Hello, everyone, and thank you for tuning in
to the Becker's Healthcare Podcast.
We're thrilled to be joined today by Amanda
Penrod,
CEO and founder of RFx Solutions, to discuss
the health care safety culture, its challenges, compliance,
and technology partnerships.
Amanda, thank you so much for joining us
today.
Thank you, Brian. Really appreciate it.
So, let let's dive in. To begin, I
just wanna sort of level set here for
our listeners. Can you introduce yourself by sharing
a few pertinent details about your professional journey,
how you ended up at at at founding
RFX,
and and what are you working on today?
Yeah. I'd absolutely,
love to. So prior to RFX,
spent,
roughly a little over 20 years in various
roles from operational roles and, consulting in health
care,
primarily in post acute space, physician practice, and
also in the ambulatory surgery space. So saw
a lot of different,
process and failures on that during my time.
It's been about a decade actually doing a
lot of turnaround
and helping organizations navigate some very significant,
compliance issues,
you know, failing systems and so forth. And
so,
that really became the impetus for me in
terms of looking for other solutions due to
the heavy manual processes, seeing failures where well
intended people had, you know, wanted better outcomes,
but didn't have the tools to do that.
And so we started RFX to help meet
that need. Yeah. I mean, everyone wants good
outcomes. Right? It's to to your point. Absolutely.
They do. Yeah. And and to that point,
we hear a lot about trying to achieve
those outcomes. We hear the phrase culture of
safety quite a bit in health care,
but creating, I think, like, that that your
experience sort of speaks to is creating such
a culture is not an easy feed. So
can you talk a little bit about in
your experience, what are the primary challenges that
hinder safety in the healthcare settings, particularly in
the ASC, of course? Absolutely. So, a lot
of times what we're seeing is, you know,
again, people want to have and promote
patient safety. They have the desire for those
outcomes.
But a lot of the data, because we're
in manual processes,
there's a lack of transparency. There's a lack
of visibility in terms of what is actually
occurring from day to day, where are we
meeting these compliance requirements and the regulations.
And, with that information, because it's hidden so
much in our paper, our binders,
so forth,
we don't have the manpower necessary to even
adequately,
you know, aggregate this, oversee it, monitor, and
really drive,
that culture and, ultimately, that safety even more.
The other thing we see a lot is
just a lack of understanding and knowledge that
sits in the space.
And many times, you know, we'll have an
individual that's, you know, placed in an administrator
role or a director of nursing just due
to the fact that, you know, they're there.
They've been a great employee, but they don't
have all the experience and knowledge as there's
when they step in those roles to really
drive
all the requirements,
that they have to meet at that point.
So, sort of not not enough experience in
some ways. And then also the the challenges
are hidden.
Right? As as you can you speak to
that and elaborate on that a little bit
more? You touched on it. But but why
is that such
so common, I guess?
Yeah. So one of the things,
you know, definitely,
speaking in those challenges and that that they
have and and how this ends up being
overlooked. Again, kinda going back to those manual,
processes. So we see 2 areas that become
very, very significant, particularly in the ASC space.
1, in that provider credentialing realm due to
the heavy,
tasks, the all of the documents and stuff
that have expirations, keeping up with that, making
sure that we have doctors who are, you
know, qualified in what they're doing so forth,
but it's a lot of paper manual process.
The other thing we see a lot is,
even in all the requirements for regulation,
the daily, weekly, monthly, so forth, all the
logging of data, there's just, again, it's on
paper, so we have gaps or we really
don't know when things are out of compliance.
No real mechanisms to notify us. One of
the things we we share a lot of
times with our clients, we like to tell
the story of an airplane. And we're like,
you know, if I am in an airplane
and I'm 10,000 feet in the air, the
one thing we don't wanna hear is a
pilot come over to speaker and say, hey.
By the way, we're gonna start our safety
checks now.
And at that point, I mean, everybody would
panic or, oh, by the way, my credentials
have expired, but I'm still good to go.
And
it's just learning to kind of rethink that,
but a lot of them are not they're
not thinking about the why Mhmm. Behind the
what of what we're doing, which creates, you
know, a bigger level of challenge, in this
industry. And it's been done one way for
so long, I imagine too, that it's sort
of it requires somewhat of a mind step
shift to to get to that place that
you're talking about. Right? It absolutely does because,
you know, it's
when you talk about, that mind
the mindset that is there, a lot of
people also view this from the perspective of,
okay, I've gotta I've gotta meet this intent
for my surveys or my department of health
accreditation.
It's a it's a box I'm checking, but
not, again, realizing, okay, this is all designed
to bring us to a different level in
truly patient safety.
And this requires new tools as well. So
what what tools or or other strategies are
available to to help overcome these challenges and
and get to get to this place where
where you're not operating in this old old
mode of things that's been so vulnerable to
some some safety challenges.
Absolutely. So one of the you know, as
we kinda we talked about, obviously, labor intensive
processes,
gaps in the knowledge and information.
