Outcomes Rocket Podcast_Peter Angood MD: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Saul Marquez:
Hey everybody! Saul Marquez with the Outcomes Rocket. Thank you so much for tuning in. You know there’s a lot of really great things happening in healthcare right now and I’m so excited to be hosting a leader, a physician, and an incredible person. His name is Dr. Peter Angood. He’s the CEO and president of the American Association of Physician Leadership. He has been in the position since 2011, having previously provided senior leadership for all sizes and types of healthcare organizations. During his career, Dr. Angood was the first Chief Patient Safety Officer and Vice President for the Joint Commission, Senior Advisor for the Patient Safety to the National Quality Forum and National Priorities Partnership, and the former Chief Medical Officer with the Patient Safety Organization of GE Healthcare. With his academic surgery practice experience ranging from the McGill University hospital system in Canada to the University of Pennsylvania, Yale, and Washington universities in Saint Louis, Dr. Angood completed his formal academic career as a full professor of surgery, anesthesia, and emergency medicine. A fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, the American College of Surgeons, and the American College of Critical Care Medicine, Dr. Angood has been an author in more than 200 publications and is a former president of the Society of Critical Care Medicine. Such a privilege to have you here, Dr. Angood, thanks for making time to join us.
Peter Angood:
Oh, thank you so much. I look forward to the conversation, Saul.
Saul Marquez:
Likewise, likewise, and the topic is super interesting. It’s about physician leadership and there’s so much to cover here, I’m excited about it. Before we do, though, I’d love to better understand what makes you tick, what inspires your work in healthcare and leadership.
Peter Angood:
Oh, great question Saul, and thanks so much, and it’s actually a question that we all struggle with, right, all throughout our career and in our personal lives. For me, I’ve always carried a high level of altruism and idealism, that’s kind of what got me into clinical care to begin with. And then as my career progressed, it’s always been there in the background. And as I’ve been doing this current role and other roles in the past, I continue to find that if I can help create some change for others and create some change on a larger scale so that I know that we’re improving the delivery of patient care and the delivery for individual patients, then that’s really inspiring for me.
Saul Marquez:
That’s fantastic, and so, you know, this topic of physician leadership, we could tend to maybe not think about it at all or maybe silo it. Talk to us a little bit about what your organization does to add value to physicians, but also the healthcare ecosystem at large.
Peter Angood:
Sure, you know, it’s, one of those intriguing things about the healthcare industry is that in training, physicians do not get any exposure to leadership or to management principles. They get a lot of dominant focus, obviously, on patient care, disease management, and in this day and age, more and more about health and how to help people be living more healthy lives. But how to be leaders and how to manage organizations, that’s just not in the training at any point in time. So our organization has been around for the better part of 50 years, and we take a philosophy that at some level all physicians are leaders. So how do we help those physicians kind of embrace the recognition that they need to be better leaders? Whether you’re in a single solo practice in rural America or whether you’re running a large organization or enterprise, leadership is pivotal to how you kind of function in this world of the healthcare industry. So our added value is really being the, you know, the longest organization that’s solely focused on helping develop OP leadership skills, management skills for the physician workforce, but also to help organizations where physicians work, to help those organizations better leverage the potential of what physician leadership represents for the safety, quality, and efficiency of how those organizations are run, both clinical organizations as well as non-clinical organizations.
Saul Marquez:
That’s fascinating, Dr. Angood, And you know, what would you say are some things that people don’t know about the organization that you run?
