Bruce Murphy
Name: Bruce Murphy
Hospital: Arkansas Heart Hospital
Education: University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
First job in health care: Interventional cardiologist
What do you think is the biggest issue facing the health care industry in Arkansas today?
Recruiting and training the best nursing personnel is our biggest and most daunting task. Great nurses are in high demand, and they make all the difference in the outcome of the patient on an inpatient experience.
What about next year? Five years from now?
The move from hospital-based medicine into consumer-based medicine as many more of the inpatient therapies are being done as an outpatient. Additionally, the patients are going to have a choice in the selection of quality and price and will become consumers just like in retail department stores.
What are some of the most significant financial challenges facing hospitals today?
We are dealing right now with technological innovations, but at extraordinary prices. Electronic health records themselves are extremely expensive. Many of the new devices we are using in cardiology are incredibly expensive with a very narrow margins or negative margins for the hospital. We have to be very selective about which ones we use.
How do you work toward improving physician-hospital relations?
First of all, administration and the doctors have to realize they are on the same team. This has to be reiterated and reinforced constantly. For either one to succeed both must succeed and both must succeed by helping each other.
How are embracing risk and innovation?
We use a careful assessment of what the best technology will be by using the input of an entire team made up of clinical personnel, visionary personnel, and digital experts. By sifting through multiple potential entries in a specific innovative space, we are able to pick out which are the right ones we think will be durable and best suited for our patients.
What new health technologies are you most impressed with?
I think the entire wearable industry which is going to be applied at a medical grade soon to patients is huge. Basically, we will be able to put on patients the equivalent all of the devices that they would get in an ICU and be able to monitor them visually while they are in their home.
Who will be the disruptive competitors in the future?
People are going to gravitate toward those providers who supply the three things everybody desires: rapid access to a provider, many choices on what they can select, and affordable and best prices.
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