LAS VEGAS—CareMore Health System CEO Dr. Sachin Jain woke up his early-morning audience Tuesday with a blunt pronouncement.
The relationship, he said, between physicians and healthcare administrators “has never been more broken than it is today.”
Doctors and administrators don't know each other. Don't trust each other. And with profound changes in reimbursement buffeting the industry, the situation can only get worse unless the parties make an effort to get on the same page.
“Change is hard,” said Jain, who was an adviser on healthcare reform in the Obama administration before eventually joining CareMore, an Anthem care subsidiary, first as chief medical officer in early 2015, then being named CEO this year.
The Harvard Medical School-trained physician has empathy for the plight of doctors. “They have never felt more burdened and more burned out,” Jain told an assembly of about 200 at a first session Tuesday of the Healthcare Financial Management Association National Institute annual conference.
Smart administrators would do well to try to relieve that burden rather than add to it, he said.
A recent survey, Jain said, found that 53% of physicians say they are burned out by the clinical and red-tape responsibilities they have vs. 43% four years ago.
Jain laid out a commonsense plan to try to reduce the natural tension that exists between clinicians and administrators—basically, by recommending that they learn to walk in each other's shoes.
CareMore, which provides about $1.2 billion of care annually, has established an academy to inform physicians about the cost pressures that administrators face, while putting administrators on the front lines with doctors so they can better understand the clinical decisions that physicians have to make in a period of shrinking reimbursement.
Medical schools, Jain said, have checkered success informing potential doctors about the business aspects of healthcare. And the teamwork that physicians learn as residents and during training tends to go out the window once they strike off on their own.
So Jain has a straightforward prescription. First, the way care is organized at hospitals and medical offices must include input from front-line physicians, not just physician managers who, within months of joining the administration, lose touch with the on-the-ground obstacles.
Second, administrators should spend at least 10% of their time shadowing physicians and remain in contact with them to learn their struggles. The same is true of physicians, who need to spend 10% of their time learning about the latest healthcare business and reimbursement trends.
Only by communicating with one another can the two sides learn to truly trust one another, Jain said.
Putting aside the time isn't as difficult and costly as it might seem. He said administrators should use department meetings rather than special meetings to get face time with doctors. Then, they should use the sessions as much to listen as inform about the administration's perspective on business.
Jain said administrators also should excise the word “provider” from their vocabulary. Physicians, and other clinicians for that matter, didn't go through the arduous training to become “providers.” They are about caring for people.
With a little effort, and a dose of empathy, physicians and administrators can better co-exist, Jain said.
With big business changes coming down the road, the consequence of not looking out for one another is likely to be an unhappy one.
