The Catalyst Issue 17 | November 2013 | Page 33

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 33