This transcription is provided by artificial intelligence. We believe in technology but understand that even the most intelligent robots can sometimes get speech recognition wrong.

 Before we get started, I wanna share with you something that we are extremely excited about here at this week in Health it, and that is CliffNotes. CliffNotes is the fastest growing email list that we've ever put together. If you can't listen to every show, but you want to know who was on and what was said, the best thing to do is to sign up for clip notes.

one paragraph summary, key moments in bullet point format with timestamps and one to four video clips from the show. It's a great way for you to stay current, share insights with your team, and maintain your commitment to their development during these extraordinary times. The best way to sign up, the easiest way to sign up is to just send an email to clip notes C-L-I-P-N-O-T-E-S.

At this week in health it.com and it'll kick off an automated workflow. You'll get an email back from me, click on that link and you are off to the races. Uh, so don't delay. Send that email. Get signed up today, now onto the show. Welcome to this week in Health It. Today we do a solution showcase that is focused on addressing digital transformation with a virtual care platform.

My name is Bill Russell Healthcare, CIO coach. And creator of this week in Health it a set of podcasts, videos, and collaboration events dedicated to developing the next generation of health leaders. I enjoy doing Solution Showcase episodes for two reasons. One is these organizations are contributing financially to the production of the program and our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders, and also because it gives me an opportunity to explore really interesting solutions that I believe can have an impact on the care of people in our communities.

Health Next is our newest channel sponsor, and it is a startup. That comes from a wealth of experience of the team that we're gonna speak with, as well as Ed Marks and his time and uh, experience at the Cleveland Clinic. Uh, here is our solution showcase with HealthNEXT. Alright, so on the show we talk a lot about virtual care.

We've talked a lot about platforms. Today we're gonna talk about virtual care platforms, which makes sense. A lot of activity around this, a lot of, uh, momentum and excitement. Today we have Rachel England, the VP of Product Strategy and Implementation for HealthNEXT and Matt Lambert, the CMIO for HealthNEXT on the show.

First time, both of you, first time on the show. Welcome to the show. Thank you, bill. Yeah, I, I should call on you whenever I have two people on. I've gotta get used to saying, calling on individuals. 'cause you don't wanna step on each other and it's just one of those things. It happens all the time on audio podcasts.

Usually, uh, sometimes doesn't happen as bad on visual, but yeah. Rachel, welcome to the show as well. Awesome. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Yeah. I'm looking forward to this conversation there. Uh, we've had, uh, I, I just did an interview with, with Tressa Springman and she talked an awful lot about platforms and I just had to create a, a, a helped.

ACIO create a presentation around platforms, and I'm talking to a lot of people around it. It's really interesting that people are starting in healthcare are starting to talk about this, but this is not a new concept that's been around for a problem for a while. But let's start with the problem. First of all, what kind of problems are we trying to solve with a virtual care platform?

Who, who wants to handle that question? I'll go first and then Rachel, you, uh, correct me the vision for health Next was from Med Marks our Chief Digital Officer, and that was, uh, born out of trying to do this with over two dozen apps at the Cleveland Clinic and do this by meaning managing virtual health.

And so even pre covid, the, the, the idea was a platform to encompass all things of virtual health. Current state and a roadmap, uh, to do it in one way that's integrated with the electronic health record. And then really focusing on not hitting meaningful use numbers, but, but focusing on a consumer and a clinician experience around it.

So this has certainly been, uh, um, accelerated by Covid, but the vision was there before. And Bill, to your point around a platform. We often see those of us who've been around healthcare and technology enough to see the rise of the EHR platforms. The that went from best in breed and cobbled together systems, a lab system, a radiology system, a clinical documentation system.

We saw that move to a platform, and that's where we are today with most of our electronic health records. We think that's the future for virtual care as well. Interesting. And when I came into healthcare, one of the things that shocked me was our health system. We did a application audit and we had, uh.

For several reasons, not only for the experience of, again, the patients and the providers, but also for, there's a lot of hidden costs of healthcare and just managing all those different, different solutions, more security audits with that, more financial audits associated with that when you're trying to operate the the CIO level of a health system.

So there's several reasons to go in this direction for sure. Fantastic. So let's, let's break this down a little bit. As we look at platforms. First of all, when we talk about a a platform, what are some of the characteristics, character characteristics of a platform that we are looking for in healthcare?

