Transforming Care Delivery in a Post-COVID World
View from the C-Suite: Toby Cosgrove, MD, Executive Advisor and Former CEO and President of Cleveland Clinic
// By Jane Weber Brubaker //
In an interview with StartUp Health co-founders, Dr. Toby Cosgrove shares his perspectives on what we’ve learned from the pandemic, how technology accelerated innovation, and how it will continue to open new opportunities for transforming care delivery in the future.
When Toby Cosgrove, MD stepped down as president and CEO of Cleveland Clinic in 2017, it was anything but a retirement. Not only did he stay on as executive advisor to the Clinic, he has actively taken on advisory roles and board positions with a number of innovative health tech companies.
Mapping out his board relationships paints a picture of where health innovation might be going in the future. Telehealth provider Amwell is one example. Before COVID-19, telehealth had been slow-walked either due to change-resistant health care organizations or government regulations or both. To meet the massive demands on health care delivery brought on by the pandemic, telehealth was fast-tracked last year, but it is still in its nascent stage with significant potential to grow and evolve.
Toby Cosgrove, executive advisor and former CEO and president, Cleveland Clinic
Cosgrove sat down for a Zoom chat in early March with StartUp Health co-founders, Steven Krein and Unity Stoakes to discuss innovations that show promise for transforming care delivery in the post-COVID world. He stressed the importance of working within the health care system for technology innovators and concentrating on large teaching hospitals with the stature to influence the rest of the industry.
“Entrepreneurs have to understand that the health care delivery system is huge and one of the things you have to do is work within,” Cosgrove says. “If you’re an entrepreneur and you have a new technology and you want to introduce it, find a champion in the organization who is far enough up that they can make a difference and help lead that change.”