In honor of Women’s History Month, Healthcare Finance News has asked some of the women leaders in the nation’s healthcare industry to talk about the role of women in healthcare. Contact HFN associate editor, Stephanie Bouchard, on Twitter @SBouchardHFN if you have suggestions for women that should be included in our series.
Today, we hear from Carolyn Clancy, MD. As the director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), Clancy guides the department in investing in projects that seek to improve the quality, safety, efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare. Per her official bio, as director of AHRQ, Clancy launched the first annual report to Congress on healthcare disparities and quality. Clancy is also a member of the Board of Governors of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), an organization created to conduct research that will provide evidence-based information to patients and providers to aid in better healthcare decision making.
Q: What role do women have as decision-makers/leaders in today’s healthcare sector?
A: It has long been recognized that far more often than not, women are making healthcare decisions on behalf of their family. They will be the one, if the family moves for example, to investigate who the family doctor should be, and so forth. By virtue of their societal responsibilities, many women are providing and arranging healthcare for their children and sometimes for older parents or being caregivers for other people.
Because women are arranging care, they can often see the really practical details which aren’t rocket science, but actually are harder to get right. These details make all the difference in the world. It’s those details that are often the root cause of our quality and safety problems. It’s a lot about communication. It’s a lot about making sure everybody is on the same page.
Q: What do women bring to the table to shape the future of healthcare?
A: You often hear women say that they are better multi-taskers. It would be hard to pick up a newspaper without reading a columnist commenting on this issue. That aptitude and experience are enormous assets in healthcare. There is a lot happening at once. Whether you are a front line clinician, whether you’re drawing blood and bringing it to the lab to be sampled, or whether you’re writing the analysis of lab tests or x-rays – invariably it is not always going to go perfectly smoothly. There are always emergencies. You’ve always got several fires burning. So, I don’t know if it’s an innate tendency or more of a demonstrable skill and affinity for a multi-tasking world, but I think it’s a huge asset to healthcare.
Q: What do you personally believe should be the path forward to better care and lower costs?
A: A common foundation for many efforts is about focusing on skills as well as knowledge, and not overlooking the all important practical details. There is a famous episode of the TV show ‘House’ where Dr. House asks a patient if she has an inhaler for her asthma. As we know those devices can be incredibly important in self-care. She says yes and House asks if she knows how to use it. The patient gets angry and says something like ‘Do you think I’m an idiot?’ House then asks her to show him how she uses it. She proceeds to spray it on her neck like a cologne bottle. We know from a lot of studies, if you don’t use the inhaler right, it matters. So it’s not about knowing about inhalers. The challenge is actually knowing how to use them and deploy them effectively. Similarly, getting to high quality, affordable care requires a relentless focus on testing and refining solutions that are practical and workable for those who are on the front lines of care delivery.
Some of the work that we have funded at AHRQ has found that when you actually make healthcare a team sport, and you make it easy for it to be a team sport, astonishing things happen. Healthcare associated infections are dramatically reduced – and even eliminated. Whether you’re talking about private healthcare systems or public hospital systems, the challenge is figuring out if we’re all on the same page and if we’re all connecting the dots and checking in with each other. It’s a very different script than the one that most health professionals are trained for. This model is about learning new skills, learning how to be part of a team, and learning how to ‘read back.’ It’s not technical proficiency of one individual; it’s how the team functions together. That’s really where we need to go. And I don’t think there is any stopping us.