Dr. Stephen Klasko: “Healthcare has to stop waiting for the government to come up with the answers”

Dr. Stephen Klasko currently serves as president and CEO of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health.

He wears other hats as well. He has coauthored multiple books, including The Phantom Stethescope and We CAN Fix Healthcare: The Future Is Now. Klasko has another book — Bless This Mess: A Pictorial Primer for the Future of Healthcare — coming out this year.

In a phone interview, Klasko discussed his thoughts on the government’s role in healthcare, how Jefferson is addressing health disparities and more.

This exchange has been lightly edited.

In We CAN Fix Healthcare, you advocate for a new healthcare model. How would you describe it?

It’s hard to be non-political nowadays on healthcare. The Affordable Care Act did exactly the job we asked it to: It gave a lot more people availability to the healthcare system. It hoped the healthcare system would transform, but it didn’t do nearly enough to make that happen.

What we’re looking to do is disrupt the way we provide care by getting care out to where people are. For way too long, academic medical centers have made the concentration their academic hospital. The fact is, nothing else in our consumer world works that way.

I think the simple answer to your question is what has to change is healthcare has to join the consumer revolution and stop waiting for the government to come up with the answers.

Why is diversity important in healthcare — especially as it relates to medical school?

The crisis in this country is health inequity. It’s something we should all be ashamed of. The first piece is understanding that social determinants of health are just as important or as important as whether we have … an MRI in our hospital.

The issue around diversity is related to that. We haven’t done a great job of diversity in medical school education.

Part of the reason is what I have previously talked about. If you’re just admitting kids based on whether they can memorize organic chemistry, there are parents who are going to be able to afford to spend thousands of dollars for them to memorize that stuff. It’s not an even playing field. If you choose students based on empathy and communication skills, you’ll have a much more diverse class. They’ll go back to their communities and help prevent those inequities.

How is Jefferson Health working to address health disparities between zip codes in Philadelphia?

One of the things we prioritized this year is the Philadelphia Collaborative for Health Equity. We’ve gone to our gala, where we’re able to raise money. Instead of putting that into getting a new MRI, we put it into the Philadelphia Collaborative for Health Equity.

We have Project H.O.M.E., which educates people and finds them housing. We’re providing the healthcare for those people. It’s literally going after the root cause.

How can EHRs and healthcare technology become more personalized and patient-centric?

One of the things we have to do is look in the mirror and ask why healthcare has not joined the consumer revolution.

I ended up having lung surgery the day before Father’s Day. We had started a program called Virtual Rounds. With it, we ask people who they would like to communicate with. I signed up, and my three kids could hear from the surgeon that I was OK. When you think about it, we could have done something like that two years with FaceTime, five years ago with Skype or 15 years ago with the phone.

At Jefferson, we’re challenging ourselves and our patients to look at what other industries have done and do it here.

What is one healthcare application whose capabilities are overhyped?

I think probably in some respects, generally, EMRs. I think the whole concept of the EMR being a panacea for having patients and providers be closer together hasn’t turned out that way. In some respects, by having an EMR, you’re actually further away from the patient.

Photo: Artwork Photography