Peter Angood:
Well, historically we had focused in upon the niche group of physicians who are in mid-career and wanted to do administrative roles in hospitals and had wanted to be identified as physician executives. What we found over time, and I’ve been in this role about ten years now, but what we found was that the title of executive wasn’t really working well anymore, and in fact, it almost became a disparaging term. Physicians are very proud as a workforce, and when they were identifying someone of their peers who was a, quote, physician executive, there were two things that were coming up. One, you’re incompetent clinically, so you can’t do anything else but do administrative work, or two, you’ve gone to the dark side, right? You’re not a real doctor anymore. And so with those as negative connotations we’ve taken on, as I said earlier, that other philosophy, general society still views the medical profession as a lead profession, and so at some level, all physicians are leaders and they’re strong influencers. So for us, you know, it’s trying to help the industry better understand that we’re not just about educating physician executives anymore. We’re really all about providing the information resources around leadership, providing some education, a number of credentials, we have seven different master’s degrees that we offer with different university partners. We have a strong community of physicians in 40 different countries, and we’re really all about that professional development over the entire career trajectory of a physician’s life. But as I mentioned a moment ago as well, it’s also about helping different organizations appreciate the benefits and the potential that a strong physician leadership can provide in their organizations.
Saul Marquez:
Amazing, that’s fantastic, and it’s good to know the different lanes of influence that span from degree opportunities for advanced education to, hey, you know, curriculum about how can you make an impact in your organization with these programs for your physicians. So as you think about what you guys do different, or even better than what’s out there already, maybe, do you have an example, Dr. Angood, of one of the things and ways that you guys have been able to make a difference?
Peter Angood:
Well, yeah, I mean, we’ve got multiple examples. Traditionally, professional medical societies are oriented solely to the members of that particular clinical discipline. If you’re a surgeon, you tend to join the surgical societies. If you’re a pediatrician, you tend to join the pediatric societies. But we are multidisciplinary in terms of our membership. As I mentioned, we’re international in our membership and we’re also very broad in the spectrum in terms of the types of physicians and organizations where they work. So we’ve got, you know, chief medical officers, as one example, who are in smaller, rural-based kinds of organizations, and then we’ve also got CEOs of very large academic medical centers, some of the best in the country, actually. And so, you know, it’s not really a typical professional society in the way we think of them. And as well, we have a number of members who are in different areas of the healthcare industry, different sectors. So we’ve got participants who are in the financial services sector, big pharma, device companies, the payer community, and the insurance providers, governmental agencies, so we’re all over the place. And the corollary to that is we then also work with a whole different variety of types of organizations where physicians are in different types of leadership roles. So it’s quite a broad, wide spectrum of involvement, which is not typical of a typical professional society.
Saul Marquez:
I think that’s really neat, and you think about the brainpower that the organization wields as well as the diversity in thought given the different disciplines, it’s very interesting. Have you guys done things like provided services to industry that could potentially help them achieve goals and even like providers achieve goals? Have you guys done anything like that?
Peter Angood:
Yeah, you know, we collaborate and partner with a variety of different types of organizations. Obviously, we do a lot within physician practices, we do a lot within hospitals and healthcare delivery systems, but we also partner up with some of the other types of organizations that I mentioned a moment ago. And so, to give you a specific example would be a little unfair to some of the other that we collaborate with, but suffice to say, it’s broad and far-reaching.
Saul Marquez:
That’s great, great to hear. And folks, you know, a great idea here that you may be thinking about is, hey, maybe I could reach out to Dr. Angood’s organization and collaborate in some way. If you’re a physician thinking about how to take your career to the next level or expand beyond what you’re doing today, this is another opportunity. So as you guys have taken on challenges and done different things, Dr. Angood, what would you say is one of the biggest setbacks you’ve experienced and a great learning that came as a result of it?
