What Innovation Means to Healthcare

In the end, these innovations should not simply be viewed as threats to physicians and their hard-earned careers, but as opportunities for them to focus their talent and abilities where they are most needed. Interventional cardiologists may treat most single-vessel coronary artery disease patients nowadays, but we must still turn to cardiac surgeons for more complicated cases and ones in which percutaneous intervention has failed.

If surgeons were occupied with managing all cardiac interventions, there would be many sick people without access to care. Likewise, if we can use technology to release anesthesiologists, radiologists, primary care providers, emergency medicine physicians and every other physician from activities that could be safely performed by a less-costly individual, access to health services would be less of a problem than it is currently.

Finally, how quickly these changes come about ultimately boils down to money. The medical payment and reimbursement system in the U.S. has created incentives for providers to continue offering services that could be done by someone else. More importantly, there are disincentives to take on more complicated cases that offer little or no additional compensation.

Thus far, the solution to these market distortions has primarily been to cut payment rates whenever possible – and as far across the board as physicians will accept. However, if we are to expect cardiac surgeons to manage only the most complex cases, anesthesiologists to focus on the high-risk patients, and primary care physicians to coordinate increasingly fragmented care, we must pay them accordingly.

Investment in the right kinds of innovation–not blanket cost-cutting–is the path to better quality and affordability, which do not have to be mutually exclusive. By understanding what innovation means to healthcare and the types of innovation that ought to be supported, we can all be better off than we are today.