You sort of alluded to the fact that the EHR has become a, a platform. What makes something a platform? Rachel, you got that one? Or you want me to go? Sure. Yeah, no, I'll start off. And I think where we come from and our core foundational philosophy is all around the experience of the user. So whether we're talking about the patient or if we're talking about the provider, the consumer that's out there looking for options, uh, we're really focused on providing that singular.

Seamless experience for the, the consumer, whoever's coming to use the, the technology. Whenever we think of a platform, we think of something that needs to be integrated, something that all looks and feels the same way. That's a component of the, the problem statement that you all were just talking about with all of these point solutions that it doesn't, every point solution has their own.

Look and feel, right? That the, the consumer needs to get used to. And so whenever you take a platform approach and everything can look and feel the same way, the consumer then is able to be able to anticipate this is what I'm going to get whenever I come here and have an experience from a digital perspective.

So that's really what we're trying to accomplish with. And Bill, my answer is from the grumpy ER doctor is how many times do I have to log in? As far as I'm concerned, that's how many, if I have to log in once I'm working on a platform, if, if my mom has to log in once to get her her lab results, she's on a platform, right?

I think that's, that's the end result of what we're trying to do, and, and we don't think in healthcare, we don't think twice about logging in multiple times to find some data that happens to be in a different area or to, or to do a different activity. To have somebody, uh, receive care at a certain location or do a referral.

We, we, we really don't think twice about it, but outside of healthcare platforms are starting to become ubiquitous. We've started to become used to the whole concept of a common experience being delivered across various systems. The complexity being being abstracted from the end users and the data.

Flowing so that we could coordinate care and those kind of things. That's just common, common if you start to go into any of the internet-based companies and the companies that are based on these really, these modern architectures. But, but we've really, it's been slow for us to get there at this point.

Yeah. When, when I, when, when you're, let's just say a travel aggregator, when you log into to any of those flight, uh, sites, you're actually several different applications, but you would have to log in once. Uh, I do locums of emergency medicine around the Mid-Atlantic region and a Hoss, uh, a health system that shall not be named.

I have to log in four times, so I, I, I log into the EMR, I log into the PAC system, I log into the imprivata, the, the secure text messaging system. And so it's, so, it we're just, and that just happens to be where they are on their journey. But no, like most things in healthcare, we're not there where the consumer experience is yet in both place.

Yeah, and I think that's really what drives me in terms of development of the product is to really question why are we behind in healthcare and how can we get to the place where every other consumer experience is already? So I, I get, I'm not a grumpy er doc, but I'm still like a grumpy consumer of technology and I want things to be easy.

I want my systems to understand what I. Want before I even know that I want them. And that's the expectation that we have now and that's what we're trying to bring to this platform and to the user experience. Alright, so let's, oh, go ahead. No, sorry about to interrupt, but, and getting to leverage the Tech m uh, uh, family of companies, umbrella of companies that do commercial software development to, to be able to leverage that and bring it to healthcare is one of the really exciting things that we're, that and I get do right now.

It's really exciting. Yeah. So it's interesting. Uh. So the proxy into this is if you have to log in multiple times, so if people are sitting there going today, yeah, my doctors have to log in to six different systems or seven likely. You don't have an integrated platform yet, or at least aspects of it that aren't integrated.

But you guys are designing a virtual care platform from the ground up essentially to integrate the experience on the provider side and on the. Consumer side and you're using the Tech M resources as you talked about, to, to integrate that whole virtual care, uh, experience. It's exciting. I, you guys shared a slide deck with me and I'm looking at some of the slides.

It truly is an an integrated patient experience. I'm looking at the patient experience and it's pretty. Pretty exciting. Rachel, do you wanna talk a little bit about the, about the patient experience and some of the things you guys are have done and are, or you're looking to do? Yeah, absolutely. So from the patient experience, we think about the various ways that a consumer might come to use technology in their interaction with the health system.

Pretty much every type of interaction starts with a Google search, right? So from the very beginning as a patient.

Or a solution to an issue that's causing them to seek out care when they start their Google search. We want the health systems, all of the capabilities that they have to show up and the patient to be funneled into an interaction with the health system right from there. So that next step after the Google search, the link that they go to.