Peter Angood:
That’s a great question. But it’s an also, an easy one to answer, right? Because it’s them pandemic that’s got us all. It took everybody by relative surprise. It, I think, clearly affected the healthcare industry much more so than most other industries, and it affected it in a couple of different ways. One, there was obviously the delivery side that was getting overworked, especially when the pandemic was in full force, but that also created a bit of backlog in some of the other areas that couldn’t utilize the delivery system. And so you had other elements of the industry that were being underutilized. And so all of that created strong economic pressures on the delivery system, on the practices, and therefore, there weren’t as many resources available for professional development and education and learning and all that sort of thing. And that then sort of compounded itself to continue worsening that sense of anxiety, frustration, stress, and for many, even burnout in the industry. And so we as an organization wound up having to really shift our own approaches in how we best service the healthcare industry, how do we best work with our membership and our constituencies so that we can adjust to help them adjust to the pandemic. So yeah, it’s been a really intriguing journey for us. I think we’re doing pretty well by it. But as I say, you know, we’ve all been affected by it in different sorts of ways and I don’t think the pandemic’s finished with us yet. It’s, fortunately, getting a little bit milder, if you want to call it that, but there’s ongoing stresses and pressure in the industry because of it.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, and so, Peter, what was what was one of the ways that you guys responded? And what do you do differently now as a result of the pandemic?
Peter Angood:
Yeah, well, like a lot of groups, you know, we had to sort of rethink the live events. We had historically done three or four live events per year. We had done some online delivery of our different programs, products, and services. And in some ways, the pandemic was good for us because it really helped us to refocus how do we deliver all of our programs, products, and services, whether it be information, resources, education, community, and how to do that in a more efficient and more polished online, so-called virtual delivery strategy, and that’s worked for us. We’re pretty darn good. Our feedback that we receive on all of our stuff is very high in terms of the quality, the level of engagement, and the ability to utilize our programs and products.
Saul Marquez:
Wow, that’s great. Congrats on that, and you know, it’s nice to have the option to do things remotely. And, you know, whether it’s a time constraint, it sounds like there’s a couple of different ways to engage with the organization, both virtually and in person.
Peter Angood:
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we’ve got just a wonderful array of information resources. We run a couple of different journals, a number of newsletters. We’ve got 100 plus different courses. We’ve got 85 or 90 different books. We’ve got our own biweekly podcast and webcast series and yeah, and we’ve got our online community. So, you know, it’s really a full-service type of approach that we’ve taken.
Saul Marquez:
That’s fantastic. What’s the podcast called?
Peter Angood:
Yeah. It’s called Sound Practice.
Saul Marquez:
I like that, and tell us a little bit about it. We’d love to plug it here for listeners.
Peter Angood:
Oh, thank you, yeah. Yeah, no, we, similar to what you guys have been up to, we interview over about a half hour or so a variety of what we would consider luminaries and leaders in healthcare. We’ve got a variety of experts who have covered a large number of different types of topics. Alternative careers is always one that’s of interest, wellness, and how to deal with difficult patients or a couple of others. We were fortunate, we had Tony Fauci on and he was talking about the pandemic and where its trends were going and those kinds of figures.
Saul Marquez:
Amazing, sounds like an awesome podcast. Thanks for cluing us into that Dr. Angood. I know I’ll be listening to that, and folks will leave a link here in the show notes for you to tap into the wealth of both guests and topics it sounds like they’re covering there, so thank you for that resource. You know, as you think about resources, technology, trends, what do you think is one healthcare trend or tech that’s going to change healthcare as we know it today?
