Podcasts about glide health it

There are many ways to innovate within an existing organization. However, it can be difficult to move as fast as you'd like within the constructs of an established business model and culture. For one, it's difficult for your team to innovate on top of their “day job”. Second, it can be difficult to hire and incentivize the right people to drive the innovation within your existing constructs. These are the types of issues that the folks at Cleveland Clinic identified as reasons for not innovating fast enough in telemedicine. They decided that if they were going to pick up the pace, they were going to have to take a different approach. The Clinic is a joint venture between Cleveland Clinic and Amwell that connects patients with Cleveland Clinic physicians for online second opinions. Together they are using the latest telemedicine technology to, as CEO Frank McGillen put it, “unlock access to the world's best medical care”. On this episode, we talk with Frank McGillen, CEO, and Peter Rasmussen, MD, Chief Clinical Officer of The Clinic by Cleveland Clinic to understand why one of the best known global brands in healthcare decided that a JV startup was the best way to bring this innovation to market quickly. We discuss: The problem that needed to be solved The benefits of the spin-off/startup approach The benefits of partnering with vs. hiring a technology vendor How they were able to get Cleveland Clinic physicians on board The importance of unique business models in a competitive marketplace How they are measuring the success of their second opinion service How they are measuring the success of this innovation approach Advice for organizations who are considering a startup/spin-off approach to innovation   About The Clinic by Cleveland Clinic The Clinic is a visionary joint venture that combines the unrivaled clinical expertise of Cleveland Clinic with Amwell's industry-leading telehealth platform. Through innovative solutions like our Virtual Second Opinions, we enable easy, secure access to the highest quality medical expertise. Patient-centric and deeply collaborative, we are passionate about realizing the global possibilities of digital health, providing advanced solutions that help tame the costs of care while enabling patients to achieve better outcomes and the greatest degrees of hope.   Learn more: Web: https://theclinic.io/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/digitalhealth1/ Anthem signs on with Cleveland Clinic's, Amwell's virtual second opinions service   Full show notes and links: https://thehcbiz.com/172-spin-offs-and-joint-ventures-with-the-clinic-by-cleveland-clinic   The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media. 

On this edition of #HCBiz Office Hours, Don and Shahid talk with Yuma Nambu, Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) at CROSS SYNC. CROSS SYNC is a Japanese startup whose medical data analytics software, “iBSEN”, enables hospital ICU's to automate the monitoring of patient vitals and motions continuously to assist healthcare professionals in identifying acute deterioration as early as possible.  The platform relies on multimodal AI capabilities that combine time-series vital analytics from physiological monitors and patients' motion analytics from live video feeds including facial recognition and motion detection.  As CROSS SYNC looks to expand globally, and into the U.S. market in particular, what are the regulatory requirements for their software? Will they need FDA SAMD Clearance to deploy iBSEN in the U.S? Don, Shahid, and Yuma discuss FDA/SAMD regulatory requirements in detail. Plus, they expand on the idea to explore the more important question all digital health startups face: How will you prove that your software works?  For more details and full show notes: https://thehcbiz.com/171-office-hours-does-my-software-need-fda-samd-clearance/   The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media. 

We spend a lot of time talking about how to align your startup's vision with the realities of the business of healthcare. You can have the best idea in the world, but if you don't properly validate your offering with customers, clearly and concisely explain the value it will bring them, close deals, and deliver on your promises then it will amount to nothing. Each of these steps is critical to your success. However, you can get many of them right and still fail. The best way to prevent this fate is by tying them all together with a financial plan that's based on reality and considers the long-term goals for your startup. Today we talk with Kristian Marquez, CFA, Managing Director for FinStrat Management, Inc. about how to properly manage your startup's finances.  The good news is that you don't have to be perfect. Kristian tells us you should expect to get a lot of it wrong and have to clean it up along the way. That's ok. His advice: go bare-bones in the beginning when it comes to finances, legal, and generally “papering your business”. That way, you can put all of your resources into ensuring you have a product that people will actually pay you for. That means more time talking with customers, managing your pipeline (and not lying to yourself about it), practicing selling, and cultivating the confidence to ask for the close. Kristian walks you through this early-stage strategy, explains when it is time to bring in the experts, provides guidance on debt vs. equity funding, and even helps you prioritize your spending based on the type of company you want to build. This episode pairs well with: Episode 30: Why You Should Always Be Preparing to Sell Your Company with Dexter Braff Episode 85: Lessons on Selling in Healthcare w/ Dom Cappuccilli ---------- Kristian Marquez, CFA – Kristian serves as Managing Director for FinStrat Management, Inc. FinStrat Management (“FSM”) is an outsourced financial department services firm providing fractional accounting, controller services and CFO services. Exclusively serving B2B SaaS companies, we provide fractional: Chief Financial Officer, controller and accounting services. Web: https://finstratmgmt.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/finstratmgmt/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/finstratmgmt Please email info@finstratmgmt.com if you'd like a free consultation. ---------- This episode is brought to you by: The Substance Use Disorder Treatment and Recovery Loan Repayment Program (STAR LRP) gives behavioral health providers up to $250,000 to repay school loans in exchange for working full-time for six years at an approved site. Apply now through July 22, 7:30 p.m. ET. ---------- The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media.  Music by StudioEtar

Just about every health system has an innovation program, but how do they know if it's making a difference? That's the question we set out to explore with the team from Houston Methodist Center for Innovation. On this episode we talk with:   Michelle Stansbury, Vice President of IT Innovation Brad Shaink, Administrative Director of Digital Innovation Josh Sol, Administrative Director of Ambulatory Innovation   They walk us through:   Innovation Expectations: How do you set expected goals, OKRs, KPIs, etc.? Innovation Discovery: Where do you find solutions? Innovation Evaluation: How do you evaluate solutions before you pilot them? Innovation Pilots and Early Adoption: How do you pilot your solutions? Innovation Procurement: RFPs, templates, etc. Innovation Diffusion: Implementation, integration, etc. Innovation Recognition: How do you recognize teams that are doing things well? Innovation Failure: How do you know if an innovation has failed? Exnovation: How do you know when it's time to stop doing something, or to turn off legacy solutions?   Key takeaways include:   Right-sizing your pilots: Start small and keep your efforts in line with what you are trying to accomplish. Metrics can be qualitative or anecdotal, but they must exist and you must be honest with yourself about whether they are being met. Honesty and trust are key to innovation success. If you aren't giving honest feedback and holding one another accountable then everything falls apart. Startups should focus on solving the customer's problem first and avoid pushing their own agenda. If you invest in the customer's needs first, you'll get a chance to expand the vision later. Make innovation a priority and develop innovation habits: The Houston Methodist team schedules “Monday Demos” each week to ensure they always have new ideas and solutions entering the pipeline. Sometimes they find a solution for a problem they didn't even realize they had.   Links and Resources   Connect with Michelle Stansbury on LinkedIn Connect with Brad Shaink on LinkedIn Connect with Josh Sol on LinkedIn Learn more: Houston Methodist Center for Innovation   Related Episodes:   Episode 149: How Health Systems Think with Neil Carpenter (Listener Favorite) Episode 137: The Novation Dynamic: 3 Pillars for Healthcare Innovation Success with Michael Ackerman Episode 133: Keeping Your Innovation Engine Humming During the COVID-19 Crisis w/ Karen Murphy, PhD, RN (Geisinger)   This episode is brought to you by: The Substance Use Disorder Treatment and Recovery Loan Repayment Program (STAR LRP) gives behavioral health providers up to $250,000 to repay school loans in exchange for working full-time for six years at an approved site. Apply now through July 22, 7:30 p.m. ET.     The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media.  Music by StudioEtar

Early in the pandemic, Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched the Diagnostic Development Initiative (DDI) to help organizations around the world accelerate diagnostics research and development. In the first phase of the initiative, AWS awarded $8 million in computing credits and technical support to 87 organizations in 17 countries. Some of the highlights include:   Stanford University School of Medicine's smartwatch app that detects early signs of COVID-19 Ilumina's identification of viral mutations through next-gen sequencing Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub used Machine Learning to estimate the number of unreported COVID-19 Cases University of British Columbia & Vancouver General Hospital applied machine learning to CT scans to identify indicators of COVIOD-19 and detect more severe progression of the disease. Then they open sourced the model.   Today we're talking with Grace Kitzmiller, Principal Product Manager of AWS Disaster Response about the next round of DDI. AWS will distribute an additional $12 million in compute resources and technical support to organizations working in three areas:   Early disease detection Prognosis Public Health Genomics   And while AWS will continue to support COVID-19 projects, they will also consider projects focused on other infectious diseases. The application is open now and runs through the end of the year. However, AWS is encouraging applicants to submit by July 31, 2021, for priority consideration.   In this interview we discuss:   The details of the AWS Diagnostic Development Initiative (DDI). The problems AWS is trying to solve. How AWS is measuring the success of the initiative. The highlights and major outcomes from round 1. How the program is being expanded for round 2. How organizations can apply the compute, technical resources, and subject matter expertise made available through DDI. Who should apply? Plus, we do some brainstorming on possible solutions that could benefit from the program.   This is a great opportunity for organizations to accelerate their work in diagnostics and we encourage you to check it out.   Links and Resources   AWS Activate offers startups free tools, resources, and more to quickly get started on AWS Registry of Open Data on AWS is a registry that exists to help people discover and share datasets that are available via AWS resources. Synthea provides realistic health data at no cost. Check out all our coverage in Infection Prevention and Control Check out our sister podcast TIPS Deep Dive Interviews for discussions with the best minds in global health.     The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media.  Music by StudioEtar

A major driver of health disparities is that the system does not typically account for the differences in the culture, language, and experience of the patients it is charged to serve. Today we talk with Abner Mason, Founder, and CEO of ConsejoSano about the importance of customizing engagement to match the multicultural realities of your patients. Abner tells us that it's not about translating, but “creating content based on culture; based on deeper factors than language”. And it's effective. ConsejoSano is helping payers and providers get their patients into clinics and closing gaps in care. This of course leads to better outcomes, lower costs, and increased revenue for practices.   Key topics include:   What does it mean to create a more equitable and just healthcare system? How has COVID shone the light on the problems in our system? How do the Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) factor into health equity? Is there a willingness for providers and health plans to invest in these solutions? What did the original vision for ConsejoSano look like and how did healthcare's challenging reimbursement models lead to a pivot? How do you align patient engagement efforts with the multicultural reality of the U.S. population? How does your solution fit into the business model of providers and payers? What are the opportunities in Medicaid? Medicare Advantage? How are value-based payment models driving this work? What data is needed to support multicultural patient engagement? What is Health Tech 4 Medicaid and how is it enabling innovation in Medicaid? ConsejoSano's podcast: Health Equity Now     Abner Mason, Founder and CEO, ConsejoSano   Abner Mason is a healthcare technology leader who's dedicated to creating a more just, equitable, and effective healthcare system. As the founder and CEO of ConsejoSano, a multicultural patient engagement company, he leads a team of diverse professionals who strive every day to improve outcomes and lower costs on behalf of health plans. He's also the founder and chair of HealthTech 4 Medicaid, a nonprofit composed of innovative leaders working to radically change the pace of innovation to improve care quality and access. A federal and state government policy veteran with deep experience fighting the HIV/AIDS crisis, Abner knows how to tap people's unique talents and innate sense of compassion to achieve big goals.   ConsejoSano   ConsejoSano is a patient engagement platform that helps connect payers, providers and health systems with their multicultural Medicaid and Medicare patient populations. The company utilizes multi-channel engagement tools to reach patients in a culturally relevant way that increases engagement, lowers costs, and improves health outcomes. For more information, visit www.consejosano.com.   Connect with Abner on Twitter and LinkedIn Check out ConsejoSano and connect with them on Twitter and LinkedIn Watch the latest episodes of Health Equity Now, the show that's dedicated to spotlighting and solving health disparities, here   The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media.   Music by StudioEtar

Price transparency and healthcare consumerism are top of mind for many operators and observers of the healthcare industry. On the surface, these topics sound great. Of course, we want to enable patients to be good consumers of healthcare. However, as we've seen so often on this show, aligning the obvious with the realities of the business of healthcare is no small feat. Today we're talking with Dr. Steve Ambrose about healthcare costs, pricing, and consumerism. We discuss what these terms mean and why they are important. Then we dig into examples of companies that are already making an impact on these issues. We discuss:   Companies that are helping to lower healthcare prices like ONCOspark (24:22), GoodRX (41:05), Transcarent (48:42), Cedar (53:24), Green Imaging (55:23), and more. What is going on in the retail space with the likes of Walmart, Target, Amazon and others (27:07). And companies working to reduce administrative costs like Olive (1:04:00) and LeanTAAS (1:08:51).   This is an exciting space that is full of potholes and false promises. However, it is also a space where good companies are beginning to make progress. And that progress may offer us a glimpse into the future of healthcare.   Dr. Steve Ambrose Dr. Steve Ambrose is a healthcare strategist with 25 years in clinical, technology, patient engagement, and consumerism. He is selectively reviewing options to place his talents and passion into his next FT leadership role. Dr. Ambrose may be reached through contact information on his LinkedIn profile.   Links and Resources   Steve Ambrose on Drug Pricing and GoodRX: https://walktheridge.com/drug-pricing Health Care Spending in the United States and Other High-Income Countries - this is the Ashish Jah study on healthcare prices and costs that Steve mentioned. Walmart acquires telehealth provider MeMD, upping competition in telehealth space   Several recent #HCBiz episodes on AI/ML in healthcare administration:   Episode 162: What's up with IBM Watson Health? A Discussion on the State of AI in Healthcare with Paddy Padmanabhan Episode 159: A Practical Look at Machine Learning in Healthcare with Josh Miramant Episode 147: Applying Conversational AI to Reduce Provider Burnout from HealthIMPACT Live''   The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media.   Music by StudioEtar

Poor oral health has a direct link to high risk of chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease. It contributes to depression, poor maternal health outcomes, and death. Research shows that it increased the risk associated with COVID-19. Yet we treat oral health as being separate from “healthcare”. 65 million Americans lack dental coverage and even Medicare provides no oral health benefits to our seniors.  Worse yet, this lack of coverage contributes to healthcare disparities as black adults are nearly seven times more likely to have an unmet dental need than white adults. But where there are problems there are opportunities. Today we're talking with Dr. Myechia Minter-Jordan, an MD, MBA, community health champion, and the President and CEO of the newly formed CareQuest Institute for Oral Health. Myechia shares with us how her role as the head of a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) helped her see the gaps in our system and the extraordinary benefits of integrating oral health into primary care delivery. Better yet, those benefits extend far beyond a moral imperative. There is a clear business case for integrating oral health in a more holistic health delivery system. Myechia breaks it all down for us, plus much more including:   Why oral health has been treated separately from healthcare. How oral health integration compares to behavioral health integration (which is already leading to improved outcomes and lower overall costs). The many ways CareQuest Institute is moving the needle including grants, research, innovation, and social impact investing. How entrepreneurs and startups can work with CareQuest Institute and why they will be launching the CareQuest Innovation Partners initiative to drive this. The need for teledentistry. The ways oral health and the COVID crisis have impacted one another. How ACOs, Direct Contracting Entities, and other risk-bearing organizations can benefit from oral health integration. The opportunity for dentists to rethink their own practice and begin to support primary care (and get reimbursed for it). How to foster relationships between dentists and primary care providers. Plus, we discuss The New Commonwealth Racial Equity and Social Justice Fund (NCF).     Myechia Minter-Jordan, MD, MBA Myechia Minter-Jordan, MD, MBA, serves as the president and CEO of the CareQuest Institute for Oral Health. A physician and business executive, Myechia leads a dynamic team of professional and clinical experts committed to building a future where every person can reach their full potential through excellent health. Through Myechia's leadership, CareQuest Institute operates as a catalyst for systems change, bringing forth ideas and solutions to create a more equitable, accessible, and integrated health system for everyone. CareQuest Institute collaborates with a wide range of partners to achieve its mission — to improve the oral health of all — through work in grantmaking, research, health improvement programs, policy and advocacy, and education, as well as leadership in dental benefits, care delivery, and innovation advancements. Myechia also continues to shine a national spotlight on the importance of ending deep social inequity. In 2020, Myechia joined 18 other Black and Brown executives in Massachusetts as a founding leader of The New Commonwealth Racial Equity and Social Justice Fund (NCF) to provide philanthropic support to community groups and coalitions fighting systemic racism and racial inequity in the Commonwealth. Originally seeded with $20 million, the NCF aims to raise $100 million. Before joining CareQuest Institute, Myechia served as chief medical officer and CEO of the Dimock Center, one of the largest community health centers in Massachusetts. During Myechia's tenure, Dimock was recognized as a national model for comprehensive, integrated health and human services. As CEO, Myechia formed partnerships with world-class institutions to advance person-centered care, including Harvard Medical School, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Partners HealthCare. Prior to Dimock, Myechia worked for Johns Hopkins Medicine as an attending physician and instructor of medicine. Myechia also invests personal time in her community, serving on several boards and committees, including BlueShield of California, The Boston Foundation, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Previously, she held appointed positions for influential agencies, including the Massachusetts Health Planning Council Advisory Committee and the City of Boston Public Health Commission. Myechia earned her doctor of medicine degree from Brown University School of Medicine and a master of business administration degree from the Johns Hopkins University Carey School of Business. She also received honorary doctorates from Northeastern University and Newbury College.   About CareQuest Institute for Oral Health CareQuest Institute for Oral Health is a national nonprofit championing a more equitable future where every person can reach their full potential through excellent health. We do this through our work in grantmaking, research, health improvement programs, policy and advocacy, and education as well as our leadership in dental benefits, care delivery, and innovation advancements. We collaborate with thought leaders, health care providers, patients, and local, state, and federal stakeholders to accelerate oral health care transformation and create a system designed for everyone. To learn more, visit carequest.org.     Twitter: @CareQuestInst Instagram: carequestinstitute LinkedIn: CareQuest Institute for Oral Health Website: https://www.carequest.org/   Additional Resources and Links   Research Report: A Coming Surge in Oral Health Treatment Needs CareQuest Institute is set to release a series of reports in the coming months that provide in-depth analysis of the results of a comprehensive national survey aimed at understanding oral health equity in the US. They released their first report earlier in April that looks specifically at the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on our oral health and overall health systems.    Key findings: Roughly 6 million adult Americans have lost their dental insurance due to the pandemic   Nearly two-thirds of them have a symptom that is frequently linked to oral diseases, such as tooth decay and periodontal disease.    Many others have canceled or put off important preventive care in the last year – 28 million people have delayed care because of concerns ranging from cost and lacking insurance to risk of exposure to the virus.     The data also reinforces what became very clear early on in the pandemic: low-income individuals, those living in rural areas, and families and communities of color have been disproportionately impacted by this virus. In fact, 60% of Black respondents said they knew someone personally who has died from COVID-19. Across all demographic groups, the higher a respondent's income level the less likely they were to know someone who has died from COVID-19.      Additional statistics on inequities in oral health care   Poor oral health has a direct link to higher risks of chronic illnesses, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, asthma, and more. It also leads to greater instances of depression and other mental health diseases.      Over 65 million Americans lack access to dental coverage prior to the pandemic, four times the number of people who are medically uninsured.    Americans in poverty are 2.5 times more likely to have an unmet dental need due to lack of insurance. Black adults are 68% more likely to have an unmet dental need than white adults.    Nearly 4 in 10 Black and Latino adults reside in 14 states where Medicaid's adult dental benefits cover no services or emergency-only care.      Press Release: New National Nonprofit Will Battle Inequity in Health Care     The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media. Music by StudioEtar

When it comes to billing codes there are many processes and solutions that focus on the backend. They support the coders and help ensure the codes are “bill ready”. However, as today's guest points out, there are very few solutions that exist solely to help providers put those codes in the EHR accurately and efficiently in the first place. Abboud Chaballout created Diagnoss to untether the clinician from a clunky EHR interface when it comes to coding. Chaballout describes it as a provider assistant that reads the free-text clinical narrative as they record it and uses AI to suggest the appropriate codes needed to paint an accurate picture of their patient's health and the nature of the care they provided. Certainly, this will improve the accuracy of coding and allow for improvements in the overall coding workflow, but that really isn't the goal. For Abboud, it's far more important to give the providers some relief from clicking, pecking, and guessing in the EHR. The EHR is one of many contributors to physician burnout, or as Abboud prefers to describe it, moral injury. Simply put, Abboud and Diagnoss are using AI in an attempt to improve providers' lives. It's their sole focus. In addition to exploring Diagnoss' goals and capabilities, we also get into the technical aspects of building this type of startup in healthcare. We discuss:   How to decide which EHRs to work with. How to engage with those EHRs and get access to their API. How much variance you see from EHR to EHR when it comes to integration and APIs. How FHIR will impact the EHR integration process in the future.   This is a great discussion for anyone trying to do the hard things in healthcare, especially when they require tight integration with many EHRs.   Abboud Chaballout Abboud Chaballout is the CEO and founder of Diagnoss, a digital health company on a mission to reduce the administrative burdens of medical providers on the front lines of our healthcare system by building seamless tech. At Diagnoss, he's taking on medical coding with an AI-based coding assistant that “whispers over a doctor's shoulders.” Find and connect with him on LinkedIn to talk AI, EHRs, and medical coding.      Connect with Abboud on LinkedIn Follow Diagnoss on Twitter Learn more at https://www.diagnoss.com/ Diagnoss Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y3zFZ8yHPY    Diagnoss Diagnoss supports providers in their most cumbersome EHR tasks so they can spend more quality time with patients. Today, Diagnoss's AI powered EHR assistant helps providers pick medical codes, more quickly and more accurately, saving them time while simultaneously enabling them to capture more revenue. By building the most robust real-time predictive system for clinical teams, Diagnoss transforms the experience of medical providers from one of frustration to one of inspiration.       The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media. Music by StudioEtar

95% of innovations that are brought to market fail to reach an adequate level of customer adoption or financial ROI. It sounds scary, but it doesn't have to be this way. Today we're talking with healthcare commercialization strategist and digital health advisor Dr. Roxie Mooney, about the steps innovators can take to dramatically increase their chances of being in the other 5%.   Why you need an early adopter strategy that focuses on the specifics needs, goals, and desires of the customers who are looking for something new and novel. How to avoid pilot purgatory by negotiating future sales up-front and ensuring you can get value from the pilot along the way. The risks of falling in love with your idea and skipping the all-important customer discovery and market validation step. And no, your mom is not a good source of feedback on your innovation. The benefits of being strategic with your go-to-market timing (i.e., don't rush to market; do rush to customer feedback). How to co-create with your clients without building a product that works only for them. When to convert your early-adopter messaging (i.e., new, never been done before, innovative, etc.) to mainstream messaging (i.e., social proof, trustworthy, reliable, ROI, etc.). This is a rich conversation, and whether you're a startup or innovating within your organization, it's full of things you should be thinking about right now!   Dr. Roxie Mooney, DBA Healthcare Commercialization Strategist and Digital Health Advisor   Dr. Roxie Mooney helps health tech innovators uncover their most profitable and viable market strategies, from early adoption strategies to pivoting. She transformed 20 years of business practice, 7 years of researching over 500+ peer-reviewed articles, and 160+ interviews with health innovators into a repeatable method to go from an idea to full-scale adoption. She advises startups and emerging healthcare brands and has been involved in three successful exits. She currently serves as the Healthcare Commercialization Strategist and Digital Health Advisor of Legacy DNA. She's also the international best-selling author of How Health Innovators Maximize Market Success: Strategies to Launch and Commercialize Healthcare Innovations, as well as host of the podcast and video show “Health Innovators.” In addition to her strategist role, Dr. Roxie is a sought out speaker and educator. She's spoken at HIMSS and the Connected Health Conference, and currently serves as an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Jack Welch Management Institute and an Adjunct Professor of Gender Leadership and Coaching and Consulting at Palm Beach Atlantic University. She's also a Board Member of One Purse, a nonprofit organization committed to restoring the lives and dreams of sex-trafficking survivors. Dr. Roxie holds a DBA with a Marketing Specialization from Walden University, an MS degree in Organizational Leadership from Palm Beach Atlantic University, and a BA degree in Organizational Communications from Rollins College. She has carried out additional post-graduate studies on Disruptive Strategy under Clayton Christensen at Harvard Business School. To learn more about Dr. Roxie's personal and professional work, follow her on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/roxiemooney. Learn about her company Legacy DNA at www.legacy-dna.com.    Links and Resources More on selling/getting things done in Healthcare:   Episode 150: How to Turn the Growth Engine on in your Digital Health Startup with Bryan Loomis Episode 149: How Health Systems Think with Neil Carpenter Episode 148: Partnering with Payers w/ Andrew-Adrian Karlin of Highmark Episode 103: Selling to Health Systems: Advice for Digital Health Startups (Part 1) Episode 105: Selling to Health Systems: Advice for Digital Health Startups (Part 2) Episode 85: Lessons on Selling in Healthcare w/ Dom Cappuccilli   Also mentioned on the show:   Clayton Christensen on what Disruptive Innovation really means. Startup books by Steve Blank (and others he recommends) VideoPeel.com – remotely capture video testimonials from your customers in seconds.     The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media.

