# Apr 7 Yale Healthcare Conference - Recap: Executive Panel

**Executive Panel on Patient-Centeredness**

A distinguished group of speakers, including Robert Galvin, Jahangir Mohammed, [Adrienne Boissy](https://twitter.com/boissyad), and [Donald M. Berwick](https://twitter.com/donberwick), gave an impassioned overview of common barriers to patient-centered care and recommendations to improve.

**Key takeaway:**

True patient-centered care is _Empathy Operationalized._ We must move the paradigm from patient centeredness to person or even relationship centeredness.

**Topics of note:**

- Problems to solve for in healthcare, more often than not, are a manifestation of something amiss foundationally. We’ve heard about _solving to the problem_, but how about shifting our language and focus to _solving to the root cause_?

- Examples of non-patient-centered care abound: priority parking for physicians, 9-5 Mon-Fri healthcare availability, limitations to inpatient visiting hours.

- Info, Access, Culture and Measurement barriers should be analyzed when making healthcare decisions.

**Other compelling nuggets:**

- “Have the benefit of a beginner’s mind.” Jahangir, Mohammed, Founder, Twin Health

- Donald Berwick, Faculty, Harvard Medical School:
  - We need to “design systems that are adaptive to the needs of the individual patient up to the last step.”  An example:  patients should have the ability to personalize lab result release timeframes (even for cancer and genetics if the patient so desires).
  - “Communities are asking to take the wheel, and they should.”  This means that providers and payers need to learn how to adapt to this change – be great partners and community anchors.
  - “In the U.S., we haven’t discovered solidarity [in healthcare] yet.”
  - “RVU stuff is just plain in our way.”

- Several great quotes of note from Adrienne Boissy, CMO, Qualtrics:
  - “We all behave very differently in relationships.”
  - “Patients want to know are they cared about, are they safe, is this easy.”
  - “Patients experience pain in healthcare as lack of access on the front end, delays throughout the care process, and billing issues on the back end.”
  - “Access is a health imperative.”
  - “Treat people as human beings.”
  - “Patients need to be part of the team.”

- How do we get our staff to care about and weave patient-centeredness into all decisions?
  - _At Cleveland Clinic they have “The Pause.” The names of all patients who passed away the previously day are read, a moment of silence is honored, and decision makers then get to work.  Powerful stuff._

- “Systems are perfectly designed to produce the results that they do.” – Robert S. Galvin, CEO, Equity Healthcare (EH)

## We’d love to hear from you on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/cj-duax/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/CJ_Duax) on this Thought Question:

## **What policy in place at your organization could be rolled back today given its lack of empathy for patients?**

**Apr 8 Yale Healthcare Conference - Recap: Afternoon Breakout**](/content/our-blog/yhc-afternoon-breakout/index.html) **Apr 6 Yale Healthcare Conference - Recap: Morning Breakout**](/content/our-blog/yhc-morning-breakout/index.html)