Today in health, it interviews from the chime
Bill Russell:conference in San Diego.
Bill Russell:My name is bill Russell.
Bill Russell:I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week in health.
Bill Russell:It a channel dedicated to keeping health it staff current and engaged.
Bill Russell:Just a quick reminder.
Bill Russell:I wouldn't be dropping interviews over the next couple of days and into
Bill Russell:next week from the chime conference.
Bill Russell:And then I'm going to have some more interviews from the next conference I
Bill Russell:want to be going to, and then eventually I'll get back to Florida and to the studio
Bill Russell:where we'll start looking at the news.
Bill Russell:Once again.
Bill Russell:Hope you enjoy this interview.
Bill Russell:Alright, here we are from the chime floor with Dr.
Bill Russell:Sean Kelly with, uh, with well health, uh, congratulations.
Bill Russell:Where, where Dr.
Bill Russell:So where do you practice
Sean Kelly:at Beth Israel?
Sean Kelly:Deaconess and Boston.
Sean Kelly:Massachusetts.
Sean Kelly:Oh, up in Boston.
Bill Russell:Just came back from Boston.
Bill Russell:Where you at the health conference?
Bill Russell:Yes, it was.
Bill Russell:How was
Sean Kelly:it?
Sean Kelly:It was good.
Sean Kelly:It was really good for connections in industry, strategic partnerships,
Sean Kelly:direction of the industry.
Sean Kelly:It's less about meeting with provider side people at that.
Sean Kelly:It was my, it, it
Sean Kelly:was
Bill Russell:really well put on though.
Bill Russell:I mean, they, they, they do a, they do a great job with the conference
Bill Russell:and I, I love the artwork too.
Sean Kelly:Yeah.
Sean Kelly:And it, it was, I think it was fun.
Sean Kelly:I mean, uh, to me, you seeing the innovation is really interesting
Sean Kelly:and some of the mix of the big companies and the little companies
Sean Kelly:and everything in between and how that could be, you know, strategically
Sean Kelly:cobbled together or stitched together.
Bill Russell:Yeah.
Bill Russell:Some of the conversations I was talking to a startup and, uh, there was two people.
Bill Russell:I'm like, so tell me about your company.
Bill Russell:It's like, it's us two and the three other people back in a coffee shop.
Bill Russell:Right.
Bill Russell:Here's my garage.
Bill Russell:And they were showcasing their product and I'm like, well, what are you here for us?
Bill Russell:Like, let's get funded.
Bill Russell:Yeah.
Bill Russell:Essentially.
Bill Russell:We've, we've got a product we're showing it.
Bill Russell:We've got some, they actually had some clients.
Bill Russell:I was like, that's an impressive start.
Bill Russell:I'm sure they're going to get some, some traction there.
Bill Russell:So, uh, recently with well
Sean Kelly:health.
Sean Kelly:Yeah.
Sean Kelly:I just joined well health as the chief medical officer and as a
Sean Kelly:practicing emergency physician.
Sean Kelly:Uh, really enjoy trying to bridge the gap between the real world with
Sean Kelly:consumer grade technology and the world of healthcare that we've all grown
Sean Kelly:up in and trying to usher that in, in ways that make sense for all of us.
Sean Kelly:All right.
Sean Kelly:So
Bill Russell:you're going to educate me on wealth because I
Bill Russell:just had Michelle Stansberry on the show is Houston Methodist.
Bill Russell:And she talks about well health and she was very, uh, uh, she was excited about
Bill Russell:the results that they were able to get.
Bill Russell:So give us an idea of what.
Sean Kelly:Uh, last mile of communications to patients, uh, it
Sean Kelly:catches any signal you want to send them, whether it's coming from your EHR, red
Sean Kelly:sketch or the numerous other third-party vendors, do billing forms, management,
Sean Kelly:manual messaging, pretty much anything where you're trying to communicate
Sean Kelly:with a patient in the ecosystem.
Sean Kelly:Well, health can grab all that, pull it together and send it to you as
Sean Kelly:a patient in a form that you want.
Sean Kelly:It can be voice email, but the large predominance is, guess what?
Sean Kelly:To your phone or your
Bill Russell:other platform?
Bill Russell:Well, that's the thing she was saying.