IBM Watson Health came on the scene with swagger and promises. They were going to revolutionize healthcare! And now the unit may be for sale. We don't yet know what's really going on there, but the commentary surrounding this rumor provides some interesting points for discussion. What is the state of AI in healthcare? Is the industry ready for it? Will doctors use it? Is it going to kill us if it's not perfect? There's a lot to explore.  On this episode, Paddy Padmanabhan joins us to hash it all out. Paddy is the Founder and CEO at DAMO Consulting, Host of The Big Unlock podcast, and co-author of the new book Healthcare Digital Transformation: How Consumerism, Technology and Pandemic are Accelerating the Future with Edward Marx. We discuss what's working today (think administrative functions), and what may still be a ways off (think complex cancer diagnostics). Plus we get into the challenges of regulation, ethics, patient safety, messaging, and more.    About Paddy Padmanabhan Paddy Padmanabhan is the author of the best-selling book Healthcare Digital Transformation – How Consumerism, Technology and Pandemic are Accelerating the Future. He is the founder and CEO of Damo Consulting, a digital transformation advisory firm that works with healthcare enterprises and digital health companies. He is the host of The Big Unlock, a widely subscribed podcast focusing on healthcare digital transformation. He is also the author of the book The Big Unlock: Harnessing Data and Growing Digital Health Businesses in a Value-Based Era.   About DAMO Consulting Damo Consulting provides digital transformation advisory services to enable healthcare organizations navigate the technology-enabled transition to telehealth and virtual care. We bring deep industry knowledge, market insights and technology skills to help develop and implement enterprise digital roadmaps. We work with healthcare IT and digital health firms to develop and execute market growth strategies. Links: Company Website: www.damoconsulting.net   Paddy Twitter: https://twitter.com/PaddyPadmanabha Paddy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paddypadmanabhan99 Paddy's latest book on healthcare digital transformation: https://thebigunlock.com/healthcare-digital-transformation-book-by-paddy-padmanabhan-and-edward-w-marx/ Newsletter: https://www.damoconsulting.net/newsletter/ Assessing Digital Maturity: The DigiMTM Digital Maturity Model for Health Systems - Damo Consulting (White paper) Selecting Technology Partners to Execute Digital Strategy - Damo Consulting (white paper) Healthcare Digital transformation Podcast: https://thebigunlock.com/the-big-unlock-podcast/    More on AI and Machine Learning in Healthcare Episode 159: A Practical Look at Machine Learning in Healthcare with Josh Miramant Episode 147: Applying Conversational AI to Reduce Provider Burnout from HealthIMPACT Live Episode 116: Enhancing Diagnostic Accuracy with Art Papier of VisualDx Episode 91: Deep Medicine with Dr. Eric Topol Episode 43: Demystifying Big Data and Machine Learning for Healthcare w/ Prashant Natarajan   The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media.

Picking a health plan can be the biggest crapshoot of anyone's year. It's confusing and tedious to compare the plan benefits, the provider directories are unreliable, and even if you can figure it out, there's no way to know how much you'll pay for a given service from one plan to the next. So, we cross our fingers, pick the one that seems like a fit, and hope for the best. Today's guest is trying to change all of that. Akash Magoon is Co-founder and CTO at Nayya – a company that offers personalized enrollment guidance across all employee benefits. Today we talk about how Nayya uses claims and consumer data to help consumers pick the best health plan for their situation. Their goal is to “restack the odds for American families”. That's something we can all get behind. As a bonus to the startups out there, we talk about Nayya's rapid growth over the past year. Pre-pandemic it was just Akash and his co-founder, Sina. Now a seed and series A round later, they have expanded to more than 30 employees and have customers in nearly every state. We talk about the key factors that enabled them to find their product-market-fit and show value to their customers.   On this episode you'll learn:   How claims and consumer data can be used to help consumers make better decisions about health plans. Why employers and health plans are interested in providing this service to their employees and members. Why it's important to engage consumers throughout the year to help them get the most out of their plans for the least amount of money. How the CMS Patient Data Access Rule creates new opportunities to empower healthcare consumers. How to get feedback early and often when launching a new product, and other advice for finding your product-market-fit.   About Nayya At Nayya, we believe there is a better way to choose and use healthcare benefits. A more transparent, less confusing way where consumers feel more confident in their decisions. We focus on decision support and benefits engagement. It's one of the most stressful and challenging situations consumers face – and we see that as an opportunity to do good. We're excited to deliver a new experience to consumers – where they choose and use their benefits through our software, data and AI engine.   Learn more: Web: https://www.nayya.com/ Nayya Series A Announcement Nayya + Selerix Partnership Nayya + Selerix Video   Get connected: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nayya Twitter: https://twitter.com/Nayya_Inc Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WeAreNayya Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nayya_inc/     Links and Resources Episode 153: How Will Patients Securely Connect 3rd Party Apps to Their Data Once Patient Access Rules Kick In? from Health Data Unbound Episode 50: A Blueprint for the Next Generation Health Ecosystem | Dave Chase | The Health Rosetta Episode 27: Health Benefits as a Strategic Opportunity | Chris Skisak | HBCH     The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media.

What is the role of a doctor at a digital health startup? Why are they needed? What jobs will they do? How do you find one? And how can you tell if they will be a fit for your team? If you're a doctor considering this move, you may have similar questions in reverse. What will it be like to be a “digital doctor”? How can I find opportunities? What new skills will I need to develop? How can I tell if the digital health startup I'm looking at has a shot? On this episode we talk with Sven Jungmann. He's a medical doctor with additional degrees in Public Health, Public Policy, and entrepreneurship. He's the Chief Medical Officer at FoundersLane in Berlin, Germany, where he advises digital health startups, and helps align other doctors with startups too. I can't think of anyone more qualified to discuss this topic with!   You'll learn:   Why many digital health startups really do need a doctor on their team. What the transition is like when moving from practicing medicine to the startup world. The drawbacks to doing this if you're a doctor. Six skills that make medical doctors indispensable for startups What a non-clinical founder should do to bring themselves closer to the medical side. That the problems in the U.S healthcare system are not unique when it comes to a lack of prevention and woefully inadequate data sharing. Why Corporate Venture Building is a powerful way to drive innovation.   We also discuss Sven's new book, FightBack NOW: Leveraging your assets to shape the new normal and his work at FoundersLane.   About Sven Jungmann   Sven Jungmann is a medical doctor with additional degrees in Public Health (Master, LSHTM), Public Policy (Master, Oxford), and entrepreneurship (Postgraduate Diploma, Cambridge). He worked in hospitals for several years. Today, as Chief Medical Officer, he heads the Healthcare Vertical for FoundersLane and advises start-ups in the digital health sector. He's co-author of FightBack Now. Connect with Sven on:  LinkedIn Instagram Twitter   About FoundersLane   FoundersLane is a Corporate Venture Builder that helps established organizations launch new digital offerings in the healthcare and sustainability space. FoundersLane is formed by serial full-stack entrepreneurs with experience in building tech companies from scratch to scale. Learn more: https://founderslane.com  Newsletter: https://founderslane.com/insights   Links and Resources   Episode 149: How Health Systems Think with Neil Carpenter Episode 103: Selling to Health Systems: Advice for Digital Health Startups (Part 1) Episode 105: Selling to Health Systems: Advice for Digital Health Startups (Part 2) Episode 85: Lessons on Selling in Healthcare w/ Dom Cappuccilli   The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media.

Machine Learning in healthcare (and Artificial Intelligence in the broader sense) is real and is being used today. The problem is, it's difficult to sort out what's real and what's hype. Opinions on the matter range from “it's all hype and BS” to “AI is revolutionizing healthcare and replacing doctors”. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between. Today we talk with Josh Miramant, CEO and Founder of Blue Orange Digital, to help you sort this out. After listening you'll have clarity on what Machine Learning is, an understanding of what's possible in healthcare today, and a practical expectation of what's coming next.   In this conversation we'll:   Help you understand the terminology. What is Machine Learning? What is Artificial Intelligence? What is everyone talking about!? Take the “magic” out of Machine Learning and help you understand at a basic level what's happening here. Layout the need for data quality and data fidelity (i.e., the usefulness of data for a purpose). Along with data acquisition, this is the first thing you'll need to address. Discuss practical applications of Machine Learning that are being used productively in healthcare right now. This is “Applied Machine Learning” and there are many solved problems that add value in healthcare administration, patient acquisition, costs, pricing models, etc. Dig into the research and operational applications of machine learning. These include things like image detection, diagnosis, etc. like we discussed with Eric Topol (Episode 91). These applications are real and they're improving, but they aren't replacing doctors anytime soon. Then we touch a bit on the theoretical. Things that are happening in the lab that are incredibly exciting but have a way to go before they have real-world applications.   About Josh Miramant Josh Miramant is the CEO and founder of Blue Orange Digital, a top-ranked data science and machine learning agency with offices in New York City and Washington DC. Miramant is a popular speaker, futurist, and a strategic business & technology advisor to enterprise companies and startups. As an example of thought leadership, Miramant has been featured in IBM ThinkLeaders, Dell Technologies, Global Banking & Finance Review, the IoT Council of Europe, among others.   Connect with Miramant:   LinkedIn: @joshmiramant Email: contact@blueorange.digital Twitter: @jmiramant   About Blue Orange Digital Blue Orange Digital is recognized as a “Top AI Development and Consultant Agency,” by Clutch and YahooFinance, for innovations in predictive analytics, automation, and optimization with machine learning in NYC.  They help organizations optimize and automate their businesses, implement data-driven analytic techniques, and understand the implications of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, and the Internet of Things. Whether your goal is to optimize your supply chain, use existing data to decrease operating costs, or customize the patient experience with predictive modeling, Blue Orange Digital can help you meet your challenge.  Have a project in mind but need some help implementing it? Contact us, we'd love to discuss how we can work with you to co-develop your AI project.  For more on AI and technology trends, see Josh Miramant, CEO of Blue Orange Digital's data-driven solutions for Supply Chain, Healthcare Document Automation, and more case studies at BlueOrange.Digital.   Connect with Blue Orange:   LinkedIn: @blueorangedigital Email: contact@blueorange.digital Twitter: @BlueOrangeData Medium: @blueorangedigital    Links and Resources Smartwatches can help detect COVID-19 days before symptoms appear     The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media.

Direct Contracting is a new model from the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI, or the CMS Innovation Center) aimed at reducing expenditures and preserving or enhancing quality of care for beneficiaries in Medicare fee-for-service (FFS). At a minimum, it's an opportunity for providers to change the way they care for Medicare FFS patients. And if the Geographic Direct Contracting Model is launched (it's currently under review by CMS), it will be a sea change in the 10 targeted “Geo” regions. Either way, it's worth paying attention to. We covered the Direct Contracting model and options at length in Episode 156 with Gail Zahtz. You should start there if Direct Contracting is new to you. During that conversation, Zahtz identified plenty of areas where the model could benefit doctors and their patients. However, she identified several grey areas that make it difficult for physicians to engage with potential DCEs as the application deadline rapidly approaches (April 1, 2021). The timeline and lack of clarity make it difficult for a physician to evaluate the model and make a sound decision on how, or if to participate. So, that's our goal of this discussion.  I talk with Dr. Krishnan Narasimhan, an academic family medicine physician and an Associate Professor in the Department of Community and Family Medicine at Howard University, about what Direct Contracting means to physicians.   What opportunities does Direct Contracting create for physicians? What opportunities does Direct Contracting create for their patients? How does Direct Contracting compare to other value-based payment programs? How might Direct Contracting lead to deeper physician-payer alignment? How does Direct Contracting enable physicians to truly address the Social Determinants of Health (SDOH)? What questions should a physician ask a DCE to determine if they are a fit? What should physicians' do right now to determine if Direct Contracting is worth pursuing? How can busy physicians fit this in with all their existing priorities during a pandemic?   Dr. Krishnan Narasimhan Krishnan Narasimhan M.D., is an academic family physician who has a proven record of driving health system and policy change. Dr. Narasimhan has led grassroots coalitions to move the political and policy debate on health reform, expand access, and to increase primary care infrastructure. He has spoken at the U.S. Capitol, at universities, and with numerous stakeholders on health reform, health disparities, and physician workforce. He serves on the Boards of Doctors for America and the District of Columbia Academy of Family Physicians. Dr. Narasimhan has a decade of experience in undergraduate and graduate medical education with a focus on curricular design, mentorship, and integrated care models. He has a record of consistently increasing primary care workforce capacity. His research on the Economic Impact of Family Physicians has been utilized extensively by the American Academy of Family Physicians. Currently he serves as Associate Professor at Howard University, Director of the Family Medicine Clerkship, as Residency faculty, and takes care of underserved populations. His training includes an M.D. from Jefferson Medical College, residency at University of Connecticut, Primary Care Health Policy Fellowship at Georgetown University, and a Certificate of Health Policy at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute. Dr. Narasimhan is also an advisor to WiseCare, a startup applying to become a Direct Contracting Entity (DCE).  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krishnanmd/   Links and Resources   Doctors for America - Doctors for America mobilizes doctors and medical students to be leaders in putting patients over politics on the pressing issues of the day to improve the health of our patients, communities, and nation. District of Columbia Academy of Family Physicians: The District of Columbia Academy of Family Physicians (DCAFP) is a state chapter of the American Academy of Family Physicians. A membership organization for DC Family Physicians, the Academy advocates for Family Physicians and our patients, and conducts continuing medical education for Family Physicians. Episode 156: Direct Contracting: It's Coming Fast and Will Have a Big Impact on Medicare-fee-for-service w/ Gail Zahtz – you'll find additional Direct Contracting resources there. WiseCare     The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media.

As of 2015 the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT had awarded $548 million in grants to states to establish health information exchanges (HIE). I have no doubt hundreds of millions of dollars more have been invested in various ways since then. So, when faced with one of the most daunting healthcare data challenges of our time in the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, surely, we turned to the HIEs first. Right? Not so much, according to today's guest. Niam Yaraghi, assistant professor of Business Technology at Miami Herbert Business School at the University of Miami and a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution's Center for Technology Innovation, recently explored the use of HIEs in vaccination efforts across the country. He tells us that “While the U.S. employed every possible resource to develop the vaccines, we are neglecting to use the best available information technologies to efficiently distribute them”. In Yaraghi's recent article, co-authored with Brookings Institution colleague Peter Levin, they share that none of the state vaccination plans they reviewed made any mention of using HIEs to support the effort. Further, they found no correlation between a state's vaccination success and the existence of a robust HIE infrastructure in that state.   There are some efforts underway to change this, including ONC's $20 million investment to help increase data sharing between health information exchanges (HIEs) and immunization information systems. Still, the question remains: why aren't we using HIEs to their fullest potential to support the vaccine rollout? And why aren't we turning to the HIEs first whenever we need to move clinical data in general? On this episode, we explore those questions plus:   Five ways that health information exchange can help with vaccination efforts. How HIEs can change the conversation when it comes to revenue generation. The opportunity for HIEs to add value and transform data into information through analytics. How might HIEs play a role in reopening the economy? Will HIEs play a role in patient-mediated exchange? Why it's time for the industry to rethink its views on HIE and make them their first stop for interop. Plus, some novel API ideas for HIEs.   Niam Yaraghi Niam Yaraghi is an Assistant Professor of Business Technology at Miami Herbert Business School, and a non-resident Fellow in the Brookings Institution's Center for Technology Innovation. Niam's research is focused on the economics of health information technologies. In particular, Niam studies the business models and policy structures that incentivize interoperability and sharing of health information among patients, providers, payers and regulators. Niam's research has appeared in leading business journals including MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, and Production and Operations Management, as well as top-tier health policy and informatics journals including Journal of American Medical Informatics Association, and Milbank Quarterly. He regularly consults with various companies and platforms in the healthcare industry and is a sought-after expert and speaker on issues related to health information technology in media and at industry conferences. Niam has a B.Sc in Industrial Engineering from the Isfahan University of Technology in Iran, and a M.Sc from the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. He received his Ph.D. in Management Science & Systems from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Twitter: @niamyaraghi   HIE Links and Resources   The benefits of health information exchange platforms: Measuring the returns on a half a billion dollar investment Five ways that health information exchange can help with vaccination efforts Episode 140: Getting to Know eHealth Exchange – The Largest Health Information Network in the Country – Jay Nakashima Episode 129: What you need to Know About TEFCA Right Now w/ Mariann Yeager Episode 104: Why HIEs Will Lead the Way on Healthcare Quality Measurement w/ John D'Amore The Regional HIE Should be Your First Stop for Interop Plus 4 more #HCBiz Discussions with Niam Yaraghi   The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media.

CMS Direct Contracting is coming fast, is very nuanced, and full of grey. In a nutshell, 50% of Medicare patients are in Medicare Advantage (i.e., value-based care) and 50% are still Medicare fee-for-service (FFS). Direct Contracting is CMS' bold play to quickly move many of the remaining Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) patients into value-based care. If you're a doctor who takes care of Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) patients, then it is going to affect you whether you're paying attention or not. That's doubly true if you're in one of the 10 “Geo” model regions (Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, Tampa). In those regions, 100% of non-Medicare Advantage beneficiaries will have to align with one of three to seven awarded Direct Contracting Entities (DCE). DCE applications are due April 1, 2021 and all beneficiaries will be re-aligned under this fully capitated plan beginning January 1, 2022. Ya… that fast.   “There will no longer be any fee for service for all of Medicare and all of dual eligibles, which is Medicaid and Medicare eligible, in up to 10 regions of our country starting the first of next year.” Gail Zahtz, Founder and CEO, WiseCare   Today we're talking with Gail Zahtz, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at WiseCare, a startup applying to become a Direct Contracting Entity (DCE).  Gail helps us to understand the urgency of the situation and walks us through the nuance of the model. And while she acknowledges the hurdles for providers and the risks CMS' rapid timeline imposes, she also embraces the opportunity that Direct Contracting represents. As a cancer survivor, Gail understands firsthand the difficulty of navigating our healthcare system and she believes Direct Contracting offers a pathway to really make a difference in how care is delivered. It makes new services and care models possible, and it allows doctors to care for patients in the way they dreamed of when they got into medicine.   Direct Contracting / Direct Contracting Entity (DCE) Topics Covered   What is Direct Contracting and how does it differ from MSSP and Next Gen ACO models? What are the timelines? What are the different types of Direct Contracting Models? How are beneficiaries aligned to DCEs? Do patients have a choice in any of this? How will patients' benefits and/or costs change? What will happen to doctors who ignore this and let the pieces fall where they may? How do doctors interact with DCEs? How does payment flow through the DCEs? How can doctors find the DCEs in their area who they might partner with? How should providers evaluate DCEs to determine if they are right for their patients and their business? How does quality measurement work in Direct Contracting? Will there be any changes to the model under the Biden Administration?   There's a lot here, and still a lot of open questions on Direct Contracting. We're going to do our best to unravel this for you in the coming weeks. Drop me a note at don@thehcbiz.com and let me know what questions you'd like us to cover.   Gail Zahtz Founder and Chief Executive Officer, WiseCare Inc. Gail Zahtz has spent her career focusing on the intersection of evidence-based healthcare and user-centric design to honor and empower the doctor-patient relationship. An entrepreneur since the 1990s when she took a health-in-the-workplace property to $100M valuation, she has served as an adviser to healthcare start-up funders, a thought leader and advisor to industry on designing for health outcomes, a consultant to health innovation startups, and the architect of value-base healthcare delivery for NY's largest post-acute healthcare system. She has won numerous awards for her work at the intersection of health and design, including: Top 100 in Health Info Technology, Top 100 International Influencers in Health, and Top 50 Most Influential Health Leaders. As a survivor of late-stage cancer and domestic violence, Gail is dedicated to sharing her story of how to survive and thrive in the most challenging of circumstance to show young women everywhere a way forward.   Twitter: https://twitter.com/GailZahtz LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gailzahtz/ About WiseCare   WiseCare is an Integrated Healthcare Collaboration Company, enabling doctors to deliver true wrap-around care to Medicare patients by leveraging the new value-based care models. WiseCare makes thriving within the new capitated models seamless for physician practices and alternate-level-of-care facilities. A partner, not just a payor, we offer the ready-made collaborations and working partnerships across the healthcare continuum that will be the key to success. And we're expert in helping physicians keep, grow, and better care for their Medicare populations in this fast-changing environment. We lessen administrative burdens, improve financial stability, provide the data physicians need to make strategic care decisions, and deliver benefit enhancements that pay off for patient and caregiver, physician, and the practice. And our CareCoaches support patients and care plans between office visits, providing: condition and wellness education, targeted referrals to medical and social providers, and resolution of issues that stand between your patients and better outcomes. That's what we call Healthcare Made Well. To learn more about how WiseCare can partner with you, email us at info@wisecare.health. Web: https://www.wisecare.health/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wisecare-health/   Links and Resources   Notice of DCEs Participating in the Implementation Period of the Direct Contracting Model, Global and Professional Options This is dated, and only covers the Global and Professional options, but is worth a look if you're trying to figure out what's happening in your area. CMS Announcement: Geographic Direct Contracting Model (“Geo”) CMS Direct Contracting Model Options Industry Voices—CMMI chief: Direct Contracting Geographic Model a win for all stakeholders ACOs press for halt to Geographic Direct Contracting model due to complexity concerns ACOs Fear Direct Contracting Options Stray Too Far From Providers     The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media.

