In Doctors' Declaration Of Independence, I highlighted a growing movement of doctors who are done with the status quo healthcare system; they want to be independent of an oppressive system that is at odds with why they went into medicine. The Story Behind Epidemic Doctor Burnout And Suicide Statistics details the abuse doctors receive in today's under-performing status quo that leads to the destruction of doctor well-being. It's simply common sense that abusing doctors as well as other clinicians isn't the path to achieving the Quadruple Aim that is evident in the best-performing organizations.
Naturally, a broad-based grassroots movement such as civil rights or unbreaking healthcare has many people playing a critical role to drive societal change. For example, Regina Holliday has been referred to as the health care's Rosa Parks. In The Big Heist film, we are highlighting the leaders of the movement to have health care realize its full potential. There are many clinicians who are leaders and entrepreneurs completely reinventing their field including strong doctor-writers such as Atul Gawande, Marty Makary, Eric Topol, Bob Wachter and others. However, the doctor who has established the voice that is reaching the broadest audience is Dr. Zubin Damania through his alter ego, ZDoggMD. Damania's childhood hero was Weird Al Yankovic and now he's the medical equivalent.
My keynote presentation to leaders from most of the largest financial firms on Wall Street got me thinking about the shareholder value being held back by ineffective healthcare purchasing -- the second largest cost after wages for most organizations. Previously, I highlighted the tricks the healthcare industry uses to redistribute profits from companies to their coffers. In this piece, I will outline the antidotes that the most effective benefits leaders use to ensure their organizations maximize shareholder value by avoiding needless overspending on health benefits. As the earlier article pointed out and the table below illustrates, this can have a major impact on shareholder value.
As I've been working as a subject matter expert on The Big Heist film (think of it as The Big Short for healthcare), my talk to Wall Street leaders on how there are opportunities hiding in plain sight seemed apropos. A well-regarded author and business consultant, Ric Merrifield, has also provided advice to the film and had the following to say:
The Big Short, and Moneyball, had one major theme in common - in the face of a mountain of evidence, the evidence was ignored - in the case of baseball for over 20 years until someone got backed into a financial corner and had to take a big chance. Baseball kept ignoring the value of OBP relative to batting averages, stolen bases, and RBI. Wall Street and regulators didn't downgrade the credit ratings of the mortgage backed securities even when the mountain of evidence was presented to them. So why should we expect healthcare to be any different? Healthcare is in the same place at the moment. The healthcare mess in many ways is happening in broad daylight and there is no evidence of major change.
Healthcare has been the embodiment of the irresistible force paradox, a classic paradox formulated as “What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?” We know that technology and empowerment of the individual have been the drivers of immense change in virtually every corner of our lives…except healthcare.
There are many efforts ranging from startups to convening thought leaders at events to public and private sector initiatives meant to change this dynamic. It’s clear it will take a broad coalition of these efforts to make the change most desire in the face of immense forces to protect turf. It’s natural that organizations collectively generating trillions of dollars of revenue won’t give up without a fight. In fact, it’s entirely predictable that they’ll use every “FUD” (fear, uncertainty & doubt) tactic in the book…and already have. The key is to create the inoculation against that inevitable poison.
Several months ago, I came to the conclusion that the only way to make the wholesale change to the healthcare industry everyone I know wants is for the healthcare equivalent of a Super Size Me or An Inconvenient Truth documentary to be created. This was from someone who never had a moment in my life where I thought about making a film (more on the rationale below). To my astonishment, in the short interval since that "ah-hah moment, we have assembled a world class film-making team that includes an Academy Award nominated director/producer and a Peabody-winning director/producer not to mention talent on the business side of film-making.
Despite being in the early stages, we've already had unsolicited backers each committing $75,000 to $100,000 of their money to ensure this film is made.
I've been gratified by the number of people who've reached out to me asking how they can help. Ultimately, there'll be several ways but the first thing you can help with is identifying individuals, foundations or companies interested in the opportunity to be founding partners in the film. With a few more partners, we'll be on our way given a production budget likely to be only in the neighborhood of $1 million. For those of you who don't have that kind of money sitting around, we're expecting that we'll do a crowdfunding campaign so stay tuned. Generally, one raises 20-30% of the necessary funds to get all the details nailed down in terms of who'll be in the film, detailed script and more. At that point, it becomes crystal clear to the financial backers that the risks of making a great film are greatly diminished.
The working title for the film is...
