10 Sep Week 4 Discussion Minghao Ji Different companies can have different focuses on investments, and even the same companies can have different priorities at different stages during their growth. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy. Jobs went all in on his ideas to bring Apple back to life; the potential gain from his ideas outweighed the risks at the time since Apple didn’t have much to lose. When Tim Cook became the CEO, he was criticized to be not as visionary and aggressive as Jobs. But at this point, Apple had become a multi-billion dollar company, Tim cook has to protect its assets by being more conservative and not putting all eggs in one basket. If a project has a 90% chance to make $10millions for an organization, but at the same time, there is also a 10% chance will lead to bankruptcy, how do we determine if it’s worth spending the money? $10,000,000 x 90% – (company value) x 10% = 0 if company value $90,000,000, it’s not worth it Although all healthcare delivery organizations

Week 4 Discussion

 

Minghao Ji

 

Different companies can have different focuses on investments, and even the same companies can have different priorities at different stages during their growth. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy. Jobs went all in on his ideas to bring Apple back to life; the potential gain from his ideas outweighed the risks at the time since Apple didn’t have much to lose. When Tim Cook became the CEO, he was criticized to be not as visionary and aggressive as Jobs. But at this point, Apple had become a multi-billion dollar company, Tim cook has to protect its assets by being more conservative and not putting all eggs in one basket.

If a project has a 90% chance to make $10millions for an organization, but at the same time, there is also a 10% chance will lead to bankruptcy, how do we determine if it’s worth spending the money?

$10,000,000 x 90% – (company value) x 10% = 0

if company value < $90,000,000, it’s worth to take the risk

if company value > $90,000,000, it’s not worth it

Although all healthcare delivery organizations share the same responsibility to provide care for patients, their priorities can vary greatly due to their scale, financial situation, stakeholder, etc. If a large hospital, like Johns Hopkins University, decide to adopt an expensive patient/staff management tool, like the Capacity Command Center, there is a very remarkable return on investment because of the scale of the facility; on the contrary, a small hospital with limited staff and patient flow would see very limited marginal return when blindly implementing the latest/greatest technologies, and could even face the risk of bankruptcy.

Our healthcare system is too fragmented. Ideally, it’s in our best interest for all healthcare delivery organizations to work together by dividing and conquering these priorities to benefit each organization as well as the overall health system.

For public, non-profit, and government-owned hospitals, including VA and military hospitals, one of their biggest advantage is having large networks and access to public resources, and therefore should focus on:

1. Public health – for private hospitals to engage more in public health, they often want to see a profit/return (government grant, tax break, etc.). It’s more feasible to have public, non-profit, or government-owner hospitals take lead in public health.

2. Infrastructure – upgrading the infrastructure, such as moving data to the cloud, allows the network of public/government hospitals to exchange/access information more easily

3. Personalized Health – these hospitals often have a large population with co-morbidities, it would be beneficial to invest in customized health to not only care for the patients in need but also set up standards for private hospitals to follow. The urgent need to provide patient-specific care has been recognized by patients and providers (Balgrosky, 2020, p. 365)

Large research/teaching hospitals/institutions often have plenty of resources (funding and highly trained teams), and play an important role in academic research and clinical collaborations to lead “the advancement of knowledge for the benefit of society” (Day-Duro & Smith, 2020).

1. R&D/Insights/Data Science/AI – R&D doesn’t always guarantee a successful result. With large hospitals’ resources, they can collect a large quantity of data, conduct multiple types of research at the same time, and lead the industry to adopt new technologies.

2. Risk/Threats – big hospitals are also big targets, security should be a priority to protect patient and research data.

3. Surgeons – the lack of quality surgeons is a challenge, large hospitals are responsible to sharpen surgeons’ skills with their large quantity of cases, and exporting them nationwide/worldwide to supplement the demand for surgeons. Robotic surgeons is another promising field of study that can further decrease the burden on surgeons.

Small private hospitals/practices should focus more on the right side of the hype curve cycle, and adopt the technology that has already been proven by the industry leaders. Many innovations may not survive the early stage of the hype cycle (Wachter, 2008), and therefore the tiny facilities may not have the resource to handle the failure.

