“The job is broken. Primary care is about relationships and building trust with patients, and knowing who they are as people. You can’t do that in a fifteen minute visit,” says Dr. Alan Glaseroff, a longtime family physician and health care delivery innovator affiliated with Stanford University. Add to that the need to do hours of administrative work on weeknights and weekends, and Glaseroff can understand why it’s hard to get medical students to choose primary care as a specialty. As he tells Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan, the answer starts with changing the model of care to restore the appeal of primary care as a career. On this episode of WorkforceRx, Glaseroff shares several innovations he helped develop at Stanford that revolved around empowering medical assistants to do more. “Our medical assistants had their own panels of patients. They stayed in touch with the patients between visits and they helped motivate them in activities that would make them more healthy.” Other structural changes allowed physicians to only intervene with patients when most needed, and ensured that everyone’s work was done by 5pm. The result was improved patient satisfaction, job satisfaction and quality of care. Tune in to learn about other innovations in the delivery system and payment system that might help address the chronic shortage of primary care physicians that is hampering efforts to improve health and healthcare.
Continue readingDr. Stacey Ocander, Nebraska Hospital Association: Helping Young People Choose Healthcare Careers
Studies show that when it comes to getting people interested in any career, early exposure can make a significant impact on their ultimate choice. That helps explain why a program in Nebraska that’s aimed at cultivating interest in healthcare jobs begins in the third grade. As we learn in this episode of WorkforceRx, the Health Careers Pipeline Initiative is just one of several workforce development strategies being pursued by the Nebraska Hospital Association under the guidance of Dr. Stacey Ocander, the association’s senior director of workforce and education initiatives. “You really have to start the excitement young. You have to be the people who establish the strongest relationship before something that may be negative in their life gets a hold of them,” says Ocander, a self-described creative disruptor. The program starts with exposing youngsters to thirty-two healthcare occupations and gradually winnows that number down to one or two as students discover their interests through summer camps and internships in middle school and high school. Ocander sees this sustained contact as critical. “My goal is by the time they’re a senior, our hospitals are engaged to help them pay for that first two years of college to get them to that first license.” Join Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan for an encouraging exploration of innovative partnerships between hospitals and educators and the benefits of doing ‘business as unusual.’
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