- Hello everyone.
This is Erica Spicer Mason
with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast.
Thank you so much for tuning into this episode on improving
provider experience and patient outcomes
through digital health.
We're thrilled to be joined today by VM Upia,
the executive director of digital at M-D-V-I-P.
Without further ado, vm, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you so much for joining us.
- Thank you. I'd like to thank Becker's Healthcare
for the opportunity, and, uh, also those
who are listening in for their time today.
- Oh, wonderful. Well, we're excited
to hear your insights on digital health.
Um, so I wanted to kind
of start our discussion a bit high level here
and ask you what you see as the role
of digital health in driving patient
experience and outcomes.
- Yeah, absolutely. So I think one way we look at this is
how consumer behavior
and expectations have evolved since the pandemic.
If you go back to prior to the pandemic, many providers were
what we would consider to be low touch, low tech.
So the investments in digital health were more a function
of provider sentiment than patient expectations.
What happened is this accelerated through the pandemic
and has fundamentally shifted the mindset
of the healthcare consumer towards preferring
what we call more of a high touch,
high tech type of engagement.
And whether you look at patient monitoring, telehealth,
you know, artificial intelligence driven diagnostics,
medication management, right?
All of those use cases point to a consumer
that is definitely preferring more of a high touch,
high tech type of engagement.
In one study that, um, I often refer to when asked
what could cause someone to leave their provider, the lack
of online digital experiences, you know,
even basic ones like scheduling were a key driver.
And more pointedly, if you were, look, if you were
to look at millennials, millennials were three times more
likely than baby boomers to switch their providers
just over the lack of meeting digital health expectations.
Our own data at M-D-V-I-P suggests that utilization
of digital health has doubled
for some use cases versus before the pandemic.
And ulti ultimately has fundamentally shifted
the consumer behavior sense.
Now, what this means is that a world of healthcare consumers
that is increasingly biased towards high touch,
high tech healthcare,
and by the way, are willing to pay for it,
it creates just a,
a strikingly different competitive landscape in which health
systems and other providers must now operate and thrive
or risk losing their patients to a competitor.
So at M-D-V-I-P, we, we utilize like what I,
what I would call our few first
principles for digital health.
And, you know, I really hope that they're of value
to the audience, uh, that's listening today.
So, number one, we think
that digital health experiences need to be of high quality
and not necessarily of high quantity.
So while an average M-D-V-I-P member,
as an example has over 30 engagements a year with M-D-V-I-P,
uh, and about 80% of those are digital,
we really focus on the ones
that can help drive positive change and therefore outcomes.
I think a second, first principle is
that digital health experiences need to be
multimodal, right?
So, you know, M-D-V-I-P members can use their apps,
their web-based portals.
They can securely message the practice,
but they can also call their doctor.
They can schedule an appointment, they can attend an event,
uh, which could be online
or offline that their doctor's hosting,
which is focused on wellness and prevention.
So I think the, the key takeaway here is that
whatever we think about digital health experiences,
multimodality plays a key role so that you can reach
and broaden the reach of, uh,
audiences that you're trying to engage.
And then the third takeaway that, that we've had
with our experience is that digital health experiences need
to be highly personalized to the patient and to the doctor.
So our members have a sort of a curated journey
with digital engagements,
but within that curated journey, we treat each practice,
each doctor and each member with their unique needs in mind.
In fact, we've done significant work with machine learning
and, uh, various algorithms in this space
that helps us understand practice level
and patient level nuances that can help determine
what digital health engagements can drive,
what effective outcomes.
So what does this all lead to, right?
Like these three first principles, we try to live by
and practice so that we can have a highly personalized,
digitally enabled patient journey.
So day in a life, right? If you're new in a community
looking for a doctor, we're able to identify
through various algorithms if you would be a good fit
for doctors that operate in
that community within the M-D-V-I-P model.
And based on that fit, we can reach out
to you within minutes, across a variety of channels
to set up that first appointment,
to learn more about the physician and program.
