Jonathan Perlin, MD, PhD, President of Clinical Services and Chief Medical Officer, HCA Healthcare on Creating a Learning Health System
For our August 31st episode, Senator Frist sits down with Dr. Jonathan Perlin, President of Clinical Services and Chief Medical Officer at HCA Healthcare. As one of the nation’s leading providers of healthcare services, HCA is comprised of more than 180 hospitals and over 2,000 sites of care in 21 states and the United Kingdom. In their conversation Dr. Perlin explains how his team at HCA has pioneered new approaches to care – reducing sepsis deaths and adverse health outcomes for newborns; his early efforts that shaped electronic health records today; and what thought provoking question from Bill Gates has stayed with Dr. Perlin and changed his approach to health system leadership.
Creating a learning health system at HCA has become paramount. Dr. Perlin says, “our mission is the care and improvement of human life, and …we believe in the long-game, that in a value-based healthcare environment, that payers, employers, patients, prospective patients as consumers will want to come to the place that’s learning, that’s improving, and that’s preventing needless harm and providing the best quality outcomes.”
Before joining HCA in 2006, Dr. Perlin served as Under Secretary for Health in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Senator Frist vividly remembers working with Under Secretary Perlin when he was Senate Majority Leader and Perlin served as chief executive officer of the Veterans Health Administration, leading the nation’s largest integrated health system.
It was there at the VA that Dr. Perlin became a pioneer and expert in electronic health records. He shares with Senator Frist how at HCA, they’re now using EHRs to reduce sepsis deaths, explaining: “When you can actually show a physician, a nurse, a care provider, a patient, that the use of this electronic health record actually saved a life – recognized a patient with sepsis before they saw it – this is the reason we have electronic health records.”
Dr. Perlin shares the startling fact that, “About a third of all hospital deaths are in some way related to sepsis.” Adding, “Every hour of delayed diagnosis increases the risk of death by up to 8%. … We asked the question, can we use this learning health system concept to create a ‘smoke detector’ for sepsis?”
Click here to listen to this week’s episode and hear more from Dr. Jonathan Perlin on HCA Healthcare and building their learning health system.
This episode is brought to you by MEDHOST, a Trusted EHR for Healthcare Facilities. To learn more, go to Medhost.com.
