Raise the question of how medicine is evolving today and you’ll discover that a love of aviation and a fascination with flying fuel Dr. Eric H. Benink’s observations with apt metaphors and parallels.
The senior vice president and chief medical officer at Regional One Health is a graduate of Rush Medical College in Chicago with an MBA from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Benink served in the U.S. Air Force during the Gulf War and was flight medical director for the helicopter program at the University of Illinois College of Medicine (UICM), where he served on the faculty for 6½ years.
A specialist in emergency medicine, Benink joined Regional One Health last October after serving as chief medical officer at Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights, Ill., and 20 years with the OSF (Order of Saint Francis) Saint Anthony Medical Center, where he filled both academic and administrative roles.
During his four-year tour of duty at Keesler Air Force Base, Benink practiced emergency medicine at Keesler Medical Center, a 500-bed teaching hospital, while on a deployment team that was on 24-hour notice to be sent anywhere in the world to handle potential mass casualties.
Although emergency medicine is more stressful than other specialties, Benink enjoys the challenges and rewards of putting together the pieces of the fresh puzzle that each patient represents and hearing their story firsthand, rather than following up a case where someone has already done the groundwork.
Thus, while his CMO role is purely administrative, Benink nonetheless has acquired his Tennessee medical license along with physician privileges at Regional One. “It’s still a passion of mine," he said, "and I think people like to see the chief medical officer still in the trenches.”
One of Benink’s first priorities as CMO was a four-fold process that addresses structure, processes, people/culture and outcomes.
“My job was to make sure we had the right structure for quality and patient safety, and I think we do," he said. "One of the first things that I wanted to do to address the ‘processes’ piece was to rewrite our quality and patient safety plan — the constitution of how we will approach quality patient safety and the performance to get our outcomes to where we want them to be.
“Medicine throughout the country is undergoing a change of culture similar to what aviation went through in the 1980s — a change that is based on flattening of the hierarchy. Physicians, like pilots, need to be open to everybody’s opinions. Open opinions can prevent airplanes from going down, and open opinions in medicine can prevent harm to our patients.”
That cultural change isn’t likely to happen overnight, he warned.
“We can learn a lot from aviation,” Benink said. “It took a generation to get the safety of aviation to the point where, despite the fact that it makes the news when a plane goes down, it’s a pretty rare event.”
He believes the healthcare community’s priorities are changing, however, dramatically impacted by the 1999 Institute of Medicine report “To Err Is Human.” The report concluded that 44,000 to 98,000 people die each year as a result of preventable medical errors such as unnecessary or incorrect surgeries, medications or treatment.
“If you compare that to the airline industry, it would be equivalent to a 727 going down every day,” Benink said. “Aviation crashes make the headlines; medicine hasn’t made the headlines yet. The challenge that I face is making healthcare in our hospital as safe as possible.”
Benink’s youthful ambition to become a paramedic was inspired by the ’70s TV show “Emergency,” in which goals were strikingly similar to one he’s now pursuing: to change Regional One’s culture to one “where the patient we take care of, at the moment we are taking care of them, is the most important person in our lives, because if they are, we will provide them with the safest, highest-quality care we can – or find somebody else who will.”
But medicine has changed drastically over the last 25 years, he acknowledges. “The days of Marcus Welby, MD, are long gone; very few doctors make house calls, know everything about their patient, and are on call seven days a week, 24 hours a day," he said. "Medicine today is so vastly complex you can’t know it all, so subspecialties prevail, and it’s hard to be a generalist.”
Benink’s concerns:
- Polypharmacy: “It’s not unusual for a patient to come into the emergency room on 10 medications. We expect our elderly population to be on multiple prescriptions, taken at multiple and different intervals. It’s difficult for patients to keep up, and it’s no surprise that studies show patients are not filling the prescriptions they need.”
- Overuse of antibiotics: “Patients come into the emergency department with common cold symptoms and insist on an antibiotic they don’t need.
- “There will come a time when physicians can’t take Medicare or Medicaid patients because they can’t afford to, Doctors’ reimbursements have deteriorated significantly over 25 years and they’re not going up anytime soon, if ever.”
Benink’s advice:
- “Sometimes you have to remember what God gave you: It’s truly a privilege to be a healthcare professional. The job is tough and sometimes not very rewarding, but we have to remember that there are very few people in whom God has instilled the skills and knowledge to do what we do. If you can focus on that, you can get through some of the frustrations that this job holds for you.”
Married, with six children ages 2 to 21, Benink and his wife love to travel the world, especially via cruise ships.
Long term, his goal is to become a Malcolm Baldrige recipient for quality.
“The journey is worth it, aside from the award," he said. "It’s like preparing for a marathon: Even if you don’t win the marathon, you’re in better shape than you were before you started.”
RELATED LINKS:
http://www.iom.edu/Reports/1999/To-Err-is-Human-Building-A-Safer-Health-System.aspx
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polypharmacy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_misuse