Shows
The #HCBiz Show!ChatGPT: Where (and Where Not) to Apply it in HealthcareOn this episode, we talk with Matt Hollingsworth, CEO of Carta Healthcare, about ChatGPT. If you've been reading the headlines, and maybe even experimenting with Chat GPT yourself, but don't quite grasp what's going on, then this episode is for you. Mat gives a not-too-technical, high-level explanation of what's going on under the hood so that you have proper context for the discussion. Then, Matt outlines the potential benefits, and potential harms, of applying ChatGPT in healthcare. Finally, Matt shares his experience launching Carta Healthcare, including how he convinced VCs that s...2023-06-2645 minThe #HCBiz Show!Medicaid Transformation: Past, Present, and Future with Alan Weil of Health AffairsMedicaid Transformation. 1115 waivers. Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment (DSRIP) programs. Expansion. Contraction. We’ve been at this for a long time. Why isn’t Medicaid transformed already? Well… it turns out that this is really difficult work. First off, there are complex political and ideological issues. Even if we all agree that we want the best healthcare for every American – a conceptually easy outcome to rally behind – we don’t all agree on what that looks like, how to get there, or how to pay for it. Second, it takes a long time for policy l...2023-04-1248 minThe #HCBiz Show!Should Patients Be Charged for Messages to their Doctors?Cleveland Clinic recently announced that they would begin charging for certain patient-initiated messages. This flies in the face of everything the industry is talking about when it comes to patient engagement and value-based care. At the same time, it is quite unreasonable to think that a doctor should be available for questions at any time, for free. How can we protect the clinicians' time AND provide the patients with the care and attention they need? And why are we moving away from value-based care? Craig Joseph, MD, Chief Medical Officer of N...2023-02-0935 minThe #HCBiz Show!Take it All With a Grain of SaltDon and Shahid discuss NCQA's Health Innovation Summit (November 2022) and FHIR Dev Days (June 2022). They explore these events as examples of how to interpret what you hear at conferences, in industry media, and even on podcasts like this. The discussion covers a lot of ground including: What is NCQA? What is HEDIS? What does it mean to move from Electronic Clinical Quality measures (ECQM) to Digital Quality Measures (DQM)? Can FHIR really do all that!? Specified, but not implemented (this is important) Why is it hard to innovate and sell innovations in the quality measure space? H...2023-01-1349 minThe #HCBiz Show!Can I Buy You Lunch (and tell you about my product)?Some people tell doctors that anything more than a cup of coffee is a conflict of interest. What about executives? Is it ok to take them out to lunch? What about a trip to the Super Bowl? Is there a line? Where is it? On this episode, Don and Shahid discuss a recent LinkedIn discussion where a healthcare executive called shenanigans on himself and his colleagues for accepting gifts. The gift is a symptom... not the underlying issue. Tune in to find out what the issue is and how to fix it. Plus, l...2022-10-2132 minThe #HCBiz Show!Episode 200!!! What's Next for the show?On this episode, Don Lee and Shahid Shah celebrate 200 episodes of The #HCBiz Show! We discuss what we've done over the past 6 years and tell you where we're headed next. In a nutshell, we're going to work to codify what we've learned about innovation in healthcare over the past 200 episodes and in our decades of deploying digital health solutions. We're steering the effort, but we need your help. There will be plenty of ways to get involved. Thanks for learning with us over the past 200 episodes. Here's to 200 more! Oh...2022-09-0853 minThe #HCBiz Show!It’s Time We Treat Medical Records Requests as a Critical Customer Service Issue with Grace CordovanoThere are many areas where customer service is lacking in healthcare, but few are more egregious than the medical records request process. It’s frustratingly slow, needlessly opaque, and contributes to patient safety issues and staff burnout. And it’s making most of our health systems look bad. Today’s guest is not just calling for a better customer service experience in the medical records request process… she is creating the tool to help get it done. Grace Cordovano is a board-certified patient advocate who knows the medical records process inside and out. She’s helped cou...2022-07-131h 04The #HCBiz Show!Do You Know Where Your Patients (and Money) Are Going? with Ray Deiotte and Sean O'MalleyMost health systems don’t understand their own referral networks or patient flows. From an overall fiscal standpoint, they may know who their best and worst physicians are but there’s little clarity on what’s happening in the middle. Where are patients going for procedures? Who is sending them there? And what’s the financial impact to the health system? Not knowing makes it difficult to make sound strategic decisions. The good news is that the data exist. The bad news is that few health systems have figured out how to harness it. Today we talk...2022-04-2846 minThe #HCBiz Show!Are We Crying Wolf? VBP in 2022 with Gail Zahtz - Part 2 We planned to discuss quality measures but shifted to address a very important piece of listener feedback after the preview and Episode 1. The comments came from a doctor in the audience and I know there are many more doctors and healthcare administrators who feel the same way. The feedback, in short, is that we’ve been hearing about the move to value for 10 years. We’ve invested in it through several evolutions and it still hasn’t come to fruition. The key is to rebuild trust between the government and those delivering the care- whether hospitals, payers, provid...2021-11-1935 minThe #HCBiz Show!Office Hours: Does My Software Need FDA Clearance (SAMD)?On this edition of #HCBiz Office Hours, Don and Shahid talk with Yuma Nambu, Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) at CROSS SYNC. CROSS SYNC is a Japanese startup whose medical data analytics software, “iBSEN”, enables hospital ICU’s to automate the monitoring of patient vitals and motions continuously to assist healthcare professionals in identifying acute deterioration as early as possible. The platform relies on multimodal AI capabilities that combine time-series vital analytics from physiological monitors and patients’ motion analytics from live video feeds including facial recognition and motion detection. As CROSS SYNC looks to expand glo...2021-08-111h 03The #HCBiz Show!Financial Advice for Early Stage Digital Health Startups w/ Kristian MarquezWe spend a lot of time talking about how to align your startup’s vision with the realities of the business of healthcare. You can have the best idea in the world, but if you don’t properly validate your offering with customers, clearly and concisely explain the value it will bring them, close deals, and deliver on your promises then it will amount to nothing. Each of these steps is critical to your success. However, you can get many of them right and still fail. The best way to prevent this fate is by tying them all together with...2021-07-161h 01The #HCBiz Show!What’s your Early Adopter Strategy? with Dr. Roxie Mooney95% of innovations that are brought to market fail to reach an adequate level of customer adoption or financial ROI. It sounds scary, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Today we’re talking with healthcare commercialization strategist and digital health advisor Dr. Roxie Mooney, about the steps innovators can take to dramatically increase their chances of being in the other 5%. Why you need an early adopter strategy that focuses on the specifics needs, goals, and desires of the customers who are looking for something new and novel. How to avoid pilot purgatory by negotiating futur...2021-05-1152 minThe #HCBiz Show!What's up with IBM Watson Health? A Discussion on the State of AI in Healthcare with Paddy PadmanabhanIBM Watson Health came on the scene with swagger and promises. They were going to revolutionize healthcare! And now the unit may be for sale. We don't yet know what's really going on there, but the commentary surrounding this rumor provides some interesting points for discussion. What is the state of AI in healthcare? Is the industry ready for it? Will doctors use it? Is it going to kill us if it's not perfect? There's a lot to explore. On this