Research, education and clinical work are the top ways healthcare institutions can spur consistent growth, according to Steven Magid, MD.
Dr. Magid is chief medical information officer, chair of the quality research center and co-chair of the quality coordinating committee for the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City.
He spoke on the "Becker's Healthcare Spine and Orthopedic Podcast" about why these actions are most important for driving improvements at healthcare practices.
Note: This is an excerpt. Listen to the full episode here.
Question: How does an institution become constantly improving and get better?
Dr. Steven Magid: It's been a real privilege to be here for so long, and I can't speak from experience to compare it against anything because I have no experience elsewhere. But what's clear to me is that the people who are hired are the best and the brightest and really are passionate about what they do. So what caused HSS to be great and remain great, they're the same things. You have to hire the best and the brightest. You need to be involved in research, teaching and in clinical work. They're so interdependent and push us to the next level. If you don't do research, you don't understand what's important and on the cutting edge. If you don't teach, you don't keep yourself on the cutting edge. And if you're not holding yourself to high standards clinically, then you're nowhere.
You need to be metric driven because you could think you're doing a great job and you're not, or you could be measuring the wrong things. And that's something we have through the years been much more attuned to, and that's of course integrally related with what IT and CMIOs and CIOs do. The other thing is never be satisfied with the status quo. What worked and what we considered a great goal a year ago is not a great goal now and shouldn't be, so we're always raising the bar and our expectations.