Three of the most influential business leaders of our time—Jamie Dimon, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett—have chosen Dr. Atul Gawande to lead their new healthcare firm. Gawande’s credentials as a surgeon and Harvard Medical School professor give them confidence in his expertise, but Gawande’s skill as a storyteller caught their attention. And it’s his storytelling ability which makes him an inspired choice as a healthcare reformer.
The vision behind the partnership between Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, and Berkshire Hathaway is to lower health-care costs for employers. Gawande will head the firm, beginning July 9. Gawande practices endocrine surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and is a Harvard professor of public health. Remarkably, Atule Gawande’s writing caught Warren Buffett’s attention.
In 2009, Gawande wrote an article for The New Yorker titled, “The Cost Conundrum.” It’s a magnificent piece of storytelling. It tackles a complex topic: why healthcare is more expensive in some American towns than in others. Instead of approaching the topic in dry, academic language, Gawande wraps the data in narrative, a much more effective way of educating readers. Here’s how Gawande begins the piece:
It is spring in McAllen, Texas. The morning sun is warm. The streets are lined with palm trees and pickup trucks…McAllen calls itself the Square Dance Capital of the World. McAllen has another distinction, too: it is one of the most expensive health-care markets in the country.”
For the first 2,000 words, Gawande tells stories; stories of the people he met in town—doctors, nurses, hotel desk clerks, a policy academy cadet, and a “weather-beaten, ranch-owning fifty-three-year-old cardiac surgeon.” Only after 30 paragraphs are we introduced to the first economist cited in the article.
Gawande’s New York Times bestselling book, Being Mortal, introduces us to Peg, his daughter’s piano teacher. She spent two weeks in a hospital, dying in pain. Gawande uses the story as a teaching moment to advocate for hospice discussions with patients and families, instead of focusing exclusively on treatment options. A website dedicated to improving the care of older adults calls Gawande one of the best storytellers in healthcare, “or possibly in any field.” Referring to Peg’s story, the article says Gawande’s storytelling skills “get his message across in a way that facts and figures could not do alone.”
Does storytelling matter in healthcare? Yes, it does. It matters a lot.
I’ve spent the past last two years researching a new book on the art of persuasion. Some of the most transformative leaders I interviewed are running world-class hospitals and healthcare organizations. Each and every one of them credits communication and, specifically, storytelling, as a key ingredient of their success. Out of more than 3,500 hospitals in America, fewer than 5% receive a five-star rating for efficiency and patient experience. The top hospitals stand out because they’re run by leaders who understand the value of clear, empathetic, and effective communication. Great healthcare leaders are proud to call themselves storytellers.
“Storytelling is my most important tool as a leader,” Dr. David Feinberg told me. In eight years, Feinberg transformed the UCLA Medical Center from one of the worst hospitals in America into one of the most admired. Feinberg, now the CEO of Geisinger Health, changed the way doctors and nurses communicated with each other and with patients. The result—better patient satisfaction, better cost efficiencies, and better outcomes.
Cleveland Clinic became one of the most admired hospitals in America after its then-CEO changed the culture. Toby Cosgrove hired a chief experience officer charged with marrying digital technology with human warmth. All 43,000 caregivers in the hospital system attended workshops that emphasized empathy and communication. A video produced for the hospital’s internal use was titled, “Empathy.” The video went viral after employees began to share it on social media. It’s a tear-jerker, used to remind healthcare providers that every patient has a story.
In her book, Back to Balance, healthcare executive and physician, Dr. Halee Fischer-Wright, writes, “The human side of medicine—the compassion, communication, and empathy that lie at the heart of the art of medicine—is essential to achieving the outcomes that matter most to the business and science sides of medicine.” The machines that take care of our healthcare needs don’t have heart; storytellers do.
Jamie Dimon, Warren Buffett, and Jeff Bezos are all excellent communicators. They know that a healthy system requires leaders who use stories to educate, inform, and inspire change.