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This article is sponsored by symplr.
Transforming hospital operations: impacts on clinicians
In the rapidly evolving world of health care, the integration of advanced technology is not just an option, but a necessity. This transformation is not merely about adopting new tools; it’s about fundamentally redefining how hospitals operate and how clinicians provide care. The key lies in leveraging technology to streamline non-clinical operations, thus freeing up more time for patient-focused tasks.
The genesis of a technological revolution in health care
The journey into a more tech-integrated health care system begins with understanding the diverse backgrounds of those leading the charge. Leaders with a rich history in software and technology are now turning their attention to health care, seeing an opportunity to apply their expertise in a field ripe for innovation. The convergence of technological acumen with medical expertise is creating a powerful synergy that is redefining patient care.
A new approach to health care operations
A pioneering vision in the realm of health care technology focuses on simplifying non-clinical health care operations, encompassing areas such as provider data management, workforce management, contract and supply chain management, and compliance, quality, and safety. This approach is not about marginal improvements but a complete overhaul of how health care systems operate, aiming to give health care workers more time to focus on what they do best: caring for patients.
The clinical perspective: the impact of technology on patient care
From a clinical standpoint, the impact of technology on patient care cannot be overstated. Technologies that enhance communication within health care settings, for example, can significantly reduce medical errors and improve patient outcomes. Efficient communication systems ensure that the right health care provider is available at the right time, making a critical difference in emergency situations.
COVID-19: a catalyst for technological adoption
The COVID-19 pandemic has acted as a major catalyst in accelerating the adoption of technology in health care. The crisis highlighted the urgent need for health care systems to evolve rapidly. As a result, there is a newfound eagerness within the sector to adopt technological solutions that can lead to tangible improvements in patient care.
Real-life impact: Enhancing health care delivery
One of the most compelling aspects of technological integration in health care is the tangible impact it has on the ground. For instance, in intensive care settings, efficient communication tools can be lifesaving, especially when managing multiple critical patients simultaneously. Such technologies not only aid in immediate patient care but also play a significant role in reducing the likelihood of medical errors.
Research insights: the potential for reclaimed time
Recent research by symplr indicates that by optimizing technological processes, health care professionals could reclaim a significant portion of their time – as much as 20 percent – which could be redirected towards direct patient care. This revelation underscores the potential of technology to revolutionize health care delivery.
Focusing on health care workers
A unique approach in this technological revolution is the focus on health care workers. By empowering clinicians and administrators with better tools and systems, the entire health care ecosystem, including patients, stands to benefit. This worker-centric approach is a strategic shift from the traditional patient-centric models, yet it indirectly enhances patient care by supporting those who provide it.
Bridging the gap: Aligning technology with clinical needs
A critical challenge in embracing new technology is aligning the perspectives and priorities of IT professionals and clinicians. Collaborative efforts are essential in identifying and implementing the right technological solutions. Addressing real problems like clinician burnout and operational inefficiencies requires a unified approach from both the technological and clinical sides.
Looking ahead: standardization and efficiency in 2024 and beyond
The future of health care technology is likely to be marked by a trend toward system-level standardization. This shift aims to create more efficient and interoperable systems that enable health care professionals to work effectively across various settings. Standardization also addresses the current challenges of resource scarcity, particularly in the face of a global shortage of health care workers.
Embracing the technological leap: advice for the health care sector
For health care institutions still on the fence about embracing new technology, the path forward involves identifying specific challenges and finding the right technological solutions to address them. Committing to these solutions and partnering with the right technology providers is crucial in navigating the complexities of modern health care.
Conclusion: a call to embrace change
As the health care sector stands at a crossroads, the decision to embrace technology is more than a choice—it’s a strategic imperative. Leveraging technology to solve new and existing challenges will not only enhance patient care but also empower health care workers to practice at the top of their license. The future of health care is inextricably linked to technology, and embracing this relationship is key to unlocking a new era of operational efficiency and improved patient outcomes.
BJ Schaknowski is CEO, symplr, and Angel J. Mena is chief medical officer, symplr Clinical Communications.
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Transcript
Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show, where we share the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast. Today we have a special sponsored episode from symplr. We welcome BJ Schaknowski. He is the CEO of symplr. He is a seasoned software industry executive with more than 25 years of experience in leadership roles across a wide variety of operating functions. A former Marine, he has worked for Vertafore, LexisNexis Software Solutions, CA Technologies, Intuit, and Sage Software.
