Reflections from the HBS Healthcare Conference

Shawn Li MD MBA

Internal Medicine Resident at MGH

PGY-1

March 27, 2019

I had the opportunity to attend the 2019 HBS Healthcare conference this past February. The day was jam-packed with insightful speakers and thought-provoking discussions. A few takeaways from the day:

Keynote speaker and CEO of the Boston Medical Center Kate Walsh talked about the challenges she faces leading the largest safety-net hospital in New England. While the national conversation is centered around reducing healthcare utilization, often the most at-risk patients need more healthcare services rather than less. Balancing how to deliver high-value care to vulnerable patients with the financial health of the institution proved to be a difficult problem. In particular, Kate highlights the conundrum of care delivery innovation in a fixed-costs heavy organization. Because of disproportionally high fixed costs, most services seemed to have a positive contribution margin. Thus it became difficult to parse out which services were genuinely adding value.

Population health was also a topic that came out across many different sessions. While we saw familiar use cases such as implementations of data analytics from the payer side, it was heartening to see population health blossoming on the provider side as well. Co-founder and COO of Landmark Health, Carol Devol, showed how in-home medical services are transforming the care for patients with multiple chronic conditions. By working with primary care practices, in-home care fills an unmet need for many. As a medicine resident, I realized just how high the opportunity cost of coming to a doctor’s appointment is for many patients. I whole-heartedly welcome new ways that we can reach our sickest patients in their own environment.

At the end of the day, the mission is to provide health to the patients we serve. It’s important to hear different perspectives from the various stakeholders on how they are tackling the toughest problems in healthcare. My experience at the HBS healthcare conference has given me new insights on how we can redesign and reshape the healthcare delivery system.