MDNews - Greater Kansas

The Mission: TRANSFORM HEALTH CARE IN SEPTEMBER, THE MAYO CLINIC HOSTED TRANSFORM 2011 — A MULTIDISCIPLINARY EVENT FOCUSED ON CULTIVATING INNOVATION AND SOLUTIONS IN HEALTH CARE. READ ON FOR SOME OF THE INSIGHTS SHARED BY LEADING INNOVATORS IN THE FIELD OF MEDICINE. MAKING HEALTH CARE CREATIVE: JAY PARKINSON, M.D. , M.P.H. JAY PARKINSON, M.D., M.P.H., ISN'T ONE TO FOLLOW THE RULES — AND YET THAT IS WHAT ASPIRING PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS ARE TOLD TO DO FROM THE MOMENT THEY ENTER MEDICAL SCHOOL. "ON THE FIRST day of medical school, you fall into line," Dr. Parkinson says. "We basically regurgitate information, we don't think." This leads to what Dr. Parkinson feels is one of the biggest problems in health care — anti-creative physicians. Since physicians have focused so long on school and want to settle down, they're less likely to look for creative solutions about how to make care accessible to patients. Hello, Health When Dr. Parkinson finished medical school, he looked at different ways of setting up a practice. He settled on creating a website where patients could log on to his Google calendar and make appointments. He would then make house calls, and patients could pay him via PayPal. If patients required follow-up information, Dr. Parkinson would connect with them by phone, e-mail or video chat. This concept eventually led to Hello Health, a website where physicians and health care providers alike can connect for a more meaningful health care relationship. To make health care more accessible, Dr. Parkinson feels design and creativity should be taught in medical school and that younger attending students should be allowed to impart what they know about technology to the older population of physicians. At Transform 2011, Dr. Parkinson closed his presentation with an Apple commercial focused on rulebreakers such as Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan and Gandhi. "What struck me is that medicine is so much an art, and there were 17 artists highlighted in the commercial, but there's not a single doctor," Dr. Parkinson says. "Over the course of the next 10 years, I ask that we all work together to put doctors in an ad like that." s WHAT ONE TWEET CAN TELL: MAGGIE BRESLIN, CENTER FOR INNOVATION, MAYO CLINIC MAGGIE BRESLIN SAW A TWEET AT TRANSFORM 2010 THAT SHE FOUND HARD TO BELIEVE: "RECEIVING HEALTH CARE IS THE THIRD LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH IN THE U.S." HER REACTION TO THE STATEMENT AND SUBSEQUENT RESEARCH TO UNCOVER ITS MEANING LED HER TO SOME FASCINATING CONCLUSIONS ABOUT HEALTH CARE IN THE UNITED STATES. THIS TWEET CAUSED Breslin, senior designer/researcher at the Center for Innovation at the Mayo Clinic, to comb the academic literature for data or fi ndings that would reveal the point the tweet's author was trying to make. Breslin found the statistic in the tweet in an article by Dr. Barbara Starfi eld published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2000. Several themes relating to how the health care system defi nes errors in medicine, captures data and differentiates between what is necessary and unnecessary emerged from Breslin's reading of Dr. Starfi eld's article and the works of other authors. "I had to ask myself, 'What was it about me that caused my strong reaction to the tweet?'" Breslin says. "I think the tweet furthers the illusion of black-and- white knowledge and black-and-white choices in medicine. It will be a huge shock to patients as health care reveals that what's on the other side of the curtain dividing patients from the medical community isn't black and white." Most egregious to Breslin — a passionate proponent of meaningful conversation between patients and providers — was the way the tweet seemed to portray clinicians and patients as being at odds with each other. "I believe strongly that everyone involved in health care delivery is trying to do his or her best," she says. "It is the job of innovators to design a system that fosters and supports providers' ability to do good." s MDNEWS.COM n MD NEWS Greater Kansas | 13

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