Becker's Hospital Review

18 INNOVATION The 'goldilocks' strategy: University Hospitals eyes fixes for healthcare's biggest issues By Mackenzie Bean C leveland-based University Hospitals has launched a $10 million innovation effort to identify, test and scale solutions for some of healthcare's biggest problems, the organization said June 28. e Veale Initiative for Health Care Innovation is supported by a $10 million gi from the Veale Foundation. Peter Pronovost, MD, PhD, the system's chief quality and clinical transformation officer, is leading the effort. e initiative launched June 26 as a two-year pilot during which University Hospitals will work to identify and address barriers to healthcare delivery that have an immediate economic effect on U.S. hospitals. ese efforts will include addressing challenges with nurse labor productivity, healthcare access and chronic disease management, among others. "Healthcare does so much good, but it can be so much better. It costs way too much. It harms too oen and it learns and improves too slowly," Dr. Pronovost told Becker's. "We think this approach of having a place where the world's biggest health problems collide with the best technologies in an ecosystem of innovation and collaboration [will spur improvements]." rough the model, Dr. Pronovost's team will first work to define and prioritize healthcare's key issues by interviewing team members and conducting independent analysis. e team will focus on identifying pain points within healthcare delivery, rather than positions or personnel problems. For example, a pain point is nurses wasting their time documenting in the EHR, while a position is that nurses should not have to document, Dr. Pronovost said. Aer defining and prioritizing healthcare's biggest issues, the next step is what Dr. Pronovost calls "the goldilocks": finding the right degree of specificity to address the problem. "Some big problems are so theoretical, they're like boiling the ocean," Dr. Pronovost said. "Others are so small, it's not a meaningful problem that impacts our business. And so we're trying to find those — we kind of think of them as impactful units — that the problem is big enough that it makes a difference in our financial statements." From there, Dr. Pronovost's team will conduct innovation due diligence not from a traditional venture perspective, but from the perspective of the health system to understand what problem the solution is trying to solve, what value it will bring to the organization and whether clinicians will actually use it. "We will run tests and prototypes to see if we actually can get value," Dr. Pronovost said. "If they work, we will scale across UH and then we will either spin off companies or partner with others to scale more broadly." As the health system operates a large ACO with full claims data, UH has fully integrated EHR data and claims for a little more than half of its patients. is information will help the system assess not only clinical effects of a solution, but also factors such as annual cost of care and total drug spending to inform a clear picture of value. Dr. Pronovost said he has shared the health system's framework with several venture firms that have already shown a high interest in investing in solutions. "ey told me, 'If you have a problem that many people in healthcare agree is a problem, and it's big, and you tell me you can solve it, that's a no-brainer for our investment," he said. n 400+ patients mistakenly told they may have cancer due to software glitch By Mariah Taylor G rail, a company that developed blood tests to detect cancer, mistakenly sent approximately 400 customers letters saying they might be positive for the disease, The New York Times reported June 4. Grail's Galleri test uses blood to detect cancer signals shared by 50 types of cancers and is available only by prescription, according to the report. Grail said in a statement that one of its vendors sent hundreds of letters with incorrect test results due to a "software configuration issue." The vendor, PWNHealth, notified Grail of the letter May 19, saying it had been sent to roughly 400 customers from May 10 to May 18. Grail notified the customers of the mistake by phone and email. "No patient health information has been disclosed or breached due to this issue, and no patient harm or adverse events have been reported," Grail's statement said. The issue was not caused by incorrect test results, according to the company. More than half of people who received the erroneous letter had not yet had their blood drawn for the test. PWNHealth said in a statement that the system it uses to send template messages to people had a "misconfiguration." "We addressed the underlying problem within an hour of becoming aware of it and have implemented additional processes to ensure it does not happen again," PWNHealth said. "In partnership with Grail, we started contacting impacted individuals within 36 hours." n

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