Bill Russell:She said, you know, the, the portal is nice and we get the, you know, this
Bill Russell:much activity on the portal, but we found that texting is a better forum
Bill Russell:to, to interact because people are used to do that on an ongoing basis.
Sean Kelly:Yeah.
Sean Kelly:The trick is you have to go to where the patient wants to be and sending
Sean Kelly:them to a separate place, whether it's an app, a portal, a third-party
Sean Kelly:thing, your own hospital website can be problematic because there could be
Sean Kelly:an authentication there's friction.
Sean Kelly:Yeah.
Sean Kelly:There's user issues and then coordinating a use case for gosh
Sean Kelly:forbid you have to do three different things at three different places.
Sean Kelly:If that can all be put together into a text with AI and chatbots automated, and
Sean Kelly:it all just works and you can complete those transactions, you know, confirm an
Sean Kelly:appointment, schedule appointment, or more valuable clinically relevant use cases
Sean Kelly:around pharmacy, around, you know, meds around post discharge, pre discharge.
Sean Kelly:Just think of the multitudinous use cases out about . Yup.
Sean Kelly:Yup.
Sean Kelly:The, the amazing thing is build the atomic elements are all there.
Sean Kelly:And the funny thing for me, from my perspective, as many hospitals
Sean Kelly:actually already owned the technology and it might be at the patient access
Sean Kelly:level or the, you know, the, the call center level and someone in a silo is
Sean Kelly:doing something with the technology.
Sean Kelly:And at that very hospital, I talked to a CMIO.
Sean Kelly:Those are most of my friends and see.
Sean Kelly:And they're telling me about a problem that they're trying to solve manually
Sean Kelly:throwing bodies at the problem, cold calling patients, trying to
Sean Kelly:get them to sign up for a portal.
Sean Kelly:They have the technology in their own hospital, and now we're just, and these
Sean Kelly:are fun conversations for me, cause I'm just like, well, I'm gonna introduce
Sean Kelly:you to the technology you already own.
Sean Kelly:And you're going to tell me about that use case and we're actually gonna start
Sean Kelly:solving it, you know, right now today
Bill Russell:it's interesting because automation is a
Bill Russell:conversation that came up a lot.
Bill Russell:At the, uh, at the health conference.
Bill Russell:And I assume it's going to come up here at the chime conference as well.
Bill Russell:And part of that is just, we're looking at a significant nursing shortage.
Bill Russell:We're actually going through vaccine mandates right now.
Bill Russell:And we're seeing a natural reduction, um, in an already strained workforce.
Bill Russell:So that, that automation level, I assume is the, is the power of this.
Bill Russell:Is that pretty accurate?
Bill Russell:Absolutely.
Sean Kelly:That's one of many, you know, it's, it's loyalty and
Sean Kelly:it's it's patient engagement.
Sean Kelly:It's usability, but absolutely automate.
Sean Kelly:Allows everyone on the healthcare side to operate at the top of their license.
Sean Kelly:You want doctors doing doctor things, a nurse is doing not nursing things.
Sean Kelly:And even, you know, front end staff doing things that are the most valuable humans
Sean Kelly:should be doing, not doing things that can be automated and taken off the table.
Sean Kelly:And, you know, instead of the scale of someone following up
Sean Kelly:on a patient and getting through 10 or 12 calls, you can do.
Sean Kelly:80% empirically 80% are taken care of through automation, 20% kick
Sean Kelly:up the higher level use cases are then dealt with by human beings
Sean Kelly:who can do that higher order stuff.
Sean Kelly:And then even more interesting as you, as you move along a month or two later,
Sean Kelly:you can analyze what's bumping out to the humans and then add that into the
Sean Kelly:automation and refine it more and more.
Bill Russell:I think what my, the audience would want to hear
Bill Russell:is how hard is this to stand up?
Bill Russell:So we have a lot of projects.
Bill Russell:We're bringing a lot of new stuff in.
Bill Russell:Is this a, uh, a real heavy.
Bill Russell:It's not like I can hear the operational lift in the background, but from a
Bill Russell:technology perspective, it doesn't sound like that heavy, but Lyft.
Sean Kelly:Yeah.