episode, Paddy Padmanabhan joins us to hash it all out. Paddy is the Founder and CEO a...2021-04-2945 minThe #HCBiz Show!Direct Contracting: It’s Coming Fast and Will Have a Big Impact on Medicare-fee-for-service w/ Gail Zahtz CMS Direct Contracting is coming fast, is very nuanced, and full of grey. In a nutshell, 50% of Medicare patients are in Medicare Advantage (i.e., value-based care) and 50% are still Medicare fee-for-service (FFS). Direct Contracting is CMS’ bold play to quickly move many of the remaining Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) patients into value-based care. If you’re a doctor who takes care of Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) patients, then it is going to affect you whether you’re paying attention or not. That’s doubly true if you’re in one of the 10 “Geo” model regions (Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, M...2021-02-101h 07The #HCBiz Show!Deferred Care and Lower Risk Scores Could Reduce Medicare Advantage Payments in 2021 w/ Dr. Matt LambertThe pandemic has had a tremendous impact on the business of healthcare. With states canceling elective procedures and people deferring care for fear of being exposed to the virus, hospital and medical practice revenue is down. On the flip side, many health plans are sitting on a mountain of premiums that aren’t being spent because of this deferred care, possibly leading to rebates in some cases and a ton of uncertainty in pretty much all cases. One less obvious outcome of all of this may fall on Medicare Advantage plans in 2021, and it threatens to lower payments by 4-6...2021-01-2248 minThe #HCBiz Show!How Will Patients Securely Connect 3rd Party Apps To Their Data Once Patient Access Rules Kick In? from Health Data UnboundThe CMS Patient Access Rules are coming. And they’re easy to cheer for. We’re giving patients their data and that’s a huge win! We all love that! But what we don’t love is when FraudulentHealthcareApp.com collects patient data and sells it to the highest bidder to support targeted marketing, or whatever other nefarious act they can come up with. Well, the health plans don’t get to pick and choose which apps they connect to. What if their member wants to use FraudulentHealthcareApp.com? What’s their recourse? How can they educate and protect th...2021-01-1546 minThe #HCBiz Show!Selling to Health Plans from the Digital Health Growth SummitThis podcast features the Selling to Health Plans panel discussion at the Digital Health Growth Summit, moderated by our very own Shahid Shah, with panelists Vijay Bhatt, Deputy CTO, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, and Bill Friedman, Vice President of Sales, Zipari. The panel covers some of the most important digital health technologies that health plans are interested in and how digital health startups can get health plan executives to buy the technologies they’re building. One of my favorite points is that you’ve got to de-risk the decision to buy: Start small and build...2021-01-0739 minThe #HCBiz Show!How to Turn on the Growth Engine in Your Digital Health Startup w/ Bryan LoomisMany digital health startups rely on sales prospecting to generate new leads. That works to a point but doesn’t scale because each deal takes a long time, and good healthcare salespeople are hard to find. Today we’re talking with Bryan Loomis, a Digital Health Growth expert and mentor, about how to design, build and execute a growth plan that generates leads in a more sustainable way. We discuss: Bryan’s PAGE Methodology (Purpose, Audience, Gospel, and Experimentation) for growth The importance of generating marketing qualified leads instead of relying solely on sales...2020-12-0347 minThe #HCBiz Show!Partnering with Payers - Andrew Adrian-KarlinFor many healthcare startups and established vendors, partnering with payers is a crucial part of their business plan. And as we know, selling in healthcare is hard. It’s even harder when you don’t understand how these large corporations work. What do they want? How do they set priorities? How do they make purchasing decisions? How long does that process take? The list goes on, and if you’re strategizing without this knowledge you’re going to struggle. That’s where this episode comes in. Today we’re talking with Andrew Adrian-Karlin, Director of Business Platform Product at High...2020-11-171h 01The #HCBiz Show!Applying Conversational AI to Reduce Provider Burnout from HealthIMPACT Live There’s a lot of talk about addressing physician burnout, but little practical advice about what to do. The path to action lies first in understanding the many sources of burnout, and then separating them into those that we can impact, and those we cannot. There’s a class of burnout factors that are intrinsic to being a physician. Simply put, it’s a hard job, and it's demanding in both a physical and mental sense. But this is part of what they signed up for, and due to their passion and sense of pur...2020-11-1039 minThe #HCBiz Show!How Purpose-driven Interoperability and Data Quality Positioned Surescripts to Fill Communication Gaps During the Pandemic - Tom SkeltonMany private organizations have stepped up to provide support as we deal with the pandemic. Surescripts, for their part, repurposed clinical direct messaging infrastructure to help health systems communicate critical information from the frontlines to federal agencies. It’s a great story of a private organization rapidly transitioning to fill a need. What we’d like to explore, and what we think you will most benefit from hearing, is why Surescripts was in a position to do this in the first place. And ultimately, why co-host Shahid Shah calls them “THE interoperability story of our century”. On thi...2020-10-2955 minThe #HCBiz Show!HealthIMPACT Fall Forum Preview Plus Tips on Running Virtual EventsOn this episode, we discuss the HealthIMPACT Fall Forum coming up September 30th – October 2nd, 2020. Shahid Shah, our co-host and the HealthIMPACT Forum Chair, tells us it’s a “No BS and No PowerPoint” event that’s intended to be more of a conversation than a series of presentations. The goal is to get healthcare leaders together and facilitate a conversation amongst peers about the work they’re doing in the real world. We also talk about what it’s like to host a conference virtually and the techniques you can use to simulate the best parts of in-person co...2020-09-2426 minThe #HCBiz Show!The Long Fix: Solving America's Health Care Crisis with Strategies that Work for Everyone w/ Dr. Vivian LeeOn this episode we talk with Dr. Vivian Lee about her new book, The Long Fix: Solving America’s Health Care Crisis with Strategies that Work for Everyone. Dr. Lee offers a fresh perspective that will strengthen your understanding of the issues facing America’s healthcare system. And while she acknowledges that our government must play a substantial role in driving systemic change, she points out how each of us as individuals, clinicians, payers, and employers all have a role to play. The book’s title suggests that we’re in for a long haul, and I agree. However, Dr. Lee off...2020-09-1146 minThe #HCBiz Show!Patient Centricity: You’re doing it wrong! w/ Matthew ZacharyPatient Centricity is a buzzword that’s easy to throw around, but difficult to realize. The notion itself is straightforward… build your product or service around the patient who it is intended to help. Talk with them. Incorporate their input. Understand their needs, desires, and goals. It’s so straight-forward that today’s guest tells us this is no “ah-ha” moment for healthcare, but more of an “ah-duh”. Why do other industries do this organically, while healthcare talks about it as some enlightened idea? It’s because our healthcare system is dis-intermediated to the point where the patient no longer...2020-09-0249 minThe #HCBiz Show!The State of Payer Data with Jordan BazinskyPayers already face a formidable challenge when it comes to internal data management. After years of consolidation in the industry, many payers have a collection of legacy systems cobbled together to run their operations. This makes data management difficult for things like claims, provider directories, and member demographics. And those are just “the basics”. Now, as quality measurement evolves and payers experiment in value-based payment, there’s an acute need for the integration of real-time clinical data to support operations and care management. Finally, there are the CMS and ONC final rules that create new requirements for payers to sh...2020-08-141h 00The #HCBiz Show!Getting to Know eHealth Exchange - The Largest Health Information Network in the Country - Jay NakashimaIn a growing crowd of national health information networks, eHealth Exchange is one of the oldest and most connected in the U.S.. Notably, they are the primary way healthcare organizations connect with federal agencies such as the Social Security Administration (SSA), Department of Defense (DOD), and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). In addition, they're connected with 75% of all U.S. hospitals, more than 60 regional and state HIEs, more than 5,000 dialysis centers, and more. Today we take a thorough look at eHealth Exchange with Executive Director, Jay Nakashima to find out what they do and to...2020-07-3045 minThe #HCBiz Show!Behavioral Economics Expert Explains How to Drive Massive Change with Minor Tweaks w/ Karen HorganEverything you’re trying to accomplish comes down to one thing… getting people to do stuff. Behavioral economics, in its simplest terms, is the study of how and why people decide to do what they do (or don’t do). Whether you’re trying to sell, get users to adopt a new system or workflow, or make your staff feel comfortable coming back to work during a pandemic, understanding behavioral economics will greatly increase your chances of success. Today we’re talking with Karen Horgan, CEO at VAL Health about how behavioral economics is being used in healthcare to...2020-07-1039 minThe #HCBiz Show!Getting Ready to Go Back to Work and How Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) Tools Can HelpPublic health vs. the economy is a dangerously false dichotomy. We can protect our people AND get back to work if we accept reality and embrace science. You already know you should wear a mask, wash your hands, and practice social distancing. As we begin to go back to work and spend time with our extended families and friends, Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) tools present an additional layer of protection that could allow us to do so more responsibly, safely, and productively. Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) tools, like pulse oximeters, blood pressure cuffs, Bluetooth thermometers, and...2020-07-0136 minThe #HCBiz Show!The Novation Dynamic: 3 Pillars for Healthcare Innovation Success with Michael AckermanMichael Ackerman, director of the Master in Healthcare Innovation Program at The Ohio State University, believes that every innovation program must do three things in tandem: Innovation – filling gaps where no solution currently exists, in a way that adds value Renovation – quality improvement and process improvement Exnovation – removing functions that no longer add value; also known as de-implementation When practiced together, and ideally led by different teams within the organization, the 3 pillars of The Novation Dynamic help us overcome the notorious friction that has slowed healthcare innovation for too long. You’ll Lear...2020-06-2458 minThe #HCBiz Show!Marketing in a Post-COVID World with Jared JohnsonThe COVID-19 crisis has presented marketers with quite a challenge. Customers don't want to be sold to and no one wants to spend money. In fact, traditional marketing has been paused for fear of coming off as insensitive and out of touch. But that doesn't mean you stop. You just do it differently. The pandemic is driving marketers back to the fundamentals of relationship building and value creation. This is how you stay relevant during the crisis, and as we reopen the economy. On this episode, we talk with Jared Johnson of Shift.Health about how to get it...2020-06-1756 minThe #HCBiz Show!Direct Pay, Telehealth, Parking Lot Visits and Other Strategies for Private Practices to Survive the Pandemic In our ongoing series around the COVID-19 crisis, we plan each episode with the specific aim of delivering you, the listener, actionable items you can do right now. To ensure that during this crisis you can solidify and strengthen your business while continuing to serve your patients at the highest level, we're bringing you two of our favorite people in healthcare. Joining us today is David Goldhill, CEO of Sesame and Dr. Allison Edwards who runs a direct primary care facility, to talk about how you can adopt the right strategies for doctors to overcome this crisis.2020-05-2049 minThe #HCBiz Show!What you need to Know About TEFCA Right Now w/ Mariann Yeager A year after Draft 2 of TEFCA, what has happened and where are we now? The ONC awarded a cooperative agreement to The Sequoia Project to serve as the Recognized Coordinating Entity (RCE) to develop, update, implement, and maintain the Common Agreement and the QTF. On today's episode, Shahid Shah joins your host, Don Lee to talk with the CEO of The Sequoia Project, Mariann Yeager. If you are an HIE and you want to become a QHIN (or sell to one), this episode is for you. Highlights from What you need to Know About T...2020-04-1554 minThe #HCBiz Show!COVID-19 Community Vulnerability Map w/ Dr. John Showalter There is an urgency to utilize social determinants in healthcare decision making, especially to meet the needs of underserved populations. Jvion launched its new COVID-19 Community Vulnerability Map, a free, publicly available tool that identifies populations — down to the census block level — that are likely to experience severe outcomes requiring hospitalization when they contract the virus. The map integrates the findings of the data analysis project that Jvion conducted last week, which analyzed a representative sample of 2 million patients to understand the social and clinical risk drivers that make populations more vulnerable to viral infections like COVID-19. Joinin...2020-04-0959 minThe #HCBiz Show!There Are No Drug Prices in the US w/ AJ Loiacono Drugs are way too expensive. It has got to be from someone in the middle taking up all the money. Blame the pharmacy benefits managers! Right? Not so fast. If you're like me and have gotten derailed by complicated flow charts trying to understand PBMs in the past, this is the episode for you. AJ Loiacono, CEO of Capital Rx, is a new PBM injecting some much-needed trust back into the system. By starting fresh and denouncing business as usual, AJ is giving control back to self-insured entities while looking after the community...2020-02-0555 minThe #HCBiz Show!Interoperability 2.0 with Niko Skievaski The interoperability promise of a shared, longitudinal medical record has so far focused on connecting health systems to each other. With the growing investment and constant new entrants of SDOH solution vendors, a new wave of interoperability challenges are becoming apparent. How does your health app connect to an EHR? Will new anti-data blocking legislation help or hurt SDOH startups? In this wide-ranging conversation, Don Lee and Shahid Shah talk with Niko Skievaski, President and Co-Founder of Redox, about his team’s solution to interoperability and why health information exchanges (HIEs) are only part of the answer....2020-01-1556 minThe #HCBiz Show!Designing an Innovator Network for Hospitals with Amy Stevens For long time listeners of this show, you know we’re in the business of helping entrepreneurs understand how to create use case alignment, how to get over the hump of defeating good marketers with a not so good solution, and how to get the right tools in the hands of people who need them. The hurdles involved with getting permission and building consensus around which new tech to bring in slows down diffusion and implementation of needed solutions. Well today we’re looking at a new platform that gets targeted information to health...2019-12-0459 minThe #HCBiz Show!Tying SDOH Factors to Clinical Outcomes with Erin BensonWe’ve been talking about Social Determinants of Health for a couple of years now and I think we all got the basic concept: For the best health outcomes, we need to combine healthcare with social care. ”A doctor might prescribe to you the best care in the world, but if you can’t afford it or you can’t get to it because you don’t have a car, you might just not be able to follow those recommendations.” Today we can happily say there are solutions that implement best practices for addressing SDOH in the docto...2019-11-1340 minThe #HCBiz Show!Enhancing Diagnostic Accuracy with Art Papier of VisualDxIt’s said that 10-20% of all medical diagnoses are wrong. That’s a bit scary, but it’s not surprising. Medical diagnostics is inherently complex, the medical literature is always expanding, and doctors, like all humans, grapple