August 29, 2022

On a cool, refreshing August evening (we almost forgot what a breeze felt like!), we hosted the latest edition of our Digital Health Institute for Transformation (DHIT) Happy Hour series. The growing DHIT team was joined by digital health transformers, entrepreneurs, clinicians, researchers and technologists at our headquarters on historic Franklin Street in downtown Chapel Hill.

Dr. Dorn spoke about the challenges and opportunities of redesigning and transforming clinical care. “Change is hard, especially in healthcare, given the number of people involved, legacy structures, misaligned incentives, and a generally conservative culture. The pandemic catalyzed rapid change to an extent that would not have otherwise been possible, especially around using virtual care and digital health tools.” He went on to consider how new technologies may bring many benefits, but also some drawbacks. For instance, electronic health records may make information more readily available, but, “often, doctors are forced to look at a screen, depersonalizing and disconnecting the patient from their experience and creating even more fatigue and administrative burden for the provider.”

Dr. Dorn was asked about his perception of the future of care delivery. He remarked that, “one of my fundamental views of healthcare is that we tend to force people to adapt to one-size-fits-all care models. Our opportunity (and challenge) is to build out additional ways of taking care of people and then construct an operating system that matches people to the type of care that best meets their needs and preferences.”

“Our opportunity (and challenge) is to build out additional ways of taking care of people and then construct an operating system that matches people to the type of care that best meets their needs and preferences.”

-Dr. Spencer Dorn

Along these lines, Dr. Dorn discussed how “unbundling” specialty care may make it better. Currently, specialists bundle their core activities – consultations, co-management, primary care, and procedures – together using the same clinical, operating, and business models. In some ways this is akin to how cable TV subscribers  “may only want to watch CNN and ESPN but get stuck also paying for the Lifetime Channel and A&E through the bundle they are forced to purchase.” He explained that, “if specialists unbundle and optimize their services, we would better serve our communities, align with the exciting advancements in primary care around value, and make overall care more affordable, effective, accessible, and pleasant.” The net result is personalization at scale, where health systems adjust to patients’ individual needs rather than patients conforming to the outdated care pathways of legacy systems.

To read more about unbundling specialty care, check out the article Dr. Dorn recently wrote for the Harvard Business Review here!

Many thanks to Dr. Dorn for the engaging and thought-provoking talk, and to all of the attendees who gathered at our homebase! Continued collaboration across our ecosystem is the only way towards a healthier future for us all.

Join us again at our next Happy Hour event on September 27th at the Enventys Health Innovation Lab in Charlotte, North Carolina – as we continue to connect with the region’s digital health innovators and transformers. There will be cold beer, tasty bites, and ever-engaging conversation around enabling a healthier tomorrow, today!

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Talk soon!