Marc Scher: Successful innovation calls for an ‘always forward’ approach

During one of my favorite presentations at HFMA’s Annual Conference, healthcare entrepreneur and best-selling author Suneel Gupta described Betty Crocker’s unexpectedly bumpy path to launching an instant cake mix. 

Betty Crocker believed instant cake mixes were destined to become a best-selling product. Leaders had done the research, and they put a lot of marketing behind their idea. But when the product hit grocery shelves, “No one was buying instant cake mixes,” Gupta told HFMA Annual attendees. “It was a flop, and they could not understand why.” 

It turned out consumers didn’t want to simply pour water into a mix. They wanted a sense of ownership over their cake, and that came from allowing consumers to add their own eggs. Once Betty Crocker tweaked the recipe to put this step into consumers’ hands, “Sales completely took off,” Gupta said. “It became one of Betty Crocker’s best-selling products of the time.” 

Innovative organizations embrace risk in the quest to be better. They accept temporary setbacks as an inevitable part of moving forward. It’s a mindset we must have as leaders in healthcare. 

Our industry — and our Association — are at an inflection point. The strategies and tools that may have worked in addressing yesterday’s challenges aren’t enough to solve today’s pressures or tomorrow’s threats. We must be willing to reconfigure existing frameworks and processes to ensure our future success.  

It’s one reason why I’ve chosen the theme Sempre Avanti, which means ‘always forward.’ 

Throughout the HFMA Annual Conference, we heard great examples of an always forward approach to innovation in healthcare. 

For instance, Elizabeth Fowler, PhD, JD, director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), described “a decade of testing more than 50 payment and care delivery models, throwing a lot of spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks.

“We remain bullish on value-based care, and we continue to believe that moving from a volume-based [payment] system to one that rewards value is the right path,” said Fowler, who received the Richard L. Clarke Board of Directors Award from HFMA during the conference.  

Today, there’s a spillover effect to CMMI innovation.  

“We hear that even after physician practices and providers drop out of a model, they continue providing the enhanced care delivery services that were part of the model,” Fowler said. 

Geeta Nayyar, MD, author of “Dead Wrong: Diagnosing and Treating Healthcare’s Misinformation Illness,” encouraged leaders to keep clinicians at the center in determining which innovations to introduce — and how.  

“We often talk about consumer experience, patient engagement, and we completely divorce it from physician engagement,” which is a “big part of the puzzle,” she said. 

Innovative organizations have a culture that’s never satisfied with being just good enough. And I don’t think any of us aspire to be just good enough. The key, as Suneel said, is to create great energy and momentum around innovation, always moving forward for our teams and the communities we serve. 

Sempre Avanti!