The pandemic has exposed many weaknesses in our healthcare and public health systems, and our disjointed public health data infrastructure is certainly one of them. Like much of our healthcare data, public health data tends to be manually compiled, Excel-reliant, and lacking in critical detail needed to make good decisions. Today we talk with Prashant Natarajan, VP of Healthcare Life Sciences and Health Insurance at H2O.ai about reimagining the collection and use of public health data.   Public Health Data Topics Discussed   The current state of our public health data infrastructure (12:20) Why data is the lifeblood of our society, and how it can help us make better public health decisions (22:36) How the pandemic has exposed our weaknesses, and how the private sector can help (28:12) The gaps in our public health data and opportunities for improvement (33:19) Enable better decision-making with demographic and socioeconomic data (40:17) The importance of sharing lessons from region to region and country to country (44:54) Applications and use cases for Artificial Intelligence (AI) in public health data (52:01) Converting data to narrative form and the importance of storytelling (1:02:22)   This was a fascinating conversation, and Prashant is always a lot of fun. I hope you enjoy it!   About Prashant Natarajan Prashant Natarajan is VP of Healthcare Life Sciences and Health Insurance at H2O.ai Award-winning global track record of building successful businesses with solutions and products. Conceptualizing, evangelizing & delivering lasting innovation and business transformation - across multiple geographies and organizations in Healthcare Life Sciences Insurance (Health, Group, Annuities & Life) Financial Services   Best-selling author of books that demystify data, analytics, AI-ML, and transformation for business leaders, domain experts, and non-technologists. Keynote speaker.   Twitter: @natarpr LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natarpr/ Book: Demystifying Big Data and Machine Learning for Healthcare Book: Multidisciplinary Approach to Head and Neck Cancer   About H2O.ai H2O.ai is a leading AI technology company that enables organizations to rapidly build world-class AI models and applications.  They continue to reimagine what is possible with artificial intelligence and deliver new platforms and technologies to put responsible AI into the hands of more users.   The company vision is to democratize AI by making it easier for individuals to build and access world-class and responsible AI.  To achieve this vision, H2O.ai has created a culture of responsible and engaged makers: community, customers, partners, entrepreneurs, and their own “makers,” enabling them with the technology to “make.”  H2O is a leading open-source data science and machine learning platform used by nearly half of the Fortune 500 and trusted by over 20,000 organizations and hundreds of thousands of data scientists around the world.    Links   Episode 43: Demystifying Big Data and Machine Learning for Healthcare w/ Prashant Natarajan Episode 53: What exactly is Precision Medicine? | Prashant Natarajan | H2O.ai Episode 126: Using Opportunity Zones to Drive Substantial Investment in SDOH w John Gorman Episode 143: The Long Fix: Solving America's Health Care Crisis with Strategies that Work for Everyone w/ Dr. Vivian Lee Episode 146: How Purpose-driven Interoperability and Data Quality Positioned Surescripts to Fill Communication Gaps During the Pandemic – Tom Skelton Why Indonesia is vaccinating its working population first, not elderly Survivorship Bias: See the In the Military section for an explanation and image of where the planes were shot The Hero's Journey – Joseph Campbell     The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media. Music by StudioEtar

The pandemic has had a tremendous impact on the business of healthcare.  With states canceling elective procedures and people deferring care for fear of being exposed to the virus, hospital and medical practice revenue is down. On the flip side, many health plans are sitting on a mountain of premiums that aren't being spent because of this deferred care, possibly leading to rebates in some cases and a ton of uncertainty in pretty much all cases. One less obvious outcome of all of this may fall on Medicare Advantage plans in 2021, and it threatens to lower payments by 4-6% in 2021. Medicare Advantage, of course, is the rapidly growing model that'll cover more than 24 million Americans this year. According to a recent Avalere report, these plans may be looking at both a sicker population and reduced payments in 2021 because of this deferred utilization. Here to help us understand why, and to share some advice for how Medicare Advantage plans can weather the storm is Dr. Matt Lambert, a practicing ER clinician, and Chief Medical Officer at Curation Health. A few actions Dr. Lambert suggests are:   Focus on the long game and be patient. For example, don't pay out more to shareholders and, instead, place revenue in short-term investments that they can access without penalty. Prioritize virtual care/telemedicine enablement/reimbursement now and moving forward. This will enable more members to access care while avoiding in-person treatment risks. Lead with interventions and the type of claim vs. volume of claims. MA plans will be best served to focus on capturing the key conditions that map specifically to chronic conditions as they drive the most improved outcomes, utilization and costs.   There's a lot of nuance to this story and the way Medicare Advantage payments are calculated. Dr. Lambert breaks it all down for us. Enjoy!   Dr. Matt Lambert Dr. Matt Lambert brings more than 20 years of experience as a clinician, CMIO, and change leader in value-based care, ensuring that patients receive more comprehensive care and that payers and providers better capture the value of their services. He is a practicing, board-certified emergency medicine provider who previously founded his own physician staffing company. Dr. Lambert was one of the founding members of Clinovations. During his time there he served as part of the leadership team for several electronic health record implementations at the nation's largest public health system in New York City, the University of Washington in Seattle, Johns Hopkins, Barnabas Health, Medstar, and Broward Health. He is also the author of two healthcare books: Unrest Insured and Close to Change: Perspectives on Change and Healthcare for a Doctor, a Town, and a Country. mlambert@curationhealth.com   Curation Health Curation Health was founded by a team of healthcare veterans and clinicians to help providers and health plans effectively navigate the transition from fee-for-service to value-based care. Their advanced clinical decision support platform for value-based care drives more accurate risk adjustment and improved quality program performance by curating relevant insights from disparate sources and delivering them in real time to clinicians and care teams. With Curation Health, clinicians enjoy a streamlined, comprehensive clinical documentation process that enables better clinical and financial outcomes while simultaneously reducing clinical administrative burdens on providers. Curation Health takes pride in combining the flexibility and speed of a startup with decades of leadership experience and know-how from roles in leading companies including Clinovations, Evolent Health, and The Advisory Board Company.   Web: curationhealthcare.com. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/curationhealth/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/curationhealth Case Study: https://curationhealthcare.com/a-case-study-on-curation-health-and-a-physician-group-in-the-midwest/   Links and Resources   Report: COVID-19 Pandemic May Reduce MA Risk Scores and Payments (Avalere) Unrest Insured by Dr. Matt Lambert Close to Change: Perspectives on Change and Healthcare for a Doctor, a Town, and a Country by DR. Matt Lambert Episode #122: Headwinds Impacting the Shift to Value-Based Care with Kyle Swarts and Dr. Matt Lambert   The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media. Music by StudioEtar

The CMS Patient Access Rules are coming. And they're easy to cheer for. We're giving patients their data and that's a huge win! We all love that! But what we don't love is when FraudulentHealthcareApp.com collects patient data and sells it to the highest bidder to support targeted marketing, or whatever other nefarious act they can come up with. Well, the health plans don't get to pick and choose which apps they connect to. What if their member wants to use FraudulentHealthcareApp.com? What's their recourse? How can they educate and protect their members? On this episode, we're sharing another of Shahid's recent panels. This one from Health Data Unbound, and it's like an #HCBiz super panel as we've had all 4 of the panelists on the show in the past. The panel asks the question: “How Will Patients Securely Connect 3rd Party Apps To Their Data Once Patient Access Rules Kick In?” And they will be kicking in on July 1st of this year (2021). Shahid Shah is our moderator, and he's talking with:   Andrew Adrian-Karlin, Director of Business Platform-Product, Highmark Health (Episode #148: Partnering with Payers) Gunjan Siroya, Principal Partner & Sr. Vice President, Netspective (Episode #69: An Open Source Industry Platform for Provider Directory) Ron Urwongse, Director of Strategy and Innovation, CAQH (Episode #13: Are We Asking Providers the Wrong Questions?)   They cover this core question and discuss the tools and frameworks health plans can use to protect their members and themselves. And then, as he always does, Shahid asks the most important question. Is this going to make a difference for the patients/members? Will it help them pick a health plan? Will it help them find out if their doctor is covered? Their meds? Will it help them better understand how much things are going to cost them out of pocket? Because if not, what the hell is the point? It's easy to get caught up in the implementation, especially when you're dealing with regulatory requirements. Question 1 is naturally… how do we meet the regs so we don't have a problem? That, as Shahid puts it, is institution first thinking. The smart health plans… the member-centric health plans are asking, how are we going to use this to make things better for our members? It's a great discussion. You're going to love it and I'm so happy we get to share it with you. On that note, thank you to Satish Kavirajan, Managing Director at the Actionable Intelligence Network (AIN) for letting us share this with you!   Health Data Unbound The Health Data Unbound Virtual Conference: Innovations in Health Data Sharing for the COVID-19 Era and Beyond, hosted by Actionable Intelligence Network, was held on November 10-12, 2020, and is now an on-demand event. While there have been many events on interoperability and data sharing, what's unique here is the focus on the BUSINESS rationale for health data sharing. The conference focuses on the emergent need for interoperability of all kinds, implementation of appropriate sharing of patient information, high priority use cases, value propositions, and companies with enabling technologies, business models, and strategies. Videos of all presentations from the Health Data Unbound Virtual Conference can be accessed by registering on the Summit website: https://ain.events/hdu/     The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media.

This podcast features the Selling to Health Plans panel discussion at the Digital Health Growth Summit, moderated by our very own Shahid Shah, with panelists Vijay Bhatt, Deputy CTO, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, and Bill Friedman, Vice President of Sales, Zipari. The panel covers some of the most important digital health technologies that health plans are interested in and how digital health startups can get health plan executives to buy the technologies they're building. One of my favorite points is that you've got to de-risk the decision to buy:   Start small and build-up Pilots are not bad when done right Show the IT department that you won't be a pain in their neck Show the finance department a transparent roadmap of the true cost of ownership from implementation thru tangible ROI.   Some great advice for anyone trying to sell in healthcare.   This panel discussion complements several recent episodes:   Episode 145: How Payers Can Master Core Administrative Transactions and Deliver a World-class Experience to their Members and Providers w/ Steve Krupa Episode 148: Partnering with Payers w/ Andrew-Adrian Karlin of Highmark Episode 150: How to Turn the Growth Engine on in your Digital Health Startup with Bryan Loomis – one of the organizers of this event Episode 151: Shifting Healthcare's Culture Toward Openness and Experimentation with Red Hat's Paul Jones where we talk about his experience as a buyer at a health plan and how that helps him in his new role as a seller.   We focus on selling a lot because you may have the best solution in the world, but nothing happens until someone sells something.   The Digital Health Growth Summit The Digital Health Growth Summit, hosted by Actionable Intelligence Network and Viral Healthcare Founders, is an on-demand virtual event. The Summit was held on October 29-30, 2020. This two-day Summit highlights the marketing, sales, and leadership capabilities and strategies that are necessary for digital health startups to grow and scale. Speakers include nationally recognized growth experts and executives from digital health companies, hospitals, health systems, health plans, investors and accelerators. The Summit is designed to meet the information needs of marketing and sales leaders and other senior executives at digital health startups. The program would also be of interest to digital health accelerators, the investment community, consulting firms, and marketing and sales technology companies. Videos of all presentations from the Digital Health Growth Summit can be accessed by registering on the Summit website: https://ain.events/dhgsummit/ Thank you to Satish Kavirajan, Managing Director at the Actionable Intelligence Network (AIN), and Bryan Loomis, Founder at Viral Healthcare Founders for allowing us to share this content with you   The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media.

The business of healthcare is consensus-driven and permissions-based. As we've seen time and again on this show, this culture slows innovation, stretches sales cycles, and inspires institution-first thinking. Ultimately, it's responsible for the high costs and lousy user-experiences we're all trying to fix. What if healthcare went from a culture of consensus and permission to one of openness and experimentation? That's what we're going to explore today. Our guest, Paul Jones, “grew up” in a large health plan where he was the prospect and buyer of health IT systems and solutions. Now, as Red Hat's Healthcare Strategist for the Northeast US, Paul is selling innovative healthcare solutions rooted in Open Source software back into the industry he cut his teeth in. After making this move, Paul didn't just find open-source software, but an open culture. Looking back on his days at the health plan, this is the first thing he would try to replicate if he went back. We're going to find out why and explore the hurdles he might face in that endeavor. In addition, we dig into everything Paul learned as a prospect and buyer of health IT systems, and how he's using that to be a more effective partner as he sells back into the healthcare industry. We round out the conversation with a real-world example of a Sepsis-detection system that has already saved 9,000 lives, a riff on why FHIR may still be the gamechanger the hype has promised, and of course, we get into data governance and data quality. This is a wide-ranging conversation, and it's packed with insights. Enjoy!   Paul Jones Paul Jones is Red Hat's Healthcare Strategist for the Northeast US.  He and his teammates drive innovative healthcare solutions rooted in Open Source software.  Prior to that Paul was VP, Card-to-Care at HM Health Solutions where he led the Clinical, Provider and Pharmacy Application Delivery domains focused on Value-Based Care and Care Management Solutions to multiple payers. Before that Paul Led Architecture at HM Health Solutions.  Paul has had roles in both IT and Business. “Open unlocks the world's potential.” Email: paul.Jones@redhat.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulejones/   Red Hat Red Hat is the world's leading provider of open source solutions, using a community-powered approach to deliver reliable and high-performing Linux®, hybrid cloud, container, and Kubernetes technologies. This efficient, focused method outpaces traditional proprietary software development models and enables healthcare customers to customize solutions in areas such as data integration, clinical reasoning, and compliance automation. It's why 100% of healthcare companies in the Global Fortune 500 rely on Red Hat. Learn more at redhat.com/health   Related Episodes   Episode #148: Partnering with Payers – Andrew Adrian-Karlin Episode #149: How Health Systems Think with Neil Carpenter And since Paul briefly mentions the topic, check out our Provider Directory series.   The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media.

Many digital health startups rely on sales prospecting to generate new leads. That works to a point but doesn't scale because each deal takes a long time, and good healthcare salespeople are hard to find. Today we're talking with Bryan Loomis, a Digital Health Growth expert and mentor, about how to design, build and execute a growth plan that generates leads in a more sustainable way.   We discuss:   Bryan's PAGE Methodology (Purpose, Audience, Gospel, and Experimentation) for growth The importance of generating marketing qualified leads instead of relying solely on sales prospecting Why email opt-ins are a good indicator your plan is working Useful tools to help you execute your growth strategy The proper way to reach out to prospects on LinkedIn How to use the assets you already have to generate content and “gifts” for your audience You don't need blind experimentation, but hypothesis-driven experimentation with measures and statistics. And much more   Bryan Loomis “I'm Bryan Loomis, digital health growth expert and mentor. I've mentored 25+ digital health companies, from ranging a founder with an idea to 200 million in ARR. My proven methodology helps digital health startups grow rapidly in an entrenched industry that's set up for them to fail. Grow your startup. Change the world.” Learn more, check out the video series VHFcast, and sign up for Bryan's Slack Community at: https://bryanloomis.com/ Connect with Bryan on LinkedIn   Related Episodes & Resources   Episode 136: Marketing in a Post-COVID World with Jared Johnson Book: Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares – This book breaks down the 19 channels that you can use to build your customer base and helps you identify the best ones for your business.   The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media.

Get ready for a cold dose of reality. On this episode, we're talking with Neil Carpenter, VP of Strategic Planning at Array Advisors and former health system Chief Strategy Officer, about how health systems think. This behind the scenes look at health system strategy, decision-making, and purchasing tells you much of what you need to know as a startup/vendor trying to sell into this market. You won't like everything you learn, but it'll give you a much more productive way to look at your product or service and how you fit into the cold-hard reality of health systems. You'll learn:   Health systems are permission oriented and consensus driven. What does that mean and how does it affect your sales strategy? The difference between the big-name systems and their scrappy competitors down the road. What is the role of a Chief Strategy Officer at a health system and how can you work with them to get your foot in the door? Why health systems are so focused on what's happening right now and struggle to look to the future. That most decisions are driven by personal, and not organizational interests, and how that impacts your ability to make deals How to avoid the common pitfall of focusing on your solution, and not taking the time to truly understand your buyer Why it's easier for health systems to buy from established players than small shops NOTE: We touched on this in Episode 148: Partnering with Payers too Why health system executive compensation and performance expectations make innovation difficult Why the “local monopoly” strategy is so common for health systems and why telemedicine is so threatening to that model How to get to know health systems you're trying to sell to What are the two primary power centers within the health system and how to work with each of them? Which solution spaces are overcrowded and should be avoided? Which solution spaces are wide-open and ready for new solutions? Why a good spreadsheet may be your most potent sales tool   This one is densely packed and full of fire. You may want to listen twice.   Neil Carpenter Neil Carpenter is a health care strategy and innovation consultant– he advises clients from health systems (e.g., on the future of precision medicine, ambulatory planning) to the State of Maryland (e.g., COVID-19 planning).  Neil's thought leadership, where he is the VP of Strategic Planning at Array Advisors modeling the impact of COVID-19 on the US health care sector has been cited by the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and several industry publications (e.g., Health Leaders). In his career, Neil has been a system leader and senior advisor to health system leaders and boards. Neil was the Chief Strategy Officer for LifeBridge Health, a $2billion+ integrated health care delivery system in Maryland with over 400 employed providers and assets across the entire continuum of care. In that role, Neil had wide-ranging responsivities, including helping lead the clinically integrated physician network which had one of the highest ACO savings in the country for several years, launched the first in the nation, offshore command center, the first bioincubator inside a community hospital in the country and new patient engagement technologies aimed at some of the most socio-economically patient populations in the country. Neil also spent a decade at leading consulting firms. Neil's clients included Kaiser Permanente, Sisters of Mercy Health System, Steward, UnityPoint, Trinity, Dana Farber, the Military Health System, Montefiore, and the University of Virginia among many others.   Prior to entering consulting after business school, Neil focused on global reengineering, financial analysis and process improvement at GE and American Express. Neil has a Master's Degree in business from Georgetown University and a Bachelor's in Business from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Neil has served on various state task forces related to Health System planning, taught at John's Hopkins Carey School of Business and has been published papers on technology transformation in forums such as Digital Biomarkers and AMA Journal of Ethics. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neil-carpenter-924a40/   Array Advisors We understand that asking the right questions positively affects your Health System's goals. Our purpose is to ask the questions that turn your goals into tangible realities. Array Advisors has the expertise to help position your organization for success in tomorrow's uncertain market. As your trusted partners in Strategy Development, Organizational Transformation, and Building Informatics, we can help you solve strategic business problems and develop methods to improve efficiency and utilization. We approach each problem from a unique angle, providing a plan tailored to help you overcome your toughest challenges. Having dedicated our careers to healthcare innovation, our objective viewpoint and industry-wide knowledge provide you the decision support you need.   Website: https://array-advisors.com/ COVID-19 Resource Hub: https://info.array-architects.com/en-us/covid-19 Market Disruption Study: https://array-architects.com/press-release/array-models-healthcare-disruption-top-111-markets/   Links and Resources   Episode 103: Selling to Health Systems: Advice for Digital Health Startups (Part 1) Episode 105: Selling to Health Systems: Advice for Digital Health Startups (Part 2) Episode 85: Lessons on Selling in Healthcare w/ Dom Cappuccilli   The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media.

For many healthcare startups and established vendors, partnering with payers is a crucial part of their business plan. And as we know, selling in healthcare is hard. It's even harder when you don't understand how these large corporations work. What do they want? How do they set priorities? How do they make purchasing decisions? How long does that process take? The list goes on, and if you're strategizing without this knowledge you're going to struggle. That's where this episode comes in. Today we're talking with Andrew Adrian-Karlin, Director of Business Platform Product at Highmark Health. Andrew sheds some light on how payers decide what to do and who they decide to do it with. This episode will help you build an effective framework for preparing, approaching, and successfully partnering with payers.   You'll Learn What are “products” from a health insurance point of view? What is the purpose of health insurance? Note: This is the same question we went deep on with Steve Krupa from HealthEdge on Episode 145. Steve's answer is also worth a listen. What are some things that payers are interested in from a “business processing” perspective? How do payers set priorities? What's the typical timeline for bringing on a new vendor and what factors contribute to it? What are the challenges, both internally and externally, that need to be managed when bringing on a new vendor? What can/should vendors do to minimize these challenges and shorten the timeline? How do external factors like the CMS Interoperability Rule or the COVID-19 pandemic impact your priorities? And a little bonus here: Why no one – not payer, not vendor, not lawmaker, and not even the regulator – fully understands new regulations and how that creates an early mover advantage. What are the best ways to keep a pulse on what a health plan is trying to do so that you can partner with them? NOTE: For more tactics on this one, Jeff Byers gave us the journalists take on Episode 62.   Andrew Adrian-Karlin Andrew Adrian-Karlin helps companies do new things by better applying technology. I'm proud to be transforming healthcare at Highmark Health. As the Director of Business Platform- Product at Highmark Health, Andrew focuses on building cross-functional teams and leading Product Managers. He is accelerating speed to market for new products, reducing the cost to market, and delivering improved experiences to Highmark's members. Andrew has more than 10 years of experience in Information Technology. Prior work has included diverse areas like data analytics, cybersecurity, post-merger integration, and system development. He holds a BS in Accounting from Case Western Reserve University, an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University, and a number of professional certificates and certifications. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewadriankarlin/   Highmark Health One of America's leading health insurance organizations and an independent licensee of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Highmark Inc. (the Health Plan) and its affiliated health plans (collectively, the Health Plans) work passionately to create a remarkable health experience for customers. Highmark Inc. and its Blue-branded affiliates proudly cover the insurance needs of 5.6 million members in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and West Virginia. As an industry, health care poses new challenges every day that require deep insights, constant innovation, and new solutions. The Health Plan business has boldly forged ahead with doing things differently, piloting new approaches, and breaking from the pack. Web: https://www.highmarkhealth.org/   Links and Resources Episode 145: How Payers Can Master Core Administrative Transactions and Deliver a World-class Experience to their Members and Providers w/ Steve Krupa Episode 141: The State of Payer Data with Jordan Bazinsky Episode 103: Selling to Health Systems: Advice for Digital Health Startups (Part 1) Episode 105: Selling to Health Systems: Advice for Digital Health Startups (Part 2) Episode 96: The CMS NPRM: Opportunities from the Payer Perspective Episode 85: Lessons on Selling in Healthcare w/ Dom Cappuccilli     The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media. Music by StudioEtar

There's a lot of talk about addressing physician burnout, but little practical advice about what to do. The path to action lies first in understanding the many sources of burnout, and then separating them into those that we can impact, and those we cannot. There's a class of burnout factors that are intrinsic to being a physician. Simply put, it's a hard job, and it's demanding in both a physical and mental sense. But this is part of what they signed up for, and due to their passion and sense of purpose (as we discussed at length with Dr. Vivian Lee on Episode 143), most physicians are willing and able to work through them. That's good because there's little we in the tech/entrepreneur community can do to help. The problems arise with the other class of burnout factors – the extrinsic variety. As a society, we have in many ways changed our deal with doctors over the past 10+ years. Under the guise of healthcare transformation, we have piled on to the existing stressors with paperwork, regulations, quality measures, reimbursement cuts, and more. These are burdens that physicians didn't sign up for, and they are not supported by the same passions we mentioned earlier. The additional layers may be necessary to support our healthcare transformation goals at a systemic level, but they don't always translate into better care for individual patients, and often undermine the patient/physician relationship. To a physician, this administrative burden feels unnecessary at best, and directly in conflict with their mission at worst. If we really do need these things, and we should confirm that regularly, then we also need to provide the tools and support to make them happen. And that brings us to the point of this episode. Today, we're sharing a discussion from the HealthIMPACT Live Summer Forum (July 22-24, 2020). In it, our co-host Shahid Shah discusses how to apply conversational AI to reduce physician burnout with Peter Durlach, SVP of Strategy and New Business Development at Nuance. As the setup would indicate, Shahid and Peter discuss the sources of physician burnout and help us to better understand where we in the tech/entrepreneur community should be focusing our efforts if we want to make an impact. Their discussion covers: The sources of physician burnout The difference between intrinsic and extrinsic stressors and why we should focus on the latter How good conversational AI, or dictation, can cut the administrative time by half How ambient conversations, where the AI listens in to the conversation as it happens, can take it to the next level Why we should also be working on nurse burnout How we can help before, during, and after the patient visit How the COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating decision making and innovation in healthcare (as discussed in Episode 137 - The Novation Dynamic: 3 Pillars for Healthcare Innovation Success with Michael Ackerman) Specific advice for entrepreneurs looking to enter healthcare The difference between health systems that get this right and those that spin their wheels I'd like to thank our partners at Purpose Events for allowing us to share this content with you. They run the HealthIMPACT Live series, and our very own Shahid Shah is the HealthIMPACT Forum Chair. Shahid describes it as a “No BS and No PowerPoint” event that's intended to be more of a conversation than a series of presentations. The goal is to get healthcare leaders together and facilitate a conversation amongst peers about the work they're doing in the real world. Definitely fitting for a listener of this show. Links and Resources Purpose Events website HealthIMPACT Live page HealthIMPACT Live on YouTube This interview on YouTube Upcoming HealthIMPACT Live Events Episode 144: HealthIMPACT Live Fall Forum Preview plus Tips on Running Virtual Events Episode 90: Healthcare Is Not Quite Digitized w/ Bill DeStefanis of Nuance - how and why paper is still widely used in healthcare, how we can keep it secure, and how we can effectively integrate it into our digital workflows.     The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media.

