By Cheechee Lin
On February 13, the UCLA Anderson Healthcare Business Association gathered together prominent leaders from health care to discuss industry challenges looking forward. Allison Faris (’15), an Anderson student with a background in civil engineering and sustainability, attended the conference and said, “I thought it was excellent and sets a high bar for next year.”
The inaugural topic was Modernizing Health Care for the New Age. And technology — its great advantages as well as unknowns — was at the center of almost every discussion. Consolidation of services along the lines of ur-consortium Kaiser Permanente, as well as the massive size of the industry, also drove conversations.
By 2029, 20 percent of the U.S. population will be over 65 years old. In other words, every day, 10, 000 baby boomers are becoming senior citizens. The panel titled Baby Boomer Silver Tsunami addressed the rapidly aging population and featured Sandy Atkins (VP of research and development at Response Genetics), Scott Kaiser (chief innovation officer of the Motion Picture & Television Fund) and Carol Lee Thorpe (VP of programs and services at St. Barnabas Senior Services), and was moderated by Arash Naeim (a geriatric oncologist and chief medical officer of clinical research at UCLA Health).
Atkins said she believes that “there is a grassroots movement happening to improve aging in society; however, there is so much more that needs to be done.” Kaiser said, “We need to work together to enable people to make better choices and take action.”
Another issue was the effectiveness of coordinated care in homes for the elderly. Thorpe believes that a community beyond a hospital setting could be beneficial to the aging society, and said that creating a network of trusted advisors for the vulnerable population is vital to creating adequate support.
Extraordinary innovation in the digital health realm was also a topic of interest. Thorpe joked, “Although I spend my days on the edge of the digital divide, and it is a huge obstacle for me, I do believe that access to more information is empowering when it comes to technology. Apps and arms — this is something we need to help with taking care of frail older people.” Atkins agreed that everyone can benefit from adapting to technological advances, and she sees great potential for technology to help compensate for losses in physical ability, such as blindness.
In final remarks, panelists expressed what they believe could make a difference for older people and their quality of life. Kaiser concluded that “We need to become better at figuring out what’s important to people. As we plan for the future, this becomes harder to know definitively.”
The panel on medical technology and biodevices included Anderson alumni Abhra Roy (’10), now vice president at St. Jude Medical, and Meera Shier (’09), marketing manager of MicroVention Inc. They and their colleagues commented on stringent competition challenging companies’ abilities to keep current with market demands while new devices are still being tested. Shier observed that in Europe they’re often approved some two years earlier than in the U.S. But she keeps her eye on where the unmet needs are and seizes opportunity there, steering her company to anticipate future markets.
Roy offered that evolving sciences result in increasing miniaturization of devices and therefore less and less invasive technology. Simplicity is also a hallmark, he said; people are expecting it now.
And, added panelist Paul Grand, managing director of RCT Ventures, it’s a data-driven market — with big constraints on capital for early-stage innovation in the last five years — so every device should be collecting as much patient data as possible. This, he said, will improve not just the quality of the care but the whole paradigm for care as well.
Participants in the payer/provider panel agreed that a major change in the landscape is the new level of competition. Now that the rate of uninsured Americans has dropped from 30 percent to 15 percent, every provider must strive to be the provider of choice, not the provider of last resort, as Martin Serota, vice president and chief medical officer of AltaMed Health Services, pointed out.
Kaiser Permanente’s Arthur M. Southam, EVP of health plan operations, said, “On the care delivery side, the key thing that cuts across markets is the coming together of institutions and professionals,” and he noted physicians’ affiliations with larger institutions as another trend.
Capacity seems to matter going forward. UCLA Health, for instance, houses the teaching and research hospital it always did; but it isn’t simply a tertiary care center anymore, it’s a full-care system for the entire family. Eric Esrailian, co-chief of the Division of Digestive Diseases at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, echoed the technophilia of the larger conference, confirming that “We rely heavily on the IT infrastructure” that enables ease of cross-communication and ensures security. The advantage of the academic medical center, he said, is that there are opportunities for engagement with and even competition to test out innovative ideas. “There’s a lot of open-mindedness and acceptance. If you can prove a concept, people will be interested in taking it to the next level.” Esrailian feels like UCLA is providing the necessary environment for innovation.
The closing keynote was delivered by Thomas Priselac, president and CEO of Cedars-Sinai, in conversation with Leah Vriesman, director of UCLA Executive Education in Health Policy & Management. Cedars partnered with seven Los Angeles and Orange County health systems to launch the integrated health system Vivity. Vivity’s goal is, at its simplest, to keep people out of the hospital. MBA candidate Faris, who has a med-tech Applied Management Research client and will work in biotech upon graduation, said, “The closing fireside chat gave me insight into the evolving local ecosystem of health care, as a consumer and long-time L.A. resident. I thought it was interesting that others are really putting a lot of effort to copying Kaiser [Permanente]’s model.”
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