Drew Ungerman on patient-centric care, leadership, and technology
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But at the same time, as you said, this is not to be taken lightly, right? As I said, at the core, healthcare is people taking care of people in their most vulnerable moments often. And technology can really help us do that better.
Welcome. You're listening to the McKinsey on Healthcare podcast. If you're looking for insights into the issues that matter most to healthcare right now, you're in the right place. Explore wide-ranging conversations with leaders, changemakers, innovators, and professionals who are at the heart of healthcare today. I'm Corita Anderson, Senior Editor for Healthcare at McKinsey, based in New York. Let's get started. Today, I have Drew Ungerman, a senior partner in McKinsey's Dallas office. Drew is the global leader of McKinsey's social health care and public sector entities practice and also co-leads McKinsey Health Institute. He is a trusted counselor to CEOs and boards of many of the most prestigious health care organizations in the world.
Hi, Drew. Appreciate you being here today.
Thank you for having me.
You lead McKinsey's healthcare industry practice as well as the public sector practice. So I thought it'd be great to start by getting your perspective on the intersection of public health and healthcare industry. And how has your background shaped your thinking as a leader in this area?
Sure. Well, look, at the end of the day, whether you're employed in the public sector or the private sector, fundamentally, health care is an important human right and something that we all care about deeply. Health care also, in terms of the practice of health care, is, yes, there's a lot of technology and other technologies. things that allow us to do the amazing things we do every day. But ultimately, it's people taking care of people. And the public sector wants our country to be taken care of. The private sector wants to deliver good quality and access and affordability in terms of health care. And so really, No matter whether you're coming from the public sector or the private sector, we all want the same thing, which is a good health care experience, outstanding outcomes at an affordable price and with some degree of convenience as well.
And we're doing great on those dimensions in many ways as a country, but we also have a lot of opportunities.
And to that latter point, you know, often it can seem, particularly to people who are not directly involved in healthcare, that public health and how we actually experience healthcare can be at odds with each other. And, you know, indeed, healthcare, the healthcare industry is a complex one in many ways, understandably so. But it's also easy to understand why people are frustrated by that complexity. So what do healthcare leaders need to do to address those concerns and regain, rebuild the public trust in the system?
Well, look, you're right. Healthcare is extraordinarily complicated. The human body is complicated. There's science, there's art, there's technology. So there's a lot of structural issues when it comes to delivering high-quality healthcare, whether it's in this country or globally. And it's a set of common challenges that we have. And I think there's a couple of things that we need to do fundamentally to improve upon our current foundation. One, we have to put the consumer, the patient at the center. Too often, we're focused on structural incentives and who pays for what, as opposed to ultimately, how do we make that individual healthier? How do we take care of them in their time of need? That's one point.
I think secondly, We need to actually move from a sick care to a true healthcare industry. The fact is incentives often lead folks in the ecosystem to focus more when someone is really sick, as opposed to how do we help people maintain a healthy lifestyle all the time? The 99.9% of the time, then they're not in a healthcare facility. And then I think finally, we need to focus on holistic health. We have the McKinsey Health Institute. And while we've added 20 years of life over the last number of decades in terms of life expectancy, unfortunately, we've made very little strides in the quality of life.
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