Converge Cast | A Purposeful Path Toward Patient Centricity: Anthony Yanni, M.D.
In this new podcast, Anthony Yanni, M.D., Senior Vice President and Head of Patient Centricity for Astellas, shares his hopeful vision for patient centricity. He...
Patient centricity is a journey, not a destination, believes Anthony Yanni, M.D., Senior Vice President and Head of Patient Centricity for Astellas. And, that journey is one that participants from across the broad healthcare continuum – pharma companies, providers, payers, retailers, and more – must take together, unified by a common sense of purpose to serve the patient. Patient centricity “is not a proprietary activity,” he says.
Dr. Yanni is the first guest for WittKieffer’s Converge Cast, a podcast dedicated to exploring the complex issues impacting the well-being of our communities with executives in healthcare, life science, and education—the Quality of Life Ecosystem. Converge Cast is part of WittKieffer’s larger series, Converge, that curates deep engagement among Quality of Life Ecosystem leaders brought together in collegial settings to share perspectives, insights, and ideas for the future.
In this inaugural Converge Cast conversation, Dr. Yanni shares his hopeful vision for patient centricity with Shelly Carolan, Managing Partner of Investor-Backed Healthcare for WittKieffer, and Stephen Brengle, Managing Director for Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology, North America. They explore questions central to the success of patient centricity efforts:
- What does patient centricity really mean?
- How can organizations create cultures that foster and operationalize their patient centricity imperatives?
- How can organizations better collaborate and what role will technology play in enabling collaboration?
The journey really has just begun, Dr. Yanni believes: “The impact across industry has yet to be maximized. The sharing of best practices still needs to happen. Everyone needs to be moving toward this.”
(Full transcript available below)
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Full Transcript
Introduction:
WittKieffer is the premier executive search and leadership advisory firm developing impactful leadership teams for organizations that improve quality of life. We welcome you to the WittKieffer CONVERGE cast where we bring together the brightest minds in healthcare, life sciences, and education. Each episode we invite experts, innovators, and voices from diverse backgrounds to share their insights and discuss the challenges that affect the health and well-being of our communities. Together, we’ll navigate the complexities and discuss the tangible benefits and hurdles associated with the shift towards improved consumer experiences and better patient outcomes.
Shelly:
I’m Shelly Carolan, Managing Partner for our for-profit and investor-backed healthcare market. I’m joined today by Steve Brengle and Dr. Anthony Yanni to talk about patient centricity.
Steve:
Thanks Shelly. And for our listeners, my name is Steve Brengle. I’m Managing Director of Pharma and Biotech for North America here at WittKieffer and we are delighted to be joined here today by Anthony Yanni, the Global Chief Patient Officer at Astellas Pharma. Anthony, we’ve been acquainted now for several years, which predates but is also very much inclusive of your arrival at Astellas. So perhaps for our listeners if you wouldn’t mind just sharing a brief background and how you got to where you are today and bit about what keeps you busy would be helpful.
Anthony:
That’s great. Thanks. Thanks Shelly. Thanks Steve.
It’s great to be here with you today to have this conversation. So as you said, Steve, I’ve you and I have been connected for quite some time always talking about this idea of patient centricity. You know my journey started a long, long time ago. I was a practicing physician, trained in internal medicine and I practiced clinical care medicine, inpatient, and outpatient for 12 or 13 years before becoming Chief Medical Officer of a hospital system. I did that for a period of time and then I entered industry.
But prior to entering industry, my experiences where I was so fortunate to have the ability to see the patient care from so many different perspectives from the exam room, the bedside, and then from an administrative perspective where I saw how difficult it was for systems to deliver consistent care and how hard you had to work to do that in a compassionate and empathetic way.
The interaction of insurers with the delivery system and the physicians as well as the nurses and the entire ecosystem of delivery that is required to provide adequate and superb patient care.