We also have Angel Mena, chief medical officer of symplr Clinical Communications. In addition to his role at symplr, Dr. Mena has been a practicing physician in the fields of primary care and hospital medicine for the last 10 years. He also serves as associate program director for internal medicine at Cincinnati-based TriHealth.
Today we’ll be discussing transforming hospital operations: impacts on clinicians. Find out more at symplr.com. That’s S-Y-M-P-L-R dot com. The link is also in the show notes. BJ and Angel, welcome to the show.
BJ Schaknowski: Thanks, Kevin. Great to be here.
Angel J. Mena: Thank you, Kevin. Appreciate it.
Kevin Pho: All right, so I’m going to ask each of you to briefly share your story and journey. So BJ, why don’t you go first?
BJ Schaknowski: Sure. So first of all, Kevin, I really appreciate you spending time with us today. My name is BJ Schaknowski. I’ve been symplr CEO for three years, and that’s really my time in health care. Compared to so many, people will still pat me on the head and tell me how new I am every day, right? Until you reach that 15- or 20-year mark in health care, I think they still call you new.
Prior to that, I spent my entire career in software, the last 10 years of which were vertically focused: really understanding how enterprises, categories, and companies can better leverage technology through automation, technology standardization, and data security and privacy, removing manual processes and putting high-value work back to people. I’ve seen meaningful improvements in insurance and in legal, and when the opportunity came to bring that to health care, I couldn’t say no to the chance. I’ve been learning every single day and hopefully adding value to the category.
Kevin Pho: And Angel, why don’t you share your story and journey and how you found yourself at symplr?
Angel J. Mena: Absolutely, and thank you again for having us. In regard to the clinical career, it’s a traditional pathway. I went through medical school as an international medical graduate and then came here to the U.S. to train in residency in internal medicine about 13 years ago. I stayed on as faculty, went from faculty to associate program director, and I’m now program director of the internal medicine residency program.
My pathway into technology came from just being in the right place at the right time, as a startup company was being developed to solve a big problem in health care, which was communication. I was invited to participate and consult in the development of the product and the platform, and that’s how I ended up wearing not just the developer hat but also helping on the marketing side of things and in all the other roles at the startup company. Then symplr aligned with our mission and with our vision, I joined symplr, and here we are.
Kevin Pho: All right, so certainly let’s talk more about that. BJ, for those who are unfamiliar, please provide a brief description of symplr, its mission, and who it serves.
BJ Schaknowski: Sure. So symplr was founded in 2006, and the company has really evolved quite a bit since then. In the last few years, we’ve really built out a strategy of solving, or simplifying, non-clinical or administrative health care operations for our systems, for our payer organizations, and for our non-acute facilities. What that really means is we’ve categorized our solutions, and we’ve acquired leading products in four areas: provider data management; workforce management; contract and supply chain management; and compliance, quality, and safety.
Our belief is, and this really goes to our mission, that if we can help these systems, these administrators, and these clinicians better leverage technology, we can actually give caregivers more time to give care, right? That is really the fundamental problem we’re trying to solve. When we talk to our nurses, and when we talk to physicians like Dr. Mena and so many others, the one thing they need back in their day is more time, right? They find themselves spending too much time on administrative, non-patient-focused tasks. The goal is simpler, right?
Then who we focus on is really all those workers inside the health care system. Toward that end, I think what makes us a little bit different, too, is that while most of health care tech for years and years, and rightly so, has focused on the patient, we focus exclusively on the health care worker, clinicians and administrators. We believe that by doing so, it will actually benefit the patients and all the other constituents in the health care ecosystem.
Kevin Pho: All right, I’m going to ask both of you the next question. Angel, why don’t you go first? What makes you passionate about working in the health care technology space?
Angel J. Mena: Well, the passion is the impact, the impact that we can make just by working at a technology level. I’ve always said that as physicians, we go into the medical field because we had an experience in our personal lives or in our family where someone was sick, and that kind of drew us into medicine. The common denominator for all of us: We want to change the world; we want to make health care better. Now, as physicians, nurses, and other clinicians, we do it one patient at a time. As an educator, in my program director role, I do it a group of residents at a time. In the technology world, the impact that we can have is enormous, and that’s why I’m really passionate about it. It’s by working with a team like the symplr team that we can really make things different for the clinicians, and then for the patients, for that matter.
