At athenahealth,
we know your ambulatory practice wants healthier, a
healthier business, healthier care teams, and healthier patients.
But the complexities of modern health care tech
make it hard for you and your care
teams to focus on what matters
most? That's where athenahealth can help. Our AI
native all in one solutions reduce administrative burdens,
streamline billing and payments, and deliver critical insights
when clinicians need it most. That means fewer
clicks, more time for patients, and stronger bottom
lines.
Practicing medicine is complex, but running a practice
can be that much simpler with athenahealth.
See how simpler is healthier@athenahealth.com.
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Becker's Healthcare Podcast.
I'm Scott King, thrilled today to be joined
by Doug King, senior vice president and chief
information officer over at Northwestern Medicine. Doug, how
are you doing today? I am pretty good,
Scott. Thanks for asking. Yeah. Thanks so much
for joining us. I'm running into a lot
of big topics,
in health care on the podcast. But before
we do that, I was wondering if you
could please just kinda introduce yourself and tell
us a little bit about your background.
Yeah. Sure. Happy to do it. So, I've
been at Northwestern
for nineteen years.
Within,
those nineteen years, I've been in 11 different
roles.
Really all, the vast majority,
within, the technology umbrella,
on the technical side, on the application side,
interoperability,
and then just kinda grow our group, through
the ranks, as Northwestern
grew. And here we are today.
That's awesome. Thank you for thank you for
sharing that that background info.
First kinda question I wanna get to is
what opportunities and headwinds do you have your
eye on right now?
Yeah. I think the the headwinds are really,
you know, about seeing as many patients as
we can,
and delivering
highest quality care to make sure that we
have taken care of that patient. But that
is then also
mixed with what does that look like for
reimbursement
rates? What does that look like the impact
on our financials?
How is MedicaidMedicare
going to be impacted by that? The payer
contract. So there's a lot of lot of
headwinds, that we're still trying to figure out.
And since those headwinds are not clean and
crisp, it's really trying to adjust and adapt
to make sure we still deliver,
that high quality care,
and at the same time,
being able to adapt when something new hits
us. I think the opportunities
really,
are to solve those problems in unique ways,
with technology.
I think that, technology
is one of,
the best levers, if not the only lever
we have really to start to take care
of patients,
in their home, virtual settings, wearable types of
things. And at the same time, when a
patient is in our,
four walls of one of our,
institutions,
how do we give them the best care
with technology?
Make sure that we are monitoring them and
using technology
to treat them in a high quality manner
and then get them out as fast as
possible,
so that we can see the next patient
that really needs to see. So lots of
opportunities and I really do see it,
within, within technology and,
artificial intelligence continuing to have an impact.
Yeah. It's definitely having an impact as we
see more and more use cases. Just just
to follow it up, are you someone who
sees
have you kinda trained yourself to see headwinds
as opportunities and kinda use those terms interchangeably
to kinda I don't know. Maybe it helps
to have a more
positive mindset when challenges arise?
I think that when you are grow up
in the world of technology,
that you have been faced,
with challenge after challenge after challenge.
Some of them are novel new challenges, some
of them are old ones and now you're
just solving,
in new ways.
So ultimately,
I think what has happened,
through the years is that the technology arm
of a lot of different health systems
has really become the process improvement arm because
it's one of the fastest ways that you
can improve a process. It's one of the
fastest ways that you can solve a problem.
And it takes thoughtful collaborative leadership, not just
IT, but working with physicians and working with
clinicians and back office.
And I think having to do that over
and over and over,
people that continue to work in technology
just know that, yep, we gotta go take
that on and we're gonna do it and
we're gonna give it our best. And you
have to have a positive,
optimistic attitude because people are now coming to,
Technology Arms to solve those problems. And if
you look at it in the art of
the possible and a yes if attitude instead
of a no because,
I think it just naturally starts to build
within you to say, okay, let's take down
that problem and let's let's get to work.
Honing in on on that leadership
perspective you just mentioned,
how are you thinking about adding growth
and adding value to your organization?
Yeah. I think that, you know, on the
growth side,
I think it's really about,
standard growth. Greenfield, adding positions, doing that in
a way that is delivering a quality product,
so that as soon as we open a
new institution,
the technology works. You know, there's two parts
of technology. One, LODO. Lights on, doors open.
It means the systems are running. The utility
element of IT so that physicians and clinicians
can take care of those patients.
And we're also getting the revenue associated with
that. The other element,
is really
new stuff. How can you leverage technology in
that platform you have to treat patients in
new ways? And I think a lot of
that is going to be,
in the home setting to take care of
those patients,
where you can. Being able to fill as
many patient appointments you can through open scheduling
so a patient can do it themselves so
that you are adding that growth naturally and
organically
just by
offering up the health system services in new
ways. I think that the other thing that
you can do,
is partnership. You know, partner with different companies,
whether they were large digital
giants or whether they are with new,
startups and to see what unique ways do
they bring technology to healthcare
that either increases your margin
or it drives more volume through,
or it's increasing your quality. And all of
those really then trigger into value because it's
not just about hard ROI anymore.
