Becker's Hospital Review

25 WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP 25 CEO / STRATEGY RIP 'Uber of healthcare' By Molly Gamble T he phrase "Uber of healthcare," a once-aspirational analogy for a single, winning, disruptive force in health- care, has officially died. e industry's anticipation of the "Uber of healthcare" was akin to the world's waiting for Y2K: e hype was there; the result was not. Uber was founded in 2009. In summer 2021, competent healthcare leaders know they need a different prototype for this analogy to pos- sibly hold weight. Although "Uber of healthcare" was on the decline for years — with fewer minds finding the analogy compelling, appealing or exciting — its official cause of death in summer 2021 was the combination of ride-hailing compa- nies' soaring prices, longer wait times and frustrated customers. e analogy worked when the experience, measured by conve- nience, cost and access, was unmatched. But to call any healthcare player the "Uber of healthcare" today means its customer experi- ence involves a dawdling looking-for-driver page, a 23-minute wait and five cancellations before the 1.7-mile ride that costs $38.45. To be clear, this isn't necessarily worse than the average experience in healthcare, but it is what the industry wanted to get away from. e broken ride-hailing experience is the re- sult of a long break in use of these apps that was caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. e disruptors got disrupted, so to say, as the pan- demic tested the gig economy and the role consumers play in ensuring fair competition. By early 2021, ride-hailing apps were down drivers, and they've struggled to recuperate. Uber reported that it had 22 percent fewer drivers in the first quarter compared with the same period last year, according to e New York Times. As customers got vaccinated, de- mand rebounded and exceeded the supply of drivers and cars. e result? More expensive fares. Research firm Rakuten Intelligence found the cost of rides on Uber and Ly was about 40 percent greater in April than a year before, according to the Times. Gad Allon, PhD, professor in the department of operations, information and decisions at the Wharton School in Philadelphia, pinpoints the biggest transformation in ride-hailing from the pandemic: drivers' realization that working for a gig platform isn't all that great. Dr. Allon has studied the gig economy for years, identifying a decision-making effect called "in- ertia behavior," in which the more drivers work, the more likely they are to continue working, according to a Knowledge@Wharton article. e pandemic's forced pause halted that hustle, creating inertia among the drivers. Drivers' pay, conditions and treatment over- all worsened over time as Uber scaled back spending during the run-up to its IPO in 2019, Dr. Allon posits. Now, as the company tries to bring drivers back with promises of more money through surge pricing and in- centives, many drivers question whether the juice is worth the squeeze. "e drivers are saying, 'Well, we've been to that movie already. We've seen you trying to lure us in. Once we're in, you're going to re- move these benefits, you're going to remove these advantages, and we're going to be stuck again doing many, many short rides for very low pay,'" Dr. Allon said. "Tell us how this time it's different." Dr. Allon said drivers will return, drawn in by pay, but ride-hailing companies will still need to reexamine the diminishing returns of their employment model, noting that drivers have long memories and will remember how they were treated in the past. e strongest healthcare leaders build sound strategies, foster creativity and drive new thinking when they point to models, forces and inspirations that endure. For years, peo- ple focused on what healthcare was not by pointing to what the gig economy was, treat- ing the latter as the clever, straight-A student in the class who figured out in a couple years what hardworking healthcare did not. Uber's instability and problematic labor mod- el is but one example of how businesses built upon short-term contracts make for poor analogies to healthcare. e quality of med- ical care and treatment one receives is the longest and most consequential contract of their life. It's almost a miracle that "Uber of healthcare" caught on in the first place, as the discrepancies between the two are so glaring. RIP, "Uber of healthcare." anks for remind- ing us of the need to improve healthcare in ways that last. n Missouri children's hospital execs: Mental health crisis 'pulverizing our country's kids' By Morgan Haefner F our hundred of the nation's more than 600,000 deaths attributed to COVID-19 have been children. The presidents and CEOs of four children's hospitals in Missouri wrote in a July 13 blog post that "for anyone tempted to view this impact dispassionately as 'minimal,' we can assure you it is not." That's because the statistics "obscure the enormity of a shadow pandemic that is pulverizing our country's kids: the deterioration of mental, emotional, and behavioral health" in Missouri and nationwide, the executives wrote. At St. Louis Children's Hospital, a senior leadership meeting was stopped by an alert that a 16-year-old was at risk of attempting suicide on the hospital's campus. The child did not take their own life, but "anecdotes like this have be- come unnervingly commonplace at children's hospitals in Missouri and across the nation," the authors wrote. The executives called for several solutions, including building up provider and infrastructure supply to meet care demands, greater safety for providers and more investment in pediatric mental health services. The executives include: • Trish Lollo, president of St. Louis Children's Hospital • Paul Kempinski, president and CEO of Children's Mercy Kansas City • Steven Burghart, president of SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children's Hos- pital in St. Louis • Joseph Kahn, MD, president of Mercy Children's Hospital St. Louis n

• Cover