Becker's ASC Review

52 HEALTHCARE NEWS 52 Why innovation is more than a buzzword for UMMC's CEO By Kelly Gooch F or Bert O'Malley, MD, president and CEO of Baltimore-based University of Maryland Medical Center, innovation is more than just a buzzword in healthcare. "It's an important buzzword, in my opinion, because I think the discovery and innovation arms are not necessarily congruent every time, but they are linked significantly," he told Becker's. "at improves care problems and issues today and builds future care paradigms and treatment for tomorrow." is perspective comes from his four years of experience at the helm of UMMC (a team at the organization performed the world's second transplant of a genetically modified pig heart last year). It is also from his experience as a head and neck cancer surgeon with a long history of innovation and discovery, mostly on drug development and surgical instrument development. "It's been in my blood since training, and my interest in that early on was how do you make things better? How do you provide better current care for patients? How do you develop the future care? And that was personally exciting. I think innovation discovery gets people motivated, rallies people behind it because it's new, it's interesting, it's improvement. So there's a very important psychological aspect of positivity and enthusiasm that is valuable as well as the practical aspects of improvement and increased quality and decreased risk or harm," said Dr. O'Malley. Given his passion for innovation and the burnout and angst seen in care teams during the COVID-19 pandemic, he saw an opportunity to rally UMMC workers behind a new initiative — an Innovation Challenge in partnership with the University of Maryland, Baltimore. e competition focuses on identifying and then investing in the ability to test initiatives to improve patient outcomes. "We didn't have a forum for that," Dr. O'Malley said. ere was an "emotional, psychological feeling coming out and going back into COVID-19 from 2020 to 2021, and it was a means of pulling people together with something different and new and in an area that they have expertise in, which is clinical care." UMMC's Innovation Challenge piloted in 2021 with an investment, and applications went out for various levels of awards. Dr. O'Malley said the first round garnered more than 100 applications, and some of the applicants participated in a pitch session for their ideas, similar to "Shark Tank." is past summer, UMMC held its third annual Innovation Challenge, and the competition thus far has offered several opportunities for awards up to $125,000. One example, the founding recipient, is the Distress! gaming app from UMMC and Grendel Games. e simulation game is based on real patient scenarios and is designed to train clinicians to identify acute symptoms earlier. e content is developed by healthcare professionals, including respiratory therapists, nurses, pharmacists, physicians and others involved in rapid response to patients in distress. Dr. O'Malley said about 100 members of coordinated care teams at UMMC have gone through the app, and there have been benefits, such as better responses and better closed loop of communication. ose who have participated "become more assertive in a good way, advocating for the patient, not necessarily the current process," he said. Dr. O'Malley said the Innovation Challenge has also reinvigorated the organizational culture, and workers who have used the app have seen improvement in how they play the game with different scenarios. "e next stage is now how do we distribute it and popularize it and make it part of our standard work and standard presence," he said. "We think by doing that, it will foster the enthusiasm for engaging in innovation. Bringing people who may never have thought they could make a difference because they're not in the basic science laboratory or they're not inventing a new surgical instrument. But they're in the field and coming up with ways to significantly advance patient care." n Large health systems may need to rethink growth: Moody's By Laura Dyrda S crutiny on nonprofit health system mergers and acquisitions is intensifying and Moody's warned it could become a tougher exit strategy for distressed hospitals, and affect growth of large systems, according to an April 18 2024 Healthcare Quarterly report. While planned mergers, acquisitions, and joint operating agreements will likely continue to increase, Moody's cautioned that scrutiny from federal and state regulators has become a costly risk for even cross- market deals. "On the regulatory front, not-for-profit cross-market mergers have generally not led to the same degree of scrutiny as combinations in a single market," the report notes. "That scrutiny is intensifying as federal and state regulators increasingly have antitrust concerns and seek to control healthcare costs." The federal government is challenging more healthcare deals than in the past, and some have folded under the pressure. States are also reviewing healthcare consolidation and its impact on competition, quality and costs. Both Indiana and California state legislatures are working to expand review authority over hospital transactions, and Washington could follow suit. "Heightened concerns among regulators about consolidation carries particular risks for distressed systems seeking exit strategies because it could make it harder to find a buyer," the report notes. "If the number of merger denials increases, larger systems active in M&A may also need to reassess their growth strategies." n

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