Many private organizations have stepped up to provide support as we deal with the pandemic. Surescripts, for their part, repurposed clinical direct messaging infrastructure to help health systems communicate critical information from the frontlines to federal agencies. It's a great story of a private organization rapidly transitioning to fill a need. What we'd like to explore, and what we think you will most benefit from hearing, is why Surescripts was in a position to do this in the first place. And ultimately, why co-host Shahid Shah calls them “THE interoperability story of our century”. On this episode we explore: Surescripts 19-year journey to build a national network that handles 19 Billion transactions per year How good, purpose-driven work lead to success Why getting the data flowing is the easy part, while data quality and workflow integration are the real problems How purpose-driven data quality, which we often refer to as data fidelity at #HCBiz, guided the identification and prioritization of efforts and generated an alignment with partners to get stuff done. The building blocks that resulted from the effort including a master patient index with 314 million patients, an accurate list of all prescribers in the U.S., an accurate list of all pharmacies in the U.S., clinical direct messaging, and more. How those building blocks make the Surescripts network a “platform for innovation”, and for responding to emergencies like this pandemic Whether or not we need a Surescripts-like network for other areas of healthcare like labs, imaging, etc.   There's a lot you can take away from this. My hope is that at a minimum you walk away with a better understanding of your “data quality responsibility” and why use-case-driven interoperability is your best path forward.   About Tom Skelton Tom is amazed by the changes he's seen over the course of more than 30 years working in healthcare technology. Before joining Surescripts in 2014, he served as Chief Executive Officer of Foundation Radiology Group, a private equity-backed diagnostic imaging services firm that grew substantially under his leadership. His many other career accomplishments include serving as Chief Executive Officer for Misys Healthcare Systems and as a member of Elcomp Systems' founding team. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/skeltontom/   About Surescripts Our purpose is to serve the nation with the single most trusted and capable health information network, built to increase patient safety, lower costs, and ensure quality care. Since 2001, Surescripts has led the movement to turn data into actionable intelligence, and convened the Surescripts Network Alliance™ to enhance prescribing, inform care decisions, and advance the healthcare industry. Website: https://surescripts.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/surescripts LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/395901/?trk=tyah&trkInfo=tas%3Asures%2Cidx%3A2-1-6 Blog: https://surescripts.com/news-center/intelligence-in-action/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVJajqk__-rDozGAPMXB-TQ   Links and Resources More from Surescripts: Episode 130: Taking Friction Out of the Prescription Process with Surescripts Real-time Prescription Benefit – Andrew Mellin Episode 71: Transforming the Prescription Decision Process Between Physicians and Patients w/ Tom Skelton Episode 17: Going Deep on Provider Directory – Dave Marotz – Surescripts   My favorite book on interoperability and Data Quality: Demystifying Big Data and Machine Learning for Healthcare (HIMSS Book) by Prashant Natarajan   The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media.

It may seem cliché to say payers need to be more like Amazon, but the analogy provides fundamental, and surprisingly actionable insights for the health insurance industry. Think about your experience with Amazon (or Google or Zappos, or any other organization that provides a phenomenal customer experience). Whether they're helping you find the right product, or streamlining the purchase, or dealing with a delivery problem, or a return, these organizations have made the transactions feel easy... frictionless... natural.   If you're a payer: Ask yourself, does your front-end member experience, or back-end provider experience even remotely resemble this? If you're a member or provider: Does your experience with health insurance companies even remotely resemble this?   If we're being honest, approximately 100% of you are shaking your heads "No". The reason that Amazon can provide an awesome consumer experience is because, through telemetry and analytics, they know exactly what's happening in their business in real-time. They know how much each decision costs them, and they know it on the spot. That enables automation. And that enables the end-user experience we're trying to emulate. How is this relevant to payers? Well... that's what this interview is all about. Steve Krupa, CEO of Health Edge, explains that the adequacy and data sharing capability of a payer's underlying transaction systems will be the rate-limiting factor when it comes to improving the member and provider experience. And what could that experience look like?   First-pass payment accuracy that reduces the need for "claw-backs", saving health plans money and reducing a key source of provider abrasion Point-of-Service Payments that provide members with transparent out-of-pockets costs and improve provider cashflows. Automatic claims adjudication that works as-well-as, or better than the current workflow, and does it in real-time.   Additionally, Krupa very elegantly explains the transition of health insurance companies from underwriters of risk to managers of risk, and now increasingly, to participants in the delivery of care itself. We're always looking to expand our fundamental understanding of the business of healthcare. This section created some new and powerful connections for me, and I suspect it will for you too.   Steve Krupa, CEO, HealthEdge Software, Inc.  As the leader of HealthEdge, Steve has the unique opportunity to leverage the various aspects of his professional experience. He started out as a Mechanical Engineer and programmer for Johnson Controls, using software and digital interfaces to control large mechanical systems. Later, Steve became involved in the healthcare mergers and acquisitions business, where he worked on over $12BN of strategic acquisitions and recapitalizations, including the landmark acquisition of US Healthcare by Aetna. Prior to HealthEdge, spent 18 years as a healthcare venture capital partner at the Psilos Group. Today, Steve's professional passion is for the people and customers of HealthEdge, and its vision to build its substantial and unique intellectual property into the most innovative solutions partner in the HCIT marketplace. Steve holds an M.B.A. with Distinction from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated a Palmer Scholar; and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of South Florida where he was elected to Tau Beta Pi.   About HealthEdge HealthEdge provides modern, disruptive healthcare IT solutions that health insurers use to leverage new business models, improve outcomes, drastically reduce administrative costs, and connect everyone in the healthcare delivery cycle. Its next-generation enterprise solution suite, HealthRules, is built on modern, patented technology and is delivered to customers via the HealthEdge Cloud or onsite deployment. An award-winning company, HealthEdge empowers health insurers to capitalize on the innovations, challenges and opportunities that await in the new healthcare economy. For more information, visit www.healthedge.com. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/company/healthedge/ Twitter. https://twitter.com/HealthEdge Website. www.healthedge.com   Relevant Links and Resources   Episode #141 The State of Payer Data with Jordan Bazinsky of Cotiviti: Learn about the converging data management challenges that will change the payer industry forever, including clinical data integration and the CMS 2020 Final Rule. Episode 104: Why HIEs Will Lead the Way on Healthcare Quality Measurement w/ John D'Amore Episode 096: The CMS NPRM: Opportunities from the Payer Perspective Episode 094: The Path to Healthcare Interoperability Checkout #HCBiz's extensive coverage of the Provider Directory problem Providence Digital Innovation Group: Publications, research and perspectives on issues that are reshaping health care through digital innovation   The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media.

On this episode we talk with Dr. Vivian Lee about her new book, The Long Fix: Solving America's Health Care Crisis with Strategies that Work for Everyone. Dr. Lee offers a fresh perspective that will strengthen your understanding of the issues facing America's healthcare system. And while she acknowledges that our government must play a substantial role in driving systemic change, she points out how each of us as individuals, clinicians, payers, and employers all have a role to play. The book's title suggests that we're in for a long haul, and I agree. However, Dr. Lee offers concrete examples of driving change in the real world that can have an immediate impact on the work you're doing today. In particular: What it's like to lead a multi-billion dollar health system into value-based care for the first time? Why intrinsic motivators like purpose, autonomy, and mastery are more important than extrinsic motivators like compensation, and how to tap into them to motivate clinicians and drive change. How to co-design change with clinicians (and patients). How to implement patient satisfaction surveys that actually work. How to develop measures that matter, and the surprising things that happen when you do. How to track performance to the clinician-level, and the best way to share the data with them. Creative ways to reinvest your savings. I took a ton away from this conversation, and I'm sure you will too!   Dr. Vivian Lee Vivian S. Lee, M.D., Ph.D., M.B.A, is President of Health Platforms at Verily Life Sciences, an Alphabet company whose mission is to apply digital solutions that enable people enjoy healthier lives. A passionate champion of improving health in the U.S. and worldwide, she works closely with Verily's clinical and engineering teams to develop products and platforms that support the successful transformation of health systems to value and advance the co-production of health with patients, their caregivers, and communities. She also serves as a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. In 2019, she was ranked #11 among the Most Influential People in Healthcare (Modern Healthcare). She is the author of the acclaimed book, The Long Fix: Solving America's Health Care Crisis with Strategies that Work for Everyone (Norton, 2020). Dr. Lee is the former Dean, SVP and CEO University of Utah Health. As a leading healthcare executive, she is committed to the advancement of value-driven transformation in health care (NYT Corner Office, STAT). As CEO, Lee led University of Utah Health to recognition for its health care delivery system innovations (Algorithmsforinnovation.org) that enable higher quality at lower costs (JAMA & editorial, NYT) and with higher patient satisfaction (NYT, HBR, NEJM), as well as successful strategies of faculty development and mentorship. In 2016, University of Utah was ranked first among the nation's university hospitals in quality and safety (Vizient). Dr. Lee also commercialized the University of Utah's health plan as Chair of its Board, during which it grew five-fold and was successful in the individual exchange. As Dean, she led the significant expansion of the School of Medicine class size with increased state funding, and helped raise large philanthropic gifts. Lee is an MR radiologist who developed novel methods for measuring kidney function and vascular disease with MRI. Funded by the NIH for 20 years, Dr. Lee was elected to National Academy of Medicine (formerly, the Institute of Medicine) in 2015, and in 2019, she received the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine's highest award for scientific contributions and leadership, the Gold Medal. She served on the NIH Council of Councils advisory to the NIH Director and has authored over 200 peer-reviewed research publications. Presently she serves on the Defense Health Board, advisory to the Department of Defense for military medicine, the Board of Directors of the Commonwealth Fund and the Association of American Rhodes Scholars, the Membership Committee of the National Academy of Medicine, and on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Massachusetts General Hospital. She is also a director on the board of Zions Bancorporation, a publicly traded company. Dr. Lee is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard-Radcliffe Colleges, received a doctorate in medical engineering from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, earned her M.D. with honors from Harvard Medical School, and was valedictorian of her Executive MBA program at NYU's Stern School of Business. https://vivianleemd.com/ Dr. Vivian Lee on Twitter Dr. Vivian Lee on LinkedIn   The Long Fix It may not be a quick fix, but this concrete action plan for reform can create a less costly and healthier system for all. Beyond the outrageous expense, the quality of care varies wildly, and millions of Americans can't get care when they need it. This is bad for patients, bad for doctors, and bad for business. In The Long Fix, physician and health care CEO Vivian S. Lee, MD, cuts to the heart of the health care crisis. The problem with the way medicine is practiced, she explains, is not so much who's paying, it's what we are paying for. Insurers, employers, the government, and individuals pay for every procedure, prescription, and lab test, whether or not it makes us better—and that is both backward and dangerous. Dr. Lee proposes turning the way we receive care completely inside out. When doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies are paid to keep people healthy, care improves and costs decrease. Lee shares inspiring examples of how this has been done, from physicians' practices that prioritize preventative care, to hospitals that adapt lessons from manufacturing plants to make them safer, to health care organizations that share online how much care costs and how well each physician is caring for patients. Using clear and compelling language, Dr. Lee paints a picture that is both realistic and optimistic. It may not be a quick fix, but her concrete action plan for reform—for employers and other payers, patients, clinicians, and policy makers—can reinvent health care, and create a less costly, more efficient, and healthier system for all. Get it on Amazon   Links and Resources Episode 139: Behavioral Economics Expert Explains How to Drive Massive Change with Minor Tweaks w/ Karen Horgan Episode 098: Taking Aim at Phony Doctor Reviews w/ Ted Chan Episode 079: HCAHPS and the Patient Safety vs. Patient Satisfaction Conundrum w/ Christine Greene and Maurits Hughes from HITS2018 Book: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink     The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media. Music by StudioEtar  

Patient Centricity is a buzzword that's easy to throw around, but difficult to realize. The notion itself is straightforward… build your product or service around the patient who it is intended to help. Talk with them. Incorporate their input. Understand their needs, desires, and goals. It's so straight-forward that today's guest tells us this is no “ah-ha” moment for healthcare, but more of an “ah-duh”. Why do other industries do this organically, while healthcare talks about it as some enlightened idea? It's because our healthcare system is dis-intermediated to the point where the patient no longer looks like the customer. And unfortunately, there is no business case for “doing the right thing” in healthcare. Even though our intentions are good, our end-game involves much more than an outstanding patient experience with the best possible outcome. Consequently, our thinking gets cloudy and our efforts get diluted. Today we talk with Matthew Zachary, founder and CEO of Offscrip Media, about the shortcomings of healthcare's so-called “Patient Centricity” movement. Matthew shares what he's learned first-hand as a cancer patient and survivor, and through his advocacy work at Stupid Cancer, the nonprofit responsible for igniting a global movement advocating for AYA (adolescent young adult) cancer programs and support. Patient centricity is table-stakes at this point, but you've got to be coming at it from the correct frame of mind. This interview will help you to think about it in a whole new way.   Matthew Zachary Ten years after surviving brain cancer at age 21, concert pianist and composer Matthew Zachary created the first health podcast, founded Stupid Cancer, the nonprofit responsible for igniting a global movement advocating for AYA (adolescent young adult) cancer programs and support that brought dignity in the face of health adversity. After stepping down as Stupid Cancer's CEO in 2019, Matthew continues his legacy of building community, galvanizing the patient voice, and blowing up the status quo with OffScrip Media, the first digital health podcast network focused on patient advocacy, education, and empowerment. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewzachary/  Twitter: http://twitter.com/matthewzachary  Facebook: http://facebook.com/matthewzachary  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thematthewzachary   OffScrip Media Today's healthcare conversations are too polite. OffScrip Media's here to fix that.  Created by Matthew Zachary, a 25-year brain cancer survivor, and the Founder of Stupid Cancer, OffScrip Media is the first podcasting network at the intersection of patient advocacy, education, and digital health. Our mission is to build community, end isolation, amplify voice, and improve quality of life for patients and caregivers. Company: https://offscrip.com/    Links and Resources Episode #114: Who's Got the Patient's Back? with Patient Advocate Grace Cordovano Episode #93: Building a Social Network for Patients and Caregivers w/ Brian Loew of Inspire The Mighty: a digital health community created to empower and connect people facing health challenges and disabilities.   The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media.

Payers already face a formidable challenge when it comes to internal data management. After years of consolidation in the industry, many payers have a collection of legacy systems cobbled together to run their operations. This makes data management difficult for things like claims, provider directories, and member demographics. And those are just “the basics”. Now, as quality measurement evolves and payers experiment in value-based payment, there's an acute need for the integration of real-time clinical data to support operations and care management. Finally, there are the CMS and ONC final rules that create new requirements for payers to share data with members and other payers. When you put it all together, payers have a monumental data management task in front of them. Today we're talking with Jordan Bazinsky, Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer at Cotiviti. We discuss the current state of payer data, evolving clinical data needs, and the CMS and ONC final rules. This episode lays the foundation for a new #HCBiz series around payer data that aims to chart a course through these challenges over the coming weeks. Stay tuned for more!   Jordan Bazinsky As Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer, Jordan is responsible for Cotiviti's corporate strategy, marketing, retail, strategic alliances, legal, and compliance functions. In this capacity, he is entrusted with ensuring that Cotiviti's vision aligns with our clients and the broader marketplace. He is committed to advancing our clients' goals through solutions that empower their success in an evolving landscape. Jordan has spent his career focused on technology and analytics, often applied towards developing sustainable business models for the delivery of healthcare in the U.S. He most recently served as Executive Vice President, Product and Strategy for the organization, and also previously served as Chief Operating Officer. Earlier in his career, Jordan held positions in strategy and new product development at The Advisory Board Company, a healthcare consulting and technology firm.   Cotiviti Cotiviti is a leading solutions and analytics company that is reshaping the economics of healthcare, helping its clients uncover new opportunities to unlock value. Cotiviti's solutions are a critical foundation for healthcare payers in their mission to lower healthcare costs and improve quality through higher performing payment accuracy, quality improvement, risk adjustment, and network performance management programs. Learn more: https://www.cotiviti.com/   Links and Resources Cotiviti COVID-19 Outbreak Tracker Whitepaper: Under pressure: How Medicaid plans can overcome the inevitable strain of COVID-19 Checkout #HCBiz's extensive coverage of the Provider Directory problem Episode 104: Why HIEs Will Lead the Way on Healthcare Quality Measurement w/ John D'Amore Episode 096: The CMS NPRM: Opportunities from the Payer Perspective Episode 094: The Path to Healthcare Interoperability   The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media.

In a growing crowd of national health information networks, eHealth Exchange is one of the oldest and most connected in the U.S.. Notably, they are the primary way healthcare organizations connect with federal agencies such as the Social Security Administration (SSA), Department of Defense (DOD), and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). In addition, they're connected with 75% of all U.S. hospitals, more than 60 regional and state HIEs, more than 5,000 dialysis centers, and more. Today we take a thorough look at eHealth Exchange with Executive Director, Jay Nakashima to find out what they do and to give you a sense of how they may fit into your clinical data strategy. Topics include: What does the eHealth Exchange do Who participates How eHealth Exchange connects federal agencies like the SSA, DOD, and VA Why is the social security administration is such a large consumer of clinical data The difference in outcomes when you're opt-in vs opt-out How does eHealth Exchange compare with the other national networks How does eHealth Exchange fit in with TEFCA How the Surescripts Record Locator Service is used within the network How is eHealth Exchange different than regional and state HIEs Why they don't store any clinical information and the pluses/minuses for federated vs. non-federated exchanges New support for electronic case reporting Recent simplifications to their integrations and onboarding The PULSE Connectivity model   Jay Nakashima Over the past 25 years Jay Nakashima has designed and implemented EHRs, optimized clinical workflow, and spearheaded data exchange. Jay has worked for health IT vendors, providers, payers, and now leads the eHealth Exchange, the nation's oldest and largest public-private health information network.   eHealth Exchange Active in all 50 states, the eHealth Exchange is the largest query-based, health information network in the country. It is the principal network that connects federal agencies and non-federal organizations, allowing them to work together to improve patient care and public health. Web: https://ehealthexchange.org/ Twitter: @ehealthExchange   Links and Related Episodes What you need to Know About TEFCA Right Now w/ Mariann Yeager Transforming the Prescription Decision Process Between Physicians and Patients w/ Surescripts CEO Tom Skelton Interoperability 2.0 with Niko Skievaski Why HIEs Will Lead the Way on Healthcare Quality Measurement w/ John D'Amore The Path to Healthcare Interoperability TEFCA, Interoperability, and an Industry's Unreasonable Expectations The Regional HIE Should be Your First Stop for Interop ADVault: https://mydirectives.com/ make your end of life medical wishes known   The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media.

Everything you're trying to accomplish comes down to one thing… getting people to do stuff. Behavioral economics, in its simplest terms, is the study of how and why people decide to do what they do (or don't do). Whether you're trying to sell, get users to adopt a new system or workflow, or make your staff feel comfortable coming back to work during a pandemic, understanding behavioral economics will greatly increase your chances of success. Today we're talking with Karen Horgan, CEO at VAL Health about how behavioral economics is being used in healthcare today, and how it should be used going forward to drive positive behavior change throughout the industry. No matter what you're working on, there's something here for you. I can think of no better investment you can make in your self and your business than gaining a basic understanding of these concepts. ---------- "Behavioral economics is the last mile to transform healthcare. As an industry, we have a behavioral deficit, not an informational deficit." Karen Horgan, CEO, VAL Health ---------- You'll Learn How behavioral economics is used to influence your decisions every day How “changing the default” can drive dramatic behavior change overnight Why things like scarcity, exclusivity, and social proof are such powerful influencers of human behavior How one practice used behavioral economics to reduce no shows Why losses are doubly as powerful as gains in driving behavior change Why focus groups will often fail you How to use behavioral economics to help employees feel safe at work How to use behavioral economics to help patients feel safe going to appointments during the COVID-19 pandemic The importance of creating and maintaining a feedback loop when trying to promote preventative measures Using behavioral economics to influence up The importance of using simple language (I'm looking at you… everyone in healthcare ) Why you should always make the right path the easy path ---------- Today's Guest: Karen Horgan Karen co-founded VAL Health to apply behavioral economics to improve health and health care. A proven expert in developing high impact behavior change and engagement programs, Karen is commonly found presenting at leading industry conference and private speaking events including SXSW, HIMSS, the AHIP Institute, and the World Economic Forum. As the CEO, she has spearheaded the development of hundreds of behavior change programs that enable clients to overcome healthcare's biggest challenges. Prior to starting VAL Health, Karen was Chief Marketing Officer at Keystone Strategy. Karen also previously led marketing and product management teams for early-stage technology companies and was a consultant with Bain and Company in Boston and Hong Kong. Karen holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School, a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BS from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Connect with Karen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-sussman-horgan   VAL Health is the leading health-related behavioral economics consulting firm. We tackle the hardest problems in healthcare using proven behavioral economics science, pioneered by our academic co-founders and enhanced with our real-world experience. By meeting people where they are, we deliver sustained engagement and behavior change for clients, the leading payers, hospital systems and digital health companies. Sign up for their monthly newsletter by sending an email to countmein@valhealth.com ---------- Resources Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Revised Edition Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade VAL Health White Papers The #HCBiz Show #66: Finding the Right Words w/ Stacey Richter – we discuss another relevant book on human behavior – Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman   And this is a great talk by Karen's co-founder, David Asch. Worth checking out, especially for the graphs between the 9 and 10-minute marks: https://youtu.be/PI5V1-IFvlI  ---------- The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media.