with availability bias – they diagnose diseases they know instead of diseases they don’t. Diagnostic accuracy is clearly a problem. Today’s guest is Art Papier, MD. Art is the co-founder and CEO of VisualDx. According to Art, there are common diseases and rare diseases, and there are common presentations and rare presentations. The bulk of diagnostic errors are made on common...2019-11-0638 minThe #HCBiz Show!Who’s Got the Patient’s Back? with Patient Advocate Grace CordovanoThe healthcare system is not designed to serve patients. It may have started out that way, but it’s best we confront or current reality. That’s not to say that the people working inside of this industry are bad. Not at all. Some of the best, most generous, and caring people I’ve ever met work in healthcare. Unfortunately, they, like the patients they serve, are merely inputs to a complex national healthcare system that’s evolved to serve itself and its ever-growing appetite for trillions of American dollars. I don’t blame anyone for this...2019-10-0852 minThe #HCBiz Show!Ultraviolet Disinfection for High-Touch Hospital Surfaces with Proximity at HITS 2019 “Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers.” Seth Godin That’s one of my favorite quotes and it’s exactly what Proximity did when they looked across the 1,500 healthcare facilities they were already serving with wall-mounted workstations and medication storage carts. They saw a ton of high-touch surfaces that were not being cleaned regularly and that were likely contributing to the spread of healthcare-associated infections (HAI). This observation led them to launch their UV-CLEAN line of products that automate the sterilization of high-touch surfaces like keyboards in the hospital. It’s an automated d...2019-09-2422 minThe #HCBiz Show!Selling to Health Systems: Advice for Digital Health Startups (Part 2)Part 2 of 2 - What happens when you take an experienced digital health buyer and an experienced digital health seller and have an honest conversation about the process of bringing new innovations into a health system? You get lots of not-so-obvious, but tremendously valuable insight into how to cross the moats successful health systems have been forced to build to keep you out. Co-host Shahid Shah recently published a post with Brian Van Winkle on The Healthcare Blog titled: Perspectives on Working with Healthcare Systems for Digital Start Up Companies | Part 2. Shahid, an experienced digital health innovator played th...2019-07-1258 minThe #HCBiz Show!Why HIEs Will Lead the Way on Healthcare Quality Measurement w/ John D'AmoreI've been saying it for years. The regional Health Information Exchange (HIE) should be your first stop for interop. That's especially true when it comes to quality measurement. Patients are going to get care in many settings and their data is going to be stored in many EHRs. According to today's guest, a sick Medicare patient may see 6-7 doctors in a given year! Proper quality measurement will require every hospital and every practice to proactively connect with one another AND solve the underlying data quality problems. FACT: It'll never happen. I know what you're thinking. That's wh...2019-07-0343 minThe #HCBiz Show!Selling to Health Systems: Advice for Digital Health Startups (Part 1)What happens when you take an experienced digital health buyer and an experienced digital health seller and have an honest conversation about the process of bringing new innovations into a health system? You get lots of not-so-obvious, but tremendously valuable insight into how to cross the moats successful health systems have been forced to build to keep you out. Co-host Shahid Shah recently published a post with Brian Van Winkle on The Healthcare Blog titled: Perspectives on Working with Healthcare Systems for Digital Start Up Companies | Part 1. Shahid, an experienced digital health innovator played the role of the...2019-06-2854 minThe #HCBiz Show!Building Water Systems: The Sustainability and Public Health NexusLegionella outbreaks, which can cause the deadly Legionnaires’ disease, are on the rise. In 2017, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 7,500 Legionnaires’ disease cases. Within the general population, 10% of those affected will die. In a healthcare setting, the death rate jumps to 25%. And according to the CDC, 9 out of 10 Legionella outbreaks were preventable. Sound building water health plans in a hospital/healthcare setting are critical. Think about that… we have an engineering problem that’s causing 7,500 people to get sick every year, and there’s a known solution that can prevent 90% of it. How would...2019-06-1949 minThe #HCBiz Show!Decision Support for Selecting Digital Health ToolsSelecting digital health tools is tricky. There are thousands of innovators vying for your attention and dollars. They all promise to help you “get back to doing what you do best, caring for patients” (side note: I think that one has run its course – let’s move on marketers). But how can you be sure they’re selling something that will work for you? That’s where Medigy comes in. It’s a decision support tool for selecting digital health tools. Our very own Shahid Shah is behind this one, and he’s created a platform that enables quantitative...2019-06-1239 minThe #HCBiz Show!No BS and No PowerPoint: HealthImpact East in NYCA great way to align your vision with the realities of the business of healthcare is to test your ideas and assumptions at conferences. Unfortunately, many of these events peddle hype and highly curated sales pitches rather than actionable intelligence that’ll help you get things done (or get to the “No”, which may be even more important to you right now). Sure, you’ll get valuable networking done in most cases, but we want you to get the most bang for your buck (and time) so you can get back to innovating and giving us great stories to cover. T...2019-06-0322 minThe #HCBiz Show!The CMS NPRM: Opportunities from the Payer PerspectiveThe CMS NPRM (Notice of Proposed Rule Making) is much more interesting than many of the past interop-related rules. That’s because it gets specific. It gets specific about technology by calling out FHIR APIs. It gets specific about use cases, such as patient access to data, payer to payer interoperability for administrative data, etc. And surprisingly, it gets specific about collaboration by suggesting that all health plans look at the Da Vinci project and consider implementing its use cases. On this episode, Don Lee and Shahid Shah examine the CMS NPRM from the payer perspective. Our go...2019-05-0341 minThe #HCBiz Show!The Path to Healthcare InteroperabilityThere's a lot happening on the healthcare interoperability front: HIMSS has released a new definition for interoperability The CMS proposed rule is stacked with interesting use cases and is highly focused on making data available to patients. The ONC proposed rule attempts to address data blocking. Both proposed rules promote FHIR APIs. Emergency Triage, Treat and Transport (ET3) Model provides a business context for interoperability with a focus on outcomes. Don and Shahid discuss each of these and pull out the actionable threads. This conversation sets up the next several episodes where we'll identify the opportunities that...2019-04-1053 minThe #HCBiz Show!Healthcare's Value Based... Experiment? w/ Guest Host Janae SharpWhat's the difference between value-based care and value-based payment? How can we attribute outcomes and cost savings to specific innovations in care delivery? Does anyone really know what they're doing? What do the patients think? Who needs to be at the table to figure this all out? On this episode, guest-host Janae Sharp asks Don Lee and Shahid Shah about the VBP Forward Conference happening in Buffalo on February 20th and 21st. And we try to break down what's really happening in the move from Fee For Service to Value-based healthcare. See full show notes a...2019-01-2840 minThe #HCBiz Show!Lessons on Selling in Healthcare w/ Dom Cappuccilli - 085Selling is hard. Whether you're selling an idea, service or product, you've got to get to the core of the issue quickly or you'll lose your audience. And the challenge is notoriously exacerbated by the risky, regulated and complex healthcare system you're selling into. That's why we're talking with Dom Cappuccilli from The Clean Sell. Dom's a storyteller turned sales guy who's been successful in both inside / direct sales and enterprise sales. Dom shares some of his most important lessons from the journey like: