Dr. Uli Chettipally once made the CEO of the company he worked for stop him mid-presentation because he dropped a figure that was so jarring: “50% of what happens in a typical U.S. clinical practice is unnecessary, ineffective, or dangerous.”
This isn’t just Dr. Chettipally’s opinion, it’s a statement backed by much of his own research as well as others’ on the downsides of America’s most common business model of healthcare: the fee-for-service system.
In this episode of the Prosperous Doc, our host Shane Tenny, CFP® welcomes Dr. Uli Chettipally to discuss his research through the CREST Network project, which harnesses the power of data to help physicians make data-backed decisions about treating patients. Once this technology was implemented at Kaiser Permanente, the average length of stay in the emergency department decreased, hospital admissions decreased, and post-discharge testing decreased.
Dr. Chettipally is the Founder and President of InnovatorMD, a platform aimed at inspiring innovation in healthcare. In the episode, Dr. Chettipally also discusses his book, “Punish the Machine,” the clash between insurance carriers and physicians and why it’s important to “follow the money” when trying to implement new technology in the healthcare field.
Name: Dr. Uli Chettipally
What he does: As the Founder and President of InnovatorMD, Dr. Chettipally works to spread innovation from a physician's perspective through the written word, presentation videos, live events and one-on-one consultations. He’s also the Founder of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs in San Francisco.
Company: InnovatorMD
Words of wisdom: “Let's make the technology work harder. Let's punish the machines so that the doctors can be helped. Don’t punish the doctor, punish the machine so that patients can be saved and better health outcomes can be achieved through this technology.”
Top takeaways from this episode
★ Healthcare is most effective when providers take full responsibility for the care of the patient in a value-based care model. The American healthcare system is overwhelmingly fee-for-service, meaning that providers are paid according to how much they treat a patient rather than the treatment outcomes. Dr. Chettipally sees value-based care as the answer because “you make money when the patient is healthy, that means that you will figure out ways to keep the patient healthy.”
★ Technology has the potential to help doctors find the sweet spot between under-treating and over-treating patients. Dr. Chettipally and his colleagues on the CREST Network project have successfully developed technology that analyzes patient data to help ensure patients are discharged from the hospital at appropriate times and prescribed the most effective medicines.
★ Physicians are getting burnt out, but technology can help. Healthcare providers are currently running on a treadmill they don’t control, Dr. Chettipally argues, and they don’t feel like they’re making a dent in the broader health landscape. We will always need physicians, he adds, which is why we need to make their jobs more effective by giving them technology that helps them...
