The Big Unlock

In this episode, San Banerjee, Vice President of Digital Experience at Texas Health Resources, discusses how they create a connected ecosystem to provide a seamless digital experience for patients wherever they are through digital channels that includes virtual health.

Texas Health Resources completed 100,000 virtual visits in the first ninety days of the pandemic. San says that as we move forward in healthcare, people will get accustomed to using virtual care delivery mechanisms, which will increase its acceptance further. San defines digital front doors as an access mechanism for patients to get services they are looking for. On the other hand, from a consumer perspective, it is all about managing the consumer point of view to access the services that providers can offer.

Healthcare is not just about technology; it is a people-based business. San advises digital health startups to understand how technology enables the healthcare business while keeping in mind people and processes. Take a listen.

In this episode, Marc Probst, who served as CIO of Intermountain Healthcare for 17 years, speaks about digital health technologies, telehealth, virtual visits, and how these will determine the future of healthcare.

According to Marc, the top technology trends that will define the future of healthcare are interoperability and digital health technologies. He says that technology in healthcare should meet the needs of the population that we serve; they should communicate with each other and responsibly share data. Marc describes digital health as facilitating what we do today using digital mechanisms like telehealth and moving towards full interaction with technology, where technology will provide knowledge, capability, and expertise.

COVID-19 has accelerated healthcare industry’s adoption of digital capabilities such telehealth. Marc suggest that the health systems needs to ‘become really good at integration’ for a seamless digital health experience.

In this episode, Puneet Maheshwari, CEO of DocASAP discusses their platform and their recent survey on consumer experience and attitudes to telehealth/ telemedicine.

Puneet believes that frictionless patient access is critical for reducing costs and improving health outcomes. COVID-19 has been a very high impact phenomenon for the healthcare industry. Their recent survey on telehealth consumer experience reveals that the telemedicine adoption rate increased by 92%. However we cannot think of telemedicine in a silo; we need to blend it into the overall care delivery continuum, which is a foundational piece that must be solved by healthcare providers in the future.

According to Puneet, The reason telemedicine is here to stay and become a fundamental aspect of care delivery is because of its efficiency and effectiveness.The biggest takeaway from their recent research is that telemedicine is opening the door to the digital practice of medicine and a digital-first care delivery model.

In this episode, Diana Nole and Dr. Yaa Kumah-Crystal discuss the progress, future state, and challenges of voice-enabled technology in healthcare. They also talk about its usability and application in a post-COVID-19 world.

According to Diana, in a post-COVID world, we will see more acceptance of voice-enabled technology not just for clinical documentation but as a virtual assistant to command and control things within the physician workflow ecosystem. The pandemic accelerated the willingness and acceptance to look at things differently, such as telehealth; voice technology will be the next. It will be helpful in offering suggestions and recommendations to enhance care delivery from within the EHR system.

Dr. Kumah-Crystal states that the new era of voice mechanics and how we interact with the voice technology is instrumental in making queries and commands in the EHRs to retrieve information. A new dynamic of patient engagement will emerge from voice as a medium and as a method by which a provider engages with EHR in the presence of patient. Take a listen.

In this episode, Dr. Michael Bouton, Chief Medical Information Officer of New York City Health and Hospitals describes the significant changes that NYC H + H had to implement in their organization to deploy and integrate new technologies in response to the pandemic. NYC H + H installed hundreds of vital sign monitors linked to EMRs in the first few weeks of the pandemic and integrated them into the EHR system to enable caregivers with actionable, real-time information to address patient needs.

Dr. Bouton also discusses the challenges and opportunities of telehealth and other virtual care models that are transforming the quality of care delivery and interaction with patients and providers. He states that while no one wants to eliminate in-person visits altogether, video visits can increase low-intensity care quality. He believes the equilibrium between in-person and telehealth/ video visits will be determined by specialty-specific care in a post-pandemic era.

In this episode, Sara Vaezy, Chief Digital Strategy & Business Development Officer of Providence Health talks about their recently published series of reports – COVID-19 Digital Insight Series – that describes new digital requirements and opportunities brought by the acceleration of virtual care models due to COVID-19. Sara also speaks about the current state of telehealth adoption level and possible reasons for its drop after the industry witnessed a surge in telehealth visits in wake of the pandemic.

