SSM Health President and CEO Laura Kaiser was a featured speaker at the recent 2023 Health Evolution Summit conference in Dana Point, Calif. Speaking on a panel with other CEOs, Kaiser called for technology to support the human-to-human interaction of the patient-clinician experience, and urged health care companies to collaborate more to improve patient outcomes and lower costs.
“Technology,” she said, “is about how to help the humans who are providing care to do it more effectively without it coming at such a personal cost.”
Some of the technology that has become commonplace in health care has subtracted minutes from the time that a caregiver has to examine and talk with a patient. Kaiser noted that a partnership with Nuance, which is in a pilot stage, allows physicians to spend more time with the people under his or her care – and still emerge from the exam room with notes on the visit automatically completed by the software.
The process is called “ambient documentation,” Kaiser said. “We have adopted it at SSM Health and it has been particularly helpful for some specialties.”
SSM Health is also using technology to screen for and address social determinants of health – the nonmedical factors that influence well-being – which Kaiser said is essential for patients.
“The idea of individual health is so dependent on where you live, and access to safe food and safe water, among other needs,” she said. When it comes to managing these issues, “none of us can do it alone.”
Similarly, collaboration was a key attribute when Kaiser discussed the Health Care Utility business model formalized by SSM Health lead futurist Carter Dredge, with the low-cost generic drug company Civica Rx serving as a proof point for the model. Civica, Kaiser said, provides evidence that when health systems partner on systemic issues to lower costs, reduce monopolies and ease supply-chain issues, patients also greatly benefit.
Kaiser was greatly impacted by a trip to Cuba, a country with a much smaller economy than the U.S., which nonetheless boasted terrific health outcomes for its residents – including the fact that insulin was provided free to people with diabetes. Civica recently made news by announcing it would produce insulin for $30 per vial, which spurred major manufacturers to lower their prices as well.
“Civica,” Kaiser said, “has upended the industry.”
