MACMLA 2013: Dr. Andrew Watson

Funny, insightful, and able to sprinkle his talk with random facts, Dr. Andrew Watson provided an amazing initial presentation to kick off the MACMLA 2013 Annual Meeting.  Dr. Andrew Watson described the transformation of healthcare, highlighting some of the industry’s misalignments such as point of access (hospital? home? work? medical office?).  Here are a few highlights from his talk.

  • Transformation of healthcare is normal, natural, necessary and unstoppable
  • Consumer electronics market has impacted and changed many aspects of society, as we know it
    • examples of its impact include telementoring in the OR, telemedicine in staffing ICU beds
  • Parallel issues in medicine + libraries
    • what is info?
    • what is point of care? (point=location)
    • structure
    • access
  • IOM “30% of health spending in 2009 roughly $750B was wasted”; for more you may want to consider watching Escape Fire

  • Moving from sick care system to proactive care system
  • One main part of the transformation that needs to occur is the shift from volume of care to value of care
    • Staple or stitch?
      • Staple with 15% loss — earns more money for return visits, labs, nursing encounters
      • Sew with 0% loss — earns less but reduces costs
  • He does about 30% of work in the cloud
  • Healthcare became poor at coordinating care when we shifted medicine to urban settings
  • Implications of this new consumer tech market for you
    • Access
    • Velocity
    • Storage (IT)
    • Delivery (Kahn Academy)
  • Questions for us moving forward
    • A/I
    • Push learning
    • Social media
    • Research

Audience Questions (at least as many as I could try to capture)

  • Interprofessional emphasis right now – how to handle?
    • Collaborative care team in the cloud.  Care coordinator brings all the pieces together instead of the patient going to multiple places.
  • What is your vision for medical education?
    • Shift to the digital age.  Kahn Academy is good example.
    • Should not be time-based promotion, instead proficiency-based.
  • What is the reimbursement model for telemedicine and are insurance companies keeping up?
    • Insurance companies understand this value, as he has found through his work with insurance arm
    • CMS is also starting to expand support
    • On-site support at work is a new design component often being offered
  • How do you work with the technology-adverse?  What about the education?
    • This is a subset of the population
      • Elderly may not want it but other family members do
      • Others who want to avoid technology but their nurses and caregivers will still be using it
      • Sending teams to the home is a great

Here are a selection of other voices who virtually participated in the presentation:

https://twitter.com/JMBojanski/status/389752922759647232

https://twitter.com/RyloLH/status/389749144740302849

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