Peter Angood:
Yeah, you know, there is a not-so-subtle but strong set of influences going on inside the industry. And, you know, it’s an unfortunate industry in that it’s hugely complex. And how to make it improve over time is subject to a lot of hard work, but it’s not moving fast enough. And for example, it’s now roughly a $4 trillion dollar industry. It has recognized almost 30% waste in inefficiency in the industry, and upwards of 25% of the healthcare dollar is spent on the bureaucracy of just trying to run the different financial payment strategies and the various levels of practice management, and yet we still have roughly 10 to 12% major error rate in the industry. So if you look to any other industry, gosh, you would not tolerate those kinds of statistics. And yes, with the physician community, nursing, community, pharmacy communities, the hospital administrators, they all have been wanting to make this better, but it’s a hugely complex industry. And so what’s beginning to occur more and more is that the free market forces are starting to take place, and so a lot of non-traditional entrants are occurring into the industry. They’re not necessarily doing it for the greater good of mankind, they’re doing it because it’s a $4 trillion dollar industry and there’s opportunity in there. So there’s a fair amount of mergers and acquisitions that are going on in the industry at all levels: hospitals, practices inside of pharma, device companies, all that type of stuff. There’s a lot of venture capital funding that’s come into the industry to help support innovation and unique development. And there are several Fortune 500 companies who are looking at how best to make a foray into healthcare and provide positive contributions to the industry. You know, I was a little tongue in cheek with my comment earlier, but, you know, while you’re trying to make positive contributions to the industry, there’s also opportunity for financial gains. So you’ve got some of the big pharma groups coming in. You’ve obviously got groups like Google. Amazon just bought out a large, large practice that hit the news in the last little while, and so we’re continuing to see a lot of that activity. The technology that got a lot of attention during the pandemic initially was the whole telehealth, telemedicine piece. That still represents good opportunity, but its utilization has trickled off in the last year or so, and partly that’s because of, again, inadequate funding and financial reimbursement for telehealth services, and there’s still licensure complexities there as well. But those are the main trends over and above, just regular ongoing innovation, entrepreneurship and improvement in clinical delivery, research guidelines, all those sorts of things.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, no, some great, great callouts there Dr. Angood. What are you, what’s your take on the hospital in the home? That seems to be the big topic and, with new reimbursement codes on that ability to actually make it work, do you think there’s a, there’s a promise there? What’s your take on that?
Peter Angood:
You know, healthcare is like any other industry. There are little darling topics that show up as, and they hang around for a while. I think the hospital at home is certainly a highly appealing concept, and several large delivery systems are taking a run at investing in it and figuring out the nuances of how to actually make that occur. I think it’ll be some time before we actually see the benefits of that begin to show up. And again, oftentimes financing is at the core of some of these types of initiatives. And so until the payer community, whether it’s the for-profit payers or the government-based payers until they begin to support the benefits of that, it’s going to be slow progress, I think, but it’s certainly highly appealing.
Saul Marquez:
For sure, no, I appreciate you sharing your thoughts there. I think there’s definitely promise there and ultimately yet to see where it will end up. Appreciate you sharing that. Well, look, this is this has been a stimulating discussion, an opportunity for folks to continue learning from Dr. Angood, as well as the work that they do at the American Association for Physician Leadership. This is just the beginning. So would you please give us a closing thought, Dr. Angood, and maybe the best place the listeners can connect with you and continue following the work that you and your organization are up to?
Peter Angood:
Yeah, thanks, Saul. You know, healthcare is complex, as I said, but it’s still an incredibly important industry because it affects all of us at some point on an individual level. And yes, there’s a whole host of different types of providers and people involved in the industry, but for the foreseeable future, that patient-physician relationship is still the primary driver of this industry. And so we’re very, very privileged to be able to help the physician community, the places where they work, improve that patient-physician relationship and that quality, efficiency, and value of that relationship as it impacts a variety of different sectors of the industry, not just in the clinical delivery side. So we would love to work with others. We’re great at collaborating and you can obviously have a look at our website which is physicianleaders.org, or if you need or want to get a hold of me, it’s my first initial last name so PAngood@physicianleaders.org. Happy to start a conversation with you, and Saul thank you so much for the opportunity to have this conversation with you.
Saul Marquez:
Oh, my God, it’s my pleasure. Thank you, Dr. Angood, for the work that you’re doing, for sharing the wisdom you share today, including an amazing podcast called Sound Practice Podcast, over 100 episodes, and a ton of value. And folks, be sure to reach out to Dr. Angood. If something he said resonated with you, take that action. Don’t just listen, that’s how you make things happen. Dr. Angood thanks again.
Peter Angood:
All right, thank you. Take care.
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