Becker's Hospital Review

Save the date! Becker's Hospital Review Annual Meeting – May 7-9, 2015 – Chicago 58 S tephen Klasko, MD, MBA, is president and CEO of Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health System. A board-certified OB-GYN, Dr. Klasko is bridging the art and science of medicine and healthcare information technology through an entrepreneurial-academic model. Dr. Klasko previously served as CEO of USF Health and dean of the college of med- icine at University of South Florida in Tampa. After receiving his medical degree and completing his obstetrics and gynecology residency, he earned his MBA at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. At Jefferson, Dr. Klasko leads an academic medical center that consistently ranks among the top hospital systems in the country and serves as the largest health employer in the greater Philadelphia region. Over the last several years, he has pioneered the development of the first medical school that selects stu- dents based on emotional intelligence, led the team that built the country's largest assessment of technical and teamwork competence center, and cre- ated an innovative primary-care-driven, patient-centric, Medicare-based accountable care model within the country's largest retirement community. Dr. Klasko has served on the boards of several national nonprofit hospital sys- tems. He is currently on the corporate board of Teleflex, a global medical device company, and was recently named a trustee of Lehigh University, one of the country's leading academic institutions. He has written extensively on the need to "change the DNA of healthcare" by transforming the selection and education of health professionals. To that end, he has received more than $2 million in grants researching the biases affecting physicians' willingness to accept change. He has written more than 200 peer reviewed articles and books, including "The Phantom Stethoscope: A Field Manual for Finding an Optimistic Future in Medicine" and "Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be OB-GYNs." Dr. Klasko is married to Colleen Wyse, a former Conde Nast publishing ex- ecutive and now a vice president at Visit Philly, and has three children: Lynne, a public health professional at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, David, an actor in New York City, and Jill, a marketing director in Tampa. Here, Dr. Klasko took the time to answer Becker's Hospital Review's seven questions. What's one thing that really piqued your interest in healthcare? I'm going to go with two, since I've had two stages of my career — one as a pri- vate doctor and one after receiving my MBA from Wharton. What got me ex- cited when I was young is medicine's amazing focus on the individual. You earn the people's trust with their life and their health, and in my case as an obstetri- cian, their babies. The patient expects you to use all your expertise to get it right. As a doctor, you can say one word to a patient that will make things all right. The challenge point came later in my career, and that's the absolute compla- cency with the way we do things in healthcare — thinking it's the best it can be — and the resistance to change. When I was in the weekend program at Whar- ton, people would say, "Wow, you're so lucky to be in healthcare, a $2 trillion industry going through all this change. There are all these good opportunities." I felt good Saturday and Sunday, and then on Monday I go into the OR lounge and people are saying, "Everything is changing, that's going to be bad for us, I should retire and tell my son or daughter not to go into healthcare." During the weekends at Wharton, it was great to be in healthcare, but during the week at the hospital, it was everyone wishing things were as they used to be. What do you enjoy most about Philadelphia? Our passion in Philadelphia and Tastykakes, a Philadelphia snack tradition that is my one food vice. The great thing about Philadelphia and Philadelphians is that we really care and fight for what we believe in. In other communities I've worked in, you have to push hard to ignite passion. Here, in healthcare, in arts, in sports — we really want to be the best and we're willing to roll up our sleeves to get it done. In Philadelphia, we have six academic medical centers in a concentrated area. You can literally go from one to the other without changing your park- ing spot. All of them have a commitment to excellence. That keeps you on your game. At the end of the day, you always have to be thinking about in- novating and what you need to do to be the best to survive. If you could eliminate one of the healthcare industry's problems overnight, which would it be? I think health disparities, by far. It's not just the access to care. It's the fact we ignore the true determinants of health, most of which have nothing to do with hospitals or doctors. At Jefferson, we have the first school of population health in the country. By the time the patient gets to the doctor, 80 percent of his or her health determinants are cast, whether it's water, diet, exercise or education. Some think we're going to solve health disparities by providing better ac- cess to hospitals and doctors, which isn't a bad start, but we're missing 90 percent of the boat by not doing things from the population health perspec- tive. Unfortunately, we spend 90 percent of our healthcare dollars on the 10 percent of acute care that will determine your health, and we under-resource the public health aspects. What do you consider your greatest talent or skill outside of the C-suite? I would say creativity and communication. The way I translate that is I think you can work hard and have fun. I believe you can work in an industry like ours with stress and amazing rewards, but the rewards are heightened if the team feels they can stretch themselves creatively and just have some fun. If there is one differentiating factor in my leadership career, it is that I have The Corner Office: Dr. Stephen Klasko of Jefferson Health System on Passion, Creativity and His "New Math" By Molly Gamble

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