- Prepare to dive into the forefront
of healthcare innovation at our 14th annual meeting coming
up on April 8th
through 11th at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago, with thousands
of industry leaders converging over four dynamic days
of discussions on crucial topics from health IT
to executive leadership.
It's where the future of healthcare takes shape.
We can't wait to connect with you in person
and engage in these important conversations.
- This is Laura Dedo with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast.
I'm thrilled today to be joined by Dr. Bradley,
karate Vice President and Chief Digital Officer
of Froedtert Data Health.
Dr. Ate, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
- Thank you, Laura. Happy to be here.
- Now, I'm looking forward to learning more about some
of the successful projects that you've been doing recently
and how you're thinking about the future.
But before we dive into my questions,
can you tell me a little bit more
about yourself and your background?
- Sure. I have been in healthcare, uh, for about 20,
uh, plus, uh, years,
more than half spent in the informatics, uh, space.
My focus has always been on how we can use the technology
that we have to really make our care processes much more
efficient and, and frankly, work better for our patients
that we're serving as well as our, as our clinical teams.
Uh, you know, currently, uh, my role is
as the Chief Digital Officer for, uh, freighter data care,
uh, health, and also I serve as the interim president
of our, uh, digital subsidiary
that we call Inception, inception Health.
I also, uh, continue to, uh, see patients
as an internist as well.
- Well, that's a lot to take on,
and I can imagine you're pretty busy and,
and you know, it's really cool to hear about, um,
your innovation center as well, and,
and just, uh, you know, excited, um, that you're able
to do all of these things in the healthcare space.
Now, given that, what are some of your top priorities
for the next year or so?
- Well, there's no shortage of things going on,
but you know, very clearly, you know, number one priority is
to continue to develop out our population health programs,
uh, vis-a-vis digital.
The way that we've been organizing digital
and population health is to really
fit very closely to together.
And, uh, we're continuing to, you know,
develop those programs around virtual nursing, uh,
remote patient monitoring,
and our digital therapeutics that we, that we have
to support, uh, chronic care management.
So, and that remains, you know, a, a number one priority.
Second priority we have is
we're still focusing on making healthcare easier for people.
And one of the engineers on our team, you know, reminded me,
uh, very astutely sometimes, uh, you can't make things, uh,
simple that are complex
and, um, we often will say, oh, we need to simplify X,
we need to simplify Y.
But, but frankly, there's a lot
of complexity in, in healthcare.
Um, but the engineer went on to say,
but you can make it easy.
And, and that's what we're focusing on as well.
We have a, a large body of work right now
around our patient engagement center.
And then over top of that, we're overlaying a,
a conversational AI program on top to make it really easy,
uh, for our patients to be able
to make transactions anytime, anywhere, uh, through the web,
through voice, uh, uh, through chat.
So getting that integrated, getting that developed, uh,
getting that, uh, developed in close partnership with our,
our operators is a big focus of ours.
We have a, a, a fairly broad scope, uh, of that.
Um, and then the, the third thing that we're looking at,
you know, from a priority perspective is really looking at
how we can reimagine some of our clinical care programs now
that we have telehealth capabilities, now that we have, uh,
such high, uh, connection with our patients through, uh,
portal, uh, mobile applications, um,
and the like, you know, how, how can we start to
evolve the care model so it's less about what we're doing
in the clinical, uh, office
and more of what we can do together with the patients, uh,
at home enabled by technology.
So how we develop those programs, you know, coming out
of the, the pandemic, we certainly did a lot of telehealth
and telemedicine, but our focus right now is really
how we can dig in
and create sustainable, uh, programs that really provide,
uh, high value, uh, for patients.
So those are, those are three of our,
our top priorities here.
- That's so interesting to hear about,
and especially, you know, that last point you mentioned, um,
about reimagining clinical care
and bringing the virtual aspect into it
and how that becomes part of the whole, uh,
care offerings within the health system.
You know, when you look at clinical care
and with your background as a physician
and continuing to practice physician as well.
Um, what do you, I guess, see as being, um,
the evolution over the next 3, 4, 5 years or so?
