BOSTON – Geisinger Health System chief executive David Feinberg, MD, said the healthcare industry is at something of a crossroads that will lead either toward a success story like Uber or down the same lane taken by Blockbuster.

"We could solve all the healthcare problems if we made it The Year of the Patient," Feinberg said here at the Healthcare IT News Pop Health Forum 2016. "But we’re always worried about our piece of a shrinking pie."

That is among the reasons that Feinberg said America’s healthcare system is broken such that it is ripe for disruption and if large systems such as Geisinger don’t disrupt the industry perhaps someone like a Stanford dropout will.

Consider that Americans spend roughly twice as much money on entertainment as we do on out-of-pocket care, Feinberg added.

[Q&A: Geisinger CEO on patient satisfaction, pop health, genomics, more]

"Do you want to go to the movies or get a colonoscopy?" he continued. "As people, I think we should be saying, 'I want to get a colonoscopy and I’ll pay for it.'"

While that appears to be a drastic shift, Feinberg explained that keeping patients separate from payments is a moral hazard. And that is particularly true amid the overarching shifts toward population health, precision medicine and value-based payment models.

"Population health, to me, is engaging with the larger population one patient at a time," he said.

The best way to engage with patients is to knock on a hospital room door, walk in, wash your hands and then sit down and speak with the person in that bed, Feinberg said.

The Year of the Patient would build upon that by embracing emerging and perhaps yet-to-be-dreamed-up technologies that transform the care experience into one that is more patient centered than what generally exists today.

"If we can get that Amazon connection to people we have the chance to be the next Uber," Feinberg said. "If we don’t I think we become Blockbuster."

Twitter: @SullyHIT
Email the writer: tom.sullivan@himssmedia.com

This article is part of our reporting on the Healthcare IT News Pop Health Forum 2016. Other stories in this package include The essence of population health? Design and user experience, Population health management views from the frontline, and Danny Sands of the Society of Participatory Medicine sees cultural change coming to healthcare.