We've effectively digitized medical record via EHRs, but the healthcare industry still relies heavily on paper for many of its workflows and supporting documents. On this episode, we talk with Bill DeStefanis, Director of Product Strategy at Nuance about how and why paper is still widely used in healthcare, how we can keep it secure, and how we can effectively integrate it into our digital workflows.   About Bill DeStefanis:  As Nuance's Director of Product Strategy, Bill brings more than 20 years of experience in the software industry to the position. He is responsible for defining Nuance Imaging product strategy and vision. During his time at Nuance Bill has lead product management teams designing solutions that automate document workflows. Before joining Nuance, Bill was held various product management positions in companies developing voice recognition and natural language processing applications. He holds an MBA from Suffolk University.   About Nuance:  We are reinventing the relationship between people and technology. At Nuance, we believe in the power of intelligent systems, and quite specifically what that power can do for you. Our innovations in voice, natural language understanding, reasoning and systems integration come together to create more human technology. Used by 90% of hospitals and 10,000 healthcare organizations worldwide, our AI‑powered solutions capture 300 million patient stories each year. We help unburden clinicians, radiologists and care teams with efficient new ways to capture clinical information, applying real-time intelligence for better decision making across the continuum of care. NOTE: Nuance Document Imaging is now a part of Kofax https://www.nuance.com   Join our Community! Trying to drive change within your healthcare organization? Launching a new product? Having trouble getting decision makers attention and buy-in? We'll help you understand the whole picture so that you can align your innovation with the things decision makers care about. And then we'll help you execute It's not easy, but it's possible and we'll help you get there.  Sign up here and we'll keep you up to date on healthcare industry news with podcasts, blog posts, conference announcements and more. No fluff. No hype. Just the valuable (and often not-so-obvious) information you need to get things done. Sign up here   The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media. Music by StudioEtar

On this episode, we talk with Jason Helgerson, founder of Helgerson Solutions Group and Former Medicaid Director for New York and Wisconsin. Jason shares his perspective on Value-based payment progress and direction tells us who needs to get involved and how, and we discuss how to measure success. That is, how will we know if value-based payment has been adequately deployed, and more importantly, how will we know if it's working?   This episode is sponsored by VBP Forward: VBP Forward will host its inaugural conference February 20-21, 2019 in Buffalo, NY at the Hyatt Regency Buffalo. The conference will bring together over 200 professionals who serve Medicaid and Medicare special needs or complex populations or have an interest in that value chain. Participants will gain insight into the next generation of value-based payment and will be provided with a roadmap for their path towards effective value payment for special needs populations. In addition to clinical providers, VBP Forward will have a track and focus on guiding community-based organizations down the right path for the collection of social determinants of health and how they can become not only an integral part of care delivery but also the revenue cycle associated with that delivery.   2:09 Engaging providers who feel left behind by the Value-Based Payments conversations. 3:18 In New York, 80% of all reimbursement for Medicaid must be under VBP contract by 2020. 5:36 Community Based Organizations are treating the same issues health systems are struggling with. What do CBOs and Health systems need to learn about each other to create new sustainable business models? 9:10 Breaking down the language barriers. 12:49 What has made early pioneers successful? Green and Healthy Homes Initiative God's Love We Deliver  15:11 How do CBOs explain to plans and health systems what the expected ROI will be? "Walk before you run." 18:07 Begin the dialog with payors early. You can see this as an opportunity or a threat, but the train has left the station. 21:40 When taking on risk, you're responsible for more than you were in a FFS model. This necessitates partnerships with CBOs. If you wait, you're going to have to take what's left. 22:45 What's happening outside NY? Examples nationally and abroad. England and NHS 28:15 What about Medicare and commercial payors? 31:15 Measuring success in a VBP future. What does success look like for the state, for CBOs, for doctors, and for patients? “I think at some point in the not too distant future, we will look back on how we treat people who are sick and with flu-like symptoms almost as bloodletting. Requiring them to leave their homes and go to a clinic to be treated when the technology exists to do bloodwork and other tests in the home; with new telehealth tools to be able to almost do a complete exam on those individuals without them having to leave the comfort of their home, which is in the best interest of the patient and the public's health, those models are not possible in the traditional FFS system. They are much more possible in a value-based world." "Consumers having more choices will be the real power of Value-Based Payments." 37:00 How close are we to knowing which clinical outcomes to measure? HEDIS measures taken from claims data measure process and not the true outcome. Patient-reported outcomes are needed to say if patients are getting high-quality services. Beyond healthcare measures, how do we measure the health and wellbeing of a community? 42:00 Helgerson Solutions – What do you do and who do you do it for?   About Jason Helgerson Jason Helgerson is an entrepreneur, investor, consultant and social change agent.  After more than 20 years of public service he has embraced the “gig economy” and launched a multifaceted private sector career.  Helgerson Solutions Group LLC (HSG) is focused on helping companies, providers, payers and governments make the move to value in health care.  Jason also advises Private Equity firms and Venture Capital funds that share his commitment to value-based health care.  Jason also works around the world as a Senior Advisor to a global management consulting firm. Before his move to the private sector, Jason was a nationally recognized leader in public sector health care.  Most recently he was New York's Medicaid Director, a role he held for over seven years.  New York's Medicaid program provides vital health care services to over 6.6 million New Yorkers and has an annual budget in excess of $68 billion.  Jason also served as the Executive Director for New York's Medicaid Redesign Team, nationally recognized as a 2015 Innovation in American Government Finalist by the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.  In this capacity he directed Governor Cuomo's effort to fundamentally reshape the state's Medicaid program in order to both lower costs and improve health care quality.  In 2015, Jason was also recognized as a Public Official of the Year by Governing Magazine. Twitter: @policywonk1   About Helgerson Solutions Group HSG was founded to make the world a better place.  Its founder, Jason Helgerson, has made that his mission his entire professional life.  He has been a positive and successful change agent in every position he has held.  Most recently he was New York's Medicaid Director.  In that role he led the state's historic Medicaid redesign efforts which not only bent the cost curve but improved outcomes for Medicaid members. A 2018 Commonwealth Fund study found New York to be the most improved state in the nation relative to its overall health system performance and suggested that further improvement was likely thanks to reforms launched by Jason and his team. Prior to moving to New York, Jason was Wisconsin's Medicaid Director.  In this role he led the effort to expand access to health care to virtually all state residents.  He also helped lead a major cost-cutting exercise that brought down spending without taking benefits away from a single Medicaid member.  Prior to his Medicaid work, Jason held a series of positions in state and local government leading efforts to reform education, child care, public finance and, of course, health care. https://www.helgersonsolutions.com   Related and/or Mentioned on the Show:  DSRIP and VBP reform Green and Healthy Homes Initiative God's Love We Deliver Adam Boehler and CMMI MVP Healthcare   Join our Community!  Trying to drive change within your healthcare organization? Launching a new product? Having trouble getting decision makers attention and buy-in? We'll help you understand the whole picture so that you can align your innovation with the things decision makers care about. And then we'll help you execute It's not easy, but it's possible and we'll help you get there.  Sign up here and we'll keep you up to date on healthcare industry news with podcasts, blog posts, conference announcements and more. No fluff. No hype. Just the valuable (and often not-so-obvious) information you need to get things done. Sign up here   The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media. Music by StudioEtar

On this episode, we talk with François de Brantes, Senior Vice President of Commercial Business Development at Remedy, about the future of value-based payment. François shares with us the importance of transparency, measurement, and responsibility and tells us why payment reform is such an effective lever to drive change. You'll hear about models that have been successful, how employers are driving change, and what you can expect from the next generation of value-based payment. In addition, François shares his insights on how we can account for the social determinants of health (SDOH) in our program design.  This section led to a significant "aha" moment for me and underscores the importance of incorporating community-based organizations (CBOs) more tightly with our traditional healthcare delivery system.   View full post and show notes on the web   François de Brantes will be a keynote speaker at the inaugural VBP Forward Conference in Buffalo, NY on February 20th and 21st, 2019.   This episode is sponsored by VBP Forward: VBP Forward will host its inaugural conference February 20-21, 2019 in Buffalo, NY at the Hyatt Regency Buffalo. The conference will bring together over 200 professionals who serve Medicaid and Medicare special needs or complex populations or have an interest in that value chain. Participants will gain insight into the next generation of value-based payment and will be provided with a roadmap for their path towards effective value payment for special needs populations. In addition to clinical providers, VBP Forward will have a track and focus on guiding community-based organizations down the right path for the collection of social determinants of health and how they can become not only an integral part of care delivery but also the revenue cycle associated with that delivery.   About François de Brantes:  François de Brantes serves as Senior Vice President of Commercial Business Development at Remedy Partners. He leads customer development of the Medicare Advantage, Self-Insured Employer, and Commercial Payer markets. He has spent close to two decades working to transform the U.S. healthcare system by improving incentives for providers and consumers in order to encourage value-based decisions. Prior to joining Remedy Partners, he served as Vice President of Altarum, a national nonprofit. From 2006 to 2016, he was Executive Director of the Health Care Incentives Improvement Institute (HCI3), a not-for-profit company that designed programs to motivate physicians and hospitals to improve the quality and affordability of healthcare delivery. The organization, which merged with Altarum in December 2017, was responsible for the Bridges to Excellence® (BTE) and PROMETHEUS Payment® programs, which compensate and reward clinicians that focus on episodes of care and performance measures. Prior to HCI3, François was Chief Operating Officer of the eHealth Initiative (eHI), which promotes adoption of health information technology in the U.S. He led the development of eHI's HIE Value and Sustainability Model, a method to value services offered by Health Information Exchanges. Early in his career working in General Electric's corporate health care department, he was involved in many strategic programs that created, connected and supported Active Consumers, and defined market mechanisms to reward providers for better performance. François holds a master's degree in Economics and Finance from the University of Paris IX-Dauphine and a master's degree in Business Administration from the Tuck School of Business Administration at Dartmouth College. LinkedIn Twitter   About Remedy:  Remedy operates the nation's largest bundled payment network. Remedy is not only an operator of bundled payment programs, but actively manages and assumes financial risk with providers that are contracted for at-risk bundles. Remedy works hand in hand with the payer and the providers to deliver bankable savings by implementing double-sided risk programs. We believe that it's only by sharing financial risk that bundled payment operators can truly become partners with the payer and the providers in the transformation of the delivery system and achieve better quality and cost outcomes. All of the bundled payment programs that Remedy has participated in and implements are risk-based. https://www.remedypartners.com/   Related and/or Mentioned on the Show:  Quality of Healthcare in America Report   Join our Community!  Trying to drive change within your healthcare organization? Launching a new product? Having trouble getting decision makers attention and buy-in? We'll help you understand the whole picture so that you can align your innovation with the things decision makers care about. And then we'll help you execute It's not easy, but it's possible and we'll help you get there.  Sign up here and we'll keep you up to date on healthcare industry news with podcasts, blog posts, conference announcements and more. No fluff. No hype. Just the valuable (and often not-so-obvious) information you need to get things done. Sign up here   The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media. Music by StudioEtar

Selling is hard. Whether you're selling an idea, service or product, you've got to get to the core of the issue quickly or you'll lose your audience. And the challenge is notoriously exacerbated by the risky, regulated and complex healthcare system you're selling into. That's why we're talking with Dom Cappuccilli from The Clean Sell. Dom's a storyteller turned sales guy who's been successful in both inside / direct sales and enterprise sales. Dom shares some of his most important lessons from the journey like: How to avoid common sales mistakes like over-reliance on your deck Why no-one cares about your solution and how to get to the core of their problem with needs alignment How to use relevance hooks to earn the right to share more Why you should always reach out to 5 or more people at a large organization (and no... they won't get mad at you) There's much more too. At the end of the day, Dom shows us that these aren't lame sales tricks to get what you want. No. They're tried and true methods in human communication and relationships and you neglect them at your own peril. This one was a lot of fun. Check it out! P.S. Dom shared an awesome quote from one of his colleagues that's worth pondering: "People don't buy from you because they love your product. They buy from you because they believe you understand their problems". - Dom's unidentified sales trainer :)   Timestamps: 2:03 – Dom tells us how he went from being a writer to getting recruited by ZocDoc, to helping companies build scalable sales efforts. 8:00 – Storytelling as a tactic for Aligning Value!  This is it, people! We always talk about it and it's finally here. This how you get buy-in from multiple stakeholders with multiple problems. 10:00 – Inside sales vs. Enterprise sales: With inside sales, you get about 12x as many chances to practice selling a month. This constant feedback is what you need to become an expert salesperson. Dom shares a story you HAVE to hear. 13:52 Dom's got both inside and enterprise sales experience at ZocDoc. The only people who survived got really good at pattern recognition. 18:12 – The same mistakes keep being made by enterprise sales people: Too much reliance on their deck. 19:51 – Enterprise sales is changing. A lot of times it's not that they don't think your solution is good enough it's that they can't agree internally on what the problem is. “You need to know the players but if you pitch what they each get out of it, often what they get out of it is in conflict with each other. What you need to do is help them build consensus that each of their pain points are a result of a problem that you can help them solve. “ 21:43 – The end-user is usually your foot in the door. You need to give them the tools to sell to everyone else. Facilitate consensus on the problem then consensus on the solution. A good pitch and getting people excited is just the beginning. Navigating enterprise sales is a project management function. 25:46 – Are you experiencing the pain points we can solve for you? What are those pain points costing you? Here is why these pain points are happening to you. If you sell different problems causing the pain point to different people in sales cycle there's no shared common insight that allows people to buy in an enterprise sale. 30:23 – Whoever you're selling to has 500 problems they have to solve every day. The one problem that I solve, I see 500 times a year and I can offer help in that problem because I know why that problem is happening to them. Just be valuable. 34:22 – Tools and tactics for inside sales. When trying to get attention, the key is relevance. What is the most relevant piece of information that you have on that person? 37:22 - Tools and tactic for enterprise sales. The principles are the same. Don't just reach out to one person. Whoever it's relevant for will respond. The relevance hooks are always different but I always reach out to at least 5 people. Follow up is huge. The second email has double the response rate of initial email.   About Dom Cappuccilli Dom Cappuccilli has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs to not only tell a better sales story, but also built many of their sales efforts from the ground up. He combines the power of a trained storyteller with the real world experience of an elite salesperson. In fact, he became an elite salesperson because he was a trained storyteller. After 10 years as a reporter, author and screenwriter, Dom found his calling when he rewrote the sales story of a fast-growing healthcare company and doubled their revenue in six months. From there, he quickly rose to be a sales leader at unicorn startup ZocDoc - currently valued at $1.8B - before going to Arches Technology where he created and sold an entirely new healthcare technology product to health systems. During his time in the startup and small business world, Dom met many founders and was amazed that almost all of them were succeeding in spite of their sales effort and strategy, not because of it. The Clean Sell was born soon thereafter and in time since its founding has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs to not only tell a better sales story, but also built many of their sales efforts, processes and teams from the ground LinkedIn Dom Cappuccilli Dom@TheCleanSell.com   About The Clean Sell We help founders & CEOs turn their subject matter expertise into a structured, scalable and simple sales process that fuels their growth. The Clean Sell is a B2B sales consultancy helping everyone from startups to Fortune 500 companies to create a structured, scalable and simple sales effort in line with best practices. Throughout a company's lifecycle, there are key inflection points where a lack of sales knowledge and process can sabotage a business that should be thriving. We fill these gaps for our clients. No matter what stage you're in, we have the right solution for you. www.TheCleanSell.com Facebook TheCleanSell Twitter TheCleanSell   Related and/or Mentioned on the Show Whitepaper: The 7-Step Pitch The Clean Sell Blog   Join our Community! Trying to drive change within your healthcare organization? Launching a new product? Having trouble getting decision makers attention and buy-in? We'll help you understand the whole picture so that you can align your innovation with the things decision makers care about. And then we'll help you execute It's not easy, but it's possible and we'll help you get there.  Sign up here and we'll keep you up to date on healthcare industry news with podcasts, blog posts, conference announcements and more. No fluff. No hype. Just the valuable (and often not-so-obvious) information you need to get things done. Sign up here   The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media. Music by StudioEtar

This episode is part of our in-depth coverage of the Healthcare Infection Transmission Systems Consortium (HITS) 2018 conference in Nashville, TN that took place September 18-20th.  ... On this episode, we wrap-up our coverage of the HITS 2018 conference. We talk with HITS board members Dr. Kelly Reynolds and Savannah Hatt about what we learned at the 2018 conference, what's next for the HITS Consortium, how you can get involved, and what to expect from the HITS 2019 conference in Buffalo, NY.   Show notes: 2:32 A great time in Nashville 3:33 Summary of the insights you missed at HITS 2018 4:58 How clean is clean enough? 6:47 A Bundled Systems approach: Designing for Clean. 7:55 After measuring how healthcare facilities are achieving reductions in hospital-acquired infections (HAI), HITS has assigned quantitative values to infection prevention investments called Clean Credits. As you layer different interventions into your system, Clean Credits will quantify what your expected ROI should be. 11:55 A Systems Approach VS a Systematic Approach Standard Operating Procedures are important, but culture holds it all together. 14:40 EVS is a protector of ROI but not always given enough resources. Make sure that the staff knows how important their role is. 16:41 How can we design the ideal treatment room? Seamless walls. Sealed entryways. We need to connect healthcare architects and designers with infections prevention. The best time is during renovations but awareness is poor. 21:30 Bringing the C-Suite to the table. Nothing moves without the right decision makers. To become a priority you need to paint a very clear picture. 22:59 There were lots of discussions about the practical side of implementation. Lots of Infection Preventionists (IPs) in attendance this year at Workgroup meetings. Many discussions centered around workflow and concluded with a solution to empower EVS technicians and arming the C Suite with research. 25:20 You Need To Be Here! These conversations happen nowhere else. Dry biofilms. Seeing what's left behind. More applications for tracking pathogens, tracking mutations and antibiotic resistance. What can be present that we can't culture? Spores on wheels. How many environments does a food cart travel into? HVAC simulation model of containment and control. Waterborne pathogens like Legionella. Training programs at the conference. 31:27 The 8 Workgroups from 2017 presented on their ongoing research. Looking forward to 2019, Workgroups are encouraged to collaborate with each other for more interconnected systems solutions. THIS IS THE BEST TIME TO JOIN A WORKGROUP!!! 34:04 Plans for HITS Consortium 2019: Outreach beyond hospitals. Sponsors for research in the form of financial support, lab space, and scientific advisors for our Workgroups. 36:26 We've all be a patient before. We can all get behind infection prevention. Anyone who is interested can attend foundation dinners and other events. Help us get the research and its implementation. 37:50 When and where is 2019 – Aug 6-8 in Buffalo! We're expecting a big Canadian attendance for companies looking to do business internationally. Call to Action Come to the Conference Participate in Workgroups Volunteer!!! Donate financially Sponsor through other support    About Dr. Kelly A. Reynolds Kelly A. Reynolds, MSPH, PhD Associate Professor University of Arizona Tucson, AZ Dr. Reynolds is an Associate Professor in Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Arizona's College of Public Health, and Director of the Environment, Exposure Science and Risk Assessment Center. She has over 29 years of experience as an environmental microbiologist and directing a research program related to infectious disease transmission, quantitative risk assessment, and public health policy and education. The relationship of fomite, hand and air contamination and pathogen survival characteristics relative to human health outcomes has been a common theme in Dr. Reynolds' research. During the course of her academic career, she has served as a principal investigator on numerous projects and published over 350 journal articles, book chapters and professional reports. Recent and related projects involved the risk of MRSA transmission via hospital personnel scrubs, evaluation of an infection control intervention for first responders, development of infectious waste disposal protocols, tracking environmental microbiomes in long-term care facilities and testing methods for decontamination of soft surfaces in healthcare environments. As co-founder of the HITS Consortium, Dr. Reynolds brings her expertise in integrating academic research teams with medical personnel, clinical diagnostic laboratories, patients, industries and other stakeholders for a multidisciplinary approach toward research, communication and management efforts in infection prevention. University of Arizona's College of Public Health Environment, Exposure Science and Risk Assessment Center at the University of Arizona   About Savannah Hatt, MPH Project manager for the Applied Research Center at NSF International HITS Board Member Savannah Hatt is a Project Manager in the area of sanitation and contamination control for the Applied Research Center at NSF International. Joining the team in March of 2016, Ms. Hatt is primarily responsible for managing client projects and for supporting development of new service offerings for the healthcare industry. She also acts as the conference coordinator for the Healthcare Infection Transmission Systems (HITS) annual conference, which was first held in 2017. Ms. Hatt holds a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry and a Master's of Public Health in epidemiology, and her graduate research focused on reducing healthcare-associated infections. NSF International   About Healthcare Infection Transmission Systems (HITS) The Healthcare Infections Transmission System (HITS) Consortium looks to promote public health by reducing healthcare-associated infections through the integration of best infection prevention practices. HITS will focus on the major pathogen transmission systems in the healthcare setting specifically; surfaces, person to person, water and air. Join us for this one-of-a-kind, multimodal event where researchers and experts from across disciplines will work toward identifying research gaps and applying data-driven methods in the field. Meet, greet and share ideas with the individuals and organizations who are growing and sustaining the industry, as we explore creative and innovative solutions to this global problem. Learn more: Web: http://www.hitsconsortium.org For questions or to join their mailing list, email: info@hitsconsortium.org Twitter: @HITSConsortium HITS Consortium on LinkedIn   Related and/or Mentioned on the Show HITS 2018: A Catalyst for Change in Infection Control - Conference preview with Dr. Christine Greene and Dr. Kelly Reynolds Why Healthcare Needs a Systems Approach with Jason “The Germ Guy” Tetro from HITS 2018 Bringing Science to the Art of Hospital Cleaning w/ Michael Rochon from HITS2018 Preventing HAIs at the Source w/ Al Wickheim and Laura Barker of Prodaptive Medical Innovations from HITS 2018 Clean Air and Patient Satisfaction w/ Samantha Kitchen of Radic8 Ltd from HITS2018 HCAHPS and the Patient Safety vs. Patient Satisfaction Conundrum w/ Christine Greene and Maurits Hughes from HITS2018   Join our Community! Trying to drive change within your healthcare organization? Launching a new product? Having trouble getting decision makers attention and buy-in? We'll help you understand the whole picture so that you can align your innovation with the things decision makers care about. And then we'll help you execute It's not easy, but it's possible and we'll help you get there.  Sign up here and we'll keep you up to date on healthcare industry news with podcasts, blog posts, conference announcements and more. No fluff. No hype. Just the valuable (and often not-so-obvious) information you need to get things done. Sign up here   The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media. Music by StudioEtar

This is a crossover episode with David Shifrin from The Future of Health Podcast and Health:Further. We cover three main topics that have been coming up a lot on our podcasts:   Care Transitions Anytime a patient is moved from one care delivery location to another you need to have contextualized data exchange. If care coordinators don't have the right data, how could the patient? How can technology help educate patients and increase discharge instruction adherence? Telehealth for post-discharge follow-ups. Use telehealth for increased touchpoints and a better doctor-patient relationship. Bruce Greenstein former HHS CTO, says we must address high utilizers. When you fix big spenders, you free up money for innovation.   Clinical Decision Support How do you help providers be more effective at their job? A reliable, unbiased assistant to help evaluate data more quickly. Examples: ILÚM Health Solutions, VisualDX. Still skepticism around layering another CDS platform on top of an already problematic EHR platform. How do you design something that will fit into the business and the culture? The message is: this is a new way to deliver YOUR care. Binary Fountain – Analytics to find the most effective doctors. Align physicians with one another to encourage sharing of best practices but you need a solid culture to be able to have honest conversations. Dr. Jeff Thompson at Gundersen Health focused on their mission to foster their culture.   Business Realities, Culture, and the New Patient Journey Carrie Liken from Yext (appearing on bo/th podcasts) says the availability of data changes the way patients expect care delivery. The patient's digital expectations are set by Google and Amazon. Focus on your employees having the tools they need to do their job. Dig to find the incremental improvements. There are no silver bullets.    About David Shifrin I am a scientist, writer, and connector. I love data, but I know that it doesn't always speak for itself. Often, the difference between success and failure is a good narrative surrounding that data. My job is to create that narrative. At Health:Further, I produce, edit and curate content focused on healthcare innovation, working to build a community of people who share the goal of making healthcare accessible, affordable and sustainable. At Filament Life Science Communications, I help life science and healthcare companies create the marketing content they need to display their leadership and grow their audience. I also like three-item lists, with or without the Oxford comma. LinkedIn David Shifrin   About Health:Further Health:Further is an open community focused on the future of health. We are driven to pursue two difficult ideals: that health is a human right, and that health must be supported affordably and sustainably. We are providers, payers, politicians and practitioners. We are investors, innovators, artists and activists. We are all patients, and together, we will create the ideal future of health. Twitter Health:Further LinkedIn Health:Further Facebook Health:Further https://www.healthfurther.com/   About The Future of Health Podcast This podcast is where we come to hear from entrepreneurs, startup founders, healthcare executives, service providers, healthcare educators, and patient advocates to figure out what we can do to build a healthier society and use technology to care for real people. The Future of Health Podcast   Join our Community! Trying to drive change within your healthcare organization? Launching a new product? Having trouble getting decision makers attention and buy-in? We'll help you understand the whole picture so that you can align your innovation with the things decision makers care about. And then we'll help you execute. It's not easy, but it's possible and we'll help you get there. Sign up here and we'll keep you up to date on healthcare industry news with podcasts, blog posts, conference announcements and more. No fluff. No hype. Just the valuable (and often not-so-obvious) information you need to get things done. Sign up here   The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media. Music by StudioEtar

The social determinants of health (SDOH) are a hot topic in the healthcare industry. And rightly so: "Social, economic, and environmental issues have been shown to influence the length and quality of life by 50%, according to community health research. In comparison, only 20% is tied to the clinical care provided to community residents." Virginia Gurley, Sr. Vice President and Chief Medical Officer at AxisPoint Health But SDOH is not a new concept - it's just modern terminology for something called Social Epidemiology. What's new, is the ability to apply SDOH data to expand existing predictive models of risk stratification. By identifying the patients that are at the highest risk both clinically and socially, you can help care coordinators get much more tactical and concrete about supporting the individual. On this episode, Dr. Virginia Gurley, Sr. Vice President and Chief Medical Officer at AxisPoint Health joins us to explain how to put SDOH data to work.  Read the full post here: http://thehcbiz.com/ep82-sdoh-virginia-gurley/ ‎   The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media.