When I entered industry, I started in a clinical development role, writing protocols and helping to develop new solutions for patients before going into a medical value role. It was from that role 12 or 13 years ago that patient centricity for me was born: this idea of how can we integrate the patient perspective into new solution development. And it was my past experience that really made me realize that something was missing.
You know, my whole career was patient facing and when we got into this really complex environment of developing solutions with the smartest people I’ve ever worked with, all of a sudden, the patient was missing. And that’s where this idea was really born.
Steve:
Since there’s really no, or it seems that there’s no standard definition of patient centricity across companies, organizations, sectors within the entire health, healthcare paradigm, maybe a good place to start would be what does that phrase patient centricity mean at Astellas? What does that mean to you and what are some of the things that you’re currently doing to advance patient-centric cultures?
Anthony:
Yeah, so such a great point. I think we have a problem with language in general. We use terms kind of loosely patient engagement and we don’t talk about whether that’s truly engaging the patient as a consumer or the patient as a patient. And I noticed this over my decade of working in this space that we really need to understand what we’re talking about when we use these words.
So when I started at Astellas in 2019, I really sat down and tried to define what it is I saw as a patient centricity approach. And so my definition of patient centricity includes 2 components.
The 1st is a cultural component. It’s the conscious awareness of the patient in every role, every day, everywhere around the world, so that when people come to work, they know the importance of what they’re contributing for the patient.
And then there’s an operational definition. It’s the actionable integration of the patient perspective in every decision leading to their solution. So with these two components, think about it, we have a foundational component which is culture. Everything is built on the culture and then the operational component is how do we create specialized teams that can interact with the entire development continuum, Researchers, development teams, understanding the patient in the real world setting, in understanding behaviors that promote or challenge good care. All of the operational components are critical if we really want to integrate the patient into decision making.
But the operational components will not be sustainable unless you’ve created a culture where everyday people believe they’re contributing to something so big and so important as patient solutions so we’ve spent a lot of time working on cultural components and I’m happy to talk about that.
If you want me to go into a little bit of detail around the cultural piece now…
Steve:
Certainly, and it also it also makes me wonder you know the culture piece of course but what impact and you know what are some of those actionable outcomes that the work has had within maybe not just to Astellas but also throughout the industry and other aspects of that that you know you view as most successful or most proud of?
Anthony:
Yeah. So the cultural piece is focused around this idea of are we going to have a narrative, are we going to have actions. Are we moving from a passive culture where we talk about how we believe we are or are we going to create a programmatic approach where everyone can participate actively in their roles in becoming part of a patient centered culture?
And think about this, it would work across any industry.
Think about an industry whether it be I, I’m most familiar with healthcare and this applies certainly to the broader ecosystem. Every part of the ecosystem, whether you’re an insurer, whether you’re a retail new into healthcare partner, you need a culture that people believe in. You have to connect the purpose of the team member to the actionable work that you’re doing. So what we’ve done is moved from a passive to an active culture.
We have active programs that allow, whether you’re in finance or human resources, in a research lab or in a commercial team, you can participate in what we have as patient centricity University. It’s a university where there’s a full curriculum to learn how you what patient centricity is, how you can interact with patients and how to integrate that into the work you do every single day.
We have programs like Star and Stars in the Sky where you can do video testimonials as to what motivates you, what’s your purpose inside of the company? But the point to all of this is how do we from the beginning, from the point of a job posting to objectives and competencies, how do we integrate that culture into everything we do?
And we have done that and we’ve seen the results. A recent Gallop survey talked about the engaged team members in the US and globally. I think the positively engaged team members or employees, they were 18%. When you look at totally engaged, total engagement at all was only 32%.
This, I mean, this is a problem. And when you look at pharma in general, we’re not ranked very highly as a perceived industry, unfortunately, despite the great work and the great people. So that’s an easy metric to measure. The last time we measured our engagement in the company, 82% of people in the company believe they were contributing to a patient solution, 82%. That’s an amazing number and a compliment to them because they’re the ones coming to work every day believing they’re making a difference.
