From the year 2000 to 2013, Dr. Jeffrey Kuhlman engaged in the type of patient-first care that only a handful of doctors will ever experience. His patients: Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. Politics had nothing to do with Kuhlman’s work. Neither did agendas or budgets or quotas or standard processes. Among his duties? Never be more than two minutes away from the President. It required Kuhlman to know the personal habits and medical histories of each President. He had to be prepared to care for any medical need in any situation. The experience began to shape Kuhlman’s view of what healthcare should be like for patients who don’t live in The White House or travel on Air Force One. In other words, the patients we see every day. After coming to Advent Health as Senior Vice President and Associate Chief Medical Officer, Kuhlman used an overarching question to guide his quest to transform healthcare in a meaningful way: What if everyone in healthcare (doctors, administrators, nurses, maintenance workers, everyone) treated each patient with the kind of focus and personal attention that a physician uses with the President of the U.S.? Now that would truly be transformative.
It so happened that Dr. Daniel Peach, had been considering a similar question after taking on his role as Director of Clinical Transformation for the AdventHealth System: How can we cut through processes and excess data and re-establish a true patient-first mindset? Peach’s own background, though very different from Kuhlman’s, had a very important similarity: the one-on-one approach to care. A registered osteopath in the United Kingdom, Peach has specialized in prevention, care and optimizing performance of elite athletes, one athlete at a time. But his experience has also included personal security for VIPs and more than 20 years as an executive for an international fiber-optic telecommunications company. In every facet of his career, he has seen first-hand that the most in-depth data and the greatest technology the world has ever seen are all meaningless unless they’re tied to a real customer experience. And that is perhaps the most crucial link in making a meaningful healthcare transformation: relationships.
So, is it possible? Can we really transform healthcare as we know it? Kuhlman and Peach wouldn’t be writing this book if all they had were another theoretical exercise. They’re actually doing it. Here, they provide a roadmap and adjustable formulas that any organization or constituency can implement. It proven to work for doctors, administrators, and for the person at the heart of our work: the patient. And we should all agree, that’s the bottom line that matters most.