How do you really, um,
see organizations leaning into change in this kind
of reimagined workforce as well
as access points within the healthcare space?
- I think we've been talking about team-based care for
a while, and I think it's now really time that we
embrace the best of, of that,
and we're working through that internally with our
advanced practice providers, with our nurses, uh, with our,
uh, m DDoS, you know, what does that care team look like?
And then the other aspect is how can we augment
and enable the, uh,
and support the care team, uh, from a distance?
And, you know, I think we're seeing a culture, what I've,
what I've witnessed in my own clinical practices,
we've had a, a culture from very hyper localized care,
you know, really being about the very local,
on the ground care team, uh, to really, uh, more
of a system systems of care, uh, approach.
So, you know, how can we layer in population health
programs, uh, for example,
how can we layer in centralized resources?
And we've been doing this certainly
with our own population health efforts as well as our,
our digital outreaches.
But the, the culture's evolved,
and I think a lot of it has to do with just, there's
so much on the plate of our clinical care teams right now
that it's, uh, not just hard to keep up, it's impossible
to, uh, to keep up.
And, and I think we have an obligation to, you know,
make it easier for our, our care teams to deliver what, on
what they do best and to take things off
of their plate in, in other ways.
So, you know, the conversation around how we
share work, uh,
are definitely becoming more fruitful and changing.
And I, I think that's not just at our organization.
I think that's, that's really across
the, across the industry.
And that means that we do have teams that evolve, teams
that change, um, roles that, that change.
And we learn how to work in a more, uh, distributed model.
We have evolution of, uh, you know, certain roles,
and let's take telehealth, you know, for example,
and portal messages.
Um, you know, people wanna get in touch with their clinician
for, uh, advice.
And we're seeing, we've been doing this since the,
around 1999, 2000 where we've, uh, had, uh, portals
that have been available for patients to send in and message
and, and now with the penetration of, um,
portal access, uh, internet access, uh,
on the go smartphone use, uh, this is really the way
that patients first want to interact with us.
Uh, do I have a problem, uh, if I do, can you see me today?
Uh, or can you work me in?
And, uh, we don't have a system of care for that.
And so right now we're seeing clinicians
managing portal messages on lunch breaks, uh,
after they put their kids to bed
before they start clinic in the, in the day.
And this's just not a way to run a service, um,
if anything, and it does lead to the contribution of, uh,
just the fatigue and burnout that we're seeing across.
And, and patients, um, appreciate the, the messages,
but also they, they understand
that clinicians are doing this sort of outside of, uh,
visits and at least our research has shown
that they do self-censor and, um, are are respectful.
Um, but even with that, there's still a lot of messages
that are, are coming forward.
Uh, you know, a lot
of the conversation in the industry has been about adding a,
a fee to, to those messages as a way to either
make it more fair to acknowledge the work being done
or to, you know,
potentially gatekeeper throttle messages coming in, which I,
I can understand the fairness.
I have a, a challenge with putting up more barriers to
access and communication with patients.
But all that being said, what if we took an opportunity
to reimagine, you know, that how patients interact with the,
the, uh, healthcare system and with the clinics?
And what if we built a system of care, uh,
that started digital first
and then brought someone into in-person
or got to the specific clinician,
if only they could, they could answer.
But there's, there's a lot that we could do in this space,
and this is what I'm really excited that we're,
we're starting to lean in and,
and really reimagine how patients can interact, uh, with us.
I mean, in, in a way we've been talking about digital front
door, you know, for years, uh,
particularly in the digital health space,
a digital front door is more than building an app, uh,
or having a new website.
It's really re-imagining how people walk through that door
and, and how they interact.
And I think we're finally getting there.
- That's truly fascinating to think about.
And, you know, exciting as you mentioned, that we're getting
to a space where, um, that type of mindset and,
and, um, ability to connect
with patients on the digital front, um, you know,
and really thinking through how that integrates
with the entire clinical team
and experience, um, is, is really great to hear.
And digital first too.
Um, you know, I can imagine
that's much easier said than done in terms
of applying the technologies of workflows and whatnot.
But, um, I, I really think an exciting way
to look at the future.
