← Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Dr. Wayne J. Franklin, Senior Vice President of the Children’s National Heart Center
00:13:10
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- [00:02]
A
@ Athenahealth, we know your ambulatory practice wants healthier a healthier business, healthier care teams, and healthier patients. But the complexities of modern healthcare tech make it hard for you and your care teams to focus on what matters most. That's where athenahealth can help our AI native all in one solutions reduce administrative burdens, streamline billing and payments, and deliver critical insights when clinicians need it most. That means fewer clicks, more time for patients, and stronger bottom Practicing medicine is complex, but running a practice can be that much simpler. With Athenahealth, see how simpler is healthier at athenahealth.com.
- [00:44]
B
Hello and welcome to the Beckers Healthcare Podcast. I'm Elizabeth Gregerson, a reporter here at Beckers, and I'm thrilled to interview Dr. Wayne Franklin, senior Vice President of the Heart and Lung center at Children's National Hospital, on the podcast today. Dr. Franklin, thank you so for joining me. I'm very excited to chat as we've connected before when I was lucky enough to share some of your leadership strategies with our Cardiology Report newsletter audience. Before we dive in, could you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your background?
- [01:22]
C
Sure. Thanks for having me, Elizabeth. So I'm Wayne Franklin. I serve as a senior vice president of the Heart and Lung center here at Children's national hospital in Washington, D.C. our nation's capital. I started this role in June of 2024, so I've been here for a little over a year here in D.C. and before this I was the co director of the Heart center at Phoenix Children's in Phoenix, Arizona for five years. And before that I was faculty cardiologist at Texas Children's and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas for 17 years. So a long time. But in my role now as senior vice president, I oversee all things heart and lung at our hospital. So that is cardiology, cardiac anesthesia, cardiac surgery, cardiac icu, and pulmonary and sleep medicine. And we also do heart and lung transplant, so that falls under my center as well.
- [02:17]
B
Perfect. Thank you so much for setting that up for us. So our audience, you know, is full of hospital and health system leaders. Some of them touch cardiology, some are, you know, in other areas. I'd love to get your insight on what you feel are the top three biggest issues in cardiology today that you think the Becker's audience should be aware of.
- [02:43]
C
Sure. So I think there's three distinct ones and they're all different areas. So I think the first one is workforce. I think we as cardiovascular care professionals are facing a serious workforce challenge in the next 10 years. And by 2035, some studies have estimated that we'll be short about 8,000 cardiologists. And if you don't plan properly, that could increase to 12,000. Think about how many people and how many lives those 12,000 cardiologists can impact. So I think it's really important for us to plan on ways that we can continue this workforce. Many of our older cardiologists are retiring and we're not producing enough, you know, younger cardiology fellows to offset this workforce reduction. So I think we need to do put some things in motion, from making training more accessible, to removing barriers to enter the field, to even streamlining the certification recertification process, and work on some of these ways that can help impact the projected workforce shortage. Next. You almost can't have a podcast without talking about AI, artificial intelligence, right? So I think that that is also an exciting area that is set to revolutionize, revolutionized cardiovascular care and healthcare overall. I think there are so much data published essentially every day that it's almost impossible for a doctor, a clinician, to keep up with the most current practices. And by using AI enabled tools, we should be able to harness some of these data and therapeutic recommendations and hopefully develop algorithms that can sort of suggest therapies and management plans for almost any disease. If you look at cardiovascular imaging itself, there's a ton of things we do for imaging. And what we need to do is use AI to hopefully streamline the interpretation, maybe even provide a preliminary read. And that can help a lot of the cardiovascular imagers. Then, as I like to say, the mundane and simple things, the things that aren't very sexy like note writing and billing, can be impacted with AI. The idea of ambient listening, where a bot can listen to an encounter between a doctor and a patient, it can generate a note, and some technology is even out there that can suggest what billing or coding options would be available is huge. And that can really impact what we call pajama time, which is that time spent kind of after hours and on weekends, you know, doing documentation and charting. I know a lot of doctors, you know, we sort of dread that, but it's part of the, part of the process. Now I think that'll help with burnout. The last thing I would say, and I'll go it on a limb here, is the impact of private equity. I think honestly, these private equity companies are a threat to health care. I think a lot of times these companies are just all about making a profit and they don't necessarily give a real thought or impact to quality. And so that can reflect poorly on the physician and that can lead to. To, you know, worse patient outcomes. And so I think we need to be really, really aware that this is happening. A lot of big private equity firms are buying physician practices and a lot of times cardiology practices, because they tend to make a lot of money. And I think that's part of the issue. And so, you know, they come along with these big incentives that buy out. And after three to five years, though, doctors aren't left with very much. And anyway, I know it's a controversial topic, but I think that it's not really the right model for modern healthcare.