Sean Kelly:Luckily it's not, it's already baked into the Cerner
Sean Kelly:HealtheIntent platform to Meditech.
Sean Kelly:It integrates really well with epic and then a lot of other third-party vendors.
Sean Kelly:And the beauty of it is the genius of it is it knows exactly where
Sean Kelly:it should live in the ecosystem.
Sean Kelly:Not trying to be the brains of anything.
Sean Kelly:It's not the, you know, the content curation or development in the
Sean Kelly:background is very plugged in.
Sean Kelly:You don't have to custom code everything.
Sean Kelly:It just links into those.
Sean Kelly:There's an integration.
Sean Kelly:But once you're integrated into the major ecosystem partners,
Bill Russell:then your operations team kicks in and they, they look
Bill Russell:at all the various touch points and say, could this be better?
Bill Russell:Anything other than tax?
Bill Russell:I assume you can deliver.
Bill Russell:Yeah.
Bill Russell:Um,
Sean Kelly:pretty much on anything you have VR, you can do email and, um,
Sean Kelly:you know, a lot of places use it for links to, to enable telehealth visits
Sean Kelly:through COVID and beyond a lot of specialized COVID use cases that really.
Sean Kelly:Give those out for free and, um, got people using it.
Sean Kelly:And you know that, of course, as we've talked about, a lot of the
Sean Kelly:tele-health is now here to stay.
Sean Kelly:And so those use cases have stuck and other mission critical use cases out
Bill Russell:there.
Bill Russell:So, so why continue to practice just out of curiosity?
Sean Kelly:Cause oh, for me.
Sean Kelly:Oh, I, my passion is, is, you know, kind of living on both sides of the fence.
Sean Kelly:It keeps me honest, both ways, right?
Sean Kelly:The express you're meeting your own.
Sean Kelly:I mean, you, you have to, you have to, you have to know what you're trying
Sean Kelly:to do from the industry side to know what the world of medicine is like, and
Sean Kelly:healthcare is messy, but it's gratifying.
Sean Kelly:So seeing patients now is still fun and gratifying.
Bill Russell:It's interesting because that is CIO panel.
Bill Russell:Uh, all these CEO's who used to be doctors who became CIO and three of
Bill Russell:them essentially took a different approach to continuing to practice.
Bill Russell:One, continued to practice.
Bill Russell:Cause they're like, look, I that's my credible.
Bill Russell:Another essentially said, look, I can't in good conscience, continue to practice.
Bill Russell:Cause I can't keep up on all these skills that are required and,
Bill Russell:and medicine is rapidly changing.
Bill Russell:Uh, and then the other one said, I, I do, I went to telehealth visits
Bill Russell:on a, uh, I think like two, two or three days a month, essentially.
Bill Russell:It's like, it's the least I could possibly do.
Bill Russell:And you know, I'm seeing, seeing certain kinds of patients triaging stuff.
Bill Russell:So it's.
Bill Russell:No it's stuff, I guess you've learned in your first year
Bill Russell:of med school kind of stuff.
Bill Russell:So, yeah.
Bill Russell:Um, so it's, it always fascinates me.
Bill Russell:Why people either choose to continue to practice or whatnot.
Bill Russell:What do you think is top of mind?
Bill Russell:I asked you this question before, what do you think is top of mind here?
Bill Russell:That the thing I'm saying, I think it's this labor thing is the thing I'm hearing
Bill Russell:over and over again is I just, I just lost a handful of my staff from it.
Bill Russell:I'm worried about my it staff being that's now working remote,
Bill Russell:getting plucked away from me.
Bill Russell:And obviously the, you know, the, some of the nurse shortages and whatnot, they're
Bill Russell:getting tasked with that kind of stuff.
Bill Russell:That's what I think is the top of mind right now.
Sean Kelly:Yeah.
Sean Kelly:We can chat about that for a second.
Sean Kelly:And I think, you know, burnout is a big issue and staffing issues and, you
Sean Kelly:know, it's been there for a long time, got a lot worse during the pandemic,
Sean Kelly:but, you know, from someone who works on the front lines has done a lot of work.
Sean Kelly:That can be difficult work.
Sean Kelly:It's, it's less about the, the amount of work you're doing, but the type of.
Sean Kelly:And so if you're doing work, that's what you actually want to do.