That is something that we want to get.
That is something that we need to achieve.
But it's about patient experience. So it's about
delivering healthcare where that patient wants to receive
that healthcare. It's about offering up optionality.
Where do you want to get your MRI?
What's most important to you? Is it most
important that you get it today? Well, here's
the one that you have to drive further.
But if it's most important to stay close
to your home, it might take a little
longer. So adding the value through experience,
through quality, through efficiency
and through hard ROI,
those are really the key areas that we
try to focus in on.
What's one risk or investment
worth making this year that could help add
that value?
You know, I think,
it's what everyone is saying. And I think
it is around,
AI
in the areas of efficiency,
but do not over invest. It needs to
be a thoughtful and intentional
investment
and you need to understand what you are
measuring
upfront
so that you can understand that the value
is being achieved
or it is not. And if it is
not, it should be shut down. Because if
it's not providing that value, then all it
is doing is adding burden and expense to
the bottom line. So
when you think about that, there's proven areas.
Revenue cycle, automation,
call centers,
symptom checkers. All of those types of things
are proven. And so we're going to continue
to lean in on those areas where we
know we're going to generate the value.
But so since we're getting the value out
of there, we're also going to start to
experiment in new ways. And how do we
deploy
technology that might not have the value, but
again, we're going to measure it. So we're
going to balance. We understand that these are
proven areas. We're gonna lean in and deploy
those more, as well as we're gonna continue
to experiment. But all of that is really
under the umbrella of advanced technology and artificial
intelligence.
Getting back to growth, where do you see
the best opportunities for growth in the future?
I think that,
the area
of wearables
mixed with
algorithms on top of them is something that
is going to start to
really hit within the next three to five
years.
They're out
there, they're working, but no one really has
it truly figured out right now on how
you can deploy those types of things at
scale to where a health system can get
reimbursed for the work and the care they're
providing that is working for the clinician, the
patient, as well as the technology is seamless
and easy to set up. I do think
that those things are continuing to converge
and over the next three to five years,
we're really going to see that accelerate.
Because when we have an aging population
and there's so many only so many beds
in The US, that's an area where we're
gonna have to get better as an industry
and as a society if we're gonna continue
to take care of our aging population,
and they wanna get care at home. So
we need to be able to really
figure that one out.
Lot of investment going in there, lot of
an experimentation
going in there, and I think that we're
gonna be able to finally turn the dial
up to where that value is actually being
realized over the next three to five years.
So I think that that's an area where
we're gonna continue to see opportunities for growth
in the future,
and it's not just building brand new plants.
That will still continue to occur, but it
will be balanced, with providing care in alternative
settings.
That sounds great, doctor. Hopefully, that happens in
the next three to five years. I think
that'd be wonderful.
Last question I wanted to ask you. How
have you evolved as a leader?
I would say that, you know, over my
my career,
it's gone from
technology and truly just focusing in on,
taking the technology that we have and deploying,
and deploying it in a way,
that is built for that specific clinician. And
what has happened
over the really, probably been accelerating over the
past six years
is a lot of information services departments have
made the leap from being order takers in
an expense,
a necessary expense to the business
to actually having a seat at the table,
and being able to lead through problem solving
and being able to get technology to be
viewed as a strategic asset. And I think
with that transition of technology requires
that you adopt,
as a leader because you need to be
able to explain technology that is incredibly complex
in a care setting
to a way that everyone can understand it
so that they can come to the table
with you to solve the problem. So it's
no longer
just a world of this is the system
we want, please implement it. It's more along
the lines of this is the problem we
have, how can we leverage technology,
to help make it better? And I think
with that,
really does require,
the evolution of an individual's,
leadership
as well as the department,
that they're leading. Otherwise, you're going to fail.
Doug, thanks so much for joining us on
the podcast. I think it was a great
informative conversation. I look forward to working with
you again soon. Sounds good. Thank you.
At athena Health, we know your ambulatory practice
wants healthier,
a healthier business, healthier care teams, and healthier
patients.
But the complexities
of modern health care tech make it hard
for you and your care teams to focus
on what matters most. That's where athenahealth can
help. Our AI native, all in one solutions
reduce administrative burdens,
streamline billing and payments, and deliver critical insights
when clinicians need it most. That means fewer
clicks, more time for patients, and stronger bottom
lines.
Practicing medicine is complex, but running a practice
can be that much simpler with athenahealth.
See how simpler is healthier at athenahealth.com.