We want that to be our platform, and so it's going to look and feel like the health system, but behind it, driving it is our platform and all of those integrated functionalities and capabilities, which includes the patient portal, but is not just the patient portal, right? It's everything else around the patient portal and the patient specific data.

One big component that we talk a lot with our clients about is online scheduling. Getting the ability to have access directly to. The slot available for the provider to pull up the providers all of their information and see it be able to do an assessment, whether not, this is the doctor that I want, and be able to directly book an appointment and receive an instant confirmation that they have that appointment booked.

The next step after that is, can I register for this appointment online? Can I fill out all of those forms? Can I. Bypass the weight room, right? Like people do not wanna be sitting in a waiting room they never wanted to before. But now with Covid, they definitely don't wanna, so how do we get it to the point where they register, they do their e check-in, and whenever they arrive at the doctor's office, they're roomed immediately.

There's no waiting around. There's no stopping and having to multiple people. It's just a very seamless type of experience. And whenever they go to check out, they're. They're their bill all through the same one experience, through one application or through one sort of website. So that's what we're looking to accomplish from the patient perspective, is really just providing them with everything that they might need directly related to their care and around their care.

When we talk about that next step and that next layer in the patient experience, it's like we're gonna remind them in advance of their visit, Hey, you have this visit coming up. Fill out your paperwork. Hey, 30 minutes before, let's go ahead and get you checked in. And then, and then do you need a, do you need a ride?

So linking them directly to Lyft or to Uber so that they, they can get there on time. So all of these sorts of things, we're really thinking about it as a much more comprehensive sort of experience and support for that patient or that consumer more so than what has been happening in the past. Oh, go ahead Matt.

No, and just, and say, so technology wise, building that out in a way that makes sense for consumers is a significant part of it. But there's also, that's probably gonna bring some operational change around the hospital, right? And that takes some work and some change. Leadership ar around that. There's also physician schedules,

You either have to have the make an institutional decision that we're gonna allow open scheduling for providers, or you're gonna have to set up a separate clinic where, where patients who are using open scheduling can, can be seen by uh, uh, a physician or, or, or an APP around that. So there is some operational change to this, which is, which is I think why we've set it up this way as far as our dyad, you know, Rachel manages the technical team.

I do a lot of the health system change management around it. Yeah, it's, it's interesting and that is what I was gonna ask you about is we looked at the patient side and what does the, what does the health system get out of it? But I would assume the health system gets a immediate boost in efficiency.

Immediate bo boost in, in productivity and for the physicians, they're gonna be seeing patients in a way that the patient would like to be seen in a way that's most efficient for them in a way that's most efficient for the patient. Just generally speaking, the experience across that continuum gets, uh, much more integrated.

The virtual and the physical gets much more integrated. Even though we're really talking about a virtual care platform, it really is thinking through how all of it works together. I would assume I. Yeah. Yeah, a agreed. Uh, and a lot of this is going to be, Rachel just did a great job of explaining the interaction that winds up in a face-to-face with a patient inside the four walls.

But a lot of this care might be delivered virtually or even asynchronously, a lot of different ways around this. And so it allows the health systems to get out and provide care in different areas. And that's really gonna be significant too, with a lot of the changes that are around licensure and where you can provide virtual care.

Now, all of that is changing week by week right now. And so it's a, a very exciting time for more outreach. Also increased stickiness. You know, we just, like all consumers, we have a pleasure, pleasurable experience. We're gonna want to tend to, to, to do that again. So it's just, it's really exciting on, on that side, associated with it.

On the physician side, the expectations have changed so much. If, if there is a silver lining to covid, it is the change in patient and provider expectations of where they're going to give and receive care. And the Lightyear jump, I'll call it here in DC on . Opening up the barriers that were there around the reimbursement model for this.

Now, some of this is, some care is not gonna be able to be delivered virtually. This, you can build the slickest algorithm in the world, but if it says you have chest pain, that's gonna be a pretty short algorithm. It's to say, go to your nearest emergency department immediately. But there are a lot of other ways that we're, we can find that appropriate level of care that's most convenient for most conditions.

Yeah, and it's, I, I just had, uh, ed and Patty on the show, and we talked a lot about digital transformation and the work, and, and a lot of this comes from that work at the Cleveland Clinic and just looking at a a million point solutions right around tele kiosk, telehealth, remote patient monitoring, virtual hospital, virtual senior care, virtual physical therapy.

