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This is Alan Condon with the Becker's podcast,
and I am thrilled to be on today
by doctor Mark Kozlowski,
who's the CEO of CarePoint Health, a physician
owned and physician led practice headquartered
in Colorado.
Mark, a pleasure to have you on the
podcast with us for your debut appearance of
the Becker's podcast.
Would like to hand it over to you
1st and foremost to hear a little bit
more about your role, your background, and what
you're focusing on at CarePoint Health at the
moment.
Yeah. First, I really wanna thank you for
having me today. It's our pleasure to come
talk on,
a talk with Becker's today. I I yeah.
As you mentioned, CarePoint is a 100%,
physician owned practice.
We actually have 300,
equal owners, which is a unique, unique structure.
That entity came together in as a Colorado
emergency medicine practice
almost 30 years ago.
And in my time with CarePoint, we've grown
about tenfold,
and eventually added hospitalist services,
neurology, neurosurgery,
and, rehab services as well.
Over time, we we, grew into Kansas,
and we also joined with a like minded
practice in Utah, and we now have over
500 clinicians.
Our CarePoint team also has a neurology
group,
which does a lot of teleneurology
called Blue Sky.
And Blue Sky provides on the ground services
in 7 states and telemedicine services in another,
20 states
and serves over a 125,000
patients, including about 75,000
patients with,
suspected acute stroke.
Together, we've grown from
a really small Denver practice to about 1,300,000
patients,
that we should we'll see this year.
My role in CarePoint, I started in in
2000,
shortly after the group came together, and I've
worked there ever since.
I started working as med director at the
HCA
Swedish site.
And over the last decade, I've had the
pleasure to work at actually 14 or maybe
15 of our, separate emergency departments as our
practice grew.
After a couple decades on the board, I
took over as CEO,
last fall and really have enjoyed the time
at, at CarePoint.
Got it. I think,
really interesting here. Firstly, the background, the the
makeup of CarePoint Health, and then also your
experience, your role there. I think
almost 20 years, as you said, at CarePoint
Health serving in various leadership roles, as you
said, the medical director, then I believe chief
operating officer for quite a while, and coming
up on about your 1 year anniversary as
CEO of the organization.
I'm curious for can you give us a
little bit of insight into
making that step up to the CEO role
for the first time? Is there any advice,
if at all, for other COOs or CFOs,
medical directors who might be looking to follow
in their footsteps in terms of reaching the
corner office or the CEO seat in their
own organization?
Yeah. Great great great question. For me for
me, it was a big change. I my
last decade really was spent focusing on operations
on the on the growth we had across
markets,
on ensuring that we're meeting the health system
needs,
and really looking at kind of day to
day operations. And the transition to to a
CEO has been
been a been a great one, but it
it is a really entirely different job as
as I've really focused on
strategy of the organization.
Where do we wanna be in in 2030?
Where do we wanna be in in in
2035?
Much different than the COO job, which was
really solely where are we gonna be next
week.
So,
putting on that long term,
long term glasses and making sure you're looking
down the road at where you want the
organization to be 5 years down the road,
10 years down the road is is a
big is a big change,
for the job,
from the CEO,
role. It's one that I've really enjoyed, but
it is a was a big shift.
Yeah. Yeah. I can only imagine, and especially
in this day and age with all the
complexities of health care and evolving trends. But
I I I curious to hear, I see,
with your long term view as you're looking
to 2030, 2035,
the growth of the organization,
what are 2 to 3 trends that you're
really focusing on in health care today and
why?
Yeah. I I think the top,
the top three trends are AI, AI, and
AI.
So so,
I started yeah. I I did residency in
the nineties in in Detroit, and I started
medicine with, paper charts, clipboards,
x-ray view boxes, and,
textbooks for reference.
I've seen a lot of changes in the
almost, 30 years since I, since I started
residency.
And while
things like the Internet and the iPhone did
change medicine
for the better,
The current EHR is still up docs tied
to a desktop.
No change that I've seen in my, you
know, 25 years really compares to the revolution
that we're seeing in in AI and specifically
with with ambient listening.
When you go to one of our 40
plus ERs, you'll see the docs, and majority
of time, you'll see them at, at a
desktop,
where they do their charting. And if you
look nationally,
historically, about only a third of a doc's
time has been on direct patient care, and
about 50%
has spent spent charting, particularly in in the
many of the hospital based, based specialties.
The EHR ties those docs to the desktop.
And and, fortunately, I I really see that,
changing, particularly as we look forward.
We've we've began looking at,
the future of of health care and the
future of care delivery
and,
explored a couple different platforms, and we partnered
with some some data science graduates from Yale
and,
who they developed, CLEO, which is an ER,
ambient listening platform.
We're piloting ambient listening across markets.
I really think this will transform medicine
in in a way that really nothing else
has in in my career.
The conversation with the patient is now becoming
the record
and the ability of
AI not only to document, but also to
ensure quality
and minimize
risk is unparalleled.
Most importantly,
from both a patient and physician perspective,
the waste
of charting is gradually going away.
No one went to med school to spend
half their time charting.
