Ever looked under the hood of a Tesla? There's no oil, pistons, or hoses. In Tesla's sales model, the company does not use dealerships. Every vehicle is ordered online, custom-built, and dropped off at the customer's home.
Tesla is bringing disruption to the automotive industry, and healthcare is poised for the same.
This was a story highlighted in Mike Alkire's opening speech at the annual Breakthroughs conference, put on by Premier Inc., a leading GPO and healthcare improvement company. More than 4,000 executives and leaders from healthcare providers, suppliers and other organizations gathered in National Harbor, Md., this week to attend. The theme? Fostering innovation and disruption through collaboration among leading healthcare organizations.
The weeklong event included an Innovation Celebration, where more than a dozen medical innovations were recognized. Among them: advancements in lung and breast cancer screening, neonatal and scoliosis imaging, tissue management, perinatal heart rate monitoring, blood supply management and fascial closures.
“It still takes 15 years for a major life-saving discovery to become a standard of care across our country,” said Alkire, Premier's chief operating officer. "I find that hard to believe. And it should be hard for all of us to accept, because as innovators, we know we can do better."
Alkire said at Premier, they aspire to shorten this span to 15 months—and maybe even 15 weeks—through their established collaboratives and incubators. The strategy is meant to positioning providers for quicker success.
It was attendee Sharon Powell's sixth Breakthroughs conference. Powell is director of performance improvement for Frederick Memorial Hospital in Frederick, Md.
"One of the most valuable parts of this conference is meeting experts from across Premier who have insight into multiple hospitals,” Powell said. “These hospitals are invited to share with attendees how they accomplished their goals. I always find the speakers are willing to collaborate with you on where you need to improve.”
For example, Jim Reichert, vice president of analytics and transformation at Catholic Health Initiatives, shared CHI's journey to analytics maturity through a breakout session. Through CHI's crawl-walk-run approach to getting the right data in place, and building data governance into the organization's culture, CHI was able to achieve the following results: a 27% reduction in catheter-associated urinary tract infections, a 21% reduction in pneumonia mortality, and a 35% reduction in surgical site infections after colon surgery.
Another success story shared by Alkire: Sinai Health System in Chicago was able to reduce asthma-related emergency room visits by 56% by focusing on patient education around controlling asthma. The system found through patient education that homes in its patient population were rife with asthma triggers, such as moldy carpets and water damage. New education around these triggers helped make positive change for their patients, and their organization.
“There's so much information [at this conference] to help you achieve goals in quality,” Powell said. “In fact, through our participation and the help that Premier's given us, we were 1 of 38 hospitals that were awarded one of the top performer awards at this year's conference."