AF SG Asks MHS for "Disruptive Innovation"

By David Loebsack
Health.mil

February 1, 2010 - Lt. Gen. Charles B. Green, surgeon general of the Air Force, gave a lecture during the 2010 MHS Conference Jan. 28, introducing a new goal to the military medical community: disruptive innovation. Chief Master Sgt. Charlie Cole spoke alongside him, similarly challenging the audience – which included some 3,000 senior decision makers, providers and caregivers – to push the bar and make the MHS a leader in quality health care.

“We are pushing the envelope every day,” Green said. “People shy away from disruptive improvement. But the reality is we push ourselves in the MHS to create partnerships. At the foundation of disruptive innovation is people, it’s the people that make innovation and success happen.”

By leveraging infrastructure and global partnerships with private sector, public sector and academic institutions, Green said the MHS can create the future of precise, personalized care.

But he emphasized that innovation will be key. New products must be delivered to enhance productivity, increase efficiency and improve effectiveness. New partnerships must be built, with patients, with leadership and with the local community. Synergy must be created, between the services and among coalition partners. And the MHS must invest in its future, not only by adapting training methods, but by continuing to remain at the forefront of research and education.

Yet in their closing remarks, Green and Cole asserted that the focus must not be on programs, processes, or procedures. The ultimate goal must be good health.

“We have to become self-sustainable. We spend more money than any other nation in the world on health care, and a majority of our diseases are preventable,” Cole said. “We’ve looked at processes instead of outcomes. We’ve delivered health care, but we hope for health.”

They hope to turn that around by changing the culture of medicine and, ultimately, making the patient, instead of the process, the center of what the MHS does.