Welcome to Becker's Healthcare podcast. I'm Chris Sosa,
your host, and I'm thrilled to be joined
today by Rob Wetmore. He is the director
of digital health for Variety Care in Oklahoma
City. Rob, thank you for joining us today.
Thanks, Chris. Thank you for having me.
Yeah. We're so glad you could be here.
Rob, if you could please introduce yourself and
tell our audience a bit about your background.
Sure thing. As Chris mentioned, my name is
Rob Wetmore. I am the director of digital
health care at Variety Care. We are a
federally qualified health center out of Oklahoma City.
We
have around 20 clinics within the Oklahoma City
area and a couple into rural Oklahoma.
And we currently serve responsible for,
little over a 100,000 patients, So a fairly
large system.
My path kind of coming here into this
realm
is a bit different than what,
is the usual. So I spent sixteen years
working in inpatient mental health.
Everything from utilization review and prior authorization
into clinical program management. And then I even
was working under supervision for my LPC licensure
before my career kind of went off on
a tangent
and I ended up being on an epic
implementation build
as an instructional designer.
And then that transitioned again into what we
called care transformation where I was able to
work with some physician leads
to develop best practices for that health care
system
to standardize care and processes
throughout the whole entire thing. And so that's
really where I got a huge exposure into
the transition between a clinical vision and operational
reality and how those things worked for and
against each other.
That does seem a little bit like a
meandering path through health. But but by and
large, it just sounds like you've had
a breadth of experience in in the industry.
What got you what made you go into
health care? What made you pursue that in
the first place?
So
kinda going back even further, I entered undergraduate,
with this whole idea of, like, I'm gonna
be a business major. I'm gonna be a
CEO and, you know, do all this and
make all this money. And then those classes
put me to sleep.
And
so I realized that probably wasn't the direction
I wanted to go. And I took an
intro to psychology class
and realized that it was very interesting to
me. It's very intriguing, the psychology, the social
sciences,
and I ended up getting a double major
in psychology and sociology.
Ended up in Oklahoma after
undergrad and quickly realized that a bachelor's degree
in psychology and sociology was gonna get me
nowhere.
And eventually got into a master's program at
the University of Oklahoma and focused on my
LPC licensure.
At the time, I was working for the
inpatient mental health facility, so I was able
to translate that
real world experience into the classroom and vice
versa. So it was a really cool way
of getting that accomplished.
So that's how I got into health care.
It just fell in my lap kind of
a thing, and it's something that
definitely
is a part of who I am. It's
in my it's in my DNA, really. I
I I enjoy it. No one's in my
family has been in health care, but it's
definitely something that's just ingrained into me. It's
it's really just I'm a helper, and
I can't help but be in a helper.
Even on this side in digital health
and looking at the systems of things,
it's in that helper role of, like, how
can I better the system, not just for
the system? I mean, sure. That's great. They
they sign my paychecks.
But to me, it's all about the patient
and patient first, patient engagement, patient care. And
that was driven in on the behavioral health
side way before it was on to the
medical side. So I feel I got a
head start on that patient first mentality before
it really got into the medical side of
health care. And now in digital health, that's
what it has to be about. There's such
a divide
between
technology
and the human experience
that with me that I live on that
divide, that that gray line between those two
realms of basically anywhere in life. I live
in that gray line. And so for me
to be able to
take digital technology
and use it to transform
the human experience
in health care is just like
a win win for me, I guess.
Certainly,
if there's any indication sure indication that you're
in the wrong place, it's if it's not
inspiring you and putting you to sleep. But,
fortunately, you found your way into the WR
now. I love the way you put it.
That that's a a gray line. I hadn't
heard that before, but it certainly, I think,
speaks to a lot of leadership in health
care that you as you said, you have
to live between these two worlds of, you
know, what
digital and other technologies can provide and how
you actually translate that to the patient.
So along those lines, could you let us
know what exactly are your top priorities today?
Well, I mean, I kinda hit on it.
My top priorities are really,
serving the the patients,
reducing those disparities
and providing access to the underserved communities.
That
is always been true for federally qualified health
centers, and it's really it's always been true
for
what I've been trying to do.