Um, and, and with that in mind, you know, I, I think you,
um, mentioned so much there.
I, I was wondering if you could talk about your most
successful project from the last year or two.
What did you do and how did you measure the results?
- Absolutely. Well, none of the work that, you know,
we have, uh, that we're working through is, is de novo.
We're really, you know, taking several incremental steps.
I'll just take, you know, our virtual, uh,
nursing, you know, for example.
Um, you know, this is really an evolution of work
that we've had with, uh, an an EICU
that we've been able
to successfully develop a very talented, uh, nursing team
that really fills a lot of gaps and,
and really delivers value.
They've delivered value.
And, um, our covid remote monitoring,
they've delivered value in helping patients, uh, stay safe
as they transition out of the intensive care units,
particularly when our intensive care unit census this are,
are high and providing extra support to the, to the units.
You know, I was looking over our, our numbers
and, you know, last year, uh,
we had 10,000 tele hospitalist
interventions, you know, by this team.
So I think we're really learning how to work,
again with a centralized, uh, virtual resource in a way
that, um, really respects the, um,
the care on the grounds, but really supports
and augments provides a additional layer of, of safety.
And, uh, and we're really excited to build on that,
you know, our building on top of, you know, newer clinical
programs and services we're seeing across the industry.
Several, uh, try to address that, that problem
that I was mentioning earlier around, uh, digital access
and portal messages and, and really looking for guidance
and advice on, on where to turn.
Uh, some organizations have had success, uh,
putting bots in front.
Uh, we have developed a, a fairly robust, uh,
asynchronous care, uh, program,
and we continue to see volume, uh, increasing through that.
But what I was gonna say is, you know,
our investment in our, our digital front door,
we wanna make it as easy as possible for people to get
where they need to go within the healthcare system safely,
effectively, and then to develop that, that relationship.
And one of the measures that we've been using, uh, for
that in addition to monthly active users
and other such utilization metrics is are,
are we also bringing in, uh,
new unique patients in the healthcare system?
And, uh, we're finding that, you know, as we,
as we do develop systems that make it easy for people to
interact, that we can start to lay that, you know, lay
that path for people to, uh, become, um,
more connected, uh, with us.
Another thing that we've been working on, uh, is, you know,
this foundational data layer, uh, in order to be able to,
uh, deliver on our population health promises.
And we've been working both with
Epic as a partner.
We're an early adopter of the campaigns, uh, tools
to be able to do care gap closure, uh, as well
as investing in our own, uh, data lake and,
and cloud that we also are using to close, uh, care gaps.
And I think, we'll, we'll be continuing to, you know,
see development, uh, in these, in these spaces.
But we're, we're looking at, you know, efficiency.
We're looking at things move from, um, telephone calls
to more digital contacts, um,
and, uh, looking at how many, for example, care gaps
that we can, uh, address, uh, while, um,
respecting our patient's time of not keeping them on hold
and our staff time of, of, uh, of being able to automate,
uh, tasks where we can.
Then lastly, I would, you know, point out
that our digital therapeutics program, uh, as it relates
to population health, is still continuing to make, uh,
really important differences are when we see patients
that are engaged in our digital diabetes program,
they have a sustaining, uh, A1C drop of, uh,
of about, uh, 2%.
Um, and they have better sustainment when they're digitally
engaged, uh, when, when not.
Um, we have a, uh, a very lightweight program now
that we're doing for hypertension control
and management, um, over, uh, SMS
and we're seeing patients that, um, consent
and enroll in that program with our care coordinators, um,
have an 80% higher, uh, likelihood of being under, uh,
their gold blood pressure.
So we're starting to see, you know, several of these, um,
structural investments now turn into, um, real outcomes.
And I think as we further develop our, our, uh, care models,
um, we can double down and, and get greater gains here.
- That's amazing to hear.
And, and definitely, you know, a lot of time,
effort spent into, um, you know,
invested into these types of programs.
And so it was awesome to know that, you know,
you're starting to see those results.
Dr. Karate, thank you so much
for joining me on the podcast today.
This has been such a fascinating conversation,
and I look forward to connecting with you again soon.
- Thank you so much, Laura. Pleasure to be here.