Once you're a member, we have programs that offer, you know,
various conveniences, messaging capabilities across apps
or web portals that offer patients, you know, easy, direct
and secure way to communicate with their doctors.
And most importantly, personalized,
curated digital content from a doctor
that can help drive positive behavior and choices.
In the panel, we run a program called Health Champions
that is, has been very successful in this particular, uh,
focus, which is to drive personalized digital content, uh,
that can help patients make healthier choices.
And then lastly on ai, right?
M-D-V-I-P has been using artificial intelligence since 2015.
And I think what is most telling as it relates
to digital health, um, and its impact
and on patient outcomes, is that in some use cases such
as medication risk and even anti-cancer, early detection,
our doctors have effectively used this technology
for early better diagnosis and care delivery.
- Thank you so much, vm. I really appreciate that overview.
It, it's interesting to hear about this evolution
in patients technology use from low, low touch low tech
to now high touch high tech.
And I think those three principles that you outlined, um,
that you leverage at M-D-V-I-P are really helpful
for our listeners and really tying that back
to what's possible in terms
of influencing the patient experience,
but also their health outcomes.
Um, so again, thank you so much for,
for sharing those insights.
So considering all of this
and those three principles, going back
to those best practices, you mentioned, you know, ensuring
that digital health is high quality, um, multimodal,
highly personalized,
assuming a healthcare organization achieves those,
those things, what are some good ways
to get patients engaged in those digital health initiatives?
- Yeah, that's often the, the, the tougher question, right?
So, you know, as I reflect on a variety
of digital health rollouts, um, that we've had,
whether it's, uh, platforms that we've rolled out
for messaging and various apps or portals
or specific programs, uh, that have more
of a clinical element, uh, that we've rolled out such
as telehealth or digitally enabled chronic care management,
remote patient monitoring, variety of clinical pilots,
I think similar themes have emerged in driving
engagement from patients.
And I'll kind of stick to my sort of three rule principle,
hopefully that that serves as good takeaways for the,
the the listeners.
Um, so I think the, the, the first learning we've had is
buy-in and alignment from the doctor is a must have.
And specifically in our model,
which is uniquely focused on the physician patient
relationship, focusing on the physician as the net promoter
and champion of the digital health initiative is critical
to driving patient engagement.
The second, um, sort of takeaway
or learning we've had is equally important to the doctor,
perhaps even more is buy-in
and alignment from the staff in the practice.
So in addition to the physician championing the digital
health initiative with the staff,
with the practice staff on a consistent cadence,
methodologies that really have worked
for us in the past are threefold staff training,
staff incentives and staff recognition.
So for example, one thing we've done is having dedicated
outside of operational working hours
and frankly location training
for practice staff on the initiative so
that they are in the mental space to be able
to really absorb and go through the change
that's necessary in how they operationally execute on
that digital health initiative,
creating community of engaged staff.
So one thing we've piloted
and have had success with is linking
practice staff from various practices so
that they can exchange ideas
and also be transparent about obstacles that they're facing
with the digital health initiative.
And that creates both sort of a feedback loop
that is important not just for M-D-V-I-P,
but it creates a feedback loop within the practices
that can help motivate each other, uh, to bring
that initiative to life and scale it.
Another thing we've done vis-a-vis staff is
to create quantitative
and qualitative incentives for the staff.
Sometimes physicians translate
that to monitoring incentives.
Sometimes the qualitative incentives
include a recognition program.
So we have a recognition programs for staff who go really
above and beyond in the successful rollout
or adoption of key initiatives at the practice.
And all of this really then creates the conditions
between the alignment from the doctor
and then alignment from the staff to now start, you know,
sort of sowing the seeds for good alignment
and good engagement from the patients.
And I think when it comes to the patients
and their activation and additional health initiative
itself, we use the same guiding
principles that we talked about.
So we, we look at engaging patients
through multimodal means.
We look at engaging patients
through personalized mechanisms.
So first we would, you know,
we segment the patient population, identifying patients
who would be good fit for the digital health initiative.
