5 health system execs sound off on disruptors

Health system leaders increasingly understand that the competitive pressure their organizations face isn’t just coming from other systems.

Big tech and retail companies like Amazon, CVS Health, Walgreens and Walmart are providing in-person and virtual-enabled care. The disruptors are making big investments to grow organically and through acquisition, offering consumers a different kind of healthcare experience. 

Sign up for the Digital Health Intelligence newsletter and keep up with one of the industry’s fastest-growing sectors.

Here's what five health system executives say on whether incumbents can shift to a more consumer-based mindset with the impending threat from retail and big tech disruptors. 
 

Dr. Shreya Kangovi, founding executive director of the Penn Center for Community Health Workers: You can talk about the Amazons, the CVS/Aetnas and the Walmarts. They're already in the community. And so they are trying to basically build healthcare in the community, rather than do what health systems have to do, which is push out into the community. It's very clear that the next frontier of healthcare is the community. It is our own backyard.

Related: How Amazon, CVS and others have grown into healthcare powerhouses

Dr. Imran Andrabi, president and CEO of ThedaCare:I think the pandemic has made it really clear that the way we have always done our work is not going to be sustainable. And so if we keep sitting in our brick-and-mortar offices and just wait for people to show up from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m...that is not the way healthcare can be delivered in the future. We're working with [digital health companies] like b.well to meet the consumers where they are located. We're trying to build a 24/7 capability so [consumers] have access when they need it, how they need it and for the right reasons to get them the right outcomes. I think not doing this is not an option anymore.

Kash Patel, chief digital information officer at Hackensack Meridian Health: When it comes to return on investment with digital [health]...I've gone to our board and talked about the offensive defensive approach. Amazon, CVS, Optum, they have all started to chew into the business. And they don't have the same burden of brick-and-mortar with paying the rent that we do. It's good to have that competition around...but when I speak about ROI, I'm speaking about a offensive defensive conversation. If we don't do this, our competitors will and they don't have to be the next hospital. They're going to be the Amazons, the Optums and others like them. 

Roger Jensen, chief innovation and digital health officer at Michigan State University Health Care: The way I look at it is, ‘Have we earned the right to be called a consumer business?’ Up to this point, healthcare has not done a good job of that when almost every other facet of your life…has migrated to a better online experience at a pace that healthcare has not been able to match. And we sometimes think being able to simply schedule somebody, have them take control of that and maybe manage their next appointment is a technological breakthrough. But we're behind the ball. Do I think healthcare gets it? I think healthcare is starting to get it. Do I think healthcare has earned the right to say we're going to do this really well? I'm not sure that I'd go that far. There are things that we're still bound by whether they're [electronic health records] or the way that we like to schedule certain patients with certain abilities to pay…and maybe we're still not recognizing what it means to exactly be consumer oriented because we still tend to make a lot of decisions based around our clinical preferences.

Marty Bonick, CEO of Ardent Health Services: As a legacy healthcare system industry, this is ours to lose. I'm not afraid of Amazon, CVS, or Walgreens coming in and taking our business away, unless we fail to act. I think this is just imperative upon us that we have to embrace this change. COVID has been an accelerant in terms of people realizing that just because we have built these big hospital structures, people don't have to come and get their care from us. So if we can, we [should] disrupt it. ourselves. That's a lot less painful than just waiting for it to happen. 

Brock E.W. Turner contributed.