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 Today in Health IT CVS Health creates new C-level role focused on digital growth. Interesting. My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week health, A set of channels dedicated to keeping health IT staff current and engaged. We wanna thank our show sponsors who are investing in developing the next generation of health leaders.

Gordian Dynamics Quill Health, Tao Site Nuance, Canon Medical and Current Health. Check them out at this week, health.com/today. Alright, so pull this story from, where did I pull this story? Digital health modern healthcare.com. So it must be a subsection of modern healthcare. Actually, that's a new subsection of modern healthcare called digital health.

Interesting. Anyway, this is from July 8th. CVS Health creates . New C-level role focused on digital growth. Let me give you a couple of excerpts here and we'll talk about it. CVS Health hired a former hospitality executive as its Chief Data digital and technology Officer, lik Mani. Most recently worked for MGM Resorts International.

He also worked in digital strategy at Disney Parks and American Express where he worked in digital strategy. He will report to the CEO Karen Lynch direct report to the CEO and oversees CVS health's more than 44 million digital customers while increasing digital solutions into the consumer healthcare experience.

Manda, M-A-N-D-A-D-I was not available for an interview. The hire comes at a time when many hospitals and health systems are attempting to transform their service lines with digital . And digital solutions and Chief Digital Officers Eric Gordon, clinical assistant professor at the University of Michigan said the move was surprising.

It's a risky appointment. Gordon said, it assumes that customers looking for healthcare are looking for the same thing that customers are looking for At a resort, resort, customers are looking for fun, excitement, or surprises. Healthcare customers are looking for the opposite. Implementing digital initiatives within healthcare can be difficult.

Experts say it's necessary to have someone within an organization to act as a chief change agent, but Gordon said those without healthcare experience could struggle creating meaningful change, whether it's provider or pharmacy change. It's just glaring that these people are not just outsiders, but they don't understand the business.

Gordon said, which makes it tough for them, digital change agents to lead people. Wow. Isn't that amazingly harsh and such an insider view of, of the role. Now with that being said, what's my so what on this? Well, my so what on This is interesting. The title is interesting in that. C-level role focused on digital growth.

So they are focusing in on digital growth. The fact that it reports into the CEO would tell me that digital growth is also a very important role and something that they are looking for revenue from. This is a publicly traded company. They're looking for revenue and they believe that digital is going to lead them there.

So. You know, is it going to be hard for somebody from, let's see, where do you come from? MGM Resorts and Disney Parks and American Express to understand the healthcare industry and make and move things forward? Absolutely. Healthcare's challenging the regulatory environment's. Challenging. The terminology itself is challenging, but you know.

Probably more luck here at CVS than they would have at a health system. I think it's a lot harder at a health system because I think there's more things to change at a pharmacy. They realize that they are a retail entity. I. There's no mixing it up. They're a retail entity. They, uh, rely on people coming in the front door and they can put together strategies that are in alignment with things that MGM does.

Think about it, MGM has massive amounts of MGM resorts has a massive amounts of competitors just they're in, in . And whatever market, but Vegas particularly, and when people fly in there, they have a choice. Where are they gonna go? And the strategies that they have to put together are strategies around making sure they go to an MGM resort as opposed to going to somebody else's resort.

That strategy isn't different in healthcare, especially retail healthcare. You're still trying to make sure that those people come into your facility. Right. Disney Parks goes into the, the experience. Alright, so once you get them in, so MGM is about getting 'em into the building and the experience for that matter.

I mean, clearly MGM is focused on the experience, but Disney Parks is absolutely focused on the experience, right? So now they're, they're in the ecosystem. They're in the CVS ecosystem. , how can we keep them there? How can we keep 'em happy, satisfied with the information they need, with the experience they're looking for, with the guidance they're looking for, for health?

The the phrase I'm gonna take issue with because I don't disagree, it's gonna be a challenge. It'll be a challenge at CVS. It's a challenge coming into healthcare, no doubt. But resort customers are looking for fun, excitement, and surprises. Healthcare customers are looking for the opposite. That's crap.

It's a crappy statement. Uh, resort customers are looking for fun, excitement, and surprises, and I'm not sure they're looking for surprises. They're looking for a predictable experience, fun excitement, and a predictable experience. Let's call it that. Okay. Healthcare customers are looking for the opposite.

I don't think they are. I think they're looking for health. I think they're looking for health so that they can have fun so that they can be on the floor with their grandkids so that they can enjoy their life so that they don't have to spend as much time in the hospital. That's what they're looking for, and CVS has the right approach here.

They're going after keeping people healthy, and if you engage them well through a digital experience, you have a better chance of being their trusted partner in their health. And there's gonna be a lot of solutions, especially digital solutions coming down the path in the next couple of years that are going to provide organizations, be it health systems or as CVS and whatever, but your trusted health partner will start to become part of our vernacular, your trusted health partner.

Remember those words? That will become a part of the, of the vernacular. And I'm gonna put devices in my home that are gonna monitor my heart rate, my, my death, and my breathing and a whole bunch of other things. And it's gonna be tracked by somebody. It could be CVS or it could be my local health system, or it could be somebody from afar, but it's gonna have physicians and nurses and.

People who have been trained clinically to look at my stuff on a daily basis, as well as technology, looking at it and saying, you know what? Bill's doing fine. Let's just send 'em a text saying, Hey, great job. You may want to exercise more. Hey, your weight's up. That kind of stuff. And if they partner with them there, they're gonna get the first dollar, they're gonna get the second dollar, and they're gonna direct the acute care dollar that I spend, which makes them an even more effective.

Partner, CVS, uh, you know, has Aetna as well. So if they start to control where all the dollars are spent, they're gonna be a big winner. So I, I think, uh, clinical assistant professor at University of Michigan, miss Misses, misses the, the, the mark pretty significantly. Now, whether this person will be successful, I.

That's entirely up to this person. I don't know how adaptable they are. I don't know how open they are, but you have to come into this environment with an open mind. You have to come in with, you've gotta learn the lay of the land, understand the regulatory environment, understand the clinical environment that you're stepping into, the things that you cannot get wrong, you cannot play around with, and you have to be right a hundred percent of the time.

And the things that you, you know, you can experiment with to see how you can make the experience . As a whole better. So that's my so what on that interesting story. Just wanted to talk about it. That's all for today. If you know of someone that might benefit from our channel, please forward them a note.

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