Kevin Pho: BJ, same question. What makes you passionate about working in the health care technology space?
BJ Schaknowski: Yeah, maybe from a different lens. Everything Angel says, obviously, we couldn’t agree more, but there is a readiness for technology adoption in health care, right? When I entered the space even three years ago, everyone told me what a laggard category it was, that health care is 10 or 20 years behind any other horizontal category, any other industry, and that it was going to be an uphill fight, right? CIOs can’t make systemwide decisions, CEOs aren’t going to put in the investment, and CFOs aren’t going to put the investments into technology modernization.
That’s all changed. I think COVID has really been a catalyst, and so I’ve entered health care at a time when it is truly hungry to consume technology to its own benefit. It knows it needs to evolve rapidly, and it’s looking for partners that have strong technology backgrounds and understand the acumen, the change management, and the interoperability to make it a reality and to provide those tangible outcomes. How could you not be so incredibly excited about that?
Kevin Pho: Angel, can you give us an example of how better hospital operations can directly impact both clinicians and patients?
Angel J. Mena: Absolutely. I started in the clinical communication world with a startup company, Halo Health. We developed a clinical communication platform, and the idea was that we wanted to reach the right person at the right time to deliver the right care. We did that not just by providing a tool, a platform for someone to communicate, but also by understanding how you find the right person, the right on-call physician. So that was just the start.
Now, as we partnered with symplr and were acquired by symplr, symplr was able to connect the dots and connect the data in the back, so that now we have the right people in that platform utilizing it to provide care to our patients. Now we’re tracking the quality of the care that we’re delivering and then connecting the communication back to our quality and safety metrics and to many of the other health care solutions that we offer with symplr.
Kevin Pho: BJ, I understand that symplr recently conducted new research in this area. What findings stood out to you the most that you think health care leaders should think about?
BJ Schaknowski: Yeah, there’s one specifically, and it really validated the reason we exist. On average, if you look at the administrators, the CIOs, right, and the clinicians that we interviewed, they all approximate that about 20 percent, right, of a clinician’s time could be given back for providing care, right, if we actually streamlined and minimized a lot of the technological burden that they’re facing today. That’s another day in a week. That’s eight hours back. How many more patients could you actually see with eight hours in a week?
We’ve all seen the data. If a nurse can spend more time with a patient, if a clinician can spend more time with a patient, he or she is more likely to have a better outcome, right? And so that’s what we’re doing here. We’re trying to give them back almost another full day in their week to provide care, which is why they got into this field in the first place.
Kevin Pho: And Angel, what were the implications of the findings on physicians and nursing staff? Maybe you could share a story with us to really bring those findings to life.
Angel J. Mena: Absolutely. To follow BJ’s comments, I think the survey, in my opinion, underestimates the time that we actually get back when we facilitate the right technology for the right processes and operations. In real life, I always like to tell the story of my ICU time in training, when I had what we all dread the most, which is two codes at the same time, two code blues at the same time, where we have to split the team. It was because we had a great team in place with great communication that we were able to deliver great care in both scenarios.
About 30 percent of the medical errors that we see in health care are because of communication, OK? I’m not going to say we’re going to solve 30 percent of the problems, but we’re going to facilitate the communication among the providers, nurses, and physicians to deliver better care. I still believe that the better our operations, the more time we get back, and the more time we dedicate to communication, the more we dedicate to better patient care.
Kevin Pho: You’re listening to a special sponsored episode of The Podcast by KevinMD. We’re talking to BJ Schaknowski, CEO of symplr, and Angel Mena, chief medical officer of symplr Clinical Communications. Today we’re discussing transforming hospital operations: impacts on clinicians. Find out more at symplr.com. That’s S-Y-M-P-L-R dot com. The link is also in the show notes.
BJ, when you think about the challenges hospitals face, what differentiates symplr as an ideal partner?
