Healthcare leaders spend a lot of time talking about how they’re improving the system — and considerably less time asking whether the people the system is supposed to serve actually feel the difference.
The evidence suggests the people being served aren’t really noticing, according to industry leaders who convened on a panel last week at the HFMA’s annual conference in National Harbor, Maryland.
Jason Wolf, CEO of patient advocacy group The Beryl Institute, pointed out that one in four Americans is currently opting out of care because it’s too expensive, while only about a third say they trust the healthcare system at all.
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The Beryl Institute surveys Americans about what’s getting in the way of their care twice a year. Wolf said the main barriers are always cost, access and trust.
But the healthcare industry doesn’t seem like it’s taken that to heart. Healthcare leaders have never really learned to listen to the people they serve the way other industries do, Wolf noted.
“I don’t know any other industry that doesn’t at least understand how their consumers engage with them,” he said.
Scott Hawig, CFO of BJC Healthcare, said part of the problem is that providers have spent years expanding access points without ever bringing patients along for the ride.
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Health systems have added urgent care centers, outpatient facilities and telehealth options with good intentions — but mostly without guidance for patients on when and how to use them, Hawig stated.
“We provided very little navigation,” he remarked.
Another part of the problem is the financial incentives driving the whole system, according to Seema Verma, former CMS administrator and general manager of Oracle Health & Life Sciences.
She noted that the nation’s healthcare system was never built for wellness in the first place.
“We are a sick system — we are built for when people get sick,” Verma said.
This design flaw shapes everything — from how hospitals generate revenue to how payers structure coverage — which makes genuine patient-centered reform nearly impossible to achieve, she explained.
Until the financial incentives underneath the system are restructured around keeping people healthy rather than treating them when they aren’t, the gap between what the industry promises and what patients actually experience will remain wide open, Verma said.
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