So by being able to leverage tools, that
technology provides, it gives us an ability to,
first of all, have greater transparency and visibility
on what's actually happening day to day. So
it's not a matter of walking around or
opening up a paper file and sifting through
a 100 pages, but rather we are we're
able to actually see the visibility and transparency
through the technology that's there. You know, leveraging
that in ways that also not only can
we see what's happening or something's out of
compliance, being able to be more proactive
in that manner, because, again, it's real time
data. It's information. It's interactive, and we can
get more automations around it.
Yeah. And and I think, like, the technology
is easy to conceptualize how powerful it can
be in this space. I think though perhaps
for some listeners out there too, they might
be feeling this. It's kind of hard sometimes
to navigate the tech landscape these days.
So in your opinion then, when you're looking
for technology that can do what you described,
what differentiates a a true partner from from
a transactional one?
Yeah. So when when we start talking about
the technology landscape,
for myself, even prior to RFX and, again,
kind of what gave rise to, some of
this passion that we have behind what we're
even doing
is we
watched even when technology is being implemented some
of those failures and things that can happen.
So with the, with the partnership in the
way that, they approach that implementation and the
client support is gonna be, paramount to obviously,
being able to drive the technology, meeting those
clients where they're at. One of the things
that oftentimes we individuals in the implementation process
don't have the industry acumen
necessary to really understand the why
behind the what of the technology and the
functionality.
And so, you know, being a partner says
we're gonna meet that client where they're where
they're at in this process. They may have
knowledge gaps. They may have technology gap in
that skill set. And in the ASC space,
we don't have a lot of bandwidth. There's
not, you know, an entire team who is
there dedicated and designed with the knowledge behind
it to actually implement that process. So we're
depending on that. But most technology, unfortunately,
is implemented in a transactional manner. Facilities are
left to try and understand it and implement
it.
Many of the times, the individuals assisting in
that process, they've got limited to actual,
like, you know, sometimes no knowledge even of
the health care industry as a whole.
And so then, unfortunately, these outcomes result in
poorly implemented software. We get insufficient workflows, underutilized
technology,
staff and physician dissatisfaction,
and poor adoption of future, you know, technology
solutions.
It sounds like meeting clients where they're at,
meeting partners where they're at is sort of
essential for for getting a good end result
here. Like, you're not gonna be able to
ensure that they're, like you said, leveraging the
technology to its fullest capacity,
getting widespread adoption rates if you don't have
the awareness of where the client's at and
where their challenges might be. Right?
Completely agree with you on that because technology
truly can, you know, help with reducing labor
burdens, streamlining processes, reduce task saturation,
provide a valuable data insights. But if we
don't meet them where they're at, we can't
help them get to the point where they
really are leveraging that technology to truly benefit
them.
Well, Amanda, it's been a pleasure talking to
you today. Is there anything we didn't get
to? Any thoughts you wanna leave our listeners
with today? Anything you wanna reemphasize?
Yeah. Absolutely. I,
would love to kinda leave them with this
thought. And, you know, as we continue to
look at health care and our ASC space
and the growth and the demands there, and
as we continue to move forward, we know
that there's gonna be more and more emphasis
on quality and this quality of care, particular
even as we're gonna see more pressure from
payers who are gonna move into that value
based approach in, you know, this particular space.
Our current manual processes and the means for
which we're collecting data
are going to hinder our organizations from being
able to accelerate this and move forward, you
know, in a very positive, compliant manner and
really promoting culture of safety. Safety. So I
really wanna encourage them. I mean, we've been
pushing a lot of technology that's obviously,
you know, collecting inpatient information,
our payer billing revenue aspects of it, and
when it's patient facing in terms of what
we're doing,
but I really wanna encourage them to take
the time to make this
a higher priority and the initiatives and really
start looking at technology
because we don't wanna, you know, find out
after the fact that, for instance, our provider
credentialing or so forth, we had a bad
actor that impacted our, you know, our patients
or patient livelihood. We also don't want to
get to 2 o'clock in the afternoon
and find out that one of our daily
checks, like on a defibrillator,
didn't work and we just put 40 patients
through our ORs at this point in time.
So
it's, I really, again, moving away from these
manual processes and disparate systems,
investing in technology that's really gonna drive these
processes gives the ASC leaders the best opportunity
to work with both real time data,
real time information,
and truly be able to drive that culture
safety. Yeah. And to your point, the the
credentialing and compliance is, of course, essential to
driving that culture safety. And to your point,
that work's not necessarily getting any easier. It's
not getting any easier, and the demands on
it are gonna be more and more as
we're moving forward. Absolutely. Well, Amanda, thank you
so much for for coming on the podcast
today. I appreciate it. Thank you so much
for your time. Yeah.
Of course, wanna thank RFX Solutions for sponsoring
today's content. To our listeners, thank you for
joining us, and please be sure to check
out other Becker's podcasts. Have a wonderful rest
of your day.