BJ Schaknowski: Yeah, I think there are three things, and I’ll try to be brief, and obviously you can go into significant detail on each of these. The first one is the technology strategy we’ve put in place, right? Not only did we acquire almost 20 companies, right, but we’re not just a holder of companies. We are actually integrating all of them into a connected platform that health care systems will be able to benefit from. Think common look and feel. Think data interoperability, which you can’t do today. Think of a nurse only having to log into one system and go through his or her workflow without ever knowing she’s leaving one tool, right? So I do think that connected enterprise technology strategy is certainly one.
The second one is that for so many years, these systems have not had a technology partner of scale to work with on these operational issues. They’ve had Epic and Cerner, right? They’ve had all the big ERP systems, but they haven’t had a partner of scale with enterprise capacity and capabilities to work with them as a trusted partner for five, 10, or 15 years to improve this area.
And the last one, and I think this is as important, is that we bring the change management competency to not only install the technology, which is important, but if they’re not getting the benefit from it, who cares? So it’s really bringing folks who have done things the same way for 10, 20, or 30 years along on the journey, so they actually change and leverage and use the technology that we’re putting in place, to the benefit of themselves as well as the system. I think that change management piece can’t be overlooked, and that’s something that symplr focuses on quite a bit.
Kevin Pho: Angel, what are ways to ensure that CIO and clinician priorities are aligned to improve health care operations and reduce burnout?
Angel J. Mena: I think if you go back to the survey, you’ll realize that there are still discrepancies in how CIOs, or the technology folks, and the clinicians see the problem. Most of the clinicians still think that all these technologies just delay the care that we deliver. CIOs and technology folks still believe that, yes, we still need to consolidate a lot of the technology, but the problem is not as bad as the clinicians feel.
We need to come to the table together and make sure we’re partnering with the right teams that are going to help us, as BJ mentioned, with that change management, that partner that’s going to help us implement and adopt the technology and make sure that it works moving forward. It doesn’t make any sense for us to just drop the technology and that’s it. So I think that’s what we have to do: come together and make sure our objectives are the same.
Kevin Pho: BJ, based on your discussions with hospital leaders, what are you expecting to see more of in 2024?
BJ Schaknowski: Really, the massive tailwind inside of health care technology today is system-level standardization, right? You can’t have a system with 47 facilities operating like 47 different entities, because if you need to move that nurse from one to the other to the other, he or she can’t walk in feeling like it’s their first day ever there. They need to be able to drop in immediately, with the same tools, the same workflow, and the same processes, and be combat effective. Sorry, prior service Marine. But be combat effective right on minute one.
I think that inertia behind consolidation, picking partners, deploying them systemwide, change management, and training, I don’t see that going anywhere, particularly given that there’s a 40-something percent nursing shortage, right? There’s a 12-percent-plus physician shortage. There’s a shortage in every other area of health care workers. You have to get the most out of the people you have. How do you do that? You leverage technology through automation and standardization to see those productivity gains. I think it only accelerates over the next 12 to 24 months.
Kevin Pho: Angel, what is your advice for hospitals and clinicians who may feel hesitant to embrace new technology?
Angel J. Mena: Well, first we have to identify the problem. We have to understand what the problem is, and then take the leap and find the partner and find the technology, the platforms, that are going to really solve your problems. We cannot boil the ocean in one day. We won’t be able to do it, but we need to start working on solutions that are going to solve our problems.
And there are real problems in health care today that affect clinicians. Burnout is a real thing. I believe in burnout being just trying to get through the day, every day, you know? We have to solve that problem. We have to solve the workforce problem. So just take the jump, work with your clinicians, work with your IT, and commit.
Kevin Pho: So I’m going to end the interview with some of the take-home messages that you want to leave with the KevinMD audience. So BJ, why don’t you go first?
BJ Schaknowski: I think whether you’re a health care administrator, whether you’re a clinician, or whether you’re a CIO inside of a big system, right, you’re at this decision point, right? You are at a fork in the road, and you can’t solve the new problems that we’re all now seeing, that COVID has really shone the spotlight on, by doing things the same way that systems have done them for the last 20 years.
And so if I can, as a lifelong technologist, right, a seller of technology, an installer of technology, a provider of technology: Be bold, and pick a lane, right? And hopefully pick the lane that allows you to use tried-and-true and trusted methodologies, technology platforms, and philosophies to actually get you to a better place. Your patients will thank you, because your health