There's all those lines. That, that need to be orchestrated and knitted together. When you call it a platform though, I think a lot of people are gonna say, okay, we have solutions or some aspect of a solution for each one of those. Why would we want to, uh, re-look at that? Why would we want to put it back on the table and can't?

The EHR just do all of this is probably one of the questions I think you would get. Yeah. Um, so, so some EHRs may be able to do this, but those that are really investing back in their product will, will get there eventually. And I say eventually because we don't know when that's going to be, and it's not necessarily on their

Roadmap when we talk to Epic leadership about this. So I think they might get there in some form or fashion, but, but we think we can, again, leveraging resources that, that a, an electronic health record company or that a health system wouldn't have from the consumer side to bring this there. So we think we can get there faster with, with a lot of this stuff.

The other thing too, I, I don't wanna sleep on in our discussions with health systems, with HealthNEXT and with other, just in other discussions, uh, most all health systems made a telehealth pivot really quickly back in March, but it is . It's temporary, it is for their, we hear a lot of of health system leaders looking for a more permanent solution, a more integrated solution around us.

So everyone made the shift in March, but I don't think very many of our partners view it as a permanent shift or sustainable model. I think that's exactly right, Matt, about they made the shift and while it may have it. Some point been on their organizational strategy or their digital strategy for some point in the future.

They, every health system had to figure out a way to make it happen right away whenever Covid hit. And so what we do whenever we start an engagement with a client is we look at their organizational strategy, we look at their digital strategy if they have one, and we try to align. What we're doing and how we are proposing to approach things from a very integrated platform approach.

Then we look at all the point solutions that they have and we say, okay, where are these point solutions? Meeting your various strategies from an organizational perspective, from your digital strategy. How, what are the outcomes that you're driving with all of these point solutions and how can we help you to get there faster?

To get there better? Right. Through integration and thinking about all the various ways that your patient base or your consumer base is interacting with you digitally, what is their experience like? Is that meeting your goals? If not, let's talk about that. Let's figure out a way that we can leverage some of the functionality that we have to be able to get you there.

Yeah. It is interesting digital at this point, digital strategy. We keep throwing that word around and we assume that it's commonly understood. But if I were to ask, let's, I'll be kind here. Let's say if I were to ask 20% of the CEOs. So the executives who are running health systems today to talk about their digital strategy, they would generally, they would point to some aspect of a a point solution that they have.

Yes, we're doing online scheduling. Yes, we have portals. Yes, we have, that's what they would do. But when you talk to an executive in, say, retail, about digital strategy, they are thinking about redoing their entire business. Based on the digital tools that are available. And to a certain extent we've done that in the EHR, but now we're seeing this proliferation of how do we extend outside of the four walls of the hospital?

And that's where this virtual care. Platform really lives. And I think what people are wondering is, are, are, and, and I think I heard you really speak to this, Rachel, is um, you're not saying to people, Hey, throw away all those really? You like that point solution, you like this, you like that? You're not saying throw that away.

You're coming in and, and looking at it and putting an underlying platform together. That will knit these things together, the experience, as you say, across the entire platform, so that they can bring in the solutions that they do have and they can start to augment with some of the solutions they don't have.

Do have I, this Bill's test. Did I say back to you what you've been saying? You hit it spot on Bill. Yep, absolutely. So, exactly right. We, we talked to, and it's amazing, as you mentioned at the beginning, about going through and looking at all of the various applications and finding so many, we do the same thing with our clients and, and we find out that they have three or four point solutions that, that all do the same thing and they have them deployed in various areas of their health system and doing, but it's.

But they're paying for it. So we try to provide some rationalization on that front in terms of the types of vendors that they have, and if they have one that they love and all, everybody uses it and it's great. We say, okay, let's bring that into the platform. Let's give your patients a singular experience.

Where they're still leveraging the functionality of that vendor, but it has the same look and feel as everything else. And it all should be branded as your health system because you want to improve and expand your brand image within the, the ecosystem. And as you mentioned with other types of, uh, companies outside of healthcare, they're very conscious about.

Competition and healthcare needs to be conscious about competition for health systems. There are a lot of real retail type of competitors that are in the market now, and there's new ones coming all the time that are taking market share and taking dollars away from health systems for standard types of services.

