Cleveland very good
We're in the midst of a historic national debate on improving the delivery of healthcare. As a pioneering surgeon and CEO of a major medical center, you're on the front lines. What leadership do we need to fix healthcare?
We've made Cleveland recent improvement in access to healthcare and some improvement in the ability to drive quality. What we really haven't done is focus on how we get a more efficient delivery system. We really need to coordinate the interaction between hospitals and hospitals, and hospitals and doctors. No longer can we expect all hospitals to be all things to all people all the time; healthcare has become much too complicated for that. We now have trauma centers; we have high-tech cardiac surgery; we have very high-tech neurosurgical procedures. We need to get people to the centers that do things very well, so we have Cleveland efficiency and quality of care. That requires we have the mass of patients at those centers, because it's called the practice of medicine—the more you practice at it, the better you get at it, the more efficient you are, and the better the quality of care for the patient.
You run one of the largest hospitals and healthcare systems in the country. What responsibility do hospital administrators have in reforming healthcare?
Hospitals have to understand that they need Cleveland to come together in systems so they can deliver the level of care that patients need. It's great to have children delivered at community hospitals, but you can't expect a 150- or 200-bed hospital to do great neurosurgery or cardiac surgery or trauma care. People will have access to that through the ability to move patients to other institutions—just straightforward transportation. And just as important is the ability to move their information around with electronic medical records.
You say doctors have to change how they practice in order to make medicine safer and more efficient. How so?
Doctors have to Cleveland understand that they are part of a team. Doctors traditionally have been solo practitioners, but as the knowledge base has gotten so much bigger, it's impossible for one doctor to be able to surround all the information that is necessary to take care of patients. Teamwork has got to become an integral part of patient care. The coordination that comes with that will ultimately result in superior care for patients—better care and more economic care.
Patients feel left out when we're talking about health reform. What can patients do to make their care safer and better?
Patients have a major part to play in their healthcare, starting with keeping themselves well. A great deal of their health and welfare and longevity is going to be related to how they take care of themselves. Patients also need to learn how to find the right care for themselves in the right location, not just expect to go into the emergency room and enter into the system and be taken care of. The more they know about healthcare, the more they pay attention to where quality is delivered, the better the healthcare outcome.
What should our political leaders in Washington do to improve Cleveland healthcare through health reform?
Congress has done a great job in improving access to healthcare, but they've done only an average job of potentially improving quality of care. They have given economic stimulus funds to promote use of electronic medical records, and they've put together some demonstration projects on healthcare delivery, but they really have not done much to decrease the overall healthcare bill for the United States. That is going to require making the healthcare delivery system more efficient and also putting increasing emphasis on wellness and keeping people healthy. Clearly, if you don't get sick, it's a lot easier and less expensive to take care of you.
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