Usually, you know, obviously this is enabled
by the physician or some, uh, type
of a clinical set of guidelines.
We would then conduct multimodal outreach
that is on the behalf of the physician
so the patients are actually hearing from their doctor.
And this could be a broad range of communications such
as calls, like recorded calls
or direct phone calls, emails, you know, messages,
alerts across the various tools that patients use
in office activation.
So the patients come in for appointments, ac you know, using
that opportunity to activate them on the initiative.
And then, as I mentioned before, both virtual
and offline events.
And so sometimes we'll do like
geographically focused webinars, right, on some specific,
um, benefit, and then the patients can
engage and learn from that.
So all of these sort of go into the recipe of
making sure that we are doing our best to engage patients,
and then we're doing that follow up
and follow through necessary for successfully rolling out,
uh, whatever digital health initiative
that we have on our plate.
- Yeah, thanks so much VM.
It sounds like a really intentional approach
and as you were describing it,
it sounds also like the provider experience is so connected
with the patient experience when it comes
to rolling out digital health initiatives
and the experience that patients have.
It's very much influenced by provider adoption
and having those physician champions.
Um, so I kind of wanted
to drill down on that a little bit more.
Can you share any opportunities, um, that you see
to improve experience
and outcomes for, for healthcare providers with these
- Initiatives?
Yeah, I think that's pretty spot on, right?
Like many of the consumer expectations
and the first principles that we operate, uh, that we spoke
around on the patient side, interestingly apply
to providers as well, right?
So if you, if you think about our model, you know,
it's more than two decades old,
but it was founded by primary care doctors
who recognize the need for more engagement
and really greater work satisfaction amongst their peers in,
um, in a delivery, in a care delivery environment
where physician burnout is now approaching, what,
70% in primary care.
This really was a hypothesis, right?
This hypothesis of an empathetic approach
to primary care physicians,
which would then ultimately drive higher satisfaction,
higher engagement from those physicians,
and then would have second order effects
of driving patient outcomes.
This, this hypothesis holds truer than ever.
So when we engage with physicians, either, you know,
whether they're employed by health system
or in an independent setting, we look for doctors
that can thrive in a model of smaller patient panels
that can take the time, that can benefit from a time
to deliver a personalized preventative care model,
and then provide them with tools to help them do
so both clinically and operationally.
You know, in many ways, you know, when,
when I think about our model, it, it,
it is the original promise of value-based care, right?
A relentless focus on the doctor, the patient,
the relationships with both those stakeholders
and the relationships amongst those stakeholders.
And so bringing it back to those, uh, first principles
when we focus on high touch, this focus on the doctor
and the focus on relationships with the doctor is
what we mean, which then creates the context necessary
to deliver satisfaction
and effectiveness both on the doctor side
and the same for the patient side.
So now you apply this to digital health, right?
So the idea is
that you've now created the necessary conditions
for a doctor to really thrive.
As I laid out. You can then
focus on more decisioning
and tooling support for the doctor,
and that's where the technology
and digital health really comes in.
And we firmly believe that that technology
and digital health should really be ambient
to the human experience of a doctor spending time
with a patient or us as the enablers
of the doctor spending time with the doctor.
So, you know, let's talk about a use case, right?
Like one use case in which we've had success in
enabling physicians this way is really leveraging machine
learning to help doctors identify which patients should they
conduct direct outreach to and engage.
And these could be, you know, existing patients
or new patients and that, you know,
we could focus on engagements
that can have predictive correlation to all kinds
of key objectives and milestones we're looking for, right?
Like, uh, like a wellness visit, which then could turn
that in, turn could drive health outcomes.
Another use case, um, to wrap up
where digital tools have played a role is
to helping our doctors with a set of,
essentially a set of to-dos, right?
Reminders that can help them
and their practice staff proactively manage their patient
panels across a variety of clinical, um, an example being,
let's say rolling out remote patient monitoring
or nonclinical or operational programs such as, you know,
welcoming a new patient.
