Healthcare organizations’ mission is to help people manage their health, but it’s not an easy goal, given the diversity of patient needs and the complexity of how providers, payers, and healthcare services and technology firms work together. What do healthcare organizations need to do? In the latest episode of the McKinsey on Healthcare podcast, McKinsey Senior Partner Patrick Finn, global leader of the Healthcare Practice, discusses how organizations can stand out and serve patients better.
Finn sits down with Querida Anderson, McKinsey senior editor for healthcare, to talk about improving access, affordability, and quality. It’s critical, he notes, to work toward all three together and not in silos. To succeed, instilling resilience in an organization is imperative—including being nimble while balancing short- and long-term goals and creating a mindset of continuous improvement at every level.
Finn points to three areas that can help healthcare organizations better serve patients. The first is the need for the healthcare ecosystem to integrate care for physical and mental health, as well as social determinants of health.1 Second, he stresses the importance of making care more personalized and care delivery more seamless. Last, administrative waste has to be reduced to make healthcare more affordable.2 AI and digital technology will be a disruptor on all three fronts, making it easier to collect and analyze vast amounts of disparate data to enable holistic care, bringing personalized information to the point of care, and creating more efficient care pathways.3
A lightly edited version of their conversation follows.
Querida Anderson: Patrick, you lead McKinsey’s healthcare industry practice. Before we discuss trends and challenges the different sectors are facing, I want to start with a broader question about fixing the problems that still exist in the US healthcare system. The public discussion about the angst patients can face when they try to get healthcare was recently reignited. What does the industry need to do to address those concerns and, in an honest way, counter that negative opinion?
Patrick Finn: As a baseline, we need to do better for our patients and plan members. The innovation that happens in the healthcare system and the ability to make people better is phenomenal. But there are a few things that we need to make better. Some of it we’ve started on. Some of it we have to expand on.
One is how we think about healthcare. We historically do a great job of treating chronic conditions and addressing acute issues, and we’ve started to expand into mental health. We can do a better job integrating care across physical and mental health. And we have to think about other factors such as food and wellness and how we bring all those pieces together to help make our country healthier.
Second, we have to make care more personal. We always talk about healthcare being local: the local market, the hospitals in that market, or the insurance that is available in that market. But at the end of the day, it comes down to a particular person who’s trying to get better. The aim should be to contextualize ideas on care pathways and population management principles for an individual and serve them the way they need to be served.
Finally, we have to become more efficient. We’ve long talked about administrative waste in the system. We have to figure out how to make real progress on that because the affordability challenge remains. But it’s an exciting time for us to address all these issues because there are some markers that suggest we may be at a time of real change—for example, the availability of more data and the rise of advanced analytics.
How AI and tech can help deliver on healthcare’s mission
Querida Anderson: Putting patients first is certainly an important North Star in healthcare, yet we have a recurring conversation about the need to make healthcare more affordable, less complex, and more personalized. So what’s different now that can allow the industry to move this necessity of patient-centricity forward in a meaningful way?
Patrick Finn: The industry has made substantial investments over the past 15 years to digitalize a lot of what it does, whether that’s related to using clinical data or claims data. That progress, coupled with the amazing innovations we’re seeing in AI and the ability to bring large sets of information together in a way humans can’t do at speed and scale, has led to more informed caregivers and patients who better understand their personal situations and what others like them have found successful in their care pathways or broader wellness and health plans.
Querida Anderson: Tech advancements have indeed always helped move the needle, and people now expect tech to be part of their experience. We’ve certainly seen other sectors respond to that expectation quickly, so healthcare can feel a bit slow. But at the same time, there are many intricacies involved in managing people’s health and wellness. Given all those complexities, how does the industry truly advance patient-centricity with tech while applying caution?
Patrick Finn: It is certainly a complicated industry: It’s complicated for patients to manage, and it’s complicated for physicians to navigate. But we can be inspired by other industries. How can we help patients and physicians be more informed and engaged? A lot of stakeholders in the industry can help enable that, whether it’s payers and the claims data they have or the health tech ecosystem and how they think about data aggregation and presentment.