How to avoid common sales mistakes like over-reliance on your deck Why no-one cares a...2018-12-1943 minThe #HCBiz Show!Healthcare Trends: A Crossover w/ David Shifrin and The Future of Health Podcast - 083This is a crossover episode with David Shifrin from The Future of Health Podcast and Health:Further. We cover three main topics that have been coming up a lot on our podcasts: Care Transitions Anytime a patient is moved from one care delivery location to another you need to have contextualized data exchange. If care coordinators don’t have the right data, how could the patient? How can technology help educate patients and increase discharge instruction adherence? Telehealth for post-discharge follow-ups. Use telehealth for increased touchpoints and a better doctor-patient relationship. Bruce Greenstein former HHS CTO, say...2018-11-2952 minThe #HCBiz Show!How to Launch and Grow a Virtual Care Service w/ Henry Ford Health System and Vidyo - 080Virtual Care. Telehealth. Telemedicine. Whatever you call it, there are very real benefits to patients and health systems when you do Virtual Care right. But there are many obstacles too. On this episode, we talk with Courtney Stevens, Director of Virtual Care at Henry Ford Health System and Brian Young, Director of Healthcare Solutions Marketing at Vidyo about how to develop a Virtual Care strategy, gain buy-in from clinicians and patients, deliver service and measure success along the way. They provide a comprehensive overview of the process from start to finish with actionable advice about what to do at...2018-11-0159 minThe #HCBiz Show!Why Healthcare Needs a Systems Approach with Jason "The Germ Guy" Tetro from HITS 2018 - 075This episode is part of our in-depth coverage of the Healthcare Infection Transmission Systems Consortium (HITS) 2018 conference in Nashville, TN that took place September 18-20th. Check out all our HITS 2018 episodes here, and look for more throughout the month of October. Adapted from Jason "The Germ Guy" Tetro's Opening Keynote at HITS 2018 Have you ever written the perfect checklist? You left no stone unturned and accounted for every possible step that needed to occur. You trained your staff. Everyone was understood and was on board. But you still failed. Today’s guest woul...2018-10-1140 minThe #HCBiz Show!The New Patient Journey and its Impact on Healthcare Marketing w/ Carrie Liken of Yext - 073The patient journey has changed drastically in the past 5 years and it's having an outsized impact on healthcare marketing. You know about the "Google-effect", but did you know that 83% of patients are not going to the hospital website to research doctors and services? And now with Alexa, Apple Car Play and Android auto, voice-first is adding a brand new wrinkle. In short, there are many ways for your patients to find you and if you aren't managing the digital landscape, then you're missing out. Proper branding across channels makes it easier to be discovered and signals to your patients t...2018-10-0258 minThe #HCBiz Show!Robotic Surgery: Business Cases, Benefits and Myths | Dr. Roger Smith | The Nicholson Center - 072Robotic surgery is a loaded term. Just reading the words can bring Hollywood-inspired images of fully autonomous robot doctors to mind. But that's not what's happening in the industry today. The "robots" are merely tools used by doctors, just like a stethoscope or a scalpel. And they have some interesting use cases and value propositions to health systems. For example, they can act as a great equalizer by helping young surgeons perform subtle movements that would otherwise take them years to perfect. But there's a flip side. Studies like this one from Stanford question the value of robotic tools t...2018-09-1957 minThe #HCBiz Show!Transforming the Prescription Decision Process Between Physicians and Patients w/ Surescripts CEO Tom Skelton - 071Unanticipated high out-of-pocket prescription costs negatively impact patient safety and may lead to increased healthcare spending later. According to the Truven Health Analytics-NPR Health Poll for Prescription Drugs (June 2017), the most cited reason by respondents who did not fill their prescription was cost (67%). Prior-authorization is another hurdle, and when it's required, according to today's guest, medication adherence drops precipitously. In general, medication treatment failures due to a variety of issues, including medication non-adherence and friction from prior-authorization are a big problem in U.S. healthcare. Patients don't get the care they need and it costs the...2018-09-1252 minThe #HCBiz Show!The California Provider Directory Utility w/ Jon McBride & Rajan Shah - 070We've talked extensively about the problem with provider directories. It's a fundamental issue in healthcare administration and many of our processes are built on top of it. I've called it healthcare's ultimate death by paper cut. Now, we're starting to see new solutions in the market. Last week we looked at an open-source industry solution. This week we're looking at the statewide effort in California. California's Senate Bill 137 (SB-137), the "toothiest" provider directory law to date, set the stage for a state-wide collaboration that would have been otherwise difficult to attain. Today I'm joined by Jon McBride...2018-09-0457 minThe #HCBiz Show!Finding the right words - Stacey Richter - Relentless Health Value Podcast - 066How do you get everyone to stick to the strategy? With doctors, CEOs, and Congress all trying to move healthcare forward, where is the progress? This week's discussion dives deep into the components of making change happen. From shared understanding to aligned incentives, Stacey Richter from the Relentless Health Value Podcast and I explain why change is so hard and how to get everyone working towards a common goal. 0:43 Everything in the industry is viewed very differently by different parties. There are different, sometimes conflicting incentives for each party. When you understand their motivations, you s...2018-08-0256 minThe #HCBiz Show!The Right Kind of Patient Education - Stacey Richter - QCHealth - 065What a patient does at home during the time between doctor visits has the largest effect on the outcome of their care. The instructions doctors and nurses give patients at the point of care varies greatly and give health systems an opportunity. Stacey Richter, Co-President of Aventria Health Group and host of The Relentless Health Value podcast joins me to talk about her new company QCHealth and how patient education can have a huge affect on quality metrics. 2:04 Are we defining patient education? 4:02 What is outcome guided engagement?- care plan is series of outcomes, how...2018-07-2651 minThe #HCBiz Show!Internet Marketing for Healthcare Practices - Garrett Smith - 063Even the best doctors in the world can have their patients stolen away by savvy online marketing. Practices are doing their patients a disservice by not doing everything they can to prevent that from happening. In this episode, I sit down with Garrett Smith, CEO of InboundMD and author of Book Now! Internet Marketing for Healthcare Practices, to discuss how everyone from large practices to solo docs can improve their online marketing. Garrett lays out an easy-to-use checklist to rev your marketing engine from 0-60 in as little as 1 hour a week. Get ready to take notes. Your future...2018-07-081h 01The #HCBiz Show!How to pitch a journalist before a conference - Jeff Byers - Healthcare Dive - 062Having a great product is not always enough to be news worthy. It is much easier to get noticed at a conference when you know what journalists are looking for. On this episode, Shahid and I get a behind the scenes look at how to hack healthcare news. Jeff Byers, Associate Editor at Healthcare Dive, tells us how he spots trends, how to pick which conferences to attend and shares dozens of tips for how to get your company's story placed above the fold. 1:25 How you can reach out to get PR before a conference. 2:47...2018-06-2946 minThe #HCBiz Show!The Role of a CMO at a large EMR Vendor - Dr Betty Rabinowitz - Nextgen Healthcare - 061Software that supports EMR needs to change and evolve at the same pace as medicine. Getting clinicians on the front lines the tools they need to make decisions is a team effort. On this episode, Shahid and I sit down with Dr. Betty Rabinowitz to talk about her new position as CMO at NextGen and how her team plans to improve the lives of those who practice medicine and those they care for. 1:16 Dr. Betty's journey from primary care to startup to Nextgen CMO. 4:40 How the physician perspective can improve the EMR implementation. 