By Kathleen D. Benton, DrPH, MA
President & Chief Executive Officer
People often assume innovation begins with creativity. I don’t think it does. I think innovation begins with discomfort—specifically, the discomfort of watching people struggle when you know there has to be a better way.
Perhaps that’s why people often describe me as someone who enjoys innovation and thrives on change. I always smile when I hear that because it isn’t quite true. I don’t wake up in the morning wondering what new program we should create or what new service we should launch. I wake up wondering who is still being left behind. There’s an important difference.
Innovation, by itself, has never interested me. New technology is exciting. New programs are exciting. But none of those things matter if they don’t improve someone’s life.
The innovations I’m proudest of didn’t begin because we were looking for the next big idea. They began because someone was struggling. Sometimes that realization came during strategic planning discussions with our Board. Sometimes it came from conversations with families, clinicians, or community partners. However the conversation began, it always came back to the same question: Who isn’t being served—and what are we going to do about it?
Over the years, I’ve realized that for our team nearly every meaningful innovation follows the same path. It begins with paying attention. It begins with listening. It begins with noticing people whom everyone else has stopped noticing. Long before an idea becomes a program, a building, or a new service, it begins with empathy.
I’ve spent much of my career trying to build the kind of healthcare system my own family wished we’d had. Growing up with a younger brother who lived with significant disabilities taught me that compassion isn’t simply about having caring professionals. It’s about creating systems that allow caring people to work together. That lesson has shaped nearly every innovation I’ve pursued since. It has also shaped the way I think about leadership.
One of the things I have never forgotten is how quickly illness changes a person’s relationship with control. Many of the people we care for have spent their entire lives making decisions, solving problems, and leading families or organizations. Then suddenly they’re diagnosed with a serious illness, surrounded by specialists who rarely speak to one another, trying to interpret unfamiliar medical language, wondering who’s actually coordinating their care—or whether anyone is. Even the most educated, capable people can feel overwhelmed.
I’ve come to believe that one of the greatest forms of suffering isn’t always physical. Sometimes it’s the feeling that your life has become a series of disconnected appointments and decisions made by people you’ve only just met. When families are left wondering who is calling the shots or how all the pieces fit together, we’ve created a burden that medicine alone can’t solve.
Compassion recognizes that uncertainty. Innovation asks how we design healthcare so people feel informed, supported, and guided—not simply treated.
Healthcare certainly needs compassionate clinicians, caregivers, and leaders. But compassion shouldn’t depend solely on the extraordinary people working within a system. It should be built into the system itself. That’s what I mean when I talk about compassionate systems.
Compassionate systems don’t happen by accident. They are intentionally designed. Someone has to imagine them. Someone has to build them. Someone has to refuse to accept that “this is just how healthcare works.”
Throughout my career, I’ve discovered that innovation isn’t about asking, “What should we create next?” It’s about asking a much more uncomfortable question: Who still isn’t being served? That single question has changed the direction of our organization again and again.
We saw families struggling to navigate serious illness long before hospice was appropriate, so we built palliative care. We recognized that grief doesn’t end after a funeral, so we expanded bereavement support through Full Circle. We watched family caregivers sacrifice their own health while caring for loved ones, so we created new ways to support them through the Edel Caregiver Institute. We saw older adults losing their independence because healthcare focused on treating illness instead of supporting life, so we pursued PACE.
None of those programs began because someone wanted to be innovative. They began because someone cared enough to refuse the status quo. That distinction matters.
I sometimes hear innovation discussed as though it’s separate from compassion—as though compassion belongs to caregivers while innovation belongs to engineers or technology companies. I don’t believe that. I believe innovation is compassion refusing to accept unnecessary suffering. Compassion notices suffering. Innovation refuses to leave it there.
When an older adult begins missing appointments because transportation has become impossible, compassion notices. Innovation asks how we remove the barrier.
Compassion notices that someone who has gardened for forty years no longer has the strength to maintain a backyard. Innovation builds a raised garden bed.
A caregiver reaches the point of exhaustion. Compassion recognizes it. Innovation creates support before burnout becomes the outcome.
Compassion notices someone repeatedly arriving in the emergency department because mild dehydration became a crisis. Innovation creates a place to receive fluids before it ever becomes an emergency.
People sometimes dismiss those ideas because they don’t look like healthcare. I think they are healthcare because they help people continue living the lives that matter to them.
The healthcare industry talks constantly about innovation. My hope is that we begin talking more about why we innovate. Not because change is exciting. Not because technology is advancing. Not because we want recognition. We innovate because somewhere, someone is still struggling. As long as that remains true, our work isn’t finished. As leaders, we have a choice. We can accept those gaps in care as inevitable, or we can see them as invitations to do better.
My premise is simple: Compassion leads us to notice suffering. Innovation leads us to do something about it. Compassion gives us the heart to care. Innovation gives us the courage to change. Together, they create the kind of healthcare our communities deserve.
