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  Today in health it more HIMSS panels. This one on telehealth. My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week in health it. A channel dedicated to keeping Health IT staff current and engaged. Did you know we have close to a thousand subscribers of this week in Health IT on our YouTube channel?

At the same time, consumer health tech continues to see a surge of investment dollars in that same space. Everyone had similar experience during the early days of Covid. We all rushed into digital and now we are watching and looking. I. At the trends and seeing it drop off in utilization across a lot of health systems.

What's really clear is that according to the data, consumers do want it. And you look at the spending and investment outside of our traditional healthcare industry, there is a huge push to serve consumers. Health systems are forced, not just to think about doing digital, but being digital and incorporating it more holistically into their business model.

Alright, so that's. The outside consultant. Now we start picking up with the health system leaders. The panelists admitted that at the start of the pandemic, the digital health strategy was often not unified, creating issues, and we heard that in our Covid interview series. I. The technologies that were in play were so vast and varied.

So a year ago we said, Hey, providers deliver care anywhere you can. Jeff Sterman, CIO at Memorial Health System in South Florida who is on our Covid series. That was good because it is good. You're delivering care when it's needed most in a way that was very safe in that environment. Let's see. Next one.

The biggest issues were logistical, not necessarily technical, and buy-in from key stakeholders, including clinicians. We like to say technology is the easy part of this, and the hard part is operations, culture and overall management support and sponsorship. Culture doesn't change overnight. Culture doesn't change in a year.

Dr. Nick Patel, chief Digital Officer for Prima Health. We've had a lot of impetus to move things forward really quickly, but still reverting back is easier than maintaining, so you have that cultural momentum that is really working against you. All right, we go on to the next one. Aaron Martin, executive VP and Chief Digital Officer at Providence.

Said the clunky experience in primary care especially is not intuitive to any consumer used to using any digital platforms. When we first launched it, because we had to, especially these Zoom visits, you would have to call to make an appointment for the virtual visit, which is absurd. Most other hospitals were in the same situation.

So not surprisingly, after we got out of the emergency patients were like, this is ridiculous. I have to make a phone call. I'm going to go to the doctor's office. It's not a pure digital transaction. The only thing I, I always remind myself when I hear Aaron talk is he has a portfolio of set of companies, any SM, some, uh, products that they've launched themselves.

Providence is a service delivery company. They. Are really growing in this space of providing services and products to health systems. The panelists agreed that there was clearly a place for technology in the future and that consumers are interested in using it. However, future planning needs to be done thoughtfully.

The key is really finding the problems you are trying to solve from the healthcare standpoint. Don't start with the technology and try to squeeze it into the mold after the fact. Start simple and understand the tech landscape and make wise decisions. Okay, that was Dr. Patel. Aaron Martin says there is something we bought over from Amazon.

You can't simply layer in the digital veneer on all business models. You have to create new business models and you have to get engagement from physicians. That is absolutely true. All right. That's probably enough from the article itself. Here's my, so what the panel interview does, leave me a little sad.

I know it's not their fault that telehealth numbers are dropping. My sadness is that it didn't feel like the panel really captured how we should be looking at telehealth. It wasn't framed in a constructive . Context. So yes, telehealth is a tool. Yes, it should be easier. Yes, we didn't do it real well during the pandemic, and people are reverting back to what they know.

But why should health providers do telehealth? How should they approach it? How do you get paid for it? How do I approach it as a technologist or an innovation leader? In fairness, a panel discussion is a very difficult form of communication. It's you really, if you have four people on that panel, you only get one or two thoughts and you don't get any chance to really.

Flesh that out. So let me flesh it out a little bit, how I would've flesh it out if I was on that panel. Technology never comes first. I agree with that. The consumer comes first. Every health system has to honestly evaluate this one question. Where are you on the consumer patient scale? Do you see your.

People that are consuming your services as patients, or do you see 'em as consumers? Where are they today and where will they be? If your practices continue into the future? In five years, you will have, consumers are still mostly patients. It matters because it will dictate your strategy. There's no wrong answer unless you're not honest with yourself.

An honest starting point. And desired destination is critical to mapping out the direction. If, for example, I think that this consumerism in healthcare is just a bunch of hooey. Then you're gonna focus in on remote patient monitoring. You're going to be looking for quality and efficiency in the existing system.

You have to understand the payment models down to the codes, and the project has to be clinically driven. With a strong operational support mechanism, you are extending the existing model of care beyond the four walls of the health system and using technology, which in this case is telehealth to grow and scale without adding thousands of staff.

You may want to consider in-hospital telehealth programs. . These are those programs that make the clinicians more efficient. Instead of having them run around the hospital or run from building to building, or even worse, travel from building to building in a car, organize in centers of excellence and extend those services from those centers.

Excellence out to multiple locations from that single well staffed team. The strategy is the current model of fee for service done more efficiently. Go for it. Again, this will work so long as consumerism in healthcare doesn't take hold. If you believe that consumerism in healthcare is right around the corner, you could do some of the things mentioned a minute ago, but you are probably going to want to work on an integrated, cohesive experience for the clinicians and the patients.

Offer services that don't require scheduling from the patient side, create tools where the physician can instantiate a telehealth video call with a patient within their normal workflow. Simple. Easy to use. Once you have the basics baked in, it's time to integrate other digital experiences that will delight the consumer, both patient and provider.

Don't try to boil the ocean with your digital solution. Get the basics working and integrated, and then layer on additional services. Ask your consumers what they want next. They will likely surprise you. The lens by which you approach a problem will determine your priorities and your focus, and a lot of times the solution.

Why is Telehealth regressing for all the reasons they mentioned. Reimbursement, a desire for normalcy, regressing back to known behaviors, just wanting to see someone and have a conversation. Sure. All those things are true, but it's also regressing because our best solutions are healthcare good, which is a D plus or C minus in the tech world.

Sometimes we hit it out of the park and we can offer a C level solution. I think it is time for everyone who has a little budget to evaluate the solution that we've given the clinicians and the patients, and ask ourselves, would we use this if we were booking a flight? Paying a bill or buying a book. If not, it's time to make something that people don't have to grade on the curve.

In healthcare, we convince ourselves that we don't need to change. We have a pretty big moat around our business, a moat being thing. Other competitors can't figure out how to get to the other side. We see things like haven fail and we say, see, it's hard. These companies aren't gonna be able to get across that moat.

They're gonna get across that moat and it's gonna come quicker. Rather than later, and one of the things that we have in our arsenal is a good telehealth solution, not a D plus C minus solution, but hopefully a b plus, maybe even a minus solution, that consumers are saying, Hey, you really have to check out this app that I have from my health system.

Man, these people got it. They're really listening to us. This really does exactly what I want it to do. I think. We can do better, and I think you know what? We can do better in this area. That's all for today. If you know of someone that might benefit from our channel, please forward them a note. They can subscribe on our website this week, health.com, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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