6:25 S...2018-06-2647 minThe #HCBiz Show!TEFCA, Interoperability, and an Industry's Unreasonable Expectations w/ Niam Yaraghi - 060In the rush to implement EHR and meaningful use, did we forget about interoperability? Congress thinks there should be more to show for the billions of dollars already spent on EHR. Now, they've asked the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) to give guidance for the future. On this episode, Shahid and I sit down with Niam Yaraghi to discuss what TEFCA is and what it means for interoperability and the business of healthcare. The problem with all this is that no one can clearly articulate what interoperability (or data blocking for that matter) is. In reality, h...2018-06-2351 minThe #HCBiz Show!What you don’t know about your data CAN hurt you | Jeff Garbus | Soaring Eagle - 058How much money would your business lose every second your database is down? How long would it take to get it back up and running? Would you be able to answer these questions on your own? Probably not. That's why Jeff Garbus started Soaring Eagle Database Consulting. In this episode, Jeff takes us on a fast-paced journey through the ultimate data management insurance process and shares some of the most common issues CIOs get blind-sided by. Don't lose focus and get your pens out because you will be talking about this with your team first thing tomorrow. ...2018-06-1819 minThe #HCBiz Show!Healthcare IT Entrepreneurs’ Dilemma: Surviving the Valley of Death - Dexter Braff at the Health IT Expo - 055It is the Healthcare IT Entrepreneurs’ Dilemma. In order to become a Unicorn, you either have to survive or take a long detour around the Valley of Death, that strange netherworld where the value of your company can actually drop once you become marginally profitable. As counter intuitive as that may seem, it is strangely logical once you realize that valuation – especially in technologically innovative sectors – is rooted far more in “behavioral economics” than rigorous math. On this episode, Dexter Braff explains the phases of value a health IT company can anticipate and the challenges – and opportunities – it may face as it mov...2018-06-0727 minThe #HCBiz Show!Validating Performance Claims in Healthcare - Linda Riddell - Validation Institute - 054When the promises of workplace wellness programs and population health analysis don't live up to expectations, lack of trust can stifle growth for the entire sector. Linda Riddell tells us how to bypass savvy marketing to help employers and health systems evaluate if vendors' claims match reality. Care Innovations' Validation Institute is rescuing outcome measurements by rigorously checking the math and methods before giving their stamp of integrity. Show Notes: 1:35 – What is the Value Institute? – Review of outcome measures 5:50 – Meaningful outcome measures – Simple questions with big predictions 7:12 – The holistic approach to measuring...2018-06-0636 min
Moment of ClarityRedacted Tonight #473-Alex Vitae Discusses Why We Don't Need Police with Lee CampAlex Vitae talks about why we don't need any police at all! Tan Lui discusses the Ponzi scheme of Wall St. PLUS a conversation with Shahid Butar, congressional candidate in San Francisco!2018-05-221h 07Moment of ClarityRedacted Tonight #473-Alex Vitae Discusses Why We Don't Need Police with Lee CampAlex Vitae talks about why we don't need any police at all! Tan Lui discusses the Ponzi scheme of Wall St. PLUS a conversation with Shahid Butar, congressional candidate in San Francisco!2018-05-221h 07The #HCBiz Show!052 - The ever-changing world of security and privacy | David Harlow and Niam YaraghiOn this episode, we welcome back two long-time friends of the show to talk privacy, security and HIPAA. David Harlow and Niam Yaraghi join me and Shahid for a wide-ranging discussion that includes: Niam's recent report: How HIPAA omnibus rules effectively reduced the number of data breaches among health care providers’ business associates Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and how it applies to the U.S. healthcare system. The difference between a systems approach and a data approach to security and privacy How privacy might be seen as a facet of patient safety and how that could ch...2018-05-2249 minThe #HCBiz Show!051 - Delivering Cost and Risk Data at the Point of Care | GT LaBorde | IllumiCareWe've always asked a lot of our doctors. Now we're asking them drive value based care. The question is, are we giving them the right tools and the right information to succeed? On this episode we talk with GT LaBorde, CEO of IllumiCare. They've built a platform that empowers clinicians with real-time cost and iatrogenic risk data – at the point of care. Here are some of the key topics we discuss: What's missing from our current healthcare economy and what problems does that cause? Why has this problem persisted and what needs to be done about it...2018-05-0342 minThe #HCBiz Show!048 - Practical Innovation at the Health IT Expo | John LynnWe're big fans of practicality at The #HCBiz Show! Don't get me wrong... we love disruptive innovation and cutting age tech as much as anyone, but we love getting things done RIGHT NOW a lot more. We're glad there are smart folks out there building the tools that'll change the game in 10-20 years, but our job is to give you the information you need to get things done when you go to work on Monday. That's why you'll see us touch just lightly on the cutting edge, and then dig incredibly deep on the here and n...2018-04-0642 minThe #HCBiz Show!HIMSS18-15 | Nathaniel Lacktman | Asynchronous Telemedicine | Foley & Lardner LLPThis interview is part of our HIMSS18 coverage and was recorded live on the showroom floor. On this episode I talk with Nathaniel Lacktman, Health Care Partner and Chair of Telemedicine Industry Team and Digital Health Group at Foley & Lardner. He's also one of the nation's leading voices on telemedicine laws and business models. Nate gives us a quick primer on why startups and entrepreneurs shouldn't put legal issues on the back-burner, especially when it comes to fraud and abuse. He tells us how we can avoid big problems down the road by coming up w...2018-04-0219 minThe #HCBiz Show!HIMSS18-14 | Stuart Goldberg, M.D. | Cota | Precision PaymentThis interview is part of our HIMSS18 coverage and was recorded live in the exhibit hall. On this episode we talk with Stuart Goldberg, MD, Chief Scientific Officer at Cota. Dr. Goldberg tells us all about Cota's physician-led journey to organize and classify real-world evidence about every type of cancer. This effort led to something they call the Cota Nodal Address (CNA), and it's enabling health systems to get very specific about the types of patients they're treating, the costs associated with them, and the outcomes being achieved. This apples-to-apples comparison allows Cota to identify variation and ad...2018-03-2724 minThe #HCBiz Show!Demystifying Big Data and Machine Learning for Healthcare | Prashant Natarajan | HIMSS18-11On this episode, we chat with Prashant Natarajan, an innovation and product leader, best-selling author on Big Data, Analytics, Machine Learning and AI, and, if I do say so myself, an all-around swell guy! Prashant takes a very pragmatic approach to demystifying big data, ML and AI and shows us that it all starts with the data. He introduces us to the concept of data fidelity, which is the appropriateness of data for a purpose. That concept is so important to grasp. It allows us to get started where we are, drive towards value over time and enables us to...2018-03-1933 minThe #HCBiz Show!HIMSS18-08 | Dexter Braff | The Braff GroupThis interview is part of our HIMSS18 coverage. We'll be talking with thought leaders and vendors all week at the annual Health Information Management Society conference in Las Vegas. On this episode we catch up with Dexter Braff of The Braff Group. Dexter shares advice for Health IT entrepreneurs on how to stay focused while big players keep making big announcements. And there have been plenty of big announcements: Apple Health Records Amazon, JP Morgan Chase, Berkshire Hathaway Partner to disrupt healthcare Uber and Lyft want to take you to the doctor The Whitehouse has a...2018-03-1316 minThe #HCBiz Show!HIMSS18-06 | Matt Fisher | Healthcare lawyer, podcaster & SMAThis interview is part of our HIMSS18 coverage. We'll be talking with thought leaders and vendors all week at