This is Laura D with the Becker Healthcare
care Podcast.
I'm thrilled today to be joined by Troy
Williams Vice President of Health
Partnerships at First Choice Health.
A pleasure to have you on the podcast
today?
Laura nice to be here thanks for having
me.
No. I I'm looking forward to our discussion
in learning more about First choice health and
what you're doing and how you're thinking about
the future, but before we dive into those
questions, can you tell us a little bit
more yourself in your background?
Absolutely. Well, I I've been in healthcare a
long time, probably a little over 3 decades
now.
But I've seen a variation of really what
our industry looks like because I've worked on
the provider side.
I've worked on the vendor side.
I've kind of worked on the services side.
And
there's so much that can be accomplished in
healthcare as far as ways that we can
improve what's going on in areas we can
focus on. And having that perspective,
in working through those roles. I I think
it's giving me a pretty well rounded perspective.
But I may not be a subject matter
expert in anything specifically, but I seen a
lot of our industry?
Look, fascinating to hear and know, certainly,
really an important context for this conversation now
first and foremost, what are some of the
big trends at headwind that you're following right
now?
Well, the trends I think are pretty consistent
of what I hear amongst my industry colleagues
and what I read in the press.
Transparency for me is probably 1 that floats
to the top because I think there's been
a lot of legislation and focus on that.
Forward looking, we're going to bring greater transparency
into
the pharmacy lines of business,
the healthcare lines with the machine readable files
and those surprises has been a step in
the right direction.
But I find that
partnerships in healthcare, which is my focus with
first choice
that transparency is incredibly important because it allows
to have a platform
doing business
moving forward and also appeal to your clientele.
That makes a lot of sense. It is
really interesting and cool to see it. And
when you think about that transparency piece of
it.
How do you see that continuing to grow
and evolve? What do you see health systems
needing more of as health care and the
data information becomes more transparent?
I think you, ultimately our client our patients.
So really what we want from the patient
is to feel comfortable
and
really
aligned with the goals of their health system
and their health care. And I think when
they feel more comfortable that the information is
accessible that the information is true and accurate
that the information is digestible
so that they can actually see that and
feel confident in it.
They're going to feel better about that relationship
that they have with their healthcare care provider
to get on the right journey for improved
health. So
I think the consumer really is at the
center of everything. And it matters very much
how simple it is for them to interface
with transparency,
how trust worthy they find that transparency to
be and really how do we create low
friction environments to engage those folks and keep
them engaged in their healthcare journey.
That's great to think about it. And I
really appreciate you going a little bit deeper
there now looking ahead, how are you thinking
about growth for the future?
There's been a lot set about the digital
transformation happening in healthcare and I saw study
this morning that was kind of interesting serving
200 healthcare executives,
basically stating that the millions of dollars that
have been invested
in digital
transformation
doesn't really get a vote of confidence,
75
percent a time. So
while we know that there's up to 3
60000000000
dollars
in net savings that can be driven through
this digital transformation,
most healthcare executives don't feel like they've really
realized that as of yet that they've really
realized that putting these things together
as
appropriately driven the right efficiencies that's driven the
right
access it's driven the right user face going
back to the consumer once again
that they can see those realized savings. So
I think we have some work to do
there, But I think that it's a huge
focus right now
in how we can grow. We need our
processes to be more efficient. We need them
to be simplified again, we need them to
be transparent.
But we we can
introduce digital
transformation into some of these aspects without saying
you need to have an Ai
physician,
but you could have a Ai
digital front door of sorts that helps triage
where those patients need to go better
so that we're allowing
practitioners to practice at the top of their
license, right? And they're not essentially
getting bogged down in the emergency department or
with a specialist when really they could have
appropriate
designation or referral
into primary care or urgent care or walk
in or even
tele or telehealth.
Such a great point. And definitely all of
those different areas where you ask with healthcare,
can be really meaningful. I know some are
newer than others, but
certainly, all coming together to create that journey
in that,
ability for patience to access carrie is so
important. Now From your perspective, could you tell
me about a project or initiative from the
last year, so that yield is the best
results?
Yes, because my focus really involves clinically integrated
networks and large system network partners
in my role,
we've been focusing on growing our geographic footprint.
So while our company has really
traditionally existed for the 35 years in the
Pacific Northwest. We're finding that some of the
methodology, the process and what we've been able
to bring into the industry has appealed kind
of middle America.
So we've been working on new system partnerships
in Middle America and they've been going very
well
I think it's largely focused around health plan
incubation.
There's a lot of infrastructure
and business process. That happens in improperly and
effectively
generating a health plan and basically a network
of providers that will be
utilizing the health plan take care patients.
And
the appeal that we have found and large
projects we've been launching outside of the Pacific
Northwest
have really
introduced new growth patterns for us.
We found that we have new clients in
basically the mid south.
That are engaging us for health plan incubation.
They're doing certain things and they're doing certain
things very, very well, but there are broken
processes orders there's poor efficiencies
in some of their business process,
their network management,
their ad
of claims
and really their
infrastructure with other entities so that that clinical
integration is really important for them to have
operating at highest efficiency. And so some of
those
internal
infrastructure projects and processes or what we've been
bringing to these
mid state
healthcare care systems and clinically integrated networks.
And there over long
a long runway, these are 10 year projects
really
but they started a year or 2 ago
and they're going very well and we're growing
into those states the way we had planned.
That's great to hear. You know, I'm really
impressive to have that kind of foresight and
ability
to look at, you know, what patients are
needing in in really where you can generate
the best value. So
Troy, Thank you so much for joining us
on podcast today. This is really a fantastic
a discussion, and I look forward to connecting
with you again soon.
Yeah. I I've appreciate it very much. So
thank you more.