Healthcare workers urged to care about each other in the ‘hospital of tomorrow’
“The hospital of the future will not stand by itself if we have a burned out workforce. Each of you has to care about the people with whom you work.”
On that low-tech, high-touch note, John Noseworthy, MD, president and CEO of the Mayo Clinic, concluded his keynote address to open the third annual U.S. News Hospital of Tomorrow conference in Washington, D.C., the third week of October.
Earlier in the speech, titled “The Faces of High-Value Health Care: People and Processes,” Noseworthy discussed some of the ways Mayo has invested in personalized and genomic medicine.
As a result of the emphasis, Mayo has succeeded in halting, through use of contraindication alerts in the EMR, more than 650 drug prescriptions that could have caused harm.
The institution has also created a program called Ask Mayo Expert, which connects patients with clinicians online so they might avoid a trip to the hospital.
A video of the speech, along with extensive coverage of the three-day event, is posted at the website of U.S. News & World Report.
When he got to the part about burnout, Noseworthy said doctors’ lives have been heavily impacted by healthcare demands coming from the federal government.
Today’s physicians sometimes struggle to keep up because they “are data driven, they are good people, they have to find meaning in their work, and they want to be challenged,” he said.
Other sessions and talks at the conference hit on the continued growth of telemedicine, the increasing focus on outcomes, hospitals’ need to operate more efficiently and ways to make sure technology “lets doctors be doctors.”
Also presented were insights on cancer treatments and cardiac issues and, not least, how the heightened focus on overall consumer satisfaction, aka the “patient experience,” is transforming healthcare.
Dave P. has worked in journalism, marketing and public relations for more than 30 years, frequently concentrating on hospitals, healthcare technology and Catholic communications. He has also specialized in fundraising communications, ghostwriting for CEOs of local, national and global charities, nonprofits and foundations.