Ben Kruskal MD is coming to HealthCamp Boston.
Please tell us a little about your day job.
I’m Chief of Infectious Diseases at Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, a 500 physician, 400,000 patient multispecialty group practice in the greater Boston area. I supervise clinicians seeing patients for infectious disease consultations, long-term HIV care, and pre-travel consultations. I see patients myself for both pediatric infectious disease consultations and pediatric primary care.
What are you passionate about?
Improving how we deliver care: making it safer, better, more comforting and comfortable, and less expensive for society and for the patient; trying to transform health care into a partnership with patients to prevent problems when we can, and treat the problems only if we can’t prevent them.
What are you doing to “hack” health care?
I see the value of a systems approach; I am trying to help systematize care where it makes sense, as it generally reduces mistakes, waiting times and costs. This may seem the opposite of hacking, but there are so many ways that care is currently NOT delivered in a systematic way, that trying to provide some useful structure often feels like a hack.
Why are you attending HealthCamp Boston?
I am interested in learning about innovative ideas; in particular, in disruptive innovation and how to utilize it within a health care system.
If you were to lead a session, what would it be about?
I’d love to understand why the Boston area doesn’t have a fully integrated health care system (something like Kaiser Permanente in California, with inpatient and outpatient care and the insurance/payment functionality fully integrated into one entity).
What kinds of people do you want to meet at HealthCamp?
Smart people doing innovative things in health care I can’t even imagine yet.
See you at HealthCamp Boston!
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