White offered care in all the areas I
was concerned about, care that was as
good as, if not better than, healthcare
anywhere else. In all the research I’ve
done, Scott & White always comes
out on top. That’s impressive to me.
This healthcare system is of the highest
quality and from the cost-benefit
standpoint it is one of the best. As a
board member, I enjoy being a part
of that.
We moved my mother to Austin
from Las Vegas so she would be near
Scott & White. In Las Vegas she was
spending a great deal of time driving
to different doctors, each with his
or her own fee and no coordination
of care. She’s doing better now, and
the frequency of her doctors visits
has diminished since she began
working with Scott & White. I have
experienced, and value, Scott & White’s
commitment to care and outcomes.
They pay attention to the metrics on
a systemwide basis, and use the data to
drive quality and patient satisfaction.
The business of healthcare
My background is in the computer
gaming business. My brother, Richard
Garriott, and I founded ORIGIN
Systems, Inc., which a lot of people
know for Wing Commander and the
Ultima series. ORIGIN Systems, Inc.
grew to be the number one independent
publisher of computer games in the
United States.
I’ve always been interested in
business and in creating something
people wanted and would pay for,
something that could make money
and create jobs. My brother loved
games, but for me it could have been
something else. We went into business
when I was 25, and everyone told me it
would fail. Experts in the industry said
I was crazy. I decided I could believe
them or set out to prove them wrong.
That’s when you start working harder.
It’s during the hard times that you
learn who you can trust, and it’s those
people who become your friends and
colleagues for life.
Healthcare is a challenge on a
national basis because of where our costs
are going. Scott & White is working
on ways to manage group healthcare
that can lower costs dramatically. I’ve
enjoyed the professionalism at Scott &
White—it runs deeply throughout the
organization.
I’ve been fascinated to discover that
going forward, healthcare is going to
need some of the same types of expertise
as the gaming industry. Online games
utilize giant data networks, and the
future of healthcare is highly reliant on
database programs. The most difficult
part of gaming relates to databasedriven issues, and the same can be
said of healthcare. How to manage
costs and understand the efficacy of
treatments—those are data-driven
issues. Scott & White is on the road
to greatly improving the process of
providing healthcare. Process is at the
heart of progress, and I’m enjoying
taking that into the healthcare arena,
seeing if I can add value to that as a
board member. n
“We moved my
mother to Austin
from Las Vegas so
she would be near
Scott & White.”
—Robert Garriott
sw.org | November 13 The Catalyst
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