Sean Kelly:And patient care, direct patient care can be really hard work, but if it's
Sean Kelly:directly impactful to the patient and you feel like you're using your skill
Sean Kelly:set in an efficient manner and spending your time doing the things that you
Sean Kelly:were trained to do, and it's having an outcome, even if it's a difficult outcome
Sean Kelly:someone's coming in, you know, sick and dying from COVID and intubate them,
Sean Kelly:prone them and send them to the ICU.
Sean Kelly:But that's not where I get burnt out, where the burnout comes from as if
Sean Kelly:despite all that stuff we're dealing with and, you know, putting on PPE,
Sean Kelly:donning and doffing that, and all the procedural changes and all that.
Sean Kelly:If then I get blocked out of the EHR or I, you know, I can't,
Sean Kelly:I can't message each other.
Sean Kelly:You know, if there are all these artificial barriers and frustrating
Sean Kelly:clerical or regulatory or compliance work or litigious stuff, that's frustrating.
Sean Kelly:And that's not what you said.
Sean Kelly:For and more and more in the us healthcare system, that just the
Sean Kelly:burden of that keeps increasing.
Sean Kelly:And even some of the tools we know we use like, like EHR is, are
Sean Kelly:very good at passing the burden of documentation onto the front end user.
Sean Kelly:And, you know, nothing happens until it's documented to happen.
Sean Kelly:Things like that turn into a lot of extra work.
Sean Kelly:And
Bill Russell:it's interesting.
Bill Russell:This is going a little long, but I love when I get, get to speak with the
Bill Russell:doctor, because one of the, one of the things we tend to do in health, And
Bill Russell:um, critical eye towards us is we get excited about like, oh, I think this
Bill Russell:is going to solve interoperability.
Bill Russell:If I I've heard that, like half dozen times since I came into healthcare,
Bill Russell:like I think we've got, um, one of the things I hear is ambient listening
Bill Russell:and, and voice those kinds of things.
Bill Russell:It helps, but it, I have, have you worked a lot with various tools?
Sean Kelly:I have not.
Sean Kelly:I have not worked with that.
Sean Kelly:Especially recently.
Sean Kelly:We experimented with like Google, Google glass a long time ago at our hospital.
Sean Kelly:And.
Sean Kelly:I will say this.
Sean Kelly:I think it's really important to work from the use cases backwards.
Sean Kelly:Right?
Sean Kelly:Don't try to push sexy technology into healthcare because it's a
Sean Kelly:great technology looking for a home.
Sean Kelly:You really got to think about the use case first, look at the atomic
Sean Kelly:elements of that use case and figure out how they're best addressed.
Sean Kelly:And sometimes it's it's technology that's already commercially
Sean Kelly:available in different industry.
Sean Kelly:We're just not using it in.
Sean Kelly:For whatever reason and, you know, fear of HIPAA, HIPAA violations, or
Sean Kelly:for some other artificial reason.
Sean Kelly:And, you know, maybe we should be using a proven technology in healthcare.
Sean Kelly:That's from other industries.
Sean Kelly:Sometimes we have to start from scratch, but regardless I'm a big fan of starting
Sean Kelly:with what are we actually trying to do and not replicating bad workflows
Sean Kelly:or bad practice or voodoo that we've been doing for 20 years, just because
Sean Kelly:that's the way we've been doing.
Sean Kelly:But really think about what should we be doing here?
Sean Kelly:And, you know, we should be getting doctors and nurses to your point,
Sean Kelly:focusing on the patient, caring for the patient and allowing all that repetitive
Sean Kelly:documentation and order entry and all these other things that are clerical
Sean Kelly:somehow happen and be offloaded.
Sean Kelly:And whether that's using AI or, you know, other processes
Sean Kelly:and technologies, it's fine.
Sean Kelly:But we gotta be crystal clear about the use case first.
Sean Kelly:Right.
Sean Kelly:And just.
Sean Kelly:And that's the disruptive part and start from that and kind
Sean Kelly:of pull the technology into it.
Bill Russell:And by the way, Sean, thank you for your time.
Bill Russell:Talking
Sean Kelly:with you as always.
Bill Russell:Don't forget to check back as we have more of these interviews
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