Today I am happy to introduce Dr. David Kuntz, Chief Academic Officer and Vice President for Hackensack Meridian Health, a 17-hospital network in New Jersey. He's also a Professor of Medicine and founding Dean for Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine. Additionally, Dr. Kuntz is a practicing general internist at Jersey Shore University Medical Center, a certified hypertension clinician by the American Heart Association.

Dr. Kuntz is a fellow Tiger graduating from Princeton University. Before going to medical school at the State University of New York at Buffalo, I've known and worked with Dr. Kuntz for several years, so I'm happy to have him here with us today. Welcome, David, to 5x5.

Interview Transcription

Richard Purcell (00:06) I'm going to go to our five questions in five minutes. You've been very concise in your answers today. It's been good. I've had some guests on that that have spoken for 10 minutes on one question, so I think I think we could probably get through these and I'm going to repeat them, a couple of them for for sure to get the quick five minutes and five questions here.

David Kountz MD (19:53) Fill on the first question.

Richard Purcell (20:10) So back to your dual role as a physician and administrator, how do these roles influence the other and what are the challenges associated with being the dual career person?

David Kountz MD (20:23) I don't think I would be effective as an administrator if I was not still a practicing physician, or I wouldn't be as effective. I think it's really important to kind of not stray too far away. At least this is just for me, and I'm grateful that I still have time to practice medicine a little bit and be side by side with my colleagues and really still understand what's happening in the clinical environment. And that makes me, I think, more credible as an administrator.

Richard Purcell (20:54) Let's talk about the consolidation in healthcare a little bit. HMH is buying practices. What does it mean to a private practice physician to go from being an employer to being an employee? And how is that affecting them?

David Kountz MD (21:13)I think for many private practice physicians, it's the opportunity to have the support of a very large, very stable organization. There are strategies that allow for the staff to be hired by the organization. There can be a degree of having a bigger flow of patients because it's a big organization that's very well known to the community. So I think it's a way to perhaps generate some practice security. There may also be some lifestyle benefits by having the support of a large organization and not necessarily having to worry about funds flow when you take a week of vacation. So I think, again, not for everybody, but there is a national trend for many traditional private practitioners who more and more consider employment or other relationships.

Richard Purcell (22:15) Yeah, thanks. In regard to the medical school, you started a medical school at Hackensack, Brooding Health. This is an innovation that I've seen and I haven't seen very many other places where a health care system starts their own medical school to feed the employment opportunities to the organization. What was the driving factor in starting a medical school at HMH? What were the...the decision making processes associated with that.

David Kountz MD (22:47) So I think it was a lot of very smart forward thinking leadership by our CEO to kind of anticipate this worsening physician shortage. The idea that innovation is such a big part of HMH and that a medical school almost by definition advances innovation, advances ideas.

I think that it was the right time. I we look at models like a medical school associated with Mount Sinai, a medical school associated with the Mayo Clinic, a medical school associated with Kaiser Permanente. These are all large health systems that have successfully developed medical schools. And no reason for us to not believe that we can be similar to those organizations.

I think if you were to ask me what do I see in the next five years, we of course need to focus early in the life cycle of a medical school on the student experience to continue to get the full accreditation by all the accrediting bodies. We're now looking at things like creating an MD-PhD program, which will be a big, big lift. So it's probably not right around the corner, but within the next five to seven years, I think that'll be the kind the another innovation to not only produce doctors who are going be clinicians, but doctors who will be physician scientists.

Richard Purcell (24:21) That's fantastic. I didn't know that. And that leads to new innovation. If you've got physician researchers, how do you think you can address the new innovation environment that we're moving into right now? As a medical school and as a healthcare system, how will you develop innovation?

David Kountz MD (24:45) I think a lot of that comes from our health system. We have, as I mentioned, a unit that focuses on innovation. One of the things I love is that we are always out there in our hospitals and in our practices looking for innovative ideas from our staff. And we believe that sometimes the best innovation comes from our frontline team members who see a problem and can help identify a solution. So we have terrific programs where we incentivize our frontline team members, and that can include a medical student or a doctor in training to come up with an innovative idea that will make it through our system and can be supported. And then again, I mentioned that last year of our medical school where there's a lot of flexibility, there's the opportunity for a medical student to spend all or part of that year working with the innovation team to develop new technology or other types of innovation. So it's not a separate part of our organization. It's very much things that our nurses are aware of, our doctors are aware of, and our medical students can have an opportunity to participate.

Richard Purcell (26:02) Okay, now League Med's been set up to build this community and foster innovation and to connect people. Not just for finance, but for leadership and advisory because doctors can help emerging med tech companies understand what their needs are. Just like you said, the frontline people are the drivers of innovation and they're the ones that will be the customers for these med tech companies coming out of some other product development system, if you will. What do you think about this idea that Leagueman has come up with to link practicing physicians who understand technology with emerging med tech companies who need money and pairing them through a community of investors?

David Kountz MD (26:54) and It sounds like a wonderful opportunity. I think it's very easy to be caught in your own silo and not recognize what opportunities or potential partners are out there. So by bringing together these different worlds, hopefully it will spur an innovation and partnerships and collaboration.

Richard Purcell (27:18) That's great, David, because we're trying to break down the walls between academia, commercial world and finance, which is another world that really is essential to this whole innovative ecosystem. But we're bringing it in here. We're really excited about it. And we're really happy to have had here today. Great job on our five questions in five minutes. And it's always wonderful to talk to you. So thanks so much for your time today. We'll see you soon.

David Kountz MD (27:46) I look forward to seeing you soon, Rich.