If you're a medical practice, 4 major industry waves are rocking your boat. New demands bring new opportunities for fast practices that can quickly get physician alignment around a strategy that will maintain physician autonomy and increase reimbursement. Equally as important, the patient expectation has changed. They demand convenience and flexibility and want to interact with their care in new and innovative ways. Physicians can accept this, or ignore it at their own peril.  I'm fortunate to be joined today by Ken Comée, CEO of Carecloud who will shed some light on these 4 waves: Migration to a modern, cloud-based infrastructure Practice consolidation Value-based care Consumerism and the new patient expectation We break down what the 4 waves are, what they mean for practices and how practices can capitalize on the change. Enjoy!   0:56 What does CareCloud do and who do you do it for? 2:40 The smartphone has changed everything. What do doctors need to do to modernize? 4:00 Who are your customers? How has that changed as your company has grown? How has consolidation in the Health IT marketplace affected you? 6:08 The 1st Wave is a migration to a modern and cloud-based environment. It creates efficiencies and is needed for an interconnected, interoperable future. 9:30 The 2nd Wave is acceleration towards consolidation and rollups of physicians. You need IT infrastructure to rollup brick and mortar medical practices. 12:58 Hospitals need to re-evaluate what they are offering to compete with outpatient surgery centers. 14:33 The 3rd Wave is Value-Based Care. VBC means physicians are required to be more active in terms of outcomes. You must engage with patients earlier, more regularly, and over a longer period of time. Independent medical practices will be able to thrive if they can build an active and loyal patient base. 16:23 What do you see with people trying to prepare for a VBC future while still living in a Fee For Service now? Outcomes of medical care need to be thought of as if the consumer has options and can go somewhere else. They can. Attract. Serve. Retain. 20:00 What is the patient's experience with your practice from the first second they know you exist? Must have a holistic approach to end to end experience. Cloud infrastructure lets physicians thrive. 22:31 The 4th Wave is patient expectations and consumerism. Average out of pocket expense is going up and your patient experience could make or break you. I mean, Clipboards? Really? 25:50 Patients need to find info with as little friction as possible. Put your hours and prices on the web. Provide as much decision-making information as possible to prevent the patient from having to call and ask a question. 28:55 What do the 4 Waves mean for the practice listening? Every practice has different pain points. The Cloud can solve those pains and set you up for future growth. 31:22 What does all of this mean for CareCloud? Their platform is an all-in-one solution that can generate data that allows you to provide better care and proactive care for your patients. 33:55 What are the big tech giants up to? What are they going to do that impacts midmarket practices trying to stay independent? Amazon is going after the consumer experience. Their biggest impact is on facilitating the expectation of ease and simplicity for patients. Physicians need to be aligned with that. Amazon is doing it with their employees to show that it can be done. 36:29 Opening their own clinics? Amazon/Apple. Smart players are sometimes not the one that goes in first. They're watching innovative companies like Forward and OneMedical to see how they do and whether they should build or buy. 38:11 To use CareCloud, do you have to use both front and back office software? We're flexible. It's very easy for pieces to integrate with your current system. We ask, “How do we get you on the path to a cloud-based infrastructure with the least disruption so we can ensure success." 43:00 What is your biggest opportunity as a company coming from the 4 Waves? Interoperability. Carecloud is FHIR API certified. Going deep in cloud infrastructure means we can partner with Amazon and apply machine learning so practice systems get smarter. 45:02 Where can you find us? If you're a partner and want to integrate with our platform we have a robust partner program where you can download our APIs and work with them in real time. Our service and training side of the business is looking to expand. 46:19 What's your partnership model for apps on your system? Open system. Nothing but. We can't build everything. We integrate with care coordination, pop health, telemedicine, service or product side as extensions to our platform. Contact us for a discussion then apply. ...  About Ken Comée Ken Comée is CEO of CareCloud, the cloud-based software and services platform focusing exclusively on supporting high-growth medical groups. Ken joined CareCloud as CEO in 2015 after serving on the company's Board of Directors while an Executive-in-Residence at Norwest Venture Partners. Ken brings to CareCloud a track record of building high performing organizations and helping early-stage companies reach their full potential and value. Ken is a seasoned technology industry executive who has had a successful track record leading growth companies to achieve high-value strategic exists. Prior to joining CareCloud, Ken led several technology companies spanning the software, big data and analytics spectrum. Among these companies was Cast Iron Systems, a platform for integrating cloud-based applications from SaaS providers with on-premise applications. Ken managed Cast Iron's turnaround, successfully positioning the company for its sale to IBM, which bought the company to serve as a foundational element of its cloud strategy. As CEO of PowerReviews, which provided technology and tools for retailers and e-commerce companies to host product reviews on their websites, Ken orchestrated the company's acquisition to its largest competitor, Bazaarvoice. In addition to his roles as CEO, Ken has served as an executive advisor and on the board of directors for several new ventures, including BeyondCore, which was acquired by Salesforce.com, and Simpplr, a social intranet company focused on improving employee engagement. Ken's role as an advisor reflects his personal mission to help shape the next generation of CEOs. In addition to mentoring up and coming entrepreneurs, Ken also is committed to supporting philanthropies and non-for-profits that are making a meaningful difference in promoting health and quality of life. He most recently participated in the “Real Men Wear Pink of Miami” campaign to support the American Cancer Society. Ken earned his MBA from the London Business School and a BSc from Santa Clara University. A recent transplant from Silicon Valley to Miami, Ken enjoys spending his free time on the water and exploring South Florida. ... About CareCloud CareCloud is the leading provider of cloud-based revenue cycle management, practice management (PM), electronic health record (EHR), patient experience management (PXM), and telemedicine solutions for high-growth medical groups. CareCloud helps clients increase profitability, streamline workflow and improve patient care nationwide. The company currently manages more than $4.2 billion in annualized accounts receivable on its integrated clinical and financial platform. To learn more about CareCloud, visit www.carecloud.com. Links: Twitter: @CareCloud LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/carecloud/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carecloud/ Website: carecloud.com ... Related and/or Mentioned on the Show The New Patient Journey and its Impact on Healthcare Marketing | Carrie Liken | Yext ... Subscribe to Weekly Updates If you like what we're doing here, then please consider signing up for our weekly newsletter. You'll get one email from me each week detailing: New podcast episodes and blog posts. Content or ideas that I've found valuable in the past week. Insider info about the show like stats, upcoming episodes and future plans that I won't put anywhere else. Plain text and straight from the heart :) No SPAM or fancy graphics and you can unsubscribe with a single click anytime. ... The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media. Music by StudioEtar

Virtual Care. Telehealth. Telemedicine. Whatever you call it, there are very real benefits to patients and health systems when you do Virtual Care right. But there are many obstacles too. On this episode, we talk with Courtney Stevens, Director of Virtual Care at Henry Ford Health System and Brian Young, Director of Healthcare Solutions Marketing at Vidyo about how to develop a Virtual Care strategy, gain buy-in from clinicians and patients, deliver service and measure success along the way. They provide a comprehensive overview of the process from start to finish with actionable advice about what to do at each step of the journey. Highlights from "How to Launch and Grow a Virtual Care Service" 1:36 Henry Ford Health System is celebrating 100 years of helping patients! 3:00 Vidyo specializes in digital enablement. They manage a portfolio of capabilities that allow doctors to deliver care digitally. 4:15 Is it Telehealth or Telemedicine? Neither. It's Virtual Care. 9:58 What does virtual care mean at Henry Ford Health System and how has it impacted care? 14:45 Internal messaging is huge for getting staff through training and the inevitable hurdles. 16:08 Be the Myth Buster. Pay attention because the myths keep changing at each phase of the adoption curve even within the organization. 18:53 Valid concerns were raised that helped us improve our final product. Plan, do, check, ask cycles of learning are in our DNA! 20:40  Barriers to adoption are all about shifting mindset. "Personalized healthcare without borders." You need someone who can lead the charge. 27:15 Admin vs Clinician concerns. Battling the misconception of cost. Pay close attention to the impact on staffs workflow. Everyone needs to get involved and get trained. 29:55 Store and Forward Messaging Visits are kind of like an email. Patients can initiate care from home by entering information into a questionnaire. The provider will review it and gets back to you. 32:25 What's the use case for video? It starts with remote specialist access from hospital to rural communities. Stroke care is huge. 34:14 You need a regulatory strategy. How is reimbursement? Telehealth in Michigan has a parody of coverage law but no parody of pay so payors can reimburse visits at a different rate. So far, 38 other states have telehealth parody laws. We get into the details here. 38:52 The difference in reimbursement between in-person and telehealth is that you only get paid for the professional portion of the code, not the facility portion of the code. The clinic to clinic model is more widely accepted across government and commercial payers. 42:00 In 2020, all ACOs will be able to include 'home' as the originating site. Employers see it as a way to keep costs down. 43:20 There are so many great use cases where reimbursement doesn't even matter. So even for organizations that are skeptical of the reimbursement models should investigate ways to improve access, post-ops, care plan adherence, reducing no-shows, and more. Don't let reimbursement be your only factor. 44.37 Vidyo's tech. What are you doing for Henry Ford Health? How do you integrate? What does the patient see? 50:00 What is the feedback from patients? 52:46 How do you measure ROI? I think this is the most metrics we've ever had listed by a guest on this show. Get ready to write this down. ... Courtney Stevens, MsEM:  Director, Virtual Care at the Henry Ford Health System Courtney Stevens has been with the HFHS for over 10 years. She started at HFHS in Process Improvement as a management engineer, where she has applied her industrial engineering and project management skills to various projects to aid in health system integration and alignment. She transitioned to Customer Engagement where she helped to improve the customer experience through project management, data/root cause analysis, training, and process improvement initiatives. Courtney was integral in the development and deployment of various system-wide (over 24,000 team members) trainings, as well as a standard system approach to leadership rounding. As of 2016 Courtney accepted a leadership role in Virtual Care developing the strategy and standards for telehealth expansion throughout Henry Ford Health System's continuum of care. These applications, including remote monitoring, E-Visits, Clinic to Clinic telemedicine appointments/consults, MyChart Post Op Follow-Ups, and MyChart Mobile Video Visits, produced over 100 virtual visits/consults in 2015, over 3200 visits/consults in 2016, and over 4700 visits/consults in 2017, saving patients almost 67,000 miles or 86 days of travel and providers over 11,000 miles or over 50 clinic days of travel. Courtney has a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from Western Michigan University and Masters of Science in Engineering Management from Wayne State University. She also has 4 years of experience as a Senior Product Engineer at TRW Automotive Occupant Safety Systems in their driver side airbag and steering wheel division. Email: cstevens2@hfhs.org ... About Brian Young:  Brian Young currently works for Vidyo, Inc. as the Director of Healthcare Solutions Marketing. Brian is responsible for driving Vidyo's go-to-market strategy within the healthcare marketplace. As an expert in product strategy and strategic marketing Brian has spent the last 20 years helping healthcare providers, payers and patients use innovative technologies to become more interconnected, and to tell their stories. Brian currently resides in Chattanooga, TN with his wife and three children. ... About Henry Ford Health System:  Henry Ford Health System is a Michigan not-for-profit corporation governed by a 17-member Board of Trustees. Our advisory and affiliate boards comprising more than 100 Trustee volunteer leaders provide vital links to the communities we serve. Wright Lassiter III is the president and chief executive officer. As one of the nation's leading comprehensive, integrated health systems, we provide health insurance and health care delivery, including acute, specialty, primary and preventive care services backed by excellence in research and education. Founded in 1915 by auto pioneer Henry Ford, we are committed to improving the health and well-being of a diverse community. https://www.henryford.com/ https://www.henryford.com/services/virtual-care ... About Vidyo:  Our vision is to connect the world by video-enabling any application or idea. Vidyo delivers the highest quality cloud video conferencing service, on-premises solutions and platform-as-a-service for market leaders and innovative upstarts. Vidyo is used by nearly 400 health systems representing over 4500 hospitals. Vidyo web site Vidyo Healthcare 2nd Annual Vidyo Healthcare Summit, December 3-5, 2018, Scottsdale, AZ Making Telehealth Work for You, The Ultimate Guide whitepaper 2018 Trends in Telemedicine - Complimentary eBook Vidyo APIs allow you to rapidly embed real-time group video chat into your app ... Related and/or Mentioned on the Show:  CMS telehealth fact sheet (PDF) American Telemedicine Association National Telehealth Resource Center Center for Connected Health Policy Podcast: HIMSS18: Nathaniel Lacktman | Asynchronous Telemedicine | Foley & Lardner LLP ... Subscribe to Weekly Updates If you like what we're doing here, then please consider signing up for our weekly newsletter. You'll get one email from me each week detailing: New podcast episodes and blog posts. Content or ideas that I've found valuable in the past week. Insider info about the show like stats, upcoming episodes and future plans that I won't put anywhere else. Plain text and straight from the heart :) No SPAM or fancy graphics and you can unsubscribe with a single click anytime.  ... The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media. Music by StudioEtar

This episode is part of our in-depth coverage of the Healthcare Infection Transmission Systems Consortium (HITS) 2018 conference in Nashville, TN that took place September 18-20th. Check out all our HITS 2018 episodes here, and look for more throughout the month of October. There are plenty of reasons to be concerned with air quality in the hospital environment. The obvious ones are related to patient safety, but as we move toward a more consumer-directed healthcare system and as CMS continues to incentivize a positive patient experience through HCAHPS surveys (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) and other programs, it's important to address patient perception too. On this episode, we're talking clean air and patient satisfaction with Samantha Kitchen, Director at Radic8 Ltd. Sammy explains how a well-placed air quality system can eliminate air contaminants, alleviate foul smells that leave a bad impression, and give patients peace of mind. A few highlights from our conversation with Radic8:  After becoming the gold standard for air sterilization in Canada, Radic8 is ready to bring us new tech from the UK that can reduce airborne viruses by 99.9999%. The primary challenge is still about educating hospitals. The message: you can control what you touch but can't control what you breathe. Radic8 is wall-mounted, circulating sterilized air within the room. This allows you to maintain air quality standards with no need to heat, cool or treat the air, bringing HVAC costs down. Radic8 helps with HCAHPS and patient satisfaction scores. The reduction in strange smells is huge for helping patients feel like they're in a clean environment. Home units are available too. With Hextio, Radic8 used the same hospital virus-killing technology and shrunk it into a compact, 12-inch unit that provides a direct flow of clean air to your child, workplace, or in a hotel. It's great to have large units in the hospital but people need this everywhere. Radic8.com looking for partners in the US ... This episode was recorded on site at the HITS 2018 conference in Nashville, TN. Check out all our HITS 2018 episodes here, and look for more throughout the month of October. Thank you to HITS, Christine Greene of NSF International, Kelly Reynolds of the University of Arizona and Michael Diamond of The Infection Prevention Strategy for working with us on this conference coverage. It was a great event, in a great city, attended by true heroes of Infection Prevention and Control from all over the world. Be sure to check out the next HITS conference in August 2019 in Buffalo, NY! ... About The HITS 2018 Conference:  The HITS 2018 Conference was held on September 18-20th in Nashville, TN.   HITS 2018 offers a unique forum for the exchange of knowledge and experience in the prevention of healthcare-associated infections and promoting “hospital health”.  The 2018 HITS “Catalyst for Change” Conference is a working conference, bringing together research scientists, industry and healthcare professionals for an interdisciplinary and dynamic approach. We work together to understand and prevent the transmission of pathogens throughout the hospital facility through a collaborative effort that includes engaging in applied research.  The conference is accredited as a provider for continuing education units (CEUs) through National Environmental Health Association (NEHA) and National Board of Public Health Examiners (NBPHE). Join us for this one-of-a-kind, multimodal event where researchers and experts from across disciplines will work toward identifying research gaps and applying data-driven methods in the field. Meet, greet and share ideas with the individuals and organizations who are growing and sustaining the industry as we explore creative and innovative solutions to this global problem. The full 2018 schedule can be found at https://hitsconsortium.org/2018-nashville/2018-schedule/ The HITS organizing committee has assembled world experts and key opinion leaders to share their knowledge and expertise. We host a research poster session to hear from those in healthcare about the research being conducted in their facilities.  We also incorporate workshop breakout sessions each day in order to provide a unique forum through which everyone can interact and be innovative as we work to identify potential solutions to key barriers and develop an agenda for change moving forward into the next year.  After the conference, members have the opportunity to become involved in one of the many research workgroups conducting research around pathogen transmission in healthcare. Check out highlights from the HITS 2017 conference: https://hitsconsortium.org/2017-hits-highlight-reel/ For media inquiries:  https://hitsconsortium.org/media/ For more information, please visit the HITS Consortium website: https://hitsconsortium.org/ or email us: info@HITSconsortium.org Checkout our conference preview episode: HITS 2018 A Catalyst for Change in Infection Control - Episode 67 w/ Dr. Christine Greene and Dr. Kelly Reynolds. ... About Samantha Kitchen:  Experienced Company Director with a demonstrated history of working in the environmental services industry. Strong business development professional skilled in Customer Service, Strategic Planning, Business Development, Marketing Strategy, and Public Speaking. Samantha Kitchen on LinkedIn ... About Radic8:  Radic8 is an independent air purification company based in the UK. With a strong belief that everybody has the right to clean air, Radic8 are passionate about innovating and distributing the very best technology in their field. The Infection Prevention Strategy named Radic8's Viruskiller Technology as one of its Top Innovations of the Year: 2018. Radic8 Website Hextio ... Related and/or Mentioned on the Show:  Check out all the #HCBiz Show! Infection Prevention and Control coverage. ... Subscribe to Weekly Updates:  If you like what we're doing here, then please consider signing up for our weekly newsletter. You'll get one email from me each week detailing: New podcast episodes and blog posts. Content or ideas that I've found valuable in the past week. Insider info about the show like stats, upcoming episodes and future plans that I won't put anywhere else. Plain text and straight from the heart :) No SPAM or fancy graphics and you can unsubscribe with a single click anytime. ... The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media. Music by StudioEtar

This episode is part of our in-depth coverage of the Healthcare Infection Transmission Systems Consortium (HITS) 2018 conference in Nashville, TN that took place September 18-20th. Check out all our HITS 2018 episodes here, and look for more throughout the month of October. The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) measures a patient's satisfaction with the quality of their care during their stay at the hospital. It measures things like staff communication and attentiveness, discharge information, food service, and the hospital environment. These are important measures and every hospital should strive for excellence in each of them (we talked about this in our last episode). However, and as is often the case in healthcare, the HCAHPS survey can have unintended consequences. Typically, the Environmental Services Department (EVS) is given responsibility for the hospital environment portion of the score. And this too makes sense. They're the ones cleaning the rooms, emptying the trash, and ensuring that the patient has a comfortable environment to heal in. However, the most important responsibility for EVS is to ensure the environment is safe and HCAHPS does nothing to measure that. There is no measure that grades the EVS staff on how well they prevent the spread of pathogens through the hospital. This becomes a problem when pressures mount to improve HCAHPS scores. It creates an environment where EVS staff are forced to focus on the perception issues, and with shrinking staff sizes, it often comes at the expense of doing their most important work. On this episode, we talk with Christine Greene, MPH, Ph.D., Principal Research Investigator at NSF International and President of HITS and Maurits Hughes, Director of Logistics and Support Services at Michigan Medicine about how to deal with the patient satisfaction vs. patient safety conundrum. It's a challenge that requires proper education for staff and leadership about the importance of EVS' role in the hospital and the alignment of EVS and other critical teams like Infection Control. It also requires a new attitude towards EVS staff. They aren't just custodians or housekeepers... they are Infection Prevention Technicians. We can do a lot for patients by elevating the stature of and support for the EVS team. HCAHPS and the Patient Safety vs. Patient Satisfaction Conundrum:  1:46 Measuring Environmental Services (EVS) with HCAHPS: What sounds good on paper doesn't always work in practice. 2:40 The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) measures a patient's satisfaction with the quality of their care during their stay at the hospital. The problem with tying patient perception of cleanliness to reimbursement is that it creates the conundrum of patient satisfaction vs patient safety. Contamination removal does not increase patient satisfaction. 4:55 Environmental Services (EVS) at Michigan Health are closely aligned with Infection Prevention (IP). In the 30 minutes a day EVS is in a patient room, staff must make the room look clean, remove the clutter of medical supplies, ensure trash doesn't get too full, all while trying to stay as quiet as possible to improve HCAHPS scores. 6:20 HCAHPS has nothing to do with patient safety. It sounds good on paper but doesn't really measure if the patient is actually safe. 7:30 EVS must partner with IP and use tools to help them measure if the staff is cleaning to necessary levels. Cut-backs on staff and resources mean each staff member is being expected to do more in a given day. The culture of cleaning excellence is compromised by not respecting the folks who do the cleaning. If these frontline employees are, "the tip of the spear against pathogens" how do we make sure they're treated, compensated, trained and supplied like it? 10:20 Remind employees that they are Infection Prevention Technicians (as opposed to custodians or housekeepers) and their role is to prevent the spread of infections and save lives. All services are hospital services. 12:22 The industry has not made investments in training for EVS. Getting the lab and IP staff to help educate the C-Suite would be huge. 13:20 How do you quantify the value that EVS brings to the organization? Michigan Health uses ATP testing, microbial swab testing, gel marking and special procedures in ED and other high priority areas to track EVS effectiveness. We share the results with leadership. 14:45 A "Bundled" approach to accountability. EVS, IP, and nursing staff are all responsible for taking action if a patient has an infection. Tests that determine if a surface has been wiped vs. decontaminated can help you better prioritize which processes need improvement. 17:30 A Quality Assurance program that uses the latest technology can help validate who infection control committees should focus on. 19:30 How do you get people to see EVS as a protector of ROI and prioritize cleaning at the level needed? 22:50 HCAHPS doesn't align with the goals of infection prevention and that's a huge disservice to patient safety. It leads to EVS focusing on the perception of cleanliness and quiet first, and safety second. The smell of the chemicals might be bad but we're not cleaning a fast-food restaurant, we're cleaning to save lives. To improve HCAHPS scores we need adequate levels of staff, training of staff, access to facilities and a team approach to preparing patients for a safe environment. 25:00 This issue won't manifest itself immediately and requires a long-term strategic prioritization or eventually it will prevent you from doing other things you're trying to accomplish. On the HITS Consortium and HITS Conference: “I think change will occur by getting more EVS and IP leaders involved in this sort of initiative but it is going to require us to change the paradigm and change the model of how EVS is perceived and managed throughout the healthcare facilities.” - Maurits Hughes ... This episode was recorded on site at the HITS 2018 conference in Nashville, TN. Check out all our HITS 2018 episodes here, and look for more throughout the month of October. Thank you to HITS, Christine Greene of NSF International, Kelly Reynolds of the University of Arizona and Michael Diamond of The Infection Prevention Strategy for working with us on this conference coverage. It was a great event, in a great city, attended by true heroes of Infection Prevention and Control from all over the world. Be sure to check out the next HITS conference in August 2019 in Buffalo, NY! ... About The HITS 2018 Conference:  The HITS 2018 Conference was held on September 18-20th in Nashville, TN.   HITS 2018 offers a unique forum for the exchange of knowledge and experience in the prevention of healthcare-associated infections and promoting “hospital health”.  The 2018 HITS “Catalyst for Change” Conference is a working conference, bringing together research scientists, industry and healthcare professionals for an interdisciplinary and dynamic approach. We work together to understand and prevent the transmission of pathogens throughout the hospital facility through a collaborative effort that includes engaging in applied research.  The conference is accredited as a provider for continuing education units (CEUs) through National Environmental Health Association (NEHA) and National Board of Public Health Examiners (NBPHE). Join us for this one-of-a-kind, multimodal event where researchers and experts from across disciplines will work toward identifying research gaps and applying data-driven methods in the field. Meet, greet and share ideas with the individuals and organizations who are growing and sustaining the industry as we explore creative and innovative solutions to this global problem. The full 2018 schedule can be found at https://hitsconsortium.org/2018-nashville/2018-schedule/ The HITS organizing committee has assembled world experts and key opinion leaders to share their knowledge and expertise. We host a research poster session to hear from those in healthcare about the research being conducted in their facilities.  We also incorporate workshop breakout sessions each day in order to provide a unique forum through which everyone can interact and be innovative as we work to identify potential solutions to key barriers and develop an agenda for change moving forward into the next year.  After the conference, members have the opportunity to become involved in one of the many research workgroups conducting research around pathogen transmission in healthcare. Check out highlights from the HITS 2017 conference: https://hitsconsortium.org/2017-hits-highlight-reel/ For media inquiries:  https://hitsconsortium.org/media/ For more information, please visit the HITS Consortium website: https://hitsconsortium.org/ or email us: info@HITSconsortium.org Checkout our conference preview episode: HITS 2018 A Catalyst for Change in Infection Control - Episode 67 w/ Dr. Christine Greene and Dr. Kelly Reynolds. ... About Christine Greene, MPH, PhD:  Principal Research Investigator at NSF International Dr. Greene is the Principal Research Investigator for the Sanitation and Contamination Control unit of the Applied Research Center at NSF International.  She has over 10 years of experience in epidemiological and laboratory research.   She holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Health Sciences and an MPH in Hospital and Molecular Epidemiology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her academic research focus has been on healthcare pathogen transmission, pathogen environmental survival, hand hygiene, disinfection and biofilms which has led to multiple publications. At NSF International, Dr. Greene has been making strides to improve public health in the areas of infectious disease prevention and control in clinical, dental and community settings. Her work serves to improve the accuracy of environmental mediated infectious disease transmission modeling, strengthens current guidelines to control healthcare-associated infections and provides new insights that will stimulate innovative approaches to reduce the risk of biofilm-related infections, pathogen transmission and curtail the environmental persistence and transmission of infectious agents. Dr. Greene is a member of the NSF International 444 Joint Committee Standard – Prevention of Injury and Disease Associated with Building Water Systems and serves on the ISO TC 304 working group 3 as the project leader for the healthcare hand hygiene performance and compliance standard.  She serves as a board member for The Infection Prevention Strategy.  Dr. Greene is a co-founder of the Healthcare Infection Transmission Systems (HITS) Consortium – an organization that strives to break down silos in healthcare using a cross-disciplinary, systems approach to addressing the pressing issues around infection control. Email at cgreene@nsf.org ... About Maurits Hughes:  Maurits Hughes is the Director of Logistics and Support Services at Michigan Medicine. He's a dedicated executive with over 20 years of management experience in clinical and non-clinical environments.  Maurits Hughes on LinkedIn ... About the Healthcare Infection Transmission Systems (HITS) Consortium:  The Healthcare Infection Transmission System Consortium is a not-for-profit organization serving the field of infection control and prevention. HITS takes a holistic perspective to targeting healthcare associated infections by including multiple disciplines in the conversation, including infection prevention, environmental services, construction and renovation, facilities management and engineering along with research scientists and industry experts. HITS focuses on the major avenues for pathogen transmission in hospitals:  hands, surfaces, water and air.  HITS provides the necessary, cross-disciplinary platform to share knowledge and engage in research regarding the prevention of healthcare-associated infections and promotion of overall hospital health. @HITSConsortium on Twitter HITS Consortium on LinkedIn ... Related and/or Mentioned on the Show:  The Patient Hot Zone w/ Darrel Hicks Check out all the #HCBiz Show! Infection Prevention and Control coverage. ... Subscribe to Weekly Updates If you like what we're doing here, then please consider signing up for our weekly newsletter. You'll get one email from me each week detailing: New podcast episodes and blog posts. Content or ideas that I've found valuable in the past week. Insider info about the show like stats, upcoming episodes and future plans that I won't put anywhere else. Plain text and straight from the heart :) No SPAM or fancy graphics and you can unsubscribe with a single click anytime. ... The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media. Music by StudioEtar

This episode is part of our in-depth coverage of the Healthcare Infection Transmission Systems Consortium (HITS) 2018 conference in Nashville, TN that took place September 18-20th. Check out all our HITS 2018 episodes here, and look for more throughout the month of October. ... Hospital cleaning is one of the most important activities in Infection Prevention and Control. However, chemical cleaners that aim to kill all of the microbes aren't always as effective as you might think. At least not by themselves. And they have some serious side-effects too. Today's guest is Michael Rochon, a pioneer chemical formulator and President of Process Cleaning Solutions Ltd. Michael explains why physical cleaning followed by disinfecting may be the best approach. It allows us to reduce the microbes to a safe level while lessening the side-effects of harsh chemicals on the hospital environment. Plus, and this is really fascinating, it reduces the spread of microbes that become immune to the chemicals. Just like overuse of antibiotics leads to antibiotic-resistance, over-use of harsh chemicals can lead to chemical resistant microbes. Once you bring in the potential savings from extending the life of hospital surfaces, Michael makes a strong scientific and business case for limiting the use of harsh chemicals in hospital cleaning.   Bringing Science to the Art of Hospital Cleaning Highlights from our conversation: HITS 2018 is about finding better paths forward for stopping the spread of infections. PCS is a company dedicated to cleaning in a scientific manner to reduce environmental contaminants to a safe level. The terrible moment that inspired a campaign to find a safer way to clean. The research in physical wiping techniques that is changing how we clean hospitals and enabling the leap from sporicides to healthier alternatives. Chemical cleaner residues that are toxic promote more resistance to cleaners AND antibiotics. PCS will be publishing research that shows organic acid cleaners, with no synthetic chemicals, and microfiber cloth physical wiping techniques can reduce contaminants to safe levels with 325x less toxicity to aquatic and microbial life. Reducing microbes to safe levels is key. Infection prevention is a continuous event. What's the appropriate target for manageable levels? More chemicals mean more mutations leading to more pathogens. It's a cycle you can't win. We must fix the problem with science! The new goals are to give health centers and schools the ability to test and verify that they are at safe levels. Practical microbial testing in the field gives everyone a way to evaluate their methods. We need to get people to understand the implications of their cleaning methods and use the right tool at the right time. The easiest win for your organization is to separate cleaning from disinfecting. These are two separate jobs. The physical removal of contamination on surfaces makes the disinfectant afterward more effective. This will be very effective at reducing the need for harsh chemicals in your organization. Harsh chemicals do damage to equipment, create more porous surfaces for microbes to cling to. The associated costs of these cleaning products are starting to show up. PCS is based out of Canada. Their organic acid cleaners are very successful with hospitals in Canada, now we want to have even more success with less chemistry needed with a goal of lower than 95%. Disinfectants are also approved and available in all 50 U.S. states and Mexico. In addition to working with HITS 2018 and Michael Diamond, Michael Rochon is also part of The Infection Prevention Strategy (TIPS). In Rochon's advisory role, he is helping TIPS to pioneer new technologies and evaluates the latest science and discoveries.  ... This episode was recorded on site at the HITS 2018 conference in Nashville, TN. Check out all our HITS 2018 episodes here, and look for more throughout the month of October. Thank you to HITS, Christine Greene of NSF International, Kelly Reynolds of the University of Arizona and Michael Diamond of The Infection Prevention Strategy for working with us on this conference coverage. It was a great event, in a great city, attended by true heroes of Infection Prevention and Control from all over the world. Be sure to check out the next HITS conference in August 2019 in Buffalo, NY! ... About The HITS 2018 Conference The HITS 2018 Conference was held on September 18-20th in Nashville, TN.   HITS 2018 offers a unique forum for the exchange of knowledge and experience in the prevention of healthcare-associated infections and promoting “hospital health”.  The 2018 HITS “Catalyst for Change” Conference is a working conference, bringing together research scientists, industry and healthcare professionals for an interdisciplinary and dynamic approach. We work together to understand and prevent the transmission of pathogens throughout the hospital facility through a collaborative effort that includes engaging in applied research.  The conference is accredited as a provider for continuing education units (CEUs) through National Environmental Health Association (NEHA) and National Board of Public Health Examiners (NBPHE). Join us for this one-of-a-kind, multimodal event where researchers and experts from across disciplines will work toward identifying research gaps and applying data-driven methods in the field. Meet, greet and share ideas with the individuals and organizations who are growing and sustaining the industry as we explore creative and innovative solutions to this global problem. The full 2018 schedule can be found at https://hitsconsortium.org/2018-nashville/2018-schedule/ The HITS organizing committee has assembled world experts and key opinion leaders to share their knowledge and expertise. We host a research poster session to hear from those in healthcare about the research being conducted in their facilities.  We also incorporate workshop breakout sessions each day in order to provide a unique forum through which everyone can interact and be innovative as we work to identify potential solutions to key barriers and develop an agenda for change moving forward into the next year.  After the conference, members have the opportunity to become involved in one of the many research workgroups conducting research around pathogen transmission in healthcare. Check out highlights from the HITS 2017 conference: https://hitsconsortium.org/2017-hits-highlight-reel/ For media inquiries:  https://hitsconsortium.org/media/ For more information, please visit the HITS Consortium website: https://hitsconsortium.org/ or email us: info@HITSconsortium.org Checkout our conference preview episode: HITS 2018 A Catalyst for Change in Infection Control - Episode 67 w/ Dr. Christine Greene and Dr. Kelly Reynolds. ... About Michael Rochon Michael Rochon is a pioneer chemical formulator with a successful track record in developing low-odor and zero-V.O.C.-emission cleaning products. Michael's ground breaking work in the field of new technology cleaning formulations has led to many patents including United States Patent 6,346,279 B1 Hydrogen Peroxide Disinfectant with Increased Activity. For the past forty years, Michael has worked in the cleaning supply and contract maintenance industry. Michael's insight and vision led him to develop new technology cleaning formulations presently used in many hospitals. With foresight, he recognized the need for safer and healthier cleaning product formulations for the general public, and especially for the chemically hypersensitive individuals. Michael's efforts in bringing to market low-odor cleaning products garnered him endorsements from several environmental organizations. Michael has also pioneered new technology cleaning formulations for disinfection and sanitization markets. Michael is President of Process Cleaning Solutions, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. Process Cleaning Solutions is a Canadian company devoted to cleaning in such a way as to protect public health, protect the most sensitive, protect the environment and prevent the spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Michael is currently developing cleaning processes that physically remove bacteria and bacterial spores to the same level as disinfectants are required to kill or inactivate for registration as disinfectants. These processes are used with PCS products registered with the United States EPA and Health Canada as disinfectants, allowing institutions to shift the focus to better cleaning of health care facilities in a safer , more effective and sustainable manner. As with Michael's discovery of synergy between hydrogen peroxide, anionic surfactants and inorganic acids he has now discovered a synergy between PCS stabilized sodium hypochlorite's and controlled moisture cleaning with micro fiber cloths. This synergy allows for effective, safer and sustainable cleaning to protect public health including hospital isolation daily and discharge cleaning without the need to supplement cleaning with additional protocols like UV disinfection. Michael also is committed to assisting Health care facilities validate cleaning process with onsite microbial testing. Cleaning to a scientifically validated standard. Michael has presented at numerous conferences including: International Policy Forum, Environmental and Professional Hygiene, Toward the Prevention of Drug Resistant Infections, International Society of Microbial Resistance and Office of International Medical Policy School of Public Policy, George Mason University, 11th World Congress on Environmental Health Vancouver, Sept 2010. Michael is an Advisory Board member at The Infection Prevention Strategy (TIPS). ... About Process Cleaning Solutions Process Cleaning Solutions Ltd. is a new Canadian company devoted to cleaning in such a way as to: • Protect Public Health • Protect The Most Sensitive Among Us • Protect The Environment • Prevent The Spread Of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria PCS has cleaning processes for hospitals, long term care, hospitality, professional service providers, day care and schools. Following a proven cleaning process provides confidence you are cleaning to protect public health. PCS provides all of the components and procedures to achieve consistent excellent results. The PCS definition of cleaning to protect public health is as follows: "Removal of organic surface contamination to very low levels not visually apparent, validated by scientific measurements with ATP monitoring or microbial testing." In its marketing of Process Cleaning Solutions and cleaning processes, PCS is committed to working with all stakeholders to develop practical solutions to removing the most problematic contaminants from environmental surfaces to reducing the risk environmental surfaces pose in transferring disease causing pathogens. Find more information about Process Cleaning Solutions and tons of additional education at: ProcessCleaningSolutions.com ... About the Healthcare Infection Transmission Systems (HITS) Consortium The Healthcare Infection Transmission System Consortium is a not-for-profit organization serving the field of infection control and prevention. HITS takes a holistic perspective to targeting healthcare associated infections by including multiple disciplines in the conversation, including infection prevention, environmental services, construction and renovation, facilities management and engineering along with research scientists and industry experts. HITS focuses on the major avenues for pathogen transmission in hospitals:  hands, surfaces, water and air.  HITS provides the necessary, cross-disciplinary platform to share knowledge and engage in research regarding the prevention of healthcare-associated infections and promotion of overall hospital health. @HITSConsortium on Twitter HITS Consortium on LinkedIn ... Related and/or Mentioned on the Show Dr. Sattar Episode on understanding the spread of infectious agents in the environment. The Infection Prevention Strategy (TIPS) The Infection Prevention Strategy is a registered non-profit. We have created a model of information sharing that makes the process of vetting new technologies, implementing successful programs and inspiring innovation more efficient, more accessible, more global and more collaborative. Our global teams are driven by the firm belief that we should not have to wait years for promising innovations, ideas and processes to be implemented and accepted. Around the world, our teams develop trials and conduct pilot studies to aid in the discovery of successful research to market technological advancements. InfectionControl.tips is a Pan-Access journal that extends globally and touches locally. www.IC.tips is: Free to Publish. Free to Access and provides Accessible Scientific Services.   Check out all of the #HCBiz Show! Infection Prevention and Control coverage. ... Subscribe to Weekly Updates If you like what we're doing here, then please consider signing up for our weekly newsletter. You'll get one email from me each week detailing: New podcast episodes and blog posts. Content or ideas that I've found valuable in the past week. Insider info about the show like stats, upcoming episodes and future plans that I won't put anywhere else. Plain text and straight from the heart :) No SPAM or fancy graphics and you can unsubscribe with a single click anytime. ... The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media. Music by StudioEtar

This episode is part of our in-depth coverage of the Healthcare Infection Transmission Systems Consortium (HITS) 2018 conference in Nashville, TN that took place September 18-20th. Check out all our HITS 2018 episodes here, and look for more throughout the month of October. Benjamin Franklin told us that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. Healthcare-associated infections (HAI) cost U.S. hospitals as much as $45 Billion per year. We've covered many of the ways you can combat HAIs and we just spoke with Michael Rochon (also at HITS 2018) about how to improve our hospital cleaning procedures. Proper hospital cleaning and disinfection certainly satisfies the Franklin axiom, but what if we step back further. How did the contaminants get on the hospital surfaces in the first place? What if we could prevent some of that? Well, that's exactly what today's guests are doing. Many common healthcare procedures create sprays and splashes that spread contaminants to walls, ceilings, floors, and the clinicians' protective gear (Personal Protection Equipment or PPE). If you can prevent that spread in the first place, then cleaning becomes quicker and easier, PPEs last longer and you've really begun to take a stand against the spread of HAIs. On this episode, Al Wickheim and Laura Barker from Prodaptive Medical Innovations join us to explain how the STAL Shield & Stand, an engineered safety control, can provide much more than an ounce of protection against the spread of HAIs. Highlights from our interview: Prodaptive Medical Innovations, President Al Wickheim, Operations Executive Laura Barker Prodaptive Medical Innovations' foundation is based on the concept of providing innovative and simple improvements to existing technology. We try to make good, better. The STAL Shield & Stand is a dome-shaped device the size of a wallet that breaks the chain of infection transmission at the first link. This stops splashes, mists and aerosol sprays during medical procedures from getting onto healthcare workers, patients, and the environment. Cleaning out wounds, oral suction, suction catheters, incision and drainage procedures, wound irrigation, and medication installations can all benefit. A common reaction to this device is: "Well, duh!" The suction catheter is 100 years old. Doctors say, "Why didn't I think of this?"  Square and stand. All in one. Perforated diaphragm. Seals around a variety of instruments. This protects the worker and their PPE (personal protective equipment, anything covering their skin). The healthcare worker takes less contaminate away from the work site and that results in less self-inoculation. Feedback has been good but there has been a big resistance to change. It's an additional procedure and executives with budget restrictions say their hands are tied. It's hard to see the downstream results of reduced CMS fines but you can see reduced cleaning time and faster room turnaround time immediately! The research with Dr. Sattar for irrigation catheters found 99.5% reduction in environmental contamination and 95% contaminate capture at the site. This enhances the effectiveness of the PPE meaning less cleaning supplies, less water needed, less harsh detergents that will extend the life of your equipment, and less laundry. What do you think of the HITS conference? It's a revolutionary wave of innovation to address a global problem and we're loving being a part of it. What does the future hold? Our immediate goal is to expand our worldwide presence. This should be a global product and we have future products coming soon. ...  This episode was recorded on site at the HITS 2018 conference in Nashville, TN. Check out all our HITS 2018 episodes here, and look for more throughout the month of October. Thank you to HITS, Christine Greene of NSF International, Kelly Reynolds of the University of Arizona and Michael Diamond of The Infection Prevention Strategy for working with us on this conference coverage. It was a great event, in a great city, attended by true heroes of Infection Prevention and Control from all over the world. Be sure to check out the next HITS conference in August 2019 in Buffalo, NY! ... About The HITS 2018 Conference: The HITS 2018 Conference was held on September 18-20th in Nashville, TN.   HITS 2018 offers a unique forum for the exchange of knowledge and experience in the prevention of healthcare-associated infections and promoting “hospital health”.  The 2018 HITS “Catalyst for Change” Conference is a working conference, bringing together research scientists, industry and healthcare professionals for an interdisciplinary and dynamic approach. We work together to understand and prevent the transmission of pathogens throughout the hospital facility through a collaborative effort that includes engaging in applied research.  The conference is accredited as a provider for continuing education units (CEUs) through National Environmental Health Association (NEHA) and National Board of Public Health Examiners (NBPHE). Join us for this one-of-a-kind, multimodal event where researchers and experts from across disciplines will work toward identifying research gaps and applying data-driven methods in the field. Meet, greet and share ideas with the individuals and organizations who are growing and sustaining the industry as we explore creative and innovative solutions to this global problem. The full 2018 schedule can be found at https://hitsconsortium.org/2018-nashville/2018-schedule/ The HITS organizing committee has assembled world experts and key opinion leaders to share their knowledge and expertise. We host a research poster session to hear from those in healthcare about the research being conducted in their facilities.  We also incorporate workshop breakout sessions each day in order to provide a unique forum through which everyone can interact and be innovative as we work to identify potential solutions to key barriers and develop an agenda for change moving forward into the next year.  After the conference, members have the opportunity to become involved in one of the many research workgroups conducting research around pathogen transmission in healthcare. Check out highlights from the HITS 2017 conference: https://hitsconsortium.org/2017-hits-highlight-reel/ For media inquiries:  https://hitsconsortium.org/media/ For more information, please visit the HITS Consortium website: https://hitsconsortium.org/ or email us: info@HITSconsortium.org Checkout our conference preview episode: HITS 2018 A Catalyst for Change in Infection Control - Episode 67 w/ Dr. Christine Greene and Dr. Kelly Reynolds. ... About Al Wickheim: Al Wickheim is one of the founders, innovators, and the CEO of Prodaptive Medical. He grew up near Sooke, B.C. doing a variety of shipyard duties for his Dad. Everything from wreck salvage diving off the rugged Westcoast of Vancouver Island to pile-driving and running a modest machine shop. Al spent a fair bit of time “underground' as a spelunker on the Island in his youth – sometimes forcing him into new and unexplored passages and territory. Starting with the local fire department as a volunteer for a couple of years Al next worked for BC Ambulance for 30 years, the last 18 as an Advanced Life Support Paramedic. He has been involved in several major projects for BCAS including managing the EMS outfitting for the B.C. Summer Games in 1986 and overseeing the preparation of 36 ambulances for the Commonwealth Games of '88. He was involved in the development and teaching of the recent H1N1 and Infectious Disease Control program for the employer and was a Level 11 CBRNE Tech. He worked for a Kenn Borek Air, a well established operation in Iqaluit and did numerous Med-evac tour on Baffin Island in Canada's far north, to as far as Thule, Greenland. Al is always seeking improvements and refinements, tireless to the end. As an ERU Tech with the Canadian Red Cross Al was in Nepal in 2015 and currently is the Community Coordinator for the JdF Emergency Program in Otter Point. Al's background of innovation and self-sufficiency has taken him through various ventures of construction, hazardous tree topping and falling, bull-dozer and excavator operations. Al and his family live on their farm in the rainforest of southern Vancouver Island where he does wilderness and big tree tours to remote regions of the Island. At home, he works on managing the adventures established and coming up with new projects at a fairly constant rate. He enjoys astronomy and, well, work. ... About Prodaptive Medical Innovations:   Prodaptive Medical develops and markets solutions to problems and shortcomings in clinical medical equipment. The partnership of two well seasoned emergency care providers with overlapping areas of expertise has resulted in the development of Prodaptive's first product to market, the STAL Shield and Stand. In 2009 Al Wickheim took an idea from concept to product addressing an obvious need to the biohazard concerns inherent in the use of the Yankauer suction device. SARS had struck a deadly blow in Toronto a few years before and H1N1 loomed. While initially designed as a shielding device, it was apparent that the STAL served numerous other functions as well such as a stand. As an adjunct to half a dozen medical instruments used in Aerosol Generating Procedures – AGP's, the STAL Shield's versatility and effectiveness makes it the preferred choice when it comes to at-source medical bio-hazard blockade and confinement. Other products are on the drawing boards and with input from practitioners, patients and manufacturing specialists Prodaptive Medical sees growth ahead where the status quo is no longer good enough. At Prodaptive ‘Making good better‘, is what we do. The STAL Shield & Stand was recognized as one of InfectionControl.tips Top Innovations of the Year: 2017 Prodaptive Medical is part of the TIPS Sudden Science program, which provides support and resources to advance their innovation into the market. www.prodaptivemedical.com The STAL Shield & Stand Prodaptive Medical on Facebook Prodaptive Medical on LinkedIn Breaking the Chain at the First Link - A critical evaluation and research paper on the STAL Shield & Stand's effectiveness on InfectionControl.Tips. ... About the Healthcare Infection Transmission Systems (HITS) Consortium The Healthcare Infection Transmission System Consortium is a not-for-profit organization serving the field of infection control and prevention. HITS takes a holistic perspective to targeting healthcare associated infections by including multiple disciplines in the conversation, including infection prevention, environmental services, construction and renovation, facilities management and engineering along with research scientists and industry experts. HITS focuses on the major avenues for pathogen transmission in hospitals:  hands, surfaces, water and air.  HITS provides the necessary, cross-disciplinary platform to share knowledge and engage in research regarding the prevention of healthcare-associated infections and promotion of overall hospital health. @HITSConsortium on Twitter HITS Consortium on LinkedIn ... Related and/or Mentioned on the Show: Dr. Sattar Episode on understanding the spread of infectious agents in the environment. Check out all of the #HCBiz Show! Infection Prevention and Control coverage. ... Subscribe to Weekly Updates: If you like what we're doing here, then please consider signing up for our weekly newsletter. You'll get one email from me each week detailing: New podcast episodes and blog posts. Content or ideas that I've found valuable in the past week. Insider info about the show like stats, upcoming episodes and future plans that I won't put anywhere else. Plain text and straight from the heart :) No SPAM or fancy graphics and you can unsubscribe with a single click anytime. ... The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media. Music by StudioEtar

This episode is part of our in-depth coverage of the Healthcare Infection Transmission Systems Consortium (HITS) 2018 conference in Nashville, TN that took place September 18-20th. Check out all our HITS 2018 episodes here, and look for more throughout the month of October. Adapted from Jason "The Germ Guy" Tetro's Opening Keynote at HITS 2018   Have you ever written the perfect checklist? You left no stone unturned and accounted for every possible step that needed to occur. You trained your staff. Everyone was understood and was on board. But you still failed. Today's guest would tell you that you failed because you took a systematic approach when you really needed a systems approach. A systematic approach takes all the facts into consideration and manifests itself as guidelines, a checklist or standard operating procedure (SOP). It's based in science and best practice. On paper, it makes all the sense in the world. A systems approach considers much more. How does your guideline fit in with the culture of those that will carry it out? Forget whether or not they'll believe it. The question is, will they follow it?  A systems approach requires empathy. It works because it shows people that there's a place for them, and they're culture, within the systematics and steps they need to carry out. This may sound hokey to you. You may shout: “I'm not going to pander to peoples' feelings! I have a business to run!” But you do so at your own peril. You can write your guidelines, checklists and standard operating procedures until you're blue in the face. But if people won't follow them, then you've wasted your time. This, as we like to say on the show, is called confronting reality. On this episode, we're talking with Jason Tetro. He's the microbiologist, author and thought leader better known as The Germ Guy! We recorded this episode live at the Healthcare Infection Transmission System Consortium (HITS) 2018 conference in Nashville, TN where Jason was the opening keynote. In his talk there, Jason explained to us why a systematic approach often falls short in the real world, and why an empathic systems approach may be better suited to help you get your job done. This conversation fits the premise of The #HCBiz Show! as well as any we've done to date. Jason's common sense approach to confronting reality in the healthcare system takes us down interesting paths including the patient workflow (yup… they have one), blockchain, gamification, and even Eminem's song, Lose Yourself. This is good stuff. I promise you'll gain a brand new perspective on a thing or two. Here are some highlights: 0:50 The Germ Guy's journey from the lab to the TV. 3:37 Fixing the public's dysfunctional relationship with microbes. 7:44 Keynote – Systematic vs Systems approach to infection control. The Systematic approach is following the guidance documents and standard operating procedures. The Systems approach takes a universal perspective on how to achieve a goal and, through a multifactorial approach, uses current systems to achieve that goal. It all comes down to empathy. 13:39 Empathy is when the system shows you that there is a place for you and your culture.  If it's right on paper but wrong in the real world, you need to confront the reality you're dealing with and allow the workforce to participate the way they need to. 15:05 Innovation, culture, empowerment. When you forget about those 3 things you're taking away your own capacity to make a difference. Don't just follow rules and regulations if you know there is more that could be done. This must be a democratized system that hears all 20 different components to good infection control. 19:48 Quality measures are too distanced from the patient. There is too much bureaucracy in the way to remember the actual purpose of your actions. 20:55 Blockchain could be the potential link between systems and systematic approaches. What if human activities could be viewed as transactions in real time? You can find a way to develop transactional steps between SOPs to see the most common mistakes and fix the system. 24:20 Tokens and gamification of healthcare. The token can be used as proof of actions or accomplishments that can be used for checkpoints or rewards. 27:15 Physician workflow and the patient journey. What can we do within an existing workflow? How do we collect data while doctors are doing normal tasks without interrupting? Include the patient in providing info that will make doctor's jobs easier. 29:18 Examples of infection prevention and the simple but effective parking idea to make visitors wash their hands. 31:20 Robust checklists can shut off your creativity and problem-solving skills but we know they can be helpful. Where is the line? Checklists work until the parameters around checklist have changed.   This episode was recorded on site at the HITS 2018 conference in Nashville, TN. Check out all our HITS 2018 episodes here, and look for more throughout the month of October. Thank you to HITS, Christine Greene of NSF International, Kelly Reynolds of the University of Arizona and Michael Diamond of The Infection Prevention Strategy for working with us on this conference coverage. It was a great event, in a great city, attended by true heroes of Infection Prevention and Control from all over the world. Be sure to checkout the next HITS conference in August 2019 in Buffalo, NY!   About The HITS 2018 Conference   The HITS 2018 Conference was held on September 18-20th in Nashville, TN.   HITS 2018 offers a unique forum for the exchange of knowledge and experience in the prevention of healthcare-associated infections and promoting “hospital health”.  The 2018 HITS “Catalyst for Change” Conference is a working conference, bringing together research scientists, industry and healthcare professionals for an interdisciplinary and dynamic approach. We work together to understand and prevent the transmission of pathogens throughout the hospital facility through a collaborative effort that includes engaging in applied research.  The conference is accredited as a provider for continuing education units (CEUs) through National Environmental Health Association (NEHA) and National Board of Public Health Examiners (NBPHE). Join us for this one-of-a-kind, multimodal event where researchers and experts from across disciplines will work toward identifying research gaps and applying data-driven methods in the field. Meet, greet and share ideas with the individuals and organizations who are growing and sustaining the industry as we explore creative and innovative solutions to this global problem. The full 2018 schedule can be found at https://hitsconsortium.org/2018-nashville/2018-schedule/ The HITS organizing committee has assembled world experts and key opinion leaders to share their knowledge and expertise. We host a research poster session to hear from those in healthcare about the research being conducted in their facilities.  We also incorporate workshop breakout sessions each day in order to provide a unique forum through which everyone can interact and be innovative as we work to identify potential solutions to key barriers and develop an agenda for change moving forward into the next year.  After the conference, members have the opportunity to become involved in one of the many research workgroups conducting research around pathogen transmission in healthcare. Check out highlights from the HITS 2017 conference: https://hitsconsortium.org/2017-hits-highlight-reel/ For media inquiries:  https://hitsconsortium.org/media/ For more information, please visit the HITS Consortium website: https://hitsconsortium.org/ or email us: info@HITSconsortium.org Checkout our conference preview episode: HITS 2018 A Catalyst for Change in Infection Control - Episode 67 w/ Dr. Christine Greene and Dr. Kelly Reynolds.   About the Healthcare Infection Transmission Systems (HITS) Consortium   The Healthcare Infection Transmission System Consortium is a not-for-profit organization serving the field of infection control and prevention. HITS takes a holistic perspective to targeting healthcare associated infections by including multiple disciplines in the conversation, including infection prevention, environmental services, construction and renovation, facilities management and engineering along with research scientists and industry experts. HITS focuses on the major avenues for pathogen transmission in hospitals:  hands, surfaces, water and air.  HITS provides the necessary, cross-disciplinary platform to share knowledge and engage in research regarding the prevention of healthcare-associated infections and promotion of overall hospital health. @HITSConsortium on Twitter HITS Consortium on LinkedIn This episode was recorded on site at the HITS 2018 conference in Nashville, TN. Look for more #HCBiz conference coverage from HITS 2018 coming soon!   About Jason Tetro   Jason Tetro is a visiting scientist at the University of Guelph and has over 25 years of experience in health-related microbiology and immunology. He has worked in numerous fields including bloodborne, food and water pathogens; environmental microbiology; disinfection and antisepsis; and emerging pathogens. In the public, he is better known as The Germ Guy.  He regularly writes for The Huffington Post Canada and is a regular with media outlets worldwide. He has written two books, The Germ Code, which was shortlisted as Science Book of The Year (2014) and The Germ Files, which spent several weeks on the national bestseller list. Jason is an advisory board member of InfectionControl.tips. @JATetro on Twitter www.JasonTetro.com thegermguy@gmail.com The Germ Code The Germ Files: The Surprising Ways Microbes Can Improve Your Health and Life (and How to Protect Yourself from the Bad Ones)   Related and/or Mentioned on the Show: Closing the loop: Larry King's real name is Lawrence Harvey Zeiger. Check out all of the #HCBiz Show! Infection Prevention and Control coverage.   Subscribe to Weekly Updates: If you like what we're doing here, then please consider signing up for our weekly newsletter. You'll get one email from me each week detailing: New podcast episodes and blog posts. Content or ideas that I've found valuable in the past week. Insider info about the show like stats, upcoming episodes and future plans that I won't put anywhere else. Plain text and straight from the heart :) No SPAM or fancy graphics and you can unsubscribe with a single click anytime. --- The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media. Music by StudioEtar  

When it comes to healthcare conferences, it's easy to get stuck in an echo chamber. Too often it's the same ideas about the same topics from the same people. That's why I found last year's Quality Talks event so refreshing. NCQA brought together a varied set of speakers and topics that were guaranteed to offer a fresh perspective to anyone who attended - they certainly did for me. Plus, as a 1-day event, it was easy to get in and get out without disrupting my entire week, and the deep, TED-style talks were a welcome break from the typical stream of panel discussions. Since I enjoyed it so much last year, I decided to give you this short episode to preview the 2018 event. My guest is Andy Reynolds, Assistant VP of Marketing and Communications at NCQA and the master of ceremonies at Quality Talks. Andy tells us about Quality Talks 2018, the tracks and speakers and explains what NCQA is trying to accomplish with the event. Quality Talks 2018 takes place on October 22, 2018, in Washington, DC. Learn more about the event and register here: http://www.qualitytalks.org/   About Quality Talks Quality Talks 2018 takes place on October 22, 2018, in Washington, DC. From the Quality Talks Event page: This isn't your ordinary health care discussion. Quality Talks is a series of stirring, succinct talks by current and emerging health care leaders with ideas about how we can collaboratively improve American health care. In addition to the dynamic and thought-provoking speakers, the event features interactive dialogue among all attendees about advancing the health care system and improving patient care. Quality Talks began in 2015 as part of NCQA's 25th Anniversary and grew so successfully that NCQA made it an annual event. In 2016, this sold-out event was held at a larger venue which enabled us to reach an even wider audience. We hope to continue in 2018 with thought-provoking speakers and continuing the Quality Talks health care discussion. The Goal NCQA wants to look ahead through the eyes of tomorrow's leaders, who are inspiring the future of American health care. The Quality Talks are meant to inspire action to tackle the real and pressing problems in our health care system, and to dismantle barriers to a better future. The Format Far from a conventional conference, this event follows a “TED”-style format. That means the talks are shorter, compelling, memorable and novel in nature. Expect to leave this event hearing something you haven't heard before. Learn more about the conference and register here: http://www.qualitytalks.org/   About Andy Reynolds and NCQA Andy Reynolds is the Assistant VP of Marketing and Communications at NCQA and the master of ceremonies at Quality Talks. NCQA is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to improving health care quality. NCQA accredits and certifies a wide range of health care organizations. It also recognizes clinicians and practices in key areas of performance. NCQA's Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS®) is the most widely used performance measurement tool in health care. NCQA's Web site (ncqa.org) contains information to help consumers, employers and others make more informed health care choices. twitter: @NCQA   Related and/or Mentioned on the Show Quality Talks 2017 | Andy Reynolds | NCQA - last year's preview episode with Andy Reynolds Digital Quality Measures 2.0 | Rick Moore | NCQA - a conversation on the future of quality measurement with NCQA's CIO Rick Moore. Practical Innovation at the Health IT Expo | John Lynn - Andy discussed the importance of bringing the patient perspective on stage and I mentioned that the Health IT Expo had a patient as the opening keynote at their inaugural event. LIFE AS A HEALTHCARE CIO - Speaker John Halamka's blog Venture Valkyrie - Speaker Lisa Suennen's blog   Subscribe to Weekly Updates If you like what we're doing here, then please consider signing up for our weekly newsletter. You'll get one email from me each week detailing: New podcast episodes and blog posts. Content or ideas that I've found valuable in the past week. Insider info about the show like stats, upcoming episodes and future plans that I won't put anywhere else. Plain text and straight from the heart :) No SPAM or fancy graphics and you can unsubscribe with a single click anytime.   The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media. Music by StudioEtar

The patient journey has changed drastically in the past 5 years and it's having an outsized impact on healthcare marketing. You know about the "Google-effect", but did you know that 83% of patients are not going to the hospital website to research doctors and services? And now with Alexa, Apple Car Play and Android auto, voice-first is adding a brand new wrinkle. In short, there are many ways for your patients to find you and if you aren't managing the digital landscape, then you're missing out. Proper branding across channels makes it easier to be discovered and signals to your patients that your company is trustworthy. On this episode, me and Shahid Shah are joined by one of healthcare's leading experts on the patient journey, Carrie Liken. Carrie is the Head of Industry for Healthcare at Yext, and she helps us sort it all out. The New Patient Journey and its Impact on Healthcare Marketing 1:51 How has the patient journey changed in the last five years? What sort of impact is it having on healthcare marketing? 2:22 What is Yext? 5:08 Have you checked your address on Google Maps to see if patients are being taken to the right place? 8:00 "Everyone comes to our website. Google doesn't matter." Sorry, wrong answer. 9:40 Technology has changed the patient journey forcing doctors to be more digitally engaged. What is the new patient journey? 13:45 Hospital executives: You must accept that patients are finding information about you and your doctors via external resources that may be outside of your direct control. 15:55 Google search has made small local hospitals the biggest competitor for big city hospitals. People don't want to travel for healthcare and rural hospitals who have optimized across search and media channels are taking market share. 20:58 The new rules of re-targeting in healthcare. 83% of people don't go to hospital websites. How do you find your audience? 26:11 What else will hospitals and clinics benefit from if they already have a lot of patients? 31:50 What's going on with voice search? Most common question: “Where is my doctor located?” 35:18 When it comes to voice search, Carrie says go FOND (First Organic, Next Direct). 37:55 Patients still can't search to see if their doctor is in-network. 42:30 What is it about branding that will suffer if external data is wrong? 45:41 Benefits of managing your "provider directory" well will help with tons of internal processes. Find more #HCBiz coverage here Provider Directory. 46:45 Where should health clinics start? First, talk to patients and collect data. Next is go internal and find where your data lives today. Third, launch and iterate. You can't stop a patient from searching (and potentially finding bad data) so just start now. 51:17 If you are spending money on your website but not the organic discovery of your website, you're doing it wrong. You're only serious if you know how much money you're spending on organic vs direct. Here are the most important KPIs you should be tracking.   About Carrie Liken Carrie Liken joined Yext as the company's first Head of Industry for Healthcare. In her role, Liken leads all healthcare-related activities, including product and partnership development. Over the last fifteen years, Liken has gained experience in the government, legal, nonprofit, and for-profit sectors, focusing on healthcare and health policy. For 8.5 years, she worked for Google, where she worked with healthcare organizations of all sizes to better understand the patient journey, digital's impact on patient and customer acquisition, and how to drive increased revenue and sales through digital means. Find Carrie Liken on LinkedIn   About Yext Yext is the leading Digital Knowledge Management (DKM) platform. Yext's mission is to give organizations control over their brand experiences across the digital universe of maps, apps, search engines, voice assistants and other intelligent services that drive provider discovery, patient decision and action. Today, hundreds of healthcare organizations -- including brands like Vanderbilt Health, Steward Health and OhioHealth -- use the Yext Knowledge Engine™ to manage their digital knowledge in order to boost brand engagement, drive patient acquisition and increase system revenue. Healthcare Industry Page at Yext.com Follow Yext on Twitter Follow Yext on LinkedIn Follow Yext on Facebook   Related and/or Mentioned on the Show The Evolving Patient Experience - white paper / report All of the #HCBiz Provider Directory coverage The #HCBiz Show! Episode 63: Internet Marketing for Healthcare Practices | Garrett Smith | InboundMD Subscribe to Weekly Updates If you like what we're doing here, then please consider signing up for our weekly newsletter. You'll get one email from me each week detailing: New podcast episodes and blog posts. Content or ideas that I've found valuable in the past week. Insider info about the show like stats, upcoming episodes and future plans that I won't put anywhere else. Plain text and straight from the heart :) No SPAM or fancy graphics and you can unsubscribe with a single click anytime.   The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media. Music by StudioEtar

Robotic surgery is a loaded term. Just reading the words can bring Hollywood-inspired images of fully autonomous robot doctors to mind. But that's not what's happening in the industry today. The "robots" are merely tools used by doctors, just like a stethoscope or a scalpel. And they have some interesting use cases and value propositions to health systems. For example, they can act as a great equalizer by helping young surgeons perform subtle movements that would otherwise take them years to perfect. But there's a flip side. Studies like this one from Stanford question the value of robotic tools that yield similar results and raise costs. There's truth to that, but as always, there's nuance and the headlines don't always mean what suggest. Imagine that. On this episode, Shahid Shah and I are joined by Dr. Roger Smith, Chief Technology Officer for Florida Hospital's Nicholson Center for Surgical Advancement. Dr. Smith took a break from profiling surgical robots in his Robot Of The Day series to help us better understand how robotics are impacting surgery. This is one of the more fascinating conversations we've had on the show, and it takes us out of our comfort zone. I hope you enjoy it! Robotic Surgery: Business Cases, Benefits and Myths 2:25 What is robotic surgery? What can it do and what can't it do? 4:40 Why are so many people afraid of this? Are hospitals not explaining this properly or are patients justified in being afraid? 7:00 What does the evidence say about robotic surgery outcomes? What's the advantage that robots bring to surgical procedures? It's all about the rate of improvement. 11:18 A brief history of robotic surgery and the need for updated terminology that segments the variety of robotic devices. 16:16 Assisted procedures vs autonomous robotics. 19:00 What happens to the patient when a robot malfunctions? 22:17 As we look forward to new robots, does the FDA effectively regulate the industry? Are there things the FDA is missing? Surgeons and device makers have different opinions. 27:57 Check out the Software As a Medical Device (SAMD) pre-certification process. The FDA is asking the robotics industry how they would like to be regulated! Submit your answers! Take this opportunity to help them ease your burden. 31:27 What is creating demand on health purchaser side? The 3 big benefits for hospitals 37:20 Cost is a hurdle to adoption. Without robot surgery CPT codes, hospitals get reimbursed the same with or without robots. 41:23 What other benefits do hospitals receive? 45:50 Which surgeries don't need robots? 48:50 Where are the opportunities for innovation in robotic surgery? Who are the big players in robotic surgery?   About Dr. Roger Smith Dr. Roger Smith is the Chief Technology Officer for Florida Hospital's Nicholson Center for Surgical Advancement. He was previously the CTO for U.S. Army Simulation, Training and Instrumentation and a Research Scientist at Texas A&M University. He is also Graduate Faculty at University of Central Florida and President of Simulation First where he provides keynote event presentations and scientific lectures. Roger Smith Linkedin Robot Of The Day on LinkedIn   About The Nicholson Center For over a decade, the Florida Hospital Nicholson Center has trained more than 50,000 physicians from around the globe on leading-edge clinical and surgical techniques. Utilizing state-of-the-art surgical suites, and labs, plus advanced medical simulation robotics and learning centers, medical professionals can acquire and advance their skills in a highly collaborative surgical learning environment. Take advantage of the technology-enhanced operating techniques that are becoming the mainstay of tomorrow's healthcare by training with the Florida Hospital Nicholson Center. We are one of the largest and most experienced medical learning and simulation incubation centers of its kind in the country dedicated to advancing next-generation clinical knowledge. Year after year, our hands-on training techniques have proven to provide key skills needed to advance your medical development and grow your practice.  Florida Hospital Institute for Surgical Advancement The Nicholson Center White Papers   Related and/or Mentioned on the Show Useful website by a heroic anonymous surgeon http://surgrob.blogspot.com/ The da Vinci Surgical System - when most people think about robotic surgery, according to today's guest, this is the one they're thinking of. New Studies Look At Cost And Benefits Of Robotic Surgery - University of Stanford researchers conducted a multiyear analysis and study with 24,000 patients with kidney cancer who needed laparoscopic surgery to remove a patient's kidney indicated that the two approaches had comparable patient outcomes and hospital stays. Researchers analyzed data from 416 hospitals across the country from 2003 to 2015 for the study.   Subscribe to Weekly Updates If you like what we're doing here, then please consider signing up for our weekly newsletter. You'll get one email from me each week detailing: New podcast episodes and blog posts. Content or ideas that I've found valuable in the past week. Insider info about the show like stats, upcoming episodes and future plans that I won't put anywhere else. Plain text and straight from the heart :) No SPAM or fancy graphics and you can unsubscribe with a single click anytime.   The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media. Music by StudioEtar