. However, it will also require communication tools as well as artificial intelligence to \u201csubstitute for parts of that\u201d capability, according to Gawande.

\u201cYou need to connect the pharmacist, the primary care clinician, the cardiologist, and, so on,\u201d he added. \u201cMaybe there\u2019s an AI tool for that, but mostly it\u2019s about enabling people to communicate together, create plans and test those plans against what\u2019s really happening\u2014while understanding the costs that go along with those decisions.\u201d

While Gawande spoke in a previously scheduled AHIP general session on end-of-life care, he told the audience that he recognized that his talk perhaps will \u201ctake on some greater significance\u201d in light of his new job.

Gawande, the author of Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, a book that addresses hospice care and the current state of care with regard to age-related frailty, illness and death, made the case that in researching the topic, it became painfully obvious that the \u201ctop-down\u201d approach to healthcare is not succeeding.

Citing a 2012 National Academy of Medicine report, he noted that 30 percent of healthcare spending is wasted and is of no benefit. \u201cI didn\u2019t quite believe it then\u2014but now I do,\u201d said Gawande. \u201cWe often fail to deliver\u2014on the right thing, the right way, at the right time\u2014and are often doing things that are of no value whatsoever.\u201d

The high cost of healthcare is the \u201csymptom\u201d of an industry plagued by inadequate systems, according to Gawande, who is a professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health and the Department of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. He referenced the fact that there are \u201cmore than 70,000 different ways that the human body can fail\u201d as indicated by ICD-10 diagnosis codes.

\u201cThere\u2019s no industry that has to do 70,000 different services in every community and do it well and without wasting resources and humanely\u2014for everybody,\u201d he observed. \u201cHow do you fix that? It\u2019s hard. But, what I can tell you is it\u2019s not working the way we want it to. Now that smoking is down and cardiovascular disease is the No. 1 killer in the country, controlling high blood pressure is the biggest opportunity to save lives.\u201d

However, Gawande said that only 40 percent of Americans are having their blood pressure elevation recognized and are getting the appropriate treatment. In addition, when it comes to healthcare spending, he contends that two-thirds of major complications and deaths are avoidable.

\u201cOverall, the lack of execution in delivering already existing medical discoveries is responsible for at least a third of deaths under the age of 75\u2014not only in the United States but even in Europe,\u201d according to Gawande. \u201cWe are still in a stage of very primitive thinking about how you create delivery, how you create performance\u2014whether you\u2019re an insurer, you\u2019re a health system or you\u2019re just a doctor trying to get it done.\u201d

To solve this challenge, he believes that healthcare must transition from \u201cdelivering components for human beings to delivering outcomes, which require systems that utilize all those components to the best possible results.\u201d In addition, Gawande said the industry needs to do a better job of educating and training medical professionals to deliver care.

\u201cModern delivery and performance depends on us systematizing the care, making it so it\u2019s not just that you should do X\u2014treat the blood pressure appropriately and so on\u2014but that the norm is to do it,\u201d he added. \u201cThat\u2019s the puzzle for us in healthcare. It\u2019s ultimately about making the right care the easy thing to do.\u201d

Gawande emphasized that the kinds of changes he envisions are a \u201clong target\u201d for the Amazon-Berkshire-JPMorgan venture, with the \u201cexpectation that we\u2019re going to take on the kinds of problems we\u2019re talking about over the next decade,\u201d marked by \u201cgradual\u201d progress, not \u201cinstant\u201d solutions.

\u201cI feel incredibly lucky in this role that I will get a million new patients,\u201d he concluded. \u201cWe will come to a place where we can generate scalable solutions that change the practice of medicine anywhere. We, as a society, are headed towards being able to do that. It\u2019s a long road, but it clearly is possible.\u201d","order":0,"get_parent":{},"attributes":[],"attributesType":{"content":{"type":"string","source":"raw"},"lock":{"type":"object"}},"dynamicContent":""}]

Healthcare must ‘systematize’ so the right care is easy to provide

More for you