As Yahoo Finance's Healthcare Week kicks off, reporter Anjalee Khemlani sat down with SCAN Group & Health Plan President and CEO Sachin Jain to discuss how healthcare has evolved since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jain noted that increased access to telehealth has strained in-person healthcare relationships. Pre-pandemic, building bonds between providers and patients was vital, but telehealth's rise has disrupted this.

Jain also commented on financial strains facing hospitals, though he called recent layoffs more a "crisis in healthcare management" than a fiscal necessity. Jain says financial leaders are trained to view things in terms of "targets," but this thinking can undermine healthcare's core focus - patients, workforce, and physicians.

"I think it's a big challenge for the industry that many people expect a strong relationship," Jain tells Yahoo Finance, adding, "and some of what the digital health and telehealth revolution has done is has switched healthcare into a series of transactions, as opposed to a relationship-oriented field."

Jain analyzes how healthcare delivery and finances have transformed, for better or worse, since the pandemic accelerated trends like virtual care. He offers insights into the system's continuing adaptation, emphasizing the need to balance access, costs, and quality without losing sight of healthcare's most critical element – people.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Video Transcript

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: We know that so much has changed since the pandemic. We were forced to find health care outside of hospitals when they were locked up with patients. We saw the rise of pharmacy and retail health, as well as telehealth really play a role. I know you're in charge of a payer, but you do have some thoughts about this. So tell me about what you think has changed permanently in the way we view health care.

SACHIN JAIN: Well, for one thing, I think we no longer think of facilities as being the center of people's health care experience. But I do think one thing that people are starting to think about is really the soul of health care. And what I mean by that is I think these large institutions that people typically relied on for care were local and people felt like they had a real relationship with them.

Today, people are increasingly seeing care-- accessing care through virtual means, as well as through other channels. And I think people are wondering where is that relationship going to come from? And I think it's a big challenge for the industry, which is that many people expect a strong relationship. And some of what the digital health and telehealth revolution has done has switched health care into a series of transactions as opposed to a relationship-oriented field.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: I'm glad you said that. Transactions is a key because we know there's also the rise of cash pay options and the like and all of this while the traditional system is a little bit under pressure. We know that, you know, for example, hospital systems, other facilities and industries-- sorry, sectors in the industry are looking at making ends meet.

You had an interesting thought recently on layoffs saying specifically, "A specific savings target becomes a blind fixation that overtakes even a passing analysis of the staffing levels to meet even basic service levels." And to translate that into normal terms, layman terms here, it's basically that there are so many endpoints that these facilities have to meet, whether it is revenue or staffing levels. And it comes at the detriment of care.

SACHIN JAIN: Look, most physicians I talk to believe that we have a crisis in the management of health care organizations. And that crisis really comes from the application of MBA toolkits to health care delivery settings. And what I mean by that is, when you're trained as an MBA or a finance person, you are really trained to think about things in terms of targets and hitting those targets.

And sometimes there are things that are more important than targets, like patients, like people, like the workforce, like staff morale, that have a critical effect on the output, which is the clinical care that's actually delivered. And I think sometimes the excessive focus on targets leads us away from actually delivering the kinds of outcomes and building the kinds of relationships that we were talking about before. And so you do see health systems that are laying off people, not necessarily thinking about, like, whether or not they have adequate staffing to actually serve the patients that they're serving in order to meet their financial targets.

Now many people say things like, no margin, no mission. At the same time, there is, like, just meeting the basics of actually taking care of the people that you're taking care of and being in the business that you're in. And so if you're not able to necessarily restructure your organizations or restructure your care processes to lower costs and you're only blunt instrument is a layoff, you end up in this funny situation where people in some of the best academic health centers in the world or the best health systems in the world are saying that they don't necessarily have what they need to actually take care of patients.

You have labor strife, you've got strikes, you've got increasing regulatory and reimbursement pressure. This is a very tough time to be in health care. At the same time, the thing we can't lose sight of is our focus on patients and focus on doing what's right for the people that we're trying to serve.