So health systems really can't sit back and be comfortable anymore. They have to be pushing the envelope and thinking of ways to provide value to their customer base. And Rachel, to add to that, just two points around the, this platform level of thinking, one technical, one human, the, we're finally seeing the, we've heard the term API for a long time now in healthcare, but it's getting mature enough where you can really do things with it.

And it's really changed, uh, a lot of things that you can do with different solutions together and with patients facing solutions. So the APIs have matured to the point where we can really make 'em actionable. And then the human component of this, and, and Rachel and I have been down this road a few times.

A patient portal or a certain piece of technology is hard fought territory in a, in, in a health system. The helping health system clients get over the concept that we're going to send lab results directly to patients without a doctor interpreting that first to them was a tremendous leap. The fact that we are, and, and some of the complexities around what you release and don't release, or I can tell you that it was a, it was a career changing moment.

We need, we need help setting our strategy or figuring out a, a, just a much deeper and broader view of digital in healthcare. Is that happening for you guys? Yeah, the conversation turns pretty quick. When, when we're talking about health next for the health system, 10 minutes in, if we're getting questions like, can we adopt this but not adopt that?

Can we build off of this? Then we know that that health system has a pretty robust strategy and, and knows, uh, knows which way they wanna go, and they're looking for us to help accelerate that. If we, if Rachel and I are doing all the talking in the presentation, then we know that they probably need some strategy help too.

And we did a lot of that kind of work every years with the advisory board and that's, uh, really helps. Focus the efforts and focus the finances. Quite frankly, a lot of health systems are have to be very pretty judicious right now with what they do with, with their investments. So yeah, we've, some clients, we really work with them and, and partner with them to help define their strategy as well.

Rachel, you've been leading most of that. Your thoughts on that? Yeah, no, absolutely. You're, you're totally right, Matt, about if we are talking to somebody instead of having a conversation about what the opportunities are, that gives us a really good understanding of, of where they are in their thought process and how they have developed or have not at all developed their digital strategy.

And we've actually developed a service line where we provide support to health. Put the time and effort and energy into thinking through what is their digital strategy? What is their roadmap for deployment? How do they bring together all the various component parts into something that makes sense? If that's what they think they want to do, because at this point, digital, and especially with Covid now, I think that it's really just emphasized.

All of this so much more about the need to have meaningful digital interactions with your consumer base. Because if you don't do that, then they go somewhere else. There are other options, and a really specific example is we were on a call yesterday and we were talking about remote patient monitoring and some of.

Some of what we might expect to see from cost avoidance from health systems on avoiding readmissions or managing a CF ACHF patient outside of the hospital as opposed to in the hospital. And then we can also stack that with some remote patient monitoring revenue based on the CPT codes that were approved last year and came effective this year.

And, and, and the, the health system we're talking to is like, what do you mean, RPM revenue? Um, and given all the other things that a health system is managing right now, I probably haven't kept up to date on the latest . On the latest stuff that comes outta CMS around some other opportunities to help forge their strategy in a, in a world where we're, where there's not a lot of extra cash laying around right now.

Absolutely. Rachel, I'm gonna put you on the spot. You're the VP of Product Strategy and Implementation. Where's the product right now? It, it has a lot of core components in this slides look great. What's current and what's future at this point? Sure. So it's a mixture of both, and I think that with the way that things are going and how responsive that we are being to the market and to the needs of individual health systems, we will always be in development of some sort or another.

We have some core functionality around telehealth, around remote patient monitoring around the digital front door with online search to schedule those sorts of things. And the integration components are partners within tech. CI or expert at that. A lot of that basic core functionality is there. It's live.

We have clients that are up and using that. And then some of the more sophisticated stuff, um, around virtual hospital, EICU and some of the, the more as we get into thinking about value-based. Care and ways to leverage data and analytics to drive even more meaningful interactions with patients and consumers.

Some of that is still in, in development. We have core foundational stuff that's out there and is functioning and is great and we're building on it all the time. Yeah, and just to add to that, we're also, we're at a stage in our development where we take on some significant partners Right now their, their priorities would be ours in development.

