#9 - Dr. Manish Naik: Reasons for optimism in healthcare

In this episode, Dr. Naik sits down for an in-depth conversation with Dr. Muthu Alagappan, CMO at Notable. Among several other things, the two discuss the value and limitations of the electronic health record, the role of automation in delivering better patient care, and Dr. Naik’s dual role as Chief Medical Officer and CMIO. 

—- 

Manish M. Naik, MD, joined ARC in 1996. He has served as Associate Chief of ARC Internal Medicine since 2011 and Chief Medical Information Officer since 2014. He was named Chief Medical Officer in June, 2021, providing leadership to ARC physicians and clinicians. Under his leadership, ARC continues to explore new technologies that allow physicians to optimize clinical and administrative work flows for better physician wellness and patient care. He serves as Chairman of the ARC Executive Board and is a member of the ARC Clinical Quality Committee.

—- 

0:04:03.9: Dr. Naik: “Right now, in many cases, the technology is a hindrance, it's interfering with the patient-physician interaction because it's now in the room with you and you're interacting with it and you may be losing eye contact with the patient. And one of the great promises of these electronic systems was if we spent all day entering data into them, there would be some return on that investment. These systems would help us do tasks in an easier way, they would help us with clinical guidance. And I think that is still, in my mind, in many ways, an unfulfilled promise. So I think there's a lot of opportunity still there.”

0:06:01.4: Dr. Naik: “So again, we have better access to information but my own assessment is that in the current state of things, in no way shape or form has the electronic health record made us more efficient. And that's the challenge that we deal with today.”

0:09:21.8: Dr. Naik on what the impact of the EHR is on both older and younger physicians. “I think they recognize the value of digitalization, but both the younger and the more senior physician are being impacted by the electronic health record in a negative way, because the screens are very busy. There's a lot of clicking, there's a lot of scrolling. It has added a significant cognitive load to the brain in getting through the day, and that's on top of all of the cognition that happens evaluating patients and deciding on what is the differential diagnosis, what is the treatment plan.”

0:13:46.1 Dr. Naik: “So I definitely think there are components of the workflow that can be automated. And actually some of these components like the medication reconciliation, for example, can be automated with the help of the patient. In other words, the patient can do some of that work for you, and ideally some of that work can be done even before the patient shows up in your office.”

0:15:28.8 Dr. Naik: “Healthcare has always been behind in terms of leveraging technology in a way that actually improves efficiency, improves quality of care, and reduces the staffing need.”

0:16:45.1 Dr. Naik: “The other challenge in our healthcare system is the payment model. We live in a healthcare system in this country where you're reimbursed for everything that you do, if you do something, you get paid for it. And I think, increasingly, we're recognizing that we need to move to a model where we're rewarded for keeping patients healthy.”

0:17:26.3 Dr. Naik: “...I do think the future of healthcare is bright. We have to better leverage technology to accomplish the goals that we have set for ourselves, not that somebody else has set for us.”

0:18:24.0 Dr. Alagappan asks about the staffing shortage and whether or not we’ve seen the worst of it.

0:18:58.6 Dr. Naik, “So I think there's a long and a short-term problem there, but I think it's solvable. I think that we're also recognizing, and in any healthcare organization this is true, that the staffing and the people are the m