Podcast: Hear From Serial NEMT Entrepreneur Mike Sechrist
This week, we interviewed Mike Sechrist, Serial Entrepreneur, Founder of Pro-Transport and EMS Redline, and a general NEMT expert. He also serves as an advisor for Strategic Initiatives Group LLC, a group of industry experts that work with providers and hospitals to give actionable advice on how to reach their goals. Sechrist is able to use his extensive knowledge of the NEMT industry and hospital administration to pinpoint pain points of patient-centered care, emerging trends, and more. Read on for a sneak peek of our interview with Sechrist, and click the listen link at the bottom of the page to listen to the interview in full.
You’ve been in the healthcare space for, well, 30 years or so. How do you think the healthcare system could streamline the patient's journey and ultimately deliver better outcomes?
Simply put, technology has just got to be embraced. If you think about the last time you went to a doctor, the whole process took so much time. Driving there, sitting there, filling out paperwork. The doctor comes in for, what, three or four minutes and then you head back out, prescription in hand, and you're kicked out the door. All of that time could have been saved by telemedicine. I know that technology seems cliche, but we’ve really got to embrace it because it's an old school practice with new world problems.
Exactly. And so you mentioned technology. What innovations have you seen out there that you think have really improved the patient's experience?
Well, the problem is that many technological innovations adopted by large healthcare organizations are simply focused on lowering employee costs and promoting efficiencies inside the hospital—a lot of that technology isn’t necessarily patient-centric. Technology is often readily embraced for hospital operations and the bottom line, but not so much for patient experience.
You have a lot of experience in day to day operations. What do you think is the greatest source of friction when it comes to delivering great patient care?
Well, the problem is, if you're talking about the executive level, most of that is financially driven. Everybody says the hospital is about care, but at the executive level most of the decisions being made end up being financially based. The caregivers actually delivering healthcare to patients are really a different personality type. Those people a lot of times don't hang out together at the bar together afterwards; they have different priorities and incentives.
So where the friction is, is between those two personality types. In a fee-for-service model executives might have financial incentives to extend a patient’s stay as long as they can to get additional reimbursement for it, rather than getting a patient out as soon as possible in a healthy manner.
So where the friction is, is between those two personality types. In a fee-for-service model executives might have financial incentives to extend a patient’s stay as long as they can to get additional reimbursement for it, rather than getting a patient out as soon as possible in a healthy manner. So really we need to go to a value-based system, but I’m not saying it can’t be for profit. I believe that healthcare should be profitable for everybody, and we need to align the right incentives and embrace something more outcomes-based.
We also need to make sure that a patient is getting what they need outside of a hospital. What we really do in a hospital, to be honest, is treating symptoms. A lot of patient’s systems are a result of their social environment. I’ve run over seventy-five thousand 911 calls in my career, and, while you do see legitimate 911 emergent problems, you see a greater number of people with medical problems exacerbated by social issues. These patients suffer due to lack of good food, lack of available follow-up care, receiving their medication on time, receiving physical therapy, etc. Sure, a hospital can take care of a medical emergency. But what our system really needs to do is take care of the social and follow-up elements from care.
I do think that we're going to have to move to a more patient-centric model. And that really brings me to my next question, which is what steps could we start taking to move to this patient-centric model?
I mean, let's be honest. We actually have to listen to the patient first. And I think that's part of the problem is caregivers are delivering things that make sense for their organization as opposed to getting to patients and saying, OK, how do you access health care? What technology do you have and how can I deliver information to you so that you don't have to go to this big building over here to ask a question? How can you just stay in your home and have access to healthcare that way?
To listen to more from our interview with Mike Sechrist, click the Apple Podcasts link below:
The Patient's Journey on Apple Podcasts
Health & Fitness · 2020
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