Becker's Hospital Review

69 PRACTICE MANAGEMENT THOUGHT LEADERSHIP BECKER'S 7 th Annual Meeting Register at www.beckershospitalreview.com/ conference/ April 27-30, 2016 | Hyatt Regency, Chicago 2016 What do you believe is the single most important element of an effective population health management program? If you ask the public this one, they might not use this term, but what they indicate in surveys is navigation. ey are confused by the complexity of the system. Another advantage of navigation is we can help support primary care physicians in maintaining a continuum of care that doesn't involve specialty pinball. is means the patient who doesn't just go to a heart doctor for chest pain, then to a neurologist for headaches. ose could both be appropriate, but I think it should all be organized through the pri- mary care physician who knows the whole story about the patient. Navigators help facilitate that. Within Ascension, we call them health partners. ey do home visits, talk to folks on the phone, visit everyone when they are discharged from the hospital, make sure they understand how to take their prescriptions and get them filled and schedule a fol- low-up visit with the doctor. Transitions in care are where people fall through the cracks — they don't understand their discharge instructions, or they are confused about their new prescriptions from the hospital vs. all the orange bottles already in their medi- cine cabinet. What is your No. 1 tip for helping a team work better? Listening is important. Leaders oen have strong personali- ties. e world moves ahead behind people who conquer territory rather than hold territory, but you can never be the smartest guy in the room about everything. I think mentoring is very important in developing people. at is one of my passions in healthcare — identifying people with talent and helping them discover their strengths and develop them in areas of developmental need. What book has most influenced your professional journey? e Kindle is a great thing for me because I can get three or four books going at a time. Nonfiction can be tough. I'm rereading Winston Churchill's account of World War II. It's very interesting, but I need to take breaks from it with novels because it's so de- tailed. It's fascinating, but sometimes you just want to read Gone Girl. A relatively obscure book that's influenced me is What It Takes by Richard Ben Cramer, about multiple candidates from the 1988 presidential campaign. It follows Republicans and Demo- crats starting from their decision to get into the primaries and through the general election. It's interesting because you get sev- eral biographies plus some history in one book. I learn a tremen- dous amount from biographies. As a music lover, what is your favorite music-related memory? I've become friends with Ben Folds and I was able to be there when he recorded his most recent CD. He wrote a concerto for piano and orchestra, which premiered with the Nashville Sym- phony. My younger son, who is a grad student at Purdue, came down for it, and Liz and I went with him to the concert. Later, I got to be in the control room when it was recorded. On the other half of the CD, Ben is searching for the next genre of music. He is tremendously creative. He found an eclectic group of classical musicians who play a unique combination of instruments and re- corded with them. at's what I'm into now. n

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