Interview In Action @ HIMSS 24’: Creating a Seamless Patient Experience with Ray Lowe & Kevon Kothari
Episode 452nd April 2024 • This Week Health: Conference • This Week Health
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interview in action from the:

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right, here we are from HIMS:

They gave me a little

trophy. I appreciate that. With Ultimate out of L.

A. area. Correct. Fantastic. We're going to talk patient experience and workflow optimization. Kevin, I'd like to start with you. Talk about the problem that Certify is trying to solve in healthcare.

Great question. So I'm fairly new to Certify. I've been here about 10 weeks. Ultimately, the company is helping to streamline the patient intake process.

It's a patient experience platform. What we're trying to do is to reduce the number of touchpoints that the patient has with the front desk staff. We send out Scheduling appointments. We try to fill those appointments that a provider may have that are open and we're trying to capture as much data from that patient as possible before they enter the health facility to enter the provider's office.

So that experience that they have entering the provider's office is as frictionless and streamlined as possible. We can do insurance verification, we can do identity checking and identity verification before they come to the front desk and then they can be seated and know their place in line before they're ready to be seen by their provider.

That's ultimately what we're doing. On the back end of that, we can help them pay their bills, their co pays, or any other outstanding invoices they have, and we can also send out surveys and other care plans that might be important for them to be able to maintain and manage their care.

Ray, talk a little bit about how AltaMed is utilizing this.

Yeah in our senior product called PACE which is a program for all inclusive care of the elderly, fully capitated program, and as part of that, we have a fleet of Transportation And we do about 50, 000 trips a month in terms of pulling our seniors into our PACE centers. So what we did last year is we're actually looking for how do we create a solution that's friendly for seniors, that we can wrap them in technology, and it wouldn't be invasive.

So we looked at maybe we can do facial recognition because folks with arthritis may not be able to do other types of biometric screenings. And so we moved forward. with Certify and we actually were able to implement a platform inside of our facilities where they can present visually or with a tap.

But then we extended further into our buses and our fleets. So now that our participants can also have their face read, and read the registration, and it goes into Epic are now coming into our site. It's really working to be pretty seamless. Our students are really liking it. We're using it at two of our centers right now.

We're looking forward to it. to go across 14 different centers, as we scale it up further, but it's very promising. So

let's start with the patient experience. It's almost obvious, from a patient experience standpoint, I don't think anyone likes being handed the clipboard and sit down and put things in.

I'm sure that would never happen at one of your facilities. I was horrified when it happened at my facilities when I was still there. I'm like, are we really still doing this? it's still very prevalent. And so the experience is a lot better for them, And you're dealing

with a very fragile, patient population as well. There's folks that are elderly. In PACE, there's criteria for you to be in the program. Five chronic conditions, and again, a lot of our patients, they're not English speaking either, so with the facial aspect of it instead of having to translate as well in English and Spanish and having things lost if you present it both ways, again, it makes it easier

for them.

Is this a software solution for the most part?

100

percent software

solution. Ray's talking about one of our feature differentiators, our face check technology we've put Had it for about three years now. We've perfected it with Ultima and a few other of our strategic accounts, but the facial recognition allows for essentially a HIPAA compliant authentication of that patient.

No needing to ask for patient id, other verification technology points of touch points with the front desk. And it's just again, another touch point to streamline that patient intake and that patient experience.

So agnostic to the camera that you're using or device that you're using?

I think we use an iPad behind it, right? But I'll tell you, you talked about the old paper process. So prior to this and some of our current facilities, we actually do, they queue up. We have welcomer signing them in, giving them a badge and everything like that. But after we're doing more of a streamline process.

They actually have the authentication, right? which typical think is gonna be a really good

feature for them. Talk about the workflow optimization a little bit. Alright, so they're coming in, that in and of itself as an optimization and a process. Absolutely. And makes that clinic operate a lot more efficiently.

But it doesn't end there. goes all the way through. It,

so the key is we, there's a several different modalities you can do push button check in. So when you've arrived at the location, you have a text message, it can be sent. And you can just hit a link and it'll check you in automatically.

So when you go up, you'll know your number and your place in queue. So you can actually just go sit down or you can have a seconded area for people that have already checked in to make that experience a little bit easier. But you're absolutely right. So through the point of care, clearly the physician is managing the patient, but post visit collection of co pays.

Follow up surveys, follow up reviews, follow up schedule appointment, all of that is done to remove essentially any need for that front desk employee to be able to interact with that patient. So there's just a streamlined efficiency across the spectrum for that patient.

And

you may not be using all those things, but you fit it into your existing workload.

Yeah, we're

primarily using it for a check in, but we're gonna extend it. So again, in PACE sites, it's interdisciplinary care, and it's a very heavy personal touch. For the other populations. They feel warm and welcome. And if they're going into the gym for PT, or they're going to the medical areas on there, we're looking at expanding it.

And we're also looking at more of an RFID approach, where that the care provider will be able to have the patient go through and will actually be able to capture where and when. Because currently, right now, they're charting afterwards, so we're looking at this as being a great automation tool coming up next year.

Taking

it further. As a CIO And given the space that you're serving, you guys are probably heavily focused on automation, heavily focused on any kind of optimization and those kind of things. What are you looking for specifically as you come to a conference like this?

There's so many great products.

We're doing a lot of work in value based care, a lot of data analytics, but I'm also doing a holistic reframing of our Patient engaged approach, right? And Granted, we look to maximize our EPIC instance. Yeah, but I also think, like, one of the right partners that can extend it further.

That's where we come in. That's what we do. We fill in the gaps where EPIC may not be able to provide a service. But even when they do provide a service and they have a low utilization, we help our partners figure out ways of driving utilization, driving optimization, driving efficiencies in their workflows to be able to make sure that experience on the end for their patients

is better.

Fantastic. Kevin, Ray, thank you. Bill. It's always a pleasure.

 Thanks

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