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This is Laura Dirdo with the Becker's Healthcare
podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by
Ray Lo, senior vice president and chief information
officer at AltaMed. Ray, it's a pleasure to
have you on the podcast today. Well, Laura,
thank you for inviting me and letting us,
share some great things that are happening and
challenges of that here in, at AltaMed.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I'm excited for our conversation.
I know, you're certainly a leader in this
space and very well respected in health IT.
So we can dive right in. I'm wondering
first and foremost, can you tell us a
little bit about AltaMed? What makes you unique?
Yeah. So,
Ultimate. So we're a regional,
community health center actually in Los Angeles and
Orange County. We're actually the largest or second
largest,
in the nation. And that means we're a
Medicaid provider.
So we provide care
to,
about 500,000,
folks most underserved. Right? We provide care for
everybody.
Independent of their ability to pay. And so
we have a very unique mission that, meeting
the underserved communities,
helping take care of them, improving the overall
health health literacy
and the quality
of the lives of those folks that could
be marginalized
are often forgotten.
The other thing that's also great about ultimate
is,
that's side of our
We also have PACE programs, which are all
inclusive cares of the elderly
and these are these really amazing dynamic programs.
You'll see these seniors that,
and they come to our centers and we
take care of them clinically, but also socially
and it gives them a very vibrant opportunity
to socialize,
thrive, you know, and still live their family
units. And but still, you know, can kinda
get out. And then in our for profit
sector,
we have a Medicaid insurance product, and we
also have a managed services organization.
Oh, that's huge. And, you know, a lot
to be accountable for and responsible for,
but such an important mission in in population
that you serve. Now I I'm wondering, if
you look back at the last year or
so, what is the accomplishment that you're most
proud of?
Well, I think,
it's kind of a bragging moment.
EPIC 10 gold stars was at the absolute
highlight,
for AltaMed to be recognized that. And that
speaks to our clinical teams as well as
our technical teams and our partners that helped
us achieve it. It's no small feat to
be recognized by epic as a top performing
organization.
And I think we are probably one of
the first community health centers to ever achieve
that recognition.
So those that aren't familiar with that, there's
probably two thirty some odd
areas that you have to work across and
you have to
fulfill the requirements of epic and score to
me. It's pretty arduous. It's like the top
3%.
And so I think,
allowing
us to achieve that through the hard work,
but more importantly.
You know, instantiating
the delivery of medicine to the underserved communities
And we've seen that our quality scores are
really good Medicaid.
He just measurements are, like, in the eightieth
percentile, which is, which is outstanding
and we've been awarded and recognized on many
health plans for the quality service. We provide
Even on the Medicare side, you know, we're
pushing four and a half stars as well
for CMS ratings. So that's also great. So
you look at how do we do that?
That is, you know, technology
enabling providers, case managers,
etcetera, so that they can provide the right
care
at the right time.
That's great to hear. You know, what a
huge accomplishment.
From your perspective, how were you able to,
achieve that recognition from Epic? As you mentioned,
something that most organizations don't even approach. So
what made,
Ultimate different and ultimately,
push you over the line to to get
that achievement?
I think it's it's all team. Right? I'll
I'll tell you. I'll just say it. When
I was at Epic
in, 2023,
we reached nine gold stars. And I was
pretty happy about that to get a plaque.
And I looked over.
It was, another health system, and they got
10 gold stars, and they got a trophy.
And I went, here we get a trophy.
You know, and, I'm I'm a leadership right
at its best. And so as we were
looking where we were in terms of our
assessment,
in there, I challenged the team. I think
we're sitting at seven gold stars,
in February. I said, why can't we make
it to 10?
Right? What do we need to do? Let's
let's really push it. Why not? Let's go
for it. Right?
I love Ultimed because we're very scrappy from
a technology, clinical informatics delivery perspective. And here's
how we push the envelope and transfer the
care,
you know, for our patients. So, you know,
we, it was concerted effort,
for us to make it. Another highlight again,
this was our CEO, Costello Rocha, was invited
to speak in the CEO Council at EPIC.
And really talk about a whole community approach
to health care. And he also talked about
the journey of AltaMed being here fifty five
years, growing from a storefront
in in East LA to being, you know,
a multibillion dollar organization that we are today.
That's truly impressive in in, you know, driving
that, spirit of greatness,
in order to achieve those stars, ultimately for
the betterment of the patient community. So that's
amazing to hear. Now looking ahead, where do
you see big growth opportunities for the next
twelve months or so?
Yeah. So we're an interesting inflection point. So,
like, we are all in on the,
augmented intelligence. So we are, working with the
bridge for Amity Clinical Voice.
I love that product.
You know, it's gonna allow our providers
to work with non English speaking,
patients and actually do kind of a seamless
translation,
for this. So, if there is, I'll say
Spanglish for that term and the conversation goes
back and forth, they'll actually pick out what's
important to the subjective part of the soap
note on there. The other area we're making,
you know, a big push and it's on
patient engagement.
So we are redoing our whole patient engagement
strategy. It's it is February 2025.
We've gone live with hello world. We're going
live with cheers on quality campaigns.
You know, and then the other area we're
focusing on is on our clinical analytics perspective.
You know, with the,
current challenges and revenue,
we have to be extremely productive and extremely
effective.
So how do we put, you know, the
right analytics information,
access, quality,
census in front of our providers?
