LAS VEGAS — Cleveland Clinic CIO Edward Marx told the HIMSS conference Tuesday healthcare is too staid, and gave advice on risk-taking for health systems, including financial incentives for staff to take risks.
Marx touted the Cleveland Clinic's venture capital arm, which invests in startups and more mature companies. He noted nine spin-offs that have emerged from the culture of risk-taking. Financial incentives are available to any employee — from IT to food service to more traditional caregivers.
“Any caregiver that has a great idea and we take it to market, they’ll benefit. If they come up with some great idea and it saves people’s lives or cuts costs, they’ll benefit,” he told Healthcare Dive after speaking to a session on health innovation. “Some organizations have a lot of parameters around that — and structure.”
He advised health systems to look beyond the healthcare industry for best practices. For example, Marx said he's found new ideas from studying what consumer giant P&G and convenience store 7-Eleven do. “If you stay within healthcare looking for answers, we’re in big trouble,” he said.
This year he’s looking at Progressive, the insurance provider. “They are excellent at mobile,” he said.
Marx was asked by an audience member for an update on Cleveland Clinic’s partnership with IBM’s Watson technology. He replied that early on, they used it to broaden general knowledge. Now, they are working on more specifics, including using it to do predictive analytics in oncology.
With a view from Europe, Claus Duedal Pedersen, project manager at Odense University Hospital, described how the public hospital system cut its average length of stay in half to 3.6 days over a period of several years.
“The goal is to keep people out of the hospital,” he said, citing a strong primary care system, a change in reimbursements and agreements between municipalities and hospitals to discharge patients when they are ready to go home in a timely manner.
The pair also talked of ways to innovate while tackling burnout and administrative burden.
“When we think about caregiver burnout, something simple like increasing screen size and email storage can help,” Marx said. “It’s not until you can commiserate when them (clinicians) and get into their workflow that you learn these things.”
“If you fail, celebrate. We are so risk averse in healthcare,” he added.