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That's the beckershospitalreview.com
events page. See you in Chicago.
This is Chris Sosa with the Becker's HealthCare
podcast.
I'm thrilled to be joined by doctor Barry
Newman, pediatric surgeon, former director of pediatric surgery
at Providence Health, and an active lead in
the world of informatics to reduce clinician burnout.
Doctor Newman, thank you for joining us today.
It's my pleasure to be here. Thanks for
having me.
Doctor Newman, for those who don't know you
and are not familiar with your work, could
you please introduce yourself and tell us a
bit about your background?
Well,
first and foremost, I'm a full time pediatric
surgeon. I've been in practice for 40 years
now.
I have an MBA in finance and in
health care,
and, also a master's in health care informatics.
I'm board certified in surgery as well as
in informatics.
Since obtaining my informatics degree,
several years ago, I've been actively engaged in
efforts to reduce clinician burden and its consequences
of burnout.
I've been working with an h l seven
working group and currently had a task force
sponsored by HIMSS as well as efforts in
AMIA's 25 by 5 project,
and recently,
I'm serving as a lead,
in a working group sponsored by HL 7
and the International Standards Organization,
looking to develop programs and practices to reduce
burden and burnout,
through,
health information technology.
Thank you for laying that out for us,
doctor Newman.
Given all the projects that you have going
on, which are tremendous in many,
what are your top priorities today?
Well, my elevator speech
is that my goal was to make health
care better, more accessible, and more affordable for
my children and grandchildren.
That's what led to my MBA in finance
and health care and then, subsequently,
my master's in health care informatics.
However,
while I wanted to do that for my
children and grandchildren,
I now unfortunately believe that I need to
do that for myself and for my generation.
Higher quality care should be a given.
However, since the addition of electronic health records,
clinician burden was skyrocketed.
There's a number of reasons for this,
that it's not just the EHR.
There are
very multifactorial,
but this has been leading to increased burnout,
which leads to early retirement, providers leaving for
nonclinical
positions.
And now we're seeing worsening shortages of caregivers
where we were already previously
developing shortages,
without great caregivers who are working at top
form,
with the means of entering high quality data
that can really be used to improve health
care.
We have no hope of turning this around.
So it starts
with engaged and not burned out providers.
And that's my that's my passion and that
that's my goal is to
try to get this fixed because we need
to we need to be increasing our numbers
of providers, not not losing them.
Those are absolutely worthy goals, doctor, and certainly
everyone listening to this podcast can relate to
them.
On that note, how do you anticipate your
role as well as anyone that you're working
with in your atmosphere? How I anticipate that
will evolve over the next 18 months or
so.
Well, it turns out that this is actually
a very timely
offer to be involved with the podcast because,
I actually will be stepping away from a
full time clinical practice in the next few
months.
After 43 years in practice,
I'm moving on to my next stage.
So
while I'll be moving away from full time
clinical practice, I plan to continue my work
on reducing burden and burnout both on a
volunteer basis,
as well as in my role as a
consultant. I do do consulting as well.
I've also been developing research plans regarding identifying
and measuring burdens and their contribution
to burnout.
And my research has shown that there are
many contributors
to to burnout and burnout, not just the
electronic health record.
For example, one of the other prime contributors
is dissatisfaction
with administrators,
just as an example.
Because there are other factors as well, but
those are 2
2 major
contributors.
We're also looking at the inclusion of burden
as a strategic imperative
through the 25 by 5 work group in
India.
And we're hoping that hospitals and health systems
include this,
in their global planning and awareness,
because I think that this is
this is an important part of the solution.
And without
without that awareness
and without including it in that type of
global planning,
I'm afraid that we're gonna we're gonna lose
that battle.
Doctor Newman, looking in a little bit of
a different direction, although it's all related, of
course. I have a 2 part question for
you, and that is what are you excited
about right now, and what is making you
nervous? And please answer that in whichever order
you feel is most appropriate.
Well, I think the the first thing is
is that there are so many incredible things
that are on the horizon.
Technology, both in the information technology space,
as well as things like genomics and personalized
medicine.
They they hold such amazing potential to extend
lifespans and not just extending lifespans,
but useful lifespans to keep people productive and
functional
for many, many, more years.
I do this when people talk about retirement.
I tell people don't give up your day
job because you you may live, a lot
longer than you think you're gonna live.
You know, most people are planning living into
their eighties or maybe their nineties, and I
I suspect people are gonna be living even
longer than that. So,
when you look at what's coming down the
pipe,
I think that we have an amazing future,
potentially in front of us.
But, I am concerned about a number of
things.
You know, we talked about burden and burnout,
but I am increasingly concerned about the progressive
financialization
and the corporatization
of health care.
I think that this poses great risks to
how care is provided.
Professionals, and I'm speaking about not just physicians,
but nurses and other related,
professions,
are increasingly being treated as only employees
and not utilized to their full potential.
And there's been a loss of autonomy and
freedom of act freedom of action.
And, some of the problems that I mentioned
earlier regarding burden and burnout,
these are only going to fester and deteriorate,
potentially to the point where we can't redeem
it.
And the only people who can fix this
now may be hospital and health system administrators,
who do control the purse strings and do
control
how their employees are addressed
and,
whether they are listened to or not. And
while I don't want to say the word
tone deaf, and sadly, I'm afraid that this
is where many situations are right now.
So I think that needing to turn around
how health care is managed,
with an eye towards
being inclusive and listening and, you know, leadership,
playing a major part in
reengaging with clinicians,
I think becomes such an important,
important aspect of of what we need to
do with health care.
And if we don't get there,
I think we're sadly gonna be in a
lot of trouble.
Doctor Newman, thank you so much for being
so generous with your time and your insights
today. I cannot wait to share them with
our larger audience, and we definitely look forward
to connecting again with you soon.
Well, thank you so much for having me.
And I I look forward to talking again.
Hopefully, we can have this conversation again in
a year, and we can talk about all
the great things that have happened over the
past year or so.
No doubt, doctor.