So that they know where or how they
need to flex or our case managers, you
know, or our patient service centers. Who do
we need to reach out to?
You know, so we're doing a lot of
looking at how do we make those real
time analytics,
evident, you know, and actually went inside of
epic right to the care providers.
Those are some of our kind of our
big areas. You know, we're doing pharmacy programs
as well.
And,
you know, we're we're continuing to lift the
overall
level, you know, of our of our delivery.
That's great to hear. I love that. It
seems like so many opportunities to do new
things,
and create
a better and healthier community.
Now I know we've talked a lot about
the exciting things ahead, but there's headwinds as
well. What are some of the big challenges
that you're anticipating and starting to work through?
Yeah. You know, I,
I mean, the,
with the new administration that's come in, right,
and the overhaul of DHHS, I think it's
it's a, interesting
inflection point for the industry in terms of
way reimbursement will be happening.
You know,
you know, folks may or may not come
into
our system in order to have care. So
we have to be really good at telehealth.
We have to be really good at educating
our patients and the community. We don't want
people to get sicker. We want to keep
them well, you know, and and again, providing
all inclusive care for everybody
is what our mission is. So, you know,
we're looking at how do we continue
to do that? How do we continue to
have those type of outreach programs that will
support the community and
grow the overall wellness.
And the other part of it is on
a value based care perspective.
It's, how do we reduce hospitalization,
etcetera?
How do we do the interventions
transitioning patients from the hospital
having the right care plan care providers, you
know, I too tied to them. So that
they actually progress a wellness
right versus, you know, versus getting sicker. So
we're looking, you know, on those dimensions
really like, how do we, you know, keep
our patients involved? How to keep them educated?
How do we keep them healthier?
And,
it's I think it's moving more towards a
virtual perspective, but we can't forget that, you
know, the human touch part of what's happening.
And how do we, you know, keep folks
warm and embrace. Right?
That makes a lot of sense. And and
truly, truly embracing, like you mentioned, that virtual
space, also keeping the human connection front and
center and and providing the right type of
information that's gonna help the communities.
Have you found anything that's worked particularly well,
to reach in terms of messaging or,
way that you're connecting with the community,
that you've really had success?
Yeah. It's it's, it's kind of kind of
a funny problem I'm facing right now. So
through through omnichannel communication, which means text,
email, phone calls, etcetera, on there. We all
have different tools within our systems. We use
them, whether it be CRM, whether it be
your EHR,
whether it be your,
your IVR system out there. How do you
con contact to connect them? So,
you know, I've I've been asked to to
really kind of,
align what what are we doing from a
central message management system. And this is, you
know, very business driven, you know, as as
kind of a CIO,
but really exposing from the systems what we
know what is being scheduled
so that we can leverage across. So from
our
staff model to our IPA for quality outreach,
we have things already built in. Let me
help you get there. Let me help you
get there faster. Right? From a selling and
marketing perspective.
How to be sure that the data is
correct so they can do the proper outreach
as we're moving folks more into Medicare Advantage
type programs we have here as well.
So,
you know, I think, you know, it's it's
an eye towards, you know, again, communicating the
patient the way they best understand
and it's that health literacy,
you know, I think we don't want to
over,
you know, over communicate to people. It needs
to be appropriate communication, which is very, you
know, challenging. But, again, the goal is, right,
keeping patients healthier. Right? Making our our providers
jobs easier. Right? Improving quality and reducing costs.
So
That makes a lot of sense. Thank you
so much for digging a little bit deeper
there and, you know, fascinating results. Now before
we wrap up, I'm wondering, what is the
number one most important thing you're doing right
now to set your organization up for long
term success?
Yeah. You know, I actually, I'm I'm I
would say it's back to basics.
That term may be overused. Right? I mean,
there's been a lot of investments that have
been made in there. And and I'm really
looking at how do we harvest
and how do we optimize what we're doing.
So, again, Epic
Systems, Epic has, you know, a large AI
presence. And then I go, I really wanna
understand which of those are of most value
to us, whether it be art, whether it
be other type of activities they have, and
then where we would really need to focus.
Right? And then the next part of that
is that, how do we change the workflow
and communicate
with providers? Right? So that they're aware how
this is going to impact you. And, of
course, also, even out to the patients, how
is this going to improve it? So, I'm
looking at that's an example, right? For, AI,
what we're doing on there, but but even
looking across my tech stack, you know, what,
what can we do more from an automation
perspective?
The world is pivoting.
The skills are changing for people what they
need to know. Right?
AI is allowed to identify.
Information to us, but the person still has
to review, approve it, and make sure it's
correct.
So how we build that? How do we
test that? How do we support that? It's
a changing game. Right? So I'm looking at,
how do I educate my staff? How do
I educate the organization? Right? So they're ready
to keep moving ahead.
That's fascinating to hear. Well, Ray, thank you
so much for joining us on the podcast
today. This has been a really fun discussion,
and I look forward to connecting with you
again soon. Yeah. Laura, thank you so much.
I'm looking forward to seeing you folks in
October
at, Beggars Healthcare in Chicago.
Yeah. It'll be an amazing event. I know
we're still planning on more,
adding more sessions and really curating some discussions
that'll be top and center for a lot
of the things that we talked about today.
So thank you, Ray. I'll be looking forward
to seeing you then.
Thank you for your time.