Global Health Care Leaders Agree: We Can’t Hire Our Way Out of This Problem

Post Written by Jason Helgerson, Founder & CEO

Jason Helgerson spent a few days in Rome this spring, reflecting with other health care leaders on the state of the common, global challenges facing health care.

I had the pleasure of spending two days in Rome with a diverse group of global leaders to discuss the biggest challenges and opportunities facing health systems the world over. The meeting – hosted by the Australian healthcare data and analytics company Beamtree – brought together healthcare leaders from over a dozen countries.

While we covered a lot of ground in two days, I wanted to share my biggest takeaways from the global leaders meeting.

We can’t hire or train our way out of our workforce challenges

Every country represented at the conference is struggling to maintain an adequate health care workforce. While the problem is already significant, it will only get worse in the years to come. The World Health Organization estimates that we will need to find 18 million additional health care workers by 2030; everyone at the conference agreed that there is no way to hire our way out of that problem and everyone also agreed that we need a plan B. Much of the conversation focused on the need for automation which has proven easier said than done in health care. I personally think we will need to maximize our use of virtual care (synchronous and asynchronous) and focus our in-person interactions on the patients and moments that matter most. We all agreed that solving the workforce gap will be the biggest global health care challenge for the rest of this decade and beyond.

Old Organizational Structures + New Technology = Old, Expensive Organizations

While we spent a lot of time talking about the need for automation, there was wide agreement that technology isn’t a panacea. In fact, simply introducing new tech into old organizational structures can make things worse. This suggests that the first step is to re-organize our health care processes in ways that will make the most of these new technologies. This is easier said than done, but may be our only hope if we want to avoid the common trap of technology making our problems worse and not better. Process/organizational improvement before technology must be our mantra.

Health care should be a knowledge transfer business

I loved this reframing of health care–far too often we see health care providers as super experts who bring their highly specialized knowledge to patients on an as-needed basis. This means that patients are never actually empowered to understand their needs or options. We need to see patient empowerment and education as a prime directive, and re-focus provider-patient encounters in ways that support this empowerment. We also need to put more and better tools in the hands of patients to help them become better health care consumers and lastly–especially here in the United States–bring true price/cost transparency to the field and end surprise billing. Empowered healthcare consumers are needed if we want to really put the patient at the center of health care delivery. We need to stop paying lip service to the problem and make it a reality.

I want to thank Beamtree for the invitation to attend and present at this great conference. While we didn’t solve all the world’s healthcare problems, we did share ideas, best practices and agreed on what constitutes our biggest challenges. I am now even more excited to roll-up my sleeves and work to make health care better around the globe.

HSG works with organizations and governments around the world to incite positive change in the health and social care systems, especially by translating the leading practices that are taking place across the ponds, deserts, and mountains of our globally-connected world. If you’re interested in learning more about our global services, reach out to us at connect@hsg.global.

About the Author: Jason Helgerson is the founder and CEO at HSG. Follow him on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn.