Healthcare and medical device execs ID strategic challenges at MedExecWomen forum
Boston, MA—April 1, 2021 Two healthcare leaders joined medical device executives on Tuesday afternoon for a frank discussion of the challenges and strategic initiatives in their organizations, for MedExecWomen’s forum “What Hospital C-Suite Pain Points Can MedTech Address in 2021/22?”
“There are three things we’re looking at right now that have near term consequence and long-term advantage,” said panelist Alan Levine, MHS, MBA, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer at Ballad Health, which serves Northeast Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, Northwest North Carolina and Southeast Kentucky. “We’re paying close attention to the nursing shortage—we think that’s going to be a real limiting factor in the health system if we can’t get nurses or scrub techs. Second, we’re really focused on total cost of care, deeply invested in risk-based models. There are many primary care groups that pay a lot of attention to total cost of care.
“And the third is healthcare at home, the technology movement towards home based models. We have a home health agency that serves the whole region. During COVID we had over 1000 patients who were able to avoid hospital admissions by keeping them in their homes, monitoring them at home and having virtual visits with our physicians. And that’s not going to go away,” he said. “What are the technologies that support healthcare at home because payers are increasingly interested.”
Panelist Amy Bush, BSN, MBA, RN, CNOR, Vice President/Chief Operating Officer at WVU Medicine Children's said they’re looking at financial alignment between providers and payers. “We’ve all been working toward that. How do we help payers save money? But if we don’t have patients in the hospital, we traditionally lose money,” she said. “We really saw (the COVID) census drop. If I’m a payer that’s really good for me, but how can we better align that model with payers and providers?”
Second, she said, “We’re looking at our interoperability with public health, in particular with local health departments and community wellness—having people move forward from an information technology standpoint at the same pace.” The third she said related to workforce shortage and AI/machine learning. “We’re spending a lot of time getting the right people in the right role and decreasing the administrative burden of healthcare so that we can move workers toward the core business functions of patient care,” said Bush. “There are shortages (of certain workers). We have a much smaller market to pull from—in a much more rural state.”
When it comes to cost of care initiatives, Levine said, “Hospitals, if they want to survive, have to find a way to reduce their cost structure—devices that help workflow, improve efficiency, reduce the time in the OR and are very attractive to us. Everything that will reduce cost structures is very attractive to us. We just entered into two co-management agreements with our orthopedic and general surgeons. More than half the incentive that I’m paying them is tied to reducing supply costs. The dynamic is shifting, and we can now incentivize doctors to help us reduce supply costs and the total cost of care.”
Bush talked about the many technology initiatives they innovated to deal with COVID, including a virtual waiting room. She talked about their analytics team with machine learning engineers and data scientists and how they’re looking at home monitoring to prevent readmissions. On other technology and devices, she cautioned, “You get something new and if it doesn’t interface with (equipment) we already have, and it just ends up creating more cost to our system and to the cost of care delivery. If we can just shift the mindset to interoperability and strategic thinking, we can make it less transactional.”
She talked about the need to serve very rural locations. “Maybe you need preventive care so that you don’t get sick. We have a lot of states that could benefit from that. Socioeconomic disparities just don’t allow many people to come to the hospital. That shift to wellness and prevention would be really helpful.”
“The site of care is shifting and so are the strategies to manage it,” said Maria Shepherd, MedExecWomen Co-Founder and President, Medi-Vantage. “This is an enormous opportunity for the MedTech community because we’ve been given a vision of change and with that vision we can create new and disruptive technologies to improve healthcare outcomes and reduce costs.”
“We need to work with healthcare stakeholders to align our priorities and reduce the transactional focus, moving more toward a true strategic partnership,” she said.
“The two panelists were fantastic, so candid and eloquent in sharing issues and opportunities they see,” said Shepherd, who moderated the forum. “We had our audience split into breakout session after the panel. The audience came from diverse functions such as healthcare economics, executive management, payer relations, reimbursement, and consultants. This gave us different perspectives on the opportunities that could come from the challenges our panelists shared—this is great for our own strategic planning.”
“For example, we heard about the need to shift to home-based healthcare. How can MedTech serve here? Our C-suite executives cited the need to build remote monitoring capabilities, something especially helpful in rural areas. How can we be a part of this trend? There are other unmet needs: to create risk sharing with hospitals, to increase the incentive to use our products and to address the expectations of younger people, such as Millennials, who are new to the healthcare workforce, who have different workflow needs.”
A poll of the medical device leaders during the forum* asked “What are the biggest issues facing medical device/MedTech organizations today?” Results were:
Volatility of elective procedure rates due to COVID (62% of respondents)
An expanding decision-maker base in medical device purchasing (38% of respondents)
Tied: Clinical trial backlogs (36% of respondents)
Reduced access to clinicians (36% of respondents)
The meeting was sponsored by Boston Scientific, Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic, Boston Consulting Group, Bank of America, Latham & Watkins, Insulet, ZS Associates, Halloran, Medi-Vantage and Kathleen Rowe Associates.
MedExecWomen empowers women executives to accelerate the positive impact of medical devices, diagnostics, drug delivery and digital healthcare. The organization seeks to strengthen the field’s gender diversity through a connected, effective and visible women’s leadership pool and supports female execs as they navigate rapidly changing markets. Interested executive level women can reach out to the organization via membership@MedExecWomen.org to request to join.
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Media Contact: Kathleen Rowe, media@medexecwomen.org
*This poll question was answered by 38 attendees of the meeting. Each respondent was asked to select three of the biggest issues they see.