But
now it's even more so. The the pressures
that are being put on us at the
federal level,
to perform, to
do what we're doing with less funding,
we have to figure out a way around
this, and it comes down to access.
And to me in in my world view
and, fortunately, my leaders as well, it comes
down
to things like telemedicine and remote patient monitoring.
Any sort of tool that improves access, increases
access, gets us in front of our patients,
and help them have healthier lives.
Along those lines as well, Rob. So
to say that things change quickly would be
maybe the understatement of the year with technology
and health care in particular.
And you've you've covered
some of the challenges that you're facing with,
respect to changes in the federal government and
and the like.
So
could you take this moment to just say
describe
to the audience how you anticipate your role
is gonna change and how the role of
your team is gonna change.
And lastly,
how you work through you said you're really
not alone in this. Not at all. So
who are the people and and other
systems, organizations that you're looking for to kind
of collaborate with? And that's a lot, I
so. So break it straight into it as
as as you wish.
No. That's a great question. So
to start things off with digital health is
the department of Rob. So I don't have
a team to wrap around me, but,
that doesn't stop me.
Yeah. I talk to myself probably as much
as I talk to anybody,
and, we have good conversations.
But
I have a good relationship with my leadership,
doctor Lydia Nightingale. She's our VP of medical
affairs, and we have a good relationship and
a good understanding of where we want this
organization to go on that medical clinical operational
front
and really shift how we're doing things within
the system.
And she and our CMO
and our,
like, chief of population health and all those
aspects. They're really working together with the synergy
to kind of bring this together. So, internally,
that's my team that I work with is
is doctor Nightingale and her chiefs that are
underneath her
to just transform the way that VerityCare is
doing care.
Externally, I have a great partner with Evisit,
Evisit Telemedicine.
They have been an amazing partner from the
first conversation I had with them. Gosh. It's
been
two and a half years now probably that
I've been working with them. They've been amazing
telemedicine partner. More than a telemedicine partner, they've
really been a partner just in digital health
and innovating and expanding what that looks like
and how people get involved in that.
So it's been a great partnership there.
Working with other vendors to try to bring
in
cleaner, better, faster, more efficient ways of doing
things.
Novena AI is a company that I've been
trying to work well, I've been working with
a lot. I'm trying to get them into
our ecosystem.
They're gonna allow us to look at the
medical record from a whole new level.
Novena uses its its AI to
not only comb through our record, and we're
an epic shop. We go through Ogen instance
of Epic. And so
not only to come through Epic and Nexus
or whatever you wanna call it, Care Everywhere
platform, all that stuff, but it also looks
out to the health information exchange and pulls
in information from that on that patient.
And so our providers right there in front
of them are gonna have all of this
information on
on these patients that they treat
and know a much more robust history than
they've ever been able to look at before
because it's pulling in information that we probably
don't have in our health system,
from records going way back. And the AI
will then
make suggestions
towards
what diagnosis the provider may wanna look at
to look at and and run through and
just kinda dive deeper into. So it's a
really cool technology. I'm very excited to get
it going. We have some internal
barriers that we're looking into to make sure
that once we decide to go forward with
it, that it's gonna be clean
implementation process, but it's something that I'm very
excited about.
I'm glad you mentioned that the excitement aspect
because, you know, that's really what's gonna keep
all of us going in in all of
our jobs really, especially when things can be
a little difficult as they are right now.
Beyond what you just mentioned, and thank you
for sharing all of that,
is there anything else that you think, hey.
This is really exciting, and I really wanna
share this as far as your job is
concerned?
Just me personally, the fact that digital health
care is isn't just like this side project
now. It's really looked at as a key
strategic initiative. It is one of our strategic
initiatives here at Variety Care is innovation within
that being the digital health innovation. So
the fact that that is my realm and
the fact that it's at that high of
level of engagement is, pretty rewarding and exciting
in itself. And
I'm hoping to be able to take this
from just, like, piloting tools and bringing some
stuff on to really making this something that's
sustainable
and culture shift
and
just
being able to make sure that we can
scale it across the organization and that it
sticks.
Rob, thank you so much for joining us
on the podcast today. I we're gonna see
you at a a conference coming up this
fall. And, you know, we can't wait to
share these insights and until next time.
Alright. Thanks, Chris. It'd be good talking to
you.