So what we focused on is letting these tools be rolled out
to physicians that can help drive efficiency
and effectiveness in managing the M-D-V-I-P practice,
letting these tools be ambient to the point of multimodality
and high touch and personalization we talked about,
but ultimately using them as enablers to increasing
the physician's engagement and buy-in
because they're seeing the support that's coming their way,
which then has second
and third order effects on patient outcomes
because the physician is in a happier
place with this context.
- Absolutely, and as you were just mentioning
that point about these tools serving as en enablers
to increase physician engagement
and buy-in, um, you know, I'm sure that, that it's,
they see value in gaining time back
to have meaningful interactions with patients.
Um, so I'm sure that for a lot of providers out there,
they can see the benefits in technology,
but seeing those benefits versus actually, uh,
becoming engaged in the digital health initiative,
I'm sure those are two different things.
So just kind of as we close out here, do you have any final
best practices, recommendations,
or methods that you'd recommend, um, for organizations
who are really looking to get their providers engaged?
- Yeah, so, you know, at M-D-V-I-P, we use that, you know,
no two physicians and no two practices are really alike.
And what that requires is discipline, meaning tools,
analytics, and a mindset to be able to understand physicians
and practices, you know,
segmenting them in useful ways, right?
To derive insights on who may be best suited
for leveraging an opportunity in digital health.
Not everyone is, and not everyone is well
suited for every opportunity.
So the first angle here is this like
inside out analytical perspective,
and then we combine that with an
outside in feedback loop from physicians who sit on various,
you know, task forces and advisory boards within our
organization, and then sort of the two mix
to create a degree of selection that can take place,
which determines which physicians are fit
for which digital health programs
and which practices as a secondary qualifier are fit
for which digital health programs.
Now this engagement, you know, one, one criteria here is
that it is usually sponsor driven.
So you need a strong sponsor
and buy-in from the sponsor who's typically the owner
of the digital health initiative.
And it's combined with boots on the ground
engagement from various teams that support physicians
and practices, um, to outreach
to those physicians and engage them.
Uh, the engagement is personal.
Um, so the idea there is that
really understanding your physician to understand
what really motivates them.
Is it clinical outcomes for their patients?
Is it operational workflow and administrative load
and lessening that, is it financial incentives, right?
Those levers can vary across the physician population.
It can vary based on
where the physician is in their careers.
So ultimately knowing your physicians well
and maintaining a strong relationship with them
to help drive these conversations
and ultimately conversions is critical.
And then there's obviously the multimodality aspect in
physician engagement as well, right?
So in addition to the, you know, the digitally enabled call
and email campaigns,
we also leverage digital tools in our
portals to drive awareness.
We also leverage, you know, community updates
and newsletters to announce, you know, new initiatives
that are coming online that physicians can pilot
in or participate in.
And in the last few years,
we've also invested in developing online webinar
capabilities for physicians.
So you're almost building communities of interest, um, such
as a digital task force that we put together, and then,
but also using regularly scheduled regional
and national in-person meetings
to reinforce our priorities as well.
So all of that sort of serves that multimodal touch points
that can help engage doctors.
So I think I'll leave you with this, right?
Pursuing the goal of Happy Physicians
that are successful
and effective, it in turn leads to happy staff
and practices that are successful and effective,
and that yields patients who are engaged
and are effectively managing their health
to successful outcomes,
which you can see across various published studies, right,
that that MDV IP has had.
Digital health is a ambient mechanism, a means
to achieve these inherent goals,
and it's not necessarily the end in itself.
- Absolutely. I really love
what you said there at the end vm, the pursuing the goal
of Happy Physicians and kind of the ripple effect
that can come from that on both staff and patient outcomes.
So really think
that our listeners are going to appreciate that.
And I, I really appreciate you sharing all
of your insights with us today.
Thanks so much again for hopping on the podcast.
- Thank you. I appreciate it.
- We'd also like to thank our podcast sponsor
today, M-D-V-I-P.
You can tune into more podcasts from Becker's Healthcare
by visiting our podcast page at becker's
hospital review.com.
I.