I think I, I think if we had a, a health system that was focusing on the EICU, I think that's probably our next jump. I, I, I think we'll, and I think we can find some health system partners to really go into that. The hospital at home is a great term, but it's pretty far away from really, uh, combining that, wrapping that around with diagnostics and maybe imaging and home health.

You need some home health services around how exactly how you would do that. So I think we're still a year and a half away from really having a, a grasp on that. I had an interesting call the other day on with a children's hospital on, uh, remote surgery. If you're doing robotic surgery, you could be, is it, does it matter if you're in a different room or if you're in a different state at a, you know, at a children's hospital.

So that to me is one of the really exciting ones, but pretty far down the road now. Interesting. Every now and then I have to bounce around to look at different, I'm looking at your slide deck. I'm looking at a bunch of different things and uh, Matt, if I close my eyes and I listen to you speak, you sound like Dick ct.

Do you know who Dick CT is? Yes, I do. And I, I consider that a great compliment. His, his interview with Jimi Hendrix is one of my favorite. Yeah. And you, Rachel, you knew this was gonna get to the guitar on the back, in the back wall, didn't you? at some point. So tell us about the guitar you have hanging right behind by the way you, you've outdone me in terms of background and that's a real background.

And I was able to negotiate it down to where I got that and a really cool Fender two amp. I don't know if you could see that. So if you're gonna play a vintage guitar, you've gotta have a really cool. Hold amp to play it through as well. Yeah, and and I'm not gonna ask you to get it down and play it, but I would imagine you can

Yes, I can. Sometimes I'll do the intro and the outro for meetings. But again, no, it's playing guitar is a good way to stay sane. It's a good way to stays. So Dick Cabot, for those who don't know at one point, was the host of The Tonight Show. That's going way back. That's pre Johnny Carson. I did not know that.

Yeah, it was a short period of time, but he's done so much since then. But, uh, no longer with us, I don't think. Actually, I haven't, I should look that up. I'm not sure if I'm pre announcing his death or not. Yeah. Um, we'll pause for that because the fact checking is pretty important. Oh gosh, he is still alive.

I apologize. man. What? Amazing. Yeah, I hear his voice when I hear, hear you guys. How can they get more information on Health Next and, and the platform that you guys are, have talked about on this show? I. Rachel? Yeah, so we, we have some information on our website. To be honest with you. We haven't done a ton of marketing.

Probably one of the best ways to get more information is just email us and we'd be happy to set up a phone call. We love to demo what we have that's live, and we love to spit ideas about things that we contact.

HCI group. Okay. So, uh, HCI group, they look for health. Next, they'll find you guys. So you're not gonna give out your, your email address on the show is what you're telling me. They have to actually go to the website and find it. matt.Lambert@thehcigroup.com. There you go. It's, it's interest. I could tell you guys haven't done much marketing because when people come on and they've done a lot of marketing, they're, they're like, Hey, you can download this thing, you can do this thing.

But you guys are really focused on the work. And you've really moved fast because I remember when Ed was talking about this, when he was first leaving the Cleveland Clinic, we talked about it, uh, to now it's not that long. And you guys have done a, a ton of stuff in that short period of time. It's really amazing.

Yeah, we, we've uh, we've definitely been in the weeds. Rachel's pulled some long weeks. And Ed is the ed is when you get a text from Ed at nine 30, it's the next idea. Right. It's, that's usually pretty exciting. But no, we, we've, and, and Ed often start a sales meeting saying we're not salespeople and, uh, and we're, and we take pride in that.

We're focused on developing the product and delivering value to our health system partners and helping through what's a really exciting time in virtual care. Yeah, absolutely. Rachel. Matt, thanks for your time. I really appreciate it. Thank you, bill. This is great. That's all for this week. Don't forget to sign up for clip notes.

Send an email to CliffNotes at this week in health it.com. Special thanks to our sponsors, our channel sponsors VMware, Starbridge Advisors, Galen Healthcare Health lyrics, serious Healthcare Pro, talent Advisors, and Health. Next for choosing to invest in developing the next generation of health leaders.

This show is a production of this week in Health It. For more great content, check out our website this week, health.com, or the YouTube channel if you wanna support the show. Best way to do that is share it with the peer. Actually, another way to do that, sign up for clip notes and forward CliffNotes onto 'em and say, this is a great show.

I'm getting a lot out of it. Please check back every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday for more great content. Thanks for listening. That's all for now.