As senior vice president of the Heart and Lung Center at Washington, D.C.-based Children’s National Hospital, Wayne Franklin, MD, knows the complexities of managing healthcare delivery amid a shifting political landscape firsthand.
Dr. Franklin recently spoke with Becker’s on the Pediatric Leadership Podcast and shared what makes him most nervous — and most excited — about the state of the healthcare industry today.
Editor’s note: Response has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: As a healthcare industry leader, what are you most excited about today and what makes you nervous?
Dr. Wayne Franklin: I tend to be an optimist, so I’m going to start with the nervous part and I’ll end with the exciting part so we can end on a high note. Something that makes me nervous is, honestly, the public’s perception of healthcare.
Even though I live and work in Washington, DC. I won’t get too political, but I think it is really incumbent on physicians and scientists to lead the way regarding public health recommendations and direct patient care.
We need more humanism in medicine. When I was in medical school at UCLA, we would learn about the science of medicine, but we’d also learn about the art of medicine. When I think about the art of medicine, which we now call care delivery — how do we foster and manage the doctor-patient relationship?
As a lot of changes are happening, it’ll be really important that we use evidence-based medicine delivered in a humanistic approach where the patients and families can trust us. What makes me nervous is that we really have to drill down to the way care is delivered on a provider-to-patient level in order to really extend our trust and to move forward together.
What am I excited about? There are a lot of things that excite me; it’s a great time to be in healthcare and as a physician. With modern technology and artificial intelligence, or so-called augmented intelligence as one of my doctor friends calls it, we’re on the precipice of really making huge impacts in how we care for patients and how we deliver care.
With things like telemedicine and remote monitoring, wearable technology, we have such a large amount of data at our fingertips. The challenge for us as providers and as clinicians is how to harness the data and translate it into better health outcomes for patients. The fun part of being a doctor is being able to use data and science in an innovative way to benefit patients.
That’s what drives me, and that’s why I’m excited to wake up and come to work every day here at Children’s National.
Listen to Becker’s full conversation with Dr. Franklin here.
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