- [06:19]
B
Thank you so much. I think the workforce, AI and private equity, those are three topics that we see come up almost daily in our coverage across all specialties, across our finance line. I appreciate you letting us peek behind the curtain and seeing how all those topics are affecting cardiology today. I'd love to know how you see heart care evolving over the next year. 18 months. You touched on a little bit with AI, but are there any kind of events on the horizon that perhaps we should be preparing for?
- [07:00]
C
Yeah, that's a good question. You know, I think to address this AI topic again, I think it's really a great time to look forward to the future of cardiovascular care and cardiology. If you just look at the basic things like ambient listening, that can, you know, translate a note for us. So but it's done by the time we get out of the room. Chart review and scanning. Right. So it can really just digest a whole long chart and come up with some short paragraphs that can summarize all of the pertinent data, I think, to our revenue cycle folks. I think, you know, the idea of software that can suggest billing and coding, that's another big thing that we sort of need help with. And I was just a meeting today about prior authorization and medication denials and procedure denials. Again, these are basic business of medicine, things that, you know, we as doctors may not really think about, but are so important as, you know, for hospital financials and for hospital leaders. And if we could automate a lot of that and decrease the administrative burden, but also become more effective at it, I think that would really. That's really where we need to go. There's so many startups and companies out there that are investing in this and developing products. I think it's an exciting time and we're really going to see a lot of these come. Come through the next year or two.
- [08:23]
B
Yeah, yeah, you're Echoing a lot of things that we hear where, you know, there's just so many companies that are, are getting their foot in the door and so many solutions that are popping up. So I think that's definitely something we'll be seeing, like I said in the next year, 18 months of which ones are still working and which ones, you know, are actually moving the needle for hospitals, I guess keeping that forward momentum. What are you excited about today? When you think about the future of cardiology and candidly, are there any aspects that maybe make you feel nervous when you think about the future?
- [09:04]
C
Yeah, 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. Things that make me, yeah, things that make me nervous are really honestly the public's perception of health care. And even though I live and work in Washington D.C. i won't get too political, but I think it is really incumbent on the physicians and the scientists to lead the way regarding public health recommendations and direct patient care. You know, I think we need more humanism in medicine. I remember when I was in medical school, ucla, we would learn about the science of medicine. We'd also learn about the art of medicine. And when I think about the art of medicine, I think we now call this care delivery. Right. How do we foster and manage the doctor patient relationship? And I think it'll be really important as a lot of changes are happening, that we use evidence based medicine delivered in a humanistic approach where the patients and families can trust us. So I think that's what makes me nervous is that we really have to drill down to the way care delivered on a provider to patient level in order to really engender trust and to move forward together. What am I excited about? There's a lot of things that excite me. I think it's a great time to be in healthcare. And as a physician, I think modern technology again with the idea of artificial intelligence, or so called augmented intelligence as one of my doctor friends calls it, I think we're on the precipice of really making huge impacts in how we care for patients and how we deliver care. I think things like telemedicine and remote monitoring, wearable technology, I think we have such a large amount of data and that we can use it at our fingertips. But the challenge for us as providers and as clinicians is how to harness these data and really how to translate that into better health, health outcomes for patients. But you know, as always, say that's the fun part of being a doctor, is to be able to use these data and science in really an innovative way to benefit patients. That's what drives me and that's why I'm excited to wake up and to come to work every day here at Children's National.
- [11:24]
B
Amazing. Yeah, I think that's such a great point. I never really thought about it that way before, but hearing you talk, it's kind of like, you know, even a few years ago we would have, or healthcare leaders would have been desperate for the amount of data that they have today. But now we've got the data and it's now taking that next step of figuring out, like you said, how to harness it. I think that's, I think that's super exciting as well. So I'm glad to hear it excites you. That's all the time we have today. So I just want to thank you again for joining me on the podcast. I really feel like it's been a great, informative discussion and I just want to thank you again for sharing your time and your insights.
- [12:07]
C
Well, great. Thank you so much, Elizabeth. Thanks for having me. And I wish you guys have a good day.
- [12:11]
B
Absolutely. And I invite all of our listeners to tune into more podcasts from Becker's Healthcare by visiting our podcast page@beckershospitalreview.com thank you again, Dr. Franklin, for your time, and I hope everyone has a great rest of your day.
- [12:29]
A
At athenahealth. We know your ambulatory practice wants healthier, a healthier business, healthier care teams, and healthier patients. But the complexities of modern healthcare tech make it hard for you and your care teams to focus on what matters most. That's where athenahealth can help our AI native all in one solutions. Reduce administrative burdens, streamline billing and payments, and deliver critical, critical insights when clinicians need it most. That means fewer clicks, more time for patients, and stronger bottom lines. Practicing medicine is complex, but running a practice can be that much simpler with athenahealth. See how simpler is healthier at athenahealth. Com.