1. Finance – healthcare is expensive in the U.S., for patients as well as providers. Properly managing finance is vital for small hospitals to succeed.

2. C-suite – the adoption of any new technology could cost them a fortune, and they have to carefully consider what to adopt. Consultation from experts may prevent them from some traps

3. Radiology/Image – upgrading equipment is more straightforward and less risky than implementing complex systems that cover the entire hospital.

Medium-sized hospitals have more resources and maturity than small hospitals, but not enough to be at the cutting edge. They can experiment with some promising technologies that have shown potential, and focus on improving their current practices.

1. Patients/Access/Marketing – by using telehealth to promote patient engagement/access, medium-sized hospitals can improve their practices and patient/staff satisfaction

2. Care Teams – private entities involve many separate parties in health delivery/financing. Integrating these different parties to provide the best care for patients should be taken into serious consideration

3. Operations – Optimizing the supply chain could help manage resources more effectively/efficiently and better serve its patient population

Day-Duro, L, G., & Smith, G. (2020). Understanding and investing in healthcare innovation and collaboration. Journal of Health Organization and Management, 34(4), 469–487.  https://doi.org/10.1108/JHOM-07-2019-0206

Balgrosky, J. (2020). Understanding Health Information Systems for the Health Professions. Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Wachter, B. (2008, May 13). The “Technology Hype Cycle”: Why Bad Things Happen to Good Technologies. The Hospital Leader. Retrieved from  https://blog.hospitalmedicine.org/the-technology-hype-cycle-why-bad-things-happen-to-

 

 

Week 4 Inovate/Invest in a Digital Health Future

Lekiska Woods

 

Information technology in healthcare that I would advocate for accelerated adoption would be Infrastructures, care teams, and public health. Infrastructure like moving to the cloud has better security, greater connections to the cloud, and predictive maintenance. The connectivity allows hospital information systems to connect devices such as remote patient monitoring, wearable biosensor technology, and electronic health records (Nikuliak, n.d.). Care teams with voice enabled systems would be a technology that I would advocate to invest more in. Software like simplepractice allows patients to interact with physicians through iPad or computer browsers, chat features via phone, scheduling, file claims, and build websites (Telehealth by SimplePractice™ (Secure & HIPAA Compliant), n.d.). Public health is a great way to connect through healthcare delivery systems. Self-Directed services is a new healthcare delivery system which allows patients to make decisions about their health care. The benefit of having a self-directed service is patients are allowed to choose their own providers and receive care based on the individuals needs. Self-directed care would all public health to use surveillance to track care or trends, which would be a great tool to monitor social determinants of health (4 new types of healthcare delivery systems: What to know | USC online, n.d.).

1. Infrastructure – Move to Cloud/networking infrastructure upgrade (invest more)

2. Care teams – Voice-enabling systems for the front-line care team (invest more)

3. Public health – Connecting healthcare delivery and public health information systems, including social determinants of health (invest more)

4. Patients/Access/Marketing – Digital front door to enrich telehealth/patient engagement (invest more)

5. Personalized health – including a focus on genomic systems (invest more)

6. R&D/Insights/Data Science and more – AI/Analytics for research and management and more – find more insights (invest less)

7. Finance – Upgraded financial management suite and advanced consulting engagement to support it (invest less)

8. Risks/Threats – Cybersecurity upgrade (invest more)

9. C-suite – Tech strategy consulting firm fees for strategic planning (invest less)

10. Finance – Upgraded financial management suite and advanced consulting engagement to support it (invest less)

11. Radiology/Imaging – Diagnostic imaging upgrade (invest less)

12. Surgeons – Surgical Suite robots (invest less)

 

4 new types of healthcare delivery systems: What to know | USC online. (n.d.). USC EMHA Online. https://healthadministrationdegree.usc.edu/blog/what-you-need-to-know-about-4-new-healthcare-delivery-systems/

 

Nikuliak, A. (n.d.). Cloud-Based medical device networking – why is it that good? Software Development Company – ScienceSoft. https://www.scnsoft.com/blog/medical-device-networking

 

Telehealth by SimplePractice™ (Secure & HIPAA Compliant). (n.d.). SimplePractice. https://www.simplepractice.com/features/telehealth/