Modernizing Health Care
A nonprofit system with a for-profit infrastructure.
That’s how Michael Forbes, M.D., FAAP, FCCM, characterizes the U.S. health care system.
The chief academic officer and William H. and Rebecca D. Considine Endowed Chair for Pediatric Research at Akron Children’s Hospital joined VITALS on April 6 to share his thoughts on how the system can be improved and modernized. He suggested that any successful solution should include the following points:
- Engage patients.
“We have lots of data that tells us that patient engagement builds trust, enhances communication, improves patient satisfaction and decreases access utilization.” - Innovate the system.
“What is innovation? I’ll give you the Mike Forbes ICU guy, simple definition, right? It is scalable solutions that start with the problem. That's innovation.” - Transformational leadership.
“We need leaders who are boundary crossers, leaders who are team players who understand that nothing valuable gets done alone. We need leaders who can look at processes and innovate, leaders who are domain experts – you do, in fact, need to know your stuff. Leaders who are skilled communicators, system thinkers and rigorous researchers.”
Watch Michael Forbes on VITALS
Save the date
Princess Ogbogu, M.D. (’00), chief of the Division of Allergy, Immunology, and Rheumatology, University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital, joins VITALS at noon Thursday, May 4, in Watanakunakorn Auditorium and via Zoom. Registration opens soon.