Inbound Health

Chi-Cheng Huang

As a physician and leader, Dr. Huang has worked at tertiary care hospitals, community hospitals and critical care hospitals – Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston Medical Center, Beth Israel Lahey and Wake Forest Health System over the last two decades. He has collaborated within these healthcare systems to create new service lines, facilitate effective hospital mergers, achieve lowered mortality rate, improve patient throughput and develop more efficient hospital inpatient system which has translated into five to 20 million dollars of annual year over year savings and revenue generation. He also spearheaded health care initiatives such as Hospital at Home in 2020, Virtual Hospital in 2021 and other telehealth innovations.

Through this article, Huang highlights the importance of innovation in healthcare, focusing on patient-centric care, virtual and home-based services to tackle clinician shortages and rising costs.

As the U.S. faces a clinician shortage and rise in an aging population, innovation in population health will be key to managing rising healthcare costs. Acute Care Hospital at Home programs have been part of the health care discussion over the last few decades. However, a tipping point occurred with the COVID pandemic where many hospital systems were creating field hospitals and ED NEDOCS scores were extremely high. Many Hospitals at Home (H@H) Programs – Acute Hospital Care at Home were launch out of necessity.

Our healthcare system will face some interesting headwinds over the next decade as we collectively face a significant nursing shortage, an aging population with longer longevity and a decrease in the number of physicians. As we exited the COVID 19 pandemic in May 2023 my professional experience with being an executive sponsor of such an innovative healthcare program also felt like an opportunity to join a company such as Inbound Healthcare, one of the leading companies in the United States. Inbound Healthcare aims to deliver patient centric, value based, acute hospital care in the home

Integrate Patient-Centric Care with Empathy and Accountability

Patient-centric care is one of the core tenets as a clinician and as a clinician leader that I take to heart. One of the mottos that helps me in my decision-making is “What would I do if this was a family member (in regards to medical care)?” It has made the hard decisions much easier to have a true north over the last few decades. In addition, measure quality and being accountable to such metrics as 7-14-30 day readmission rates to the hospital, escalation rates to the emergency department, hospital acquired infections, falls and other CMS Quality Metrics.

Creating Better Care Through Listening and Collaboration

The demand for providing the highest quality of care for our patient is real. Patient care always comes first and I have been afforded the space and opportunity to help create a better clinical operational system for our patients. Different hospital systems have different needs and asks for their patients. As a result, this requires collaborative understanding and seeking to the listen first.

“Different hospital systems have different needs and asks for their patients. As a result, this requires collaborative understanding and seeking to the listen first”

Navigating Patient Safety Challenges with Virtual and Home Care

The COVID 19 pandemic in 2020 catalyzed a unique opportunity to stand up innovative ways of delivering inpatient health care in a safe, patient centric manner. I successfully led COVID units at five different hospitals and managed a hospital medicine command center over two years. The lack of inpatient beds and patients boarding in the emergency department for 48 to 96 hours created a significant patient safety and patient satisfaction challenge.

My hospital medicine colleagues collaborated with our emergency medicine physicians to provide virtual hospital medicine, perioperative medicine consults and other types of virtual hospital medicine consults at rural hospitals, community hospitals and tertiary care hospitals.

Moreover, acute hospital care at home and elevated care, i.e. Hospital at Home, was implemented within 60 days during the beginning of the pandemic and making over 5000 encounters over the next two years. At Inbound Healthcare, we have been able to achieve 30-day readmission rates for patient that is on CMS Waiver better than the national average while also decanting our emergency rooms at our health system partners.

Emerging Technologies in the Future of Hospital Medicine

Biometrics and 24 hours or a day monitoring play a significant role in what we do at Inbound Health. Monitoring vital signs and assessing the status in real time provide safer care for our patients. Emerging technology around detecting arrythmias, such atrial fibrillation, will provide advance notice to the clinician. Artificial Intelligence (AI) will play an increasingly larger role in augmenting our ability to determine if patients’ clinical status changes prior to it happening. Lastly, technology is helping Inbound determine the best and most appropriate patients for patients on CMS Waiver, Elevated Care, Recovery Care at Home and post-acute care.

Aligning Goals and Encouraging Innovation

It is important to focus the “Wildly Important Goals” and help your team place other goals in the sideline. Moreover, seeking to understand the root cause of the goal allows for innovative thinking to occur. Allowing mistakes and failures to happen provides the team the freedom to try new things without negative consequences. Communication to all key stakeholders prior to initiatives is important to gain buy in, feedback and understanding. Lastly, it is important to have an effective communication plan that cascade appropriately to the front-line providers and administrative colleagues.

Key Advice for Aspiring Leaders

During the last twenty years, Dr. Huang has mentored over 40 medical students, 25 residents and dozens of clinical leaders. He has given over 150 talks throughout the world and published over 40 peer reviewed articles. As we face a likely healthcare existential crisis in the next five to 10 years in the United States with the nursing and physician shortage, I have advocated for value based and population health. Emerging healthcare leaders should find mentors within the healthcare industry and also outside of healthcare. Moreover, professional coaches are invaluable to help one to determine their blind spots and improve as servant leaders. Lastly, I would suggest having a healthy life outside of work with family and friends.