So culture is critical, it’s critical in pharma and it’s critical across the healthcare ecosystem, whether you’re in a delivery system, a retail partner and ensure the culture is the backbone to the operational success.
Steve:
As a quick follow up, just as you were talking, some things popped into my mind. When you talk with your peers throughout the industry or perhaps throughout other organizations within the healthcare paradigm, are they having the same level of success and traction that you are? Are they doing things a little differently?
What are you hearing more broadly, from those that you work without outside of the organization?
Anthony:
Well, I think there’s a general interest for sure right there. There is a great deal of energy around this concept. I can’t speak to their success or the level of success that they’ve achieved. I can tell you that my approach and some of my colleagues across pharma has been: let’s share everything we’re doing.
You know this is one of the greatest benefits of having this conversation with you, right? This is not a proprietary activity. I will share all and everything we’re doing in this space because it benefits patients. That’s what that’s what we’re here to do. So I think there’s a general interest in sharing these ideas.
I think we need to do more of it and I think we should be doing it across the ecosystem, not just within pharma. But we should be talking about this when we talk to, again, delivery system entities, large systems, retail partners, government agencies, regulators, everybody should be interested in this because what are we doing? We’re aligning goals. It’s all about the patient.
Steve:
Yeah. And you mentioned earlier that it was your time as a practicing physician that that galvanized and precipitated your switch over; have things come a long way since then or do you see that there are still missing pieces and if so, what would those be?
Anthony:
So it’s come a long way and I think one of my issues is that we don’t ever talk positively. We always talk about what’s wrong and I think the delivery system also has that problem. But when we talk about in pharma patient engagement and patient centricity and patient-focused medicine development and delivery if you will, we’ve come a very long way.
When I started, you know, over a decade ago, the first time I brought this up in a room of scientists, they nearly kicked me out of the room because, you know, it was change management right there.
There were these were smart people and they wanted to help the patient. But here I am saying, hey, why don’t we do this a little differently? I have an idea. And it literally was a conflict, you know, That’s when everybody heard it all, you know, the story again. And I just was persistent…just give me one chance to show you what I mean. And if you don’t like it, you don’t have to use it.
And sure enough, A-Team said, yeah, go ahead., we’d be interested in seeing what this analysis looks like. And when we produced it, they loved it because they realized this wasn’t a change.
It was a change, but it wasn’t a change for change’s sake. It actually helped them make decisions. It actually clarified in their mind how this molecule is going to be used in an exam room. What is the opportunity for this molecule to impact patients in a clinically meaningful way? What are the characteristics of success for this, for the science to link to need and value?
So, it was fantastic to have these conversations and it just makes for a great story because initially it was nothing but opposition. And then we couldn’t keep up with the volume because everybody realized, hey, this is better having the stakeholders in the room.
Shelly:
Yeah, you mentioned before you know patient engagement. Is it consumer versus patient? We see healthcare evolve and what WittKieffer has written about in our disruptive trend series, that consumerism is really driving change in healthcare delivery and especially on the provider side.
What do you see as some of the lessons or takeaways or what would you like to see in other sectors of healthcare, some of the learnings that you’ve had from doing this? And how can providers start orientating themselves more to consumer healthcare versus just being a provider? How do you make it more patient centric?
Anthony:
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think one of the one of the challenges is that everyone, when they start a new idea or when you have a new health system or when you when you take independent practitioners and bring them into a physician network, you think operationally, oh, here’s what we need to do. Here are the seven things we have to do to tactically make this work. Yet no one takes the time to understand fully the purpose-driven motivations of the people you’re bringing in and then how do you create this cultural piece which I again I’ll go back to.
It is so important to have an understanding of what our corporate culture is. Are we going to say it or are we going to actually live it? Is it going to be words or works and you have to link it to the works? And so simultaneously, not six years later, the culture piece has to be built. And I think that’s what’s missing.