the annual Health Information Management Society conference in Las Vegas. On this episode we chat with Matt Fisher (@Matt_R_Fisher), Healthcare Corporate Regulatory lawyer, host of Healthcare de Jure and HIMSS 18 Social Media Ambassador. You can find all of our HIMSS '18 Interviews here. About the Healthcare de Jure Tune in as we serve up the hottest healthcare issues of the day, all from a legal point of view. From public po...2018-03-0907 minThe #HCBiz Show!HIMSS18-01 | What to expect this weekI'm at HIMSS '18 in Las Vegas. I'll be here all week and will do my best to bring you along with me. Here's the plan: 1. I'll post a new show each day at HIMSS recapping what I experienced/learned the day before. Make sure you're subscribed at your favorite podcast source so you don't miss them. Most popular: http://bit.ly/HCBiz-iTunes http://bit.ly/HCBiz-GooglePlay http://bit.ly/HCBiz-Stitcher http://bit.ly/HCBiz-Spotify 2. I'll grab impromptu interviews at the various events, in the hallways, at the meetups and happy...2018-03-0503 minThe #HCBiz Show!030 - Why You Should Always Be Preparing to Sell Your Company | Dexter Braff | The Braff Group – Part 2You've heard of "Always Be Closing", right? Well today we'll tell you why you should at least "Always Be Preparing" (to Close). Every entrepreneur can and should learn the ways of the M&A market and use that knowledge to inform the way they build their company. That's true if you hope to exit someday because it'll drive decisions that make your company more valuable later. And it's true if you plan on staying in your business for the long haul. Investors have battle-tested methods for determining what's valuable and what's risky. As the current and future i...2018-01-3141 minThe #HCBiz Show!029 - JPM18, WinterTech, Startup Bundles & MoreOn this episode we recap the 36th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare conference (#JPM18), the Health 2.0 WinterTech event and talk about the "festival" that J.P. Morgan Week becomes in San Francisco. We cover the trends and topics coming out of the festival and use them as a jumping off point to discuss the next wave of digital health investment and innovation. What you'll learn: What is the J.P. Morgan Healthcare conference? What is the Health 2.0 WinterTech Event? Who attends these events and how do you get value from them? How you can take part...2018-01-2457 minThe #HCBiz Show!028 - How to Analyze the Health IT Market | Dexter Braff | The Braff Group – Part 1To be understood, seek first to understand. It applies in life, and it applies when you're trying to gain traction with an innovative product, solution, or workflow in the Health IT market. Why? Because there are too many draws on your customers' attention. If you want them to take the time to understand you, then you'd better position yourself where they already are, or will soon be looking. In short, get to know your market. On this episode, we're talking with Dexter Braff, President of The Braff Group, one of the nation’s leading health ca...2018-01-1852 minThe #HCBiz Show!027 - Health Benefits as a Strategic Opportunity | Chris Skisak | HBCHRead this on the web Have you ever wondered why your employer buys your health insurance for you? They don't get involved in car insurance, home owners, etc. Why healthcare? To understand that, you have to go all the way back to World War II. When the federal government froze wages during WWII, employers needed a way to compete for employees. As it turned out, benefits weren't included in this freeze and became a great way to attract talent. And then, as often happens, inertia took over and we just kept doing it that way...2018-01-0548 minThe #HCBiz Show!024 - How to Listen Your Way to the Future of Healthcare | Dr. Chesley Richards | CDCThey say that civilization advances by extending the number of important things we can do without thinking about them. To me, that's the promise of technology and it's particularly true when it comes to artificial intelligence and machine learning. Still, not everyone sees it that way. Some worry that they'll be replaced. Others take offense to the fact that they're seen as replaceable. But just like the rise of ATMs led to an INCREASE in the number of bank tellers, we'll see AI drive unpredictable, and generally positive change in the healthcare industry. Some will be displaced, but if...2017-10-261h 04The #HCBiz Show!QM01 - Quality Measures: Past, Present and Future | John D'Amore - Diameter HealthOn this episode, we talk with John D'Amore. John is Founder, President and Chief Strategy Officer at Diameter Health and has been working on Quality Measures in healthcare since the early 2000s. Yup, pre-EMR quality measures! John takes us on a fascinating journey from paper based quality measurement (see RHQDAPU... at least we've streamlined our acronyms!) to the dawn of electronic measurement. via the Electronic Medical Record (EMR). He explains why the single-EMR approach made sense in the hospital, but how the industry was hurt when it decided to apply that approach in the ambulatory setting. Finally, Joh...2017-10-1155 minThe #HCBiz Show!022 - Quality Talks 2017 | Andy Reynolds | NCQAQuality... What does that mean in healthcare? How can it be measured? Is it the same for everyone? Who gets to decide? These are just a few of the incredibly difficult questions that the healthcare industry is grappling with as we enter the age of value-based care. The decisions we make about quality in the coming years will have significant and lasting impact on the future of our industry. This is a conversation that's very much worth having. On this episode, we bring you another conference preview. Our intention is to help you...2017-09-2940 minThe #HCBiz Show!021 - Building a Health IT Leadership Team | Drew Ramsey | Valor PartnersThe healthcare industry has lots of problems, lots of money and is in a constant state of change. With those characteristics, it's no wonder startups are throwing their hats in the ring in increasing numbers. The theory is that they'll take some technology or process that's just killin' it in every other sector, apply it in healthcare and profit. The reality they find is quite different. Even with a great product, the notoriously long sales cycles, counter-intuitive financial incentives and policy-driven Health IT strategies converge to deliver a very strong message... you need help. On this episode, w...2017-09-2145 minThe #HCBiz Show!Take it to the Cloud: A Look at Hybrid Data Storage in Healthcare | Laz Vekiarides | ClearSky DataThe entire healthcare industry went digital in a very short time. We've barely got our arms around the mountains of data created every day in our transactional systems (i.e. EMR, Scheduling, RCM, etc.). Now the genomic, patient-generated and device-generated data is starting to flow. Take all that, mix it up with some HIPAA, a few parts ransomware, an uncompromising need for on demand data and reliability, the almost-dogmatic refusal to ever let go of a single piece of information, and the rapidly expanding need for new insights, and you'll start to get a glimpse of the state of...2017-09-1346 minThe #HCBiz Show!019 - HITS Conference Preview w/ Dr. Christine Greene and Dr. Kelly ReynoldsThe most important thing we do on The #HCBiz Show! is confront reality. We don't complain about how things are, or how they ought to be. We know that's a dead-end. Instead, we examine our current situation and identify our obstacles. Then we come up with practical ideas for how to work through, under, around, or with those obstacles. That's the only reasonable approach for an innovator. Dealing with obstacles to Infection Control The Healthcare Infection Transmission Systems (HITS) conference (and the consortium behind it) gives us a wonderful example of this #HCBiz philosophy in action. The HIT...2017-08-2329 minThe #HCBiz Show!PD07 - Going Deep on Provider Directory - Dave Marotz - SurescriptsHow do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. That may be the best advice I can give the healthcare industry at this point. On this episode, we talk with Dave Marotz, Director of Directory Services at Surescripts to break down the Provider Directory concept into its component parts... "capability style". We go deep on the technical and architectural hurdles that need to be overcome to progress Provider Directory. You'll learn about: The various standards-based approaches that have been/are being attempted. New wrinkles on provider context and how we ma...2017-07-261h 04The #HCBiz