Time at the bedside, I believe, is going
to, already it's already increasing, and I think
that's gonna continue to to do so.
I think ambient listening will improve sepsis care.
I think it will help identify high risk
chief complaints, for example, the high risk back
pain patients
and ultimately provide what I would call cognitive
offloads for the doc.
Docs are gonna be happier and the patients
are gonna be happier because instead of focusing
on the chart or that clipboard I used
to carry around or the piece of paper
folded up with notes on it,
docs are gonna be able to focus on
the patients,
and this is gonna be a huge win.
Yeah. I think it's everything. I think we
asked a lot of executives, a lot of
physician providers this question. I think no surprise
to you that AI definitely, at least, first
or second then in terms of the biggest
trend, the most exciting trend that everybody is
keeping an eye on. And really interesting to
hear those callouts in terms of the potential
impact on clinical care, facilitating those position provider
workflows, the impact on the HR. I mean,
really so many opportunities to really, really improve
organizations across the board there.
So to jump in into my next question,
no doubt that's one area of excitement as
well. But is there anything,
either on the clinical, the technical side, or
even on the health care space in general,
anything else that you're particularly excited about?
Yeah.
We are we are focused on,
on RCM, and we think having
a top,
revenue cycle management is gonna be imperative to
be, to be successful
with the I don't know if I'm excited,
but with the proposed
Medicare reimbursement falling in 2024 or proposed cuts
for 2025
and many of our states facing a a
post, COVID Medicaid disenrollment,
the importance of being on top of your
game from a from an RCM
standpoint is is is never been more important.
Whether you're doing internal billing or outsourcing your
billing,
you need your own RCM team to be,
to to be to be competitive.
And and we've, you know, invested in this,
and we'll continue to invest in it. I
I think it is is gonna be a
top trend across all practices.
It's just gonna be a necessity as the
world becomes more competitive, as payers
become more,
aggressive and and and challenging,
and as,
reimbursement
is, is,
potentially
falling.
Yeah. It's it's so interesting that you say
that just because it's not just practices or
hospitals. It's entire health systems now which are
really outsourcing
or transitioning their entire revenue cycle departments out
to,
external partners to really help facilitate in some
of these payer challenges that we're seeing in
terms of low payments, excessively excessive prior authorization
denials, and whatnot. I'm curious to hear just
a little bit of more about the setup
of your RCM team. Is it internal, external,
and how are you looking to grow us?
Yeah. We we always had an external
billing entity that we've we've partnered with in
the past, and what we found is, they
did a great job. We're moving to automate
things. But really to ensure
we're getting the most value out of the
process, we've invested in hiring our own internal
RCM team in addition to our external external
vendor. And this has really been an important
part of our our success. So we've we've
started with 1
individual, and we're up to 5 individuals
working on RCM at CarePoint.
And they help manage the relationship with our,
outsource,
partner
and ensure, really, we're getting we're getting value.
And I see that as being key for
every practice.
Yeah. Really, really interesting to hear about the
internal and external components of your revenue cycle
operations.
I'd love to go looking ahead, you you
obviously talked earlier as you're in your CEO
role looking to go ahead to 2030, 2035.
But I'd love to kinda get, like, a
little bit of a pulse check on the
next 12 months at CarePoint Health. I know,
like you said, multiple service lines high acuity
service lines that you focus on including emergency
medicine, spine, neurosurgery, neurology.
But we'd love to hear, is there any,
CarePoint considering at all into expanding into other
high acuity service lines? Maybe just bolstering and
strengthening in those service lines which you do
perform so well in, or where are you
looking to grow over the next 12 months?
Yeah. We we completed strategic planning actually just,
just last week. We had our board together.
And as I mentioned, we'll see about 1,200,300,000
patients this year.
We have we're really at a transition point.
We've grown from
a medium sized regional practice with
800 employees
and 300 equal equal owners.
But, really, we just hired, it's a little
hard to believe, we just hired our 1st
full time salesperson,
just in the last year. So we're
we've, you know, traditionally just relied on health
systems coming to us based on our relationships
and reputation,
for growth.
But, we see the future, and I think
the future is gonna require,
continued growth and there'll be, you know, hopefully,
some economies of scale of of increasing size
in our in our in our in our
footprint
and and leveraging our, our success. So we're
looking forward to continue to grow.
We are you know, believe that this is,
we're unique.
Our physician ownership, we have no debt,
and our model has proven effective at retaining
a a top talent, and our board is
committed to committed to grow.
In addition, we're we're beginning to explore innovative
growth. I think our experience looking at
AI has has
really opened the door, and and we've we've
found that there's it's,
the company and the owners are willing and
want to invest in early stage health care
businesses that could potentially improve their practice
and may bring, you know, future value to
our patients
and our and our team. So,
we're looking forward to continued growth in the
next 12 months.
Perfect. So we're certainly excited to have you
on the podcast today. Pick your brains a
little bit, Mark, and hear a little bit
more about some of the exciting things that
are going on at CarePoint Health. A real
pleasure to to speak to you today, and
I look forward to connecting with you again
down the line.
Yeah. Thank you so much for your time.