June 2019 Healthcare Leaders

On June 29th, PMI-UAE held the leadership conference in the healthcare sector at the Dubai Health Authority Innovative Centre, Dubai, which was laced with both technological and administrative improvements avenues in the construction industry. After the barcode registration which commenced at 10:00am, the 50years anniversary of PMI Global was shared with a video from the founder Jim Snyder narrating the journey so far starting from a meeting of 7 people to a membership above five hundred thousand and certification over a million, he gave his parting note that:

“PMI will continue to support the growing profession of Project Management worldwide”.

The main session by Mr. Ahmed El Banna commenced thereafter on Healthcare Leadership which elapsed with a tea break after which volunteer speakers led the house through Supply Chain strategies as well as Blockchain Technology in the Construction Industry by Mr.Srikant Bharadwaj Vedula and Mr. Sunil Saleem respectively.

The main speaker of the event Mr. Ahmed El Banna, a well-rounded healthcare management consultant with over 13 years of experience in developing creative and transformational solutions discussed the topic on Creating Shared Value through Leadership in the Healthcare System. He highlighted the challenge of staying on top of the game in the healthcare sector which include (i) Multiple and diverse stakeholders (ii) Rising costs (iii) Rising disease burden (iv) Healthcare Practitioner are trained to treat and not to lead (v) Big data (vi) Disruptive innovations (vii) Remote team and care. Considering these, it is needful to develop new leadership behaviour in order to create shared values; the leadership development entails: (i) Understanding the context of the system both internal and external, (ii) Understanding the human behavior and styles (both the patient and the medical staff) (iii) Identifying priorities and objectives (iv) Design a strategy and implementation plan (v) Design a transformation framework (vi) Start, measure performance and improve on results

The healthcare system is to be redirected to rally around the patients, to do this, the value that really matters to the patient needs to be known. Increase in spending does not commensurate with the value of the outcome of healthcare and as such, does not justify the increasing cost of care. A supply-driven healthcare system organized around what physicians do in contrast to a patient-centred system organized around what patients need could be attributed to this shortfall. Creating shared values can be achieved in two folds; Social value for the patient outcomes and Economic value for the stakeholder outcomes. Social value means to the patients fewer readmissions, lesser complications and errors, longer life expectancy, while economic value means to the stakeholders less cost and more profit. Creating value for patients can be beneficial to the regulators in terms of each dollar spent for the patient health outcomes and also the patients the value achieved from the cost.

“Value-based healthcare delivery” is a framework for restructuring healthcare systems around the globe with the overarching goal of value for patients—not access, cost containment, convenience, or customer service” The framework involves considering 6 stakeholders as follows:

Providers are to stay competitive by adopting a strategic approach, restructuring the delivery of care and measuring costs and outcomes to increase patient value
Patient are to participate in managing personal health and seeking help and advice and rewarding excellence in providers and health plans
Health Plans is to maximize patient value and minimize paperwork, compete for subscribers based on the ability to achieve positive health outcomes
Employers are to keep cost down, improve employee health and wellness and use employer influence to advocate for value-based healthcare reform
Suppliers are to compete based on the unique, measurable value of medical products, technology or services
Policymakers are to improve health insurance and access, set standards for coverage and improve the structure of care delivery

Majors elements to be considered in a true value-based healthcare system are (i) Organize care around medical conditions, (ii) Measure outcomes and cost for every patient (iii) Aligning reimbursement with value (iv) System integration (provider, treatment and setting) (v) Geography of care (national centres of excellence) (vi) Information technology (a system to support strategy)

He dealt with the following Myths or Truth which encouraged participation from the audience: (i) Charges are a good surrogate for provider costs, (ii) Hospital overhead costs are too complex to allocate accurately (iii) Most healthcare costs are fixed and ended his session with the statement of a cleaner at NASA: I am working to place a man on the moon

The first volunteer speaker, Mr.Srikant Bharadwaj Vedula, a project management professional with 14 years of experience in Civil Infrastructure Projects and Insights of Project Management dealt with the topic Driving Stakeholder’s Satisfaction through Supply Chain. He followed his agenda through the acronym: Advancement of Supply Chain, Growing trends, Entangled Nature, Need of the hour, Draw attention with case studies, And conclude.

Describing the evolution of Supply Chain from the Fragmentation which involves demand forecasting, distribution planning, customer service to name a few in the 60’s, Consolidation with material management and physical distribution focused on in the 80’s and Functional Integration in the 90’s which is under the single umbrella of Logistic. He described Competitive Advantage as the many discrete activities a firm performs to create a basis for differentiation – Value Chain, this in the 2000’s is the Value Capture which is called Supply Chain Management and in 2010+’s is Automation.

He described the evolving DNA of supply Chain and in construction everything is relative E = mc2. Where E is the Execution of Project; m = managing stakeholders, c = complexity of supply chain and c = constraint. Despite these complexities and the evolving world around us, we are still static in ignoring project requirements. No clear strategies to fast track project, compromise on time over margin. He shared lesson learnt from his previous projects for not being dynamic which include: Poor Strategy, Multilayer Approval, Frequent Changes in Technical Specifications, Dependency on Revenue Generated, Stringent Internal Code. And as well stated why eureka never came include: Transparency, Traceability, Trust.

He chose the Burj Khalifa construction as a good example where dynamism can be used to beat the odds. He described the dynamic way of creating value by capturing the real time basis and share across the business using the supply chain management group (a team of project managers). Instead of reinventing the wheel, creates a pool of all process improvements/developed across projects – knowledge management and select the right kind of process meeting the project requirements. He ended his session with a personal quote: “My profession is my primary stakeholder, If I fail to satisfy my profession, then rest are just illusions”

The third speaker Mr. Sunil Saleem, Professional Engineer, Project Management & Strategy Consultant and a Corporate Trainer espoused on the topic Unlock Block Chain’s Potential to
Construction Project Management. He balanced his discussion around understanding block chain technology disruption, current challenges in construction management and potential block chain applications. He explained what block chain is, using the decentralized peer to peer flow diagram, with a list of popular block chain applications. He stated most commercial blockchain will use private, permissioned architecture to optimize network openness and scalability using the permission grant and ownership hybrid classification. Blockchain application landscape addresses two major needs including storage of static information and registry of tradeable information. He stated the situations when needs for block chain arises such as when you: (i) use contracts to fulfill transactions between different parties, (ii) share a database with lots of different people, (iii) process transactions that need a verifiable audit trail and (iv) use intermediaries to process/verify information on your behalf.

He stated the major challenges facing the construction project management as; (i) contract and commercial management, (ii) supply chain management (iii) asset management. Contract management is hinged on trust, claims and variations as well as cost of enforcement and litigation. Supply Chain Management is hinged on transparency and traceability, provenance, information exchange and trust. Asset Management is hinged on data exchange, interoperability between multiple platforms, trust.

The challenges ahead are technical, construction business related limitations, human related, ROI and BIM Integration (Positive Challenge)

The meeting ended with photo shoots and a befitting lunch for all attendees.