Show!PD06 - How to Tap Existing Processes for Provider Data | Martin Dunn | Gaine HealthcareThis week's guest is Martin Dunn, CEO of Gaine Healthcare. Martin frames up the current state of provider data and directory issues quite well with this quote: "It doesn't matter how much you regulate the docs, It doesn't matter how much you've threatened the docs. It doesn't matter how much you incent the docs to pull this information together for you. If you ask questions that are difficult to answer, difficult to understand, impossible to keep up with because the doctors and the physicians and the provider organizations just don't have the systems in order to give...2017-07-1853 minThe #HCBiz Show!PD05 - Approaching Provider Directory as a Data Quality Problem | Andrew Kobylinski | BetterDoctorFriedrich Nietzsche argued that there are no facts, only interpretations. It seems that this idea holds true for provider data too. Today's guest is Andrew Kobylinski, Head of Platform at BetterDoctor. Andrew tells us that the provider directory issue is first and foremost a data quality issue. At the heart of data quality, he says, is metadata that explains where the information came from, what it means, when it was updated, and more. This metadata is the interpretation and without it, your facts are pretty much useless. According to Andrew, "collecting the data is one-half of the problem. It's act...2017-07-1151 minThe #HCBiz Show!014 - Accelerating Digital Health for Social Good | Christian Seale | Startupbootcamp MiamiLife can be hard for entrepreneur's in healthcare. Sure, we've seen an increase in Digital Health investment over the past few years, but it remains exceedingly difficult for new companies to prove their value, align with complex reimbursement models and get that first customer. That's where Digital Health Accelerators like Startupbootcamp Miami come in. They're in the business of aligning startups with specific customer needs, and in doing so, can help founders make big leaps in a short amount of time. This episode's guest is Christian Seale. He's the founder and Managing Director at Startupbootcamp in Miami, whi...2017-06-2946 minThe #HCBiz Show!PD04 - Are We Asking Providers the Wrong Questions? | Ron Urwongse | CAQHOn this episode, the fourth in our ongoing Provider Directory Series, we continue to unravel the "why" behind provider directory inaccuracies. One major theme that's emerged is that we have a context gap between health plans and providers. That is, even when we're asking the right people at the right time, we might be asking the wrong questions. Our guest, Ron Urwongse, a Senior Product Manager at CAQH, explains how adding a level of specificity to our questions can yield dramatically different results. For example, if you ask a provider if they work at an office, they...2017-06-2141 minThe #HCBiz Show!PD03 - Provider Data: What is Known and What is Assumed? | Mark Martin - AvailityThere are two kinds of Provider Data Explicit provider data comes directly from the providers, their groups or even their IT systems (i.e. EMR, RCM, etc). Since this data is coming from the source, it's assumed to be up-to-date and accurate. However, as we learned in episode 11 (PD-02) there are subtleties and complexities to consider. For example, there are scenarios where it's best to go straight to the provider and others where you must talk to the group instead. You see, there are contractual complexities that change the context of the information. The context of the data is a...2017-06-131h 01The #HCBiz Show!PD01 - Provider Directories: How Hard Can This Really Be? | Don Lee and Shahid ShahIn 2016 we saw new provider directory regulations from CMS and several states, including the particularly "toothy" SB-137 in California. The new rules are intended to hold health plans accountable for any inaccurate and/or incomplete information in their provider directories. The national conversation is focused intently on the consumer side. That is, bad information makes it difficult for patients to make educated decisions when they select plans and can lead to access issues down the road. The consumer issues are real, but only scratch the surface of the overall provider data problems we face. Health plans a...2017-05-3145 minThe #HCBiz Show!IPAC-07 Understanding Infectious Agents in the Environment | Dr. Syed Sattar and Bahram ZargarWhat happens to an infectious agent once it leaves the human body? Well, it ends up in our cars, airplanes, food, water and soil. If we know how that contagion behaves "in the wild", then we'll be able to kill it, filter it, or otherwise prevent it from proliferating, and potentially improve the lives of millions of people in the process. This is the study of Environmental Microbiology and it's a topic that today's guest has spent more than 30 years trying to understand. Dr. Syed Sattar is Professor Emeritus of Microbiology at the Faculty of Medicine, University o...2017-05-1745 minThe #HCBiz Show!IPAC-05 Lessons on Infection Control and Healthcare Sales from the Man with the High-Tech Pillow | David WoolfsonThere are two things I can say for sure. First, healthcare-associated infections (HAI) cause a lot of suffering and cost a lot of money. Second, it's really hard to sell into healthcare, even when you have an innovative product that attacks a well-known problem in a common-sense way. On this episode, we get to dive into both of those things. Infection Control and Environmental Surfaces Over the past decade, substantial scientific evidence has accumulated indicating that contamination of environmental surfaces in hospital rooms plays an important role in the transmission of several key HAIs. Environmental surfaces contribute to...2017-05-0344 minThe #HCBiz Show!IPAC-04 Shining a Light on C. diff - Christian John LillisClostridium difficile (klos-TRID-e-um dif-uh-SEEL), often called C. difficile or C. diff impacts 453,000 people every year. And with 29,000 associated deaths, it takes more lives than AIDS and drunk-driving combined. Yet, most people have never even heard of it. That's a big problem because you can't protect yourself from a threat when you don't even know it exists. The impact on the business of healthcare is significant too. A study published in the American Journal of Infection Control found that C. diff-associated diarrhea (CDAD) increases hospital costs by 40% per case (an average of $7,285 ) and puts those infected at high risk...2017-04-2650 minThe #HCBiz Show!IPAC-03 Why Hand Hygiene Matters - Tamás HaideggerHand hygiene is the number one line of defense when it comes to controlling the spread of healthcare-associated infections (HAI) and infectious disease. Since we know that antibiotic and antimicrobial resistance is on the rise, and few new antibiotics are being developed, it becomes exceedingly important that we prevent people from acquiring these infections in the first place. Checkout our extensive coverage of the Infection Prevention and Control (IPAC) space We know that hand-washing is effective when done right, and we know that when monitored, we do it right. In fact, right after we recorded th...2017-04-1953 minThe #HCBiz Show!IPAC-01 Infection Prevention and Control with Niall Wallace and Michael DiamondThe #HCBiz Show first address the topic of Healthcare Associated Infections (HAI) in July 2016 when we asked Infonaut founder Niall Wallace the question: Why are we losing the battle to hospital-acquired infections? From that post/interview: Hospital Acquired Infections (HAI) are a big deal in US healthcare: They cost U.S. hospitals as much as $45 Billion per year. On any given day, approximately one in 25 U S patients has at least one infection contracted during the course of their hospital care In 2011, there were an estimated 722,000 HAIs in U.S. hospitals and 75,000 of the patients died. ...2017-04-1140 minThe #HCBiz Show!Introducing The #HCBiz Show! A Practical Conversation on the Business of HealthcareCo-hosts Don Lee (@dflee30) and Shahid Shah (@ShaidNShah) introduce the podcast and tell you what to expect in 2017. The premise behind #HCBiz is that we can't "just innovate". Sure, you may have a great idea, an all-star team and execute flawlessly, but if you don't understand the complex dynamics of the healthcare business you'll never get traction. It'll seem that the system is broken and the people inside of it are irrational. You'll swear that it just doesn't make any sense at all. Well, we're here to tell you that it always makes sense. There just happens to...2017-04-0133 min