When you talk about the larger ecosystem, whether it’s retail, whether it’s delivery, the biggest complaints are always when patients don’t feel like it suits their needs. It’s never going to be perfect.
We are not perfect and it’s going to be an evolution forever and getting better. But you can address the major issues by just simply creating possibilities for patients to give you input, creating a flexibility in your tactical operational approach.
But always staying consistent with your cultural approach and always making sure from the time you post a job to the time you rate your team member, it has to be part of all of that. And you’ll be surprised at the significant improvement in your retention rates and the quality of the people you have applying and wanting, wanting to be part of your team. Because that especially this next generation right, this younger generation coming out of school, they’re more purpose driven than previous generations for sure.
Shelly:
Sure.
Anthony:
They make choices that are going to make them satisfied more than monetary monetarily satisfied or monetarily their monetary goals.
Shelly:
So how do you see partnerships across the ecosystem contributing to fostering patient centric approach across different sub-segments let’s say that are serving patients?
Anthony:
So that’s a complex question because it depends on what areas of the business are we talking about when we say partnerships or more probably appropriately as collaborations, right. So the delivery systems are with the pharma industry creating solutions, there are definitely components that are absolutely connected to being able to deliver the solution to the patient, right.
That last mile we sort of forget about, right. there’s a group that develops the medicine, there is a group that distributes the medicine and then there’s a group that treats the patient and that’s a perfect area where we should start thinking about these. These cultural pieces are pretty similar overall, right? The focus is always: how do we deliver better care and better solutions to patients as quickly and efficiently as possible?
And then the complex nature of some of these points are: what about those patients that don’t have access, what about those patients that don’t that are regionally disadvantaged or economically disadvantaged, right? So there’s a lot of complexity within these partnerships, but we are definitely stronger together linking the portions that are sequential.
Shelly:
You know it’s a complex question and a complex issue because there’s so many different contributors to a patient’s experience. But it would be too simplistic not to bring payers into the conversation because they drive so, so much of what a patient experiences their access to care. So in your mind, what role do commercial and government payers have in this?
Anthony:
So I think their role as you pointed out Shelly is critical and I think there’s nothing more aligned with that connectivity than patient centricity, right? So I think how we develop medicines is as important as what we develop, right, that that we’re creating solutions that are linked from the very earliest time a scientist has an idea to the time it’s delivered to the patient. So when somebody asks a pharma company, Why did you choose that patient population in research?, there should be a very clear answer and there should be a discussion as to this population and what their need is in the context of standard of care.
We believe we can add a pharma company or a new molecule to the treatment advantages for the patient. And then each sequential interaction, each step that molecule takes toward being a medicine, a licensed medicine, There should be further interactions in this dossier if you will of patient insights.
How we’ve learned, how we’ve integrated into our decision making and why we believe this is a value added treatment is going to be critical in the future and who cares about that, right? Well, the patient certainly does. Pharma certainly knows payers for sure, right in, in government agencies.
So where is it all aligned? It’s value. How do you drive value for the patient? If anybody argues that value isn’t the goal, then I want to have that discussion with them and I don’t.
It doesn’t matter if they’re a payer or the government agency. We can all debate the more complex issues of that are out there around new products and pricing, but value is the driver. If we can help somebody with the treatment, if it’s clinically better, better than the standard of care, that’s the goal.
The other discussions are secondary.
Shelly:
We see value-based care as another huge conversation around this because it contributes to positive patient outcomes, manages costs etcetera and there are s a lot of technology players that are getting into value-based care enablement and making those connections.
But I would love to also hear from you, how do you think technology is going to impact patient centricity? We’re seeing some of it with logistics and retail players coming in, but you know with as data capabilities further develop as possible sharing and portability of data continues to develop.
How do you see that impacting patient centricity broadband?