But the question is, how do we get that information to a physician or other caregiver and to a patient in a way that helps them communicate with each other more easily? How do we meet patients where they are? The convenience factor for the US consumer is a big deal in many industries. So how do we meet that engaged, informed patient where they are, whether that be in a traditional in-patient setting, in an outpatient setting, in a home setting, or virtually? How do we enable a real multichannel experience? And through all of that, how do we think about an efficient patient pathway that is affordable?
Why resilience is key to success
Querida Anderson: Looking forward, how should industry leaders be planning for the next ten to 15 years? And how is it different from the past ten to 15 years?
Patrick Finn: Within that past ten to 15 years, we had the COVID-19 period. It was a terrible experience for the country and the world, but at the same time, the healthcare sector showed a lot of nimbleness. Care pathways were innovating and changing on a weekly basis on the front lines of hospitals. Innovation with vaccines and medical devices were at a speed we hadn’t seen in the prior decade. It’s clear that it’s within all of us to make that change.
As we look forward over the next ten to 15 years, AI and technology will be a disruptor at some level, and regulatory change is always a potential factor to keep in mind. As an industry, we have to consider how to inject the right level of resilience and innovation within our organizations. How can we be nimbler, continuously improve, and react to what’s immediately in front of us while also thinking about how to improve healthcare over the long term? Organizations need to not only continue to deal with immediate changes but also be planning to make healthcare better across access, affordability, quality, and patient experience because those things take time to change. Organizations have to plan for the short term and long term together.
Querida Anderson: You mentioned resilience, so say more about that. From an organizational standpoint, what does it take to practically implement resilience?
Patrick Finn: Resilience has operational components as well as cultural and capability components. It’s relevant throughout the organization—not just at the level of the CEO but down to the frontline managers as well. How does each person and the organization collectively understand the mission in terms of affordability, quality, access, and equity? Also, how are we making sure our organizations understand how to deliver on that mission?
You can then build on that with a mindset for continuous improvement—a bias to action. It’s important to have decision-making processes that are both clear and rapid so those who see the opportunity for improvement every day have a pathway to make that improvement. Leaders need to bake that action mindset into the way their organization operates every day so folks on the front line who see an opportunity to act have both the excitement and the ability to do something like they did during the height of COVID-19. They should be empowered.
Querida Anderson: What goes into the cultural component of resilience?
Patrick Finn: It’s a bit of an art and a science, but I would emphasize the science part. It is possible to measure the elements of a culture to understand where there’s a disconnect from the level of agility you need to have. Analyze where you need to make cultural changes, and then set the tone from the top and create reinforcement mechanisms to get the culture change you want. As an industry, we have the objective to improve the lives and health of citizens in the country, which is both a privilege and a responsibility. We need to build our culture around that. And relative to some other industries, this is a more inspirational mission, so we have the opportunity to build a culture around it.
Querida Anderson: Over the long run, what does it take for an organization to stand out?
Patrick Finn: The first step is understanding the mission: How are we improving access, affordability, and quality? If you’re not balancing those three, you may find yourself in a tough spot at some point—often sooner rather than later. It’s a tough environment to operate in, but we need to be delivering on all three of those all the time. We all see in our organizations where we have silos in which we’re only thinking about affordability or quality or access. But in a complex, regulated industry where the needs of patients are so diverse, we need to have everyone in the organization thinking about that triple aim so we continue to be relevant and deliver.
What the future holds for AI and healthcare
Querida Anderson: Much has been said about the promise of AI. What are you most excited about in terms of tech?
Patrick Finn: I’m excited about the promise this tech has in bringing personalized information to the point of care. Irrespective of what the point of care is—whether it’s a clinical care organization, an insurer, the government, or a private entity—personalized information enables better decisions and, hopefully, better, more effective care pathways. It also reduces friction that is present in the system today. And of course, we’re going to have to be thoughtful as an industry about how we use AI and the role it plays in healthcare versus the caregivers and patients who ultimately make decisions.
Querida Anderson: Finally, what would you like to see happen in healthcare in the long term?
Patrick Finn: In the next ten to 20 years, I would like for the healthcare system to operate in a more holistic manner that takes into account physical health and mental health as well as social determinants of health and healthy living. Patients should be able to navigate their healthcare needs in a much more seamless way that’s enabled by the digital front door but also backed up by AI analytics to enable better decisions for all of us and, frankly, make healthcare more affordable.
