The global healthcare system faces big challenges, but technology and a more patient-centered approach to care give reasons for hope. A recent global survey by GE HealthCare revealed faltering patient trust, clinicians struggling with burnout, and low professional satisfaction. But the survey also showed broad agreement among patients and care providers about how to improve healthcare. Two thought leaders with long experience advocating for better care delivery discussed the theme of overcoming barriers in a recent conversation.
Mathias Goyen, chief medical officer for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa at GE HealthCare, and Sarah DiGregorio, a journalist and author, talked with Morning Brew’s Sonya Gavankar about the results of GE HealthCare’s “Reimagining Better Health” study and their own experiences. The pair portrayed a system that is becoming stronger and better by focusing on serving patients in a more personal way and preventing illness instead of just treating it.
“Patient problems are clinician problems; clinician problems are patient problems,” said DiGregorio about the intersecting issues noted in the study. “We are quite literally in it together.”
A Patient-Centric Future
Goyen pointed out that there are several areas where healthcare is improving. Electronic health records have made accessing patient data easier, reducing the need for extraneous tests. Better diagnostic imaging and precision care are making medicine more efficient at finding disease and tailoring treatment to the individual. And telemedicine is bringing access to care to many areas, such as rural communities that often don’t have the same facilities as more urban centers do.
DiGregorio noted that healthcare is also becoming more of a team sport, with less emphasis on hierarchy that puts the physician in charge and more focus on including patients in decision-making and treating nurses and specialists as key players.
Goyen and DiGregorio agree that the future of medicine places more emphasis on the patient by, for example, promoting preventive care instead of waiting for people to get sick and go to a hospital, which is generally more expensive and less personal. Better integration of records, easier and more affordable access to care, and a focus on keeping people healthy, instead of just treating illness, could bring broad benefits, said Goyen. Doctors should be encouraging their patients to interact with their own health data and ask questions and should be unafraid to help patients adopt healthier lifestyles.
An example of how that can work, said DiGregorio, is a diabetes care program two nurses oversee in rural Tennessee. Instead of sending patients on their way with a drug prescription and some information about losing weight and eating healthier — actions that can simply reinforce the shame many feel when diagnosed — the nurses take time to understand the lifestyles their patients lead and help them see ways to improve their own health, such as by providing them with healthy recipes they can make with locally available foods.
“Patient-centered care is more effective care,” DiGregorio told the audience. “It’s more effective for the individual, it’s more effective for the community, and it’s also more effective on a systemic level in terms of cost savings.”
Goyen and DiGregorio told the audience to expect technology and a more flexible approach to further push medicine out of hospitals and into patients’ daily lives.
“When people are empowered … when people understand their own bodies better, they do make these positive changes that are sustainable, because they’re grounded in understanding the way that they live,” said DiGreogrio. “I think that that is the promise of bringing care out of the hospital and really grounding it in the community.”
Artificial intelligence, said Goyen, won’t replace care providers, but it will augment their abilities, helping to streamline tedious processes that contribute to clinician burnout. Burnout is a mounting concern as more and more experienced physicians, nurses, and other clinicians contemplate leaving their profession. Goyen, who began his career as a radiologist, told the audience that the factors behind this range from increased workloads to confronting emotional situations such as providing end-of-life care to dealing with bureaucratic tasks. Doctors spend, on average, 16% of their time on administrative tasks, said Goyen.
“Clinicians often have to spend a significant amount of time on paperwork, documentation, administrative work — everything that has little or nothing to do with what they’ve been trained for,” said Goyen. “It’s all important. I get it. But [it takes] away valuable time from patient care.”
A handheld, AI-powered ultrasound device Goyen and his colleagues developed serves as an example of what technology can do to enhance medicine, he said. A nurse or midwife can use the device to do a full exam on a pregnant woman and quickly determine if the pain she’s experiencing is normal or warrants what might mean, for a person living in rural India or Africa, a six-hour drive to a clinic.
“Patients are always looking for the human touch in medicine, and [they] don’t want to get their diagnosis from a computer. They want to talk to a real person, a nurse or a doctor,” said Goyen.
Explore the findings in the full Reimagining Better Health study.
About Reimagining Better Health
The Reimagining Better Health study draws on a quantitative survey of 2,000 clinicians and 5,500 patients and patient advocates, as well as qualitative interviews of 24 healthcare experts across eight countries in North and South America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region. This cross-sampling considered diversity of economic maturity, geography, and representation of a pure or hybrid form of the four basic healthcare models (Beveridge, Bismarck, National Health Insurance, and Out-of-Pocket).
The double-blind survey with random sampling was conducted between August and October 2022 by a third-party market research firm. All survey respondents were asked for their opinion based on their personal experience. Questions relating to technology solutions addressed their general perception and experience with technology within their facilities and included the entire spectrum of medical technology, without reference to any specific solutions or vendors. Any references in this report to technology are inclusive of the entire spectrum of medical technology, such as medical devices, software solutions, electronic patient records, and other digital workflow solutions.
Why We Conducted the Study
As we stepped into a new chapter as an independent GE HealthCare, we commissioned this study to help not only us, but the healthcare industry, add context and insights helpful to better defining the problems our customers and broader stakeholders face. It starts with listening and understanding before you can solve the problem.
By amplifying the voices of patients and clinicians, we shine a spotlight on their personal perspectives as a critical and frequently overlooked part of this conversation. Their insights are essential to the industry collectively reimagining healthcare. Their partnership and positive experience are key to the healthcare industry’s success.