Anthony:
So I think I think data is going to or this broad-based data, AI is the big topic these days is going to be an important part of how understanding the patient evolves. It’s going to give us opportunities to see larger perspectives of patients than can possibly be obtained one patient at a time.
However, I am extremely cautious on this. I think we can’t make the mistake that more data is better information. Number one, large data sets tend to be very complicated.
We need to understand exactly the question we’re asking, exactly the data we’re looking at, and make sure that this data is not interpretable in many, many different ways, because then we’re not getting information that’s actually, in my view, very actionable. So we have to take the potential of AI in large data sets with the caution of privacy, always protecting the patient’s right to only share what they want to share.
And then an irrational exuberance around this idea that all look on the information we have, we can answer any question and I think that is absolutely not true and certainly not true today.
And lastly, it will never take the place of personal interaction with patients.
You need to be in the room. When I was practicing medicine, being in the room was the most important piece of anything that I did. Having that interaction, seeing the facial expressions, being able to ask the secondary questions, understanding the perspective and the context that the patient is having in their life at their time, in their environment is important. And that can’t always be. It certainly can’t be obtained just from dry data.
So I’m optimistic. I think there’s so much potential, but boy, we’ve got to really be careful and make sure that we don’t make 10 mistakes to get to 1 solution and it harms patients.
Steve:
One of the things that really inspired me to explore and become passionate about patient centricity is that it can be so many different things. Everything from patient care to approaching patients as more than just a participant in a trial to caregivers to generating and informing research about different demands and innovation.
So in closing, what are some of the things that you may envision we need to continue to foster this approach? And will there ever be a point where we can finally say we’ve arrived, and if so, what would that look or not look like?
Anthony:
I hope we never get to the place where we say we’ve arrived. You know, we’re very fortunate that we have a lot of energy around what we’re doing. There’s a lot of positivity, but the one thing I always talk about with the teams is that if we look the same next year as we do this year, we probably failed that there is this is an ever-evolving space, people are different, they have different needs.
We should be listening to everyone making sure that we adjust everything that we do to focus in on the one goal and that is simply bringing solutions to patients. And I thinkthe impact across industry has yet to be maximized. The sharing of best practices still has to happen.
The extension of this to the broader ecosystem that Shelly was talking about earlier, the retail healthcare folks, the insurers, the payers, everyone should be moving toward this because never has there been a better aligned goal. And earlier you asked, and this is what really makes me think about this ever-changing space. You asked me, you know, what am I most proud of?
I think there’s two things that popped into my head when you said that. One was I’m proud of the fact that research teams, development teams, you know at Astellas have not only embraced it, but they live it. They really, truly look forward to how we can create solutions. And not only that, but in a cultural, in a collaborative way, they’re together, they’re moving forward.
And the second piece was when I talked a little bit about this at a meeting, there was a patient in the room. And afterwards she actually came up to me and was very tearful saying how she saw that this was going to be a change. That’s meaningful. Because, you know, patients have been through this a lot. You know, they tell their stories so often and sometimes they feel as though their stories aren’t being heard because things don’t change very quickly.
And my commitment when I started in 2019, I said that I can guarantee you one thing, if you’re a patient and you share your story with us, we are using that information. It is becoming actionable, and it will be used in decision-making.
And I can honestly say 4 1/2 years later that has happened every time. You know, and it’s not an easy industry. These aren’t easy solutions, but together across pharma companies, if we focus on the patient, if we create the right culture, if we create the right tactics and operations where the patient is part of the solution, developing medicines not only for them but with them. That’s the future and it’s not going to, it’s not going to be static.
Shelly:
It’s a great topic for launching our CONVERGE series. We so appreciate your participation and it’s it is an incredibly important part of the ecosystem that does not get talked about or focused on and the passion that you’re bringing to it is really inspiring.
Anthony:
Thanks. Great to be here.
Outro
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