According to Sara, COVID-19 acted as a catalyst for digital transformation in healthcare. She categorizes the transformation happening in the healthcare industry in two possible ways. One, where the industry needed to control and tackle the challenges created by the pandemic and the industry mobilized its IT, digital, and technology services overnight. Second, is considering the pandemic as an opportunity to evolve the healthcare industry and finding new paradigms and ways of caring for people and business models.

She adds that the healthcare industry needs to design better experiences for increasing adoption of telehealth technology. The industry also needs core IT enablers to make it a success and provide better healthcare experiences to both patients and providers. Take a listen.

In this episode, Dr. Steve Miff, President and CEO of Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation (PCCI) discusses how they build connected communities of care with a focus on cutting edge uses of data science, social determinants of health, and clinical expertise across clinical and healthcare community settings. Steve also speaks about his recent book – Building Connected Communities of Care – based on the experience at PCCI.

At PCCI, the belief is that data if done right has the power to galvanize the communities, inform leaders, and empower people. According to Steve, healthcare is a complex, multi-year journey and having a connected community of care during a pandemic, such as COVID, is essential. To control the pandemic, we need better targeting of COVID hotspots, effective and efficient communication between healthcare providers and technology enablers, and connected services through referral directories.

Steve stresses that while technology is a critical enabler for connected communities of care, there is a need to invest in robust backend data management infrastructure. Take a listen.

In this episode, Jeff Short, Vice President and Chief of Staff at Montefiore Health System describes how Montefiore prepared for one of the biggest surges of COVID-19 cases in the country, and how they used emerging healthcare technologies to manage capacity and deal with the crisis.

By end of April this year, 80 percent of all patient visits in Montefiore were being managed through telemedicine. Telehealth visits volumes have fallen back a bit since then. Jeff believes that face-to-face visits in certain specialties will always remain essential, however, with the ease of working with patients digitally, we will continue to see an increase in telehealth visits. Jeff defines digital health as the use of technologies such as digital front doors and telemedicine to improve patient engagement and access to care delivery. He further states that once we get efficient at delivering digital care and leveraging emerging healthcare technologies like chatbots and AI, we will be able to treat more patients at a higher level of care with fewer resources.

Montefiore Health System is one of the leading medical centers with 11 hospitals and over 300 ambulatory locations. They mainly serve the populations in the Bronx and Westchester counties.

In this episode, Mike Alkire, President of Premier Inc. and Dr. Jonathan Slotkin, Vice Chair of Neurosurgery and Associate Chief Medical Informatics Officer of Geisinger discuss how technology and data is helping public health officials to keep a balance in opening the economy versus managing the spread of COVID-19 virus.

Premier recently launched a surveillance tool for COVID-19 which they are piloting at Geisinger to improve the quality of medical interventions and prevent the spread of the virus. Mike believes that there is a need for syndromic surveillance system, contact tracing, and performing tests with higher accuracy rates.

According to Jonathan, siloed information and disparity in EHRs across health systems limits the scope of innovation and in case of COVID-19 it is affecting patients directly. He further states that, as part of a public-private partnership, Geisinger is performing contact tracing and have followed up on 1,600 COVID-19 positive patients, benefiting patients, providers, and communities.

In this episode, Bill Krause, Vice President of Experience Solutions at Change Healthcare, talks about removing friction points in healthcare – finding, accessing, and paying for care – throughout the consumer experience journey. According to Bill, COVID-19 created a big explosion of interest around the role digital can play in the healthcare system. He states that there are several barriers that consumer experiences while accessing care through digital means. To accelerate digital patient experience, healthcare providers must understand the role of payers in a patient’s journey and work together to provide a frictionless digital consumer experience. Recently, Change Healthcare collaborated with Adobe and Microsoft to launch a connected consumer health suite that enables healthcare providers to create a more streamlined digital health experience throughout the patient journey. Change Healthcare is one of the largest independent healthcare technology companies in the U.S. Take a listen.