Definitively Speaking

Healthcare software solutions have come a long way in the last few decades: Once consider nice-to-have workflow enhancements, electronic health records (EHRs) and revenue cycle management (RCM) tools are now ubiquitous in the world of care delivery—leaving vendors to seek competitive advantages through expanded feature sets, agnostic data integration, and other specialized solutions. A. Hadi Chaudhry, CEO and president of CareCloud, joins Justin to discuss the ways EHR and RCM software has evolved, how care delivery organizations should be using them, and what’s coming next.

Justin and Hadi look at the challenges facing EHR and RCM in a changing care delivery landscape: How can tech like telehealth, remote patient monitoring, and artificial intelligence work with EHR and RCM? What’s the right balance of investment in innovation, government compliance, and interoperability? Is true interoperability even on the table—and if so, what role should the government play in driving it?

To learn more about Definitive Healthcare, please visit us at definitivehc.com.

Mid-sized physician groups face a lot of the same problems as major health networks—they just have fewer resources to work with. Blake Wylie, chief technology officer at Montecito Medical, joins Justin to discuss how AI and data-driven strategies can help smaller practices operate more efficiently and overcome common challenges related to recruiting, no-show patients, lack of market insight, and more.

Justin and Blake ask some interesting questions facing both providers and the organizations who work with them: Is 7% of graduating physicians enough to support a healthy mid-sized practice market? How can we get remote patient monitoring tech into more of these practices? And what can healthcare companies learn from Japan’s Keiretsu business model?

To learn more about Definitive Healthcare, please visit us at definitivehc.com.

Nurses consistently rank among America’s most trusted professions, and for a good reason—they're the folks delivering the compassionate care that everyone needs. And yet, nurses are burnt out, striking, and leaving in droves. So, what’s the treatment plan? Rachel Schiff, Chief Product Officer atIntelyCare joins Justin and Todd to shed some light on recent trends in the nursing profession. Rachel discusses how the healthcare industry may address the nursing shortage by empowering nurses with greater agency and flexibility and innovative use of software.

Justin, Todd, and Rachel also grapple with some of the tricky questions that surround nursing: What can be done to make the nursing profession more desirable? Why are so many nurses retiring early? How has the shift to care at home impacted nursing? And how are CVS, Amazon, Walmart, and the broader retailization of healthcare changing the role of nurses?

To learn more about Definitive Healthcare, please visit us at definitivehc.com.

Doctors’ patient loads keep growing, and reinforcements are nowhere in sight. Could the solution be somewhere in cyberspace? Dr. Nayan Kalnad, CEO and co-founder of Avegen, talks with Justin about how digital therapeutics—healthcare software prescribed independently or alongside a drug—are helping overworked physicians focus on the patients who require face-to-face time while still supporting those with less critical needs through remote education, monitoring, and improved care coordination.

Justin and Dr. Kalnad take a look at the challenges facing digital therapeutics and healthcare technology more broadly: How can cutting-edge developers bring risk-averse prescribers and payors on board? Is the industry at a point of oversaturation with digital health tools? And why has technology brought down the unit cost of delivery in every sector aside from healthcare?

To learn more about Definitive Healthcare, please visit us at definitivehc.com.

International shipping has improved since the start of the pandemic, but hospitals are still shouldering the burden of a disrupted supply chain. Kelly Starman, chief marketing officer at PartsSource, talks with Justin about what supply chain recovery really means, how equipment management strategies can save money and improve performance at hospitals and other care facilities, and why macroeconomic trends and geopolitics should be on every facility administrator’s mind.

Justin and Kelly examine the finer details of the healthcare supply chain: Which logistical challenges are unique to medical supplies versus medical equipment? How can hospitals with numerous supply contracts simplify their spending? And is healthcare simply behind other industries when it comes to supply and equipment management?

To learn more about Definitive Healthcare, please visit us at definitivehc.com.

There just aren’t enough specialists to go around, and every position across the care continuum is feeling the strain. Mark Clermont, CEO of Cecelia Health, joins Justin to explain how virtual specialty care could ease the burden on overloaded primary care providers, reduce overall health spending, and help providers and health systems assume the role of healthcare quarterback—without setting patients up to be the football.

Justin and Mark mix metaphors as they tackle topics ranging from the impact of regulations on care integration to the role of telehealth in enabling providers to practice at the top of their licenses. Plus, they turn to personal experience to ask: For all of healthcare’s advancements, why does being a patient still stink?

To learn more about Definitive Healthcare, please visit us at definitivehc.com.

An average of two major healthcare data breaches happen every day—double the rate the industry faced just three years ago. David Ting, CEO and founder of Tausight, talks with Justin about what makes your protected health information (PHI) more valuable to thieves than your social security number, why the industry is better at securing technical infrastructure than data itself, and how neural networking and natural language processing can help providers track and handle patient records more securely.

Justin asks David the hard questions about maintaining data security in an increasingly porous digital landscape: How can the industry leverage digitization without risking compliance or locking clinicians down? Why should patients and providers make situational PHI awareness part of their digital hygiene routines? And what steps can we all take to better secure our data?

To learn more about Definitive Healthcare, please visit us at definitivehc.com.

Can you believe it’s 2023 already? With 2022 in the rearview, Definitively Speaking contributors Todd Bellemare and Brittany Morin-Mezzadri join Justin to discuss their favorite guests, most memorable moments, and recurring themes from the show’s exciting first year. They also look forward to 2023 and offer some insight on the factors that will shape the healthcare industry in the coming year.

Justin, Todd and Brittany revisit some of the highlights from 2022, including thought-provoking conversations around mental self-care with Cara McNulty of CVS Health, the growing role of direct primary care with Beth Holmes of Hint Health, the role of data in healthcare interoperability with Chase Zaputil of Veda, and more. Plus, they share their magic-wand fixes to address the biggest problems facing the U.S. healthcare system.

To learn more about Definitive Healthcare, please visit us at definitivehc.com.

The U.S. healthcare market isn’t exactly known for its efficiency. A quarter of every dollar spent on healthcare in the U.S. covers the transaction itself, and the market frequently limits consumers to a handful of choices. Othman Laraki, CEO of Color Health, joins Justin to share his vision of a more free and open healthcare market with less friction, lower costs, and greater access. Othman and Justin discuss how underutilization of preventive care amplifies expenses downstream, whether decoupling health insurance and clinical networks can improve access, and why efforts on the margins can go a long way toward eliminating friction across the care continuum.

Justin and Othman also brush off their macroeconomics textbooks to examine the market from an academic perspective: Do current payment models manufacture scarcity? Might other industries’ markets offer a positive model for healthcare? And can increased competition keep the market from swallowing the value we put into it? This discussion is literally one for the books.

To learn more about Definitive Healthcare, please visit us at definitivehc.com.

The U.S. healthcare sector generates 19 terabytes of clinical data each year—and that’s doesn’t even include any financial, operational, patient, or systems data. Chase Zaputil, chief growth officer at Veda, joins Justin to talk about all that data: how to measure its quality and value, how to reduce inaccuracy, and why old data isn’t necessarily bad data. Justin and Chase explore the role of data in healthcare interoperability, the current state of pharmacy benefits and drug costs, and how data can help reduce inequity in healthcare.

Justin and Chase also attempt to answer some tricky questions facing the industry: Is the sheer volume of healthcare data actually muddling decision-making? Should the government intervene to promote interoperability? And can pharma manufacturers lower drug prices by getting involved with distribution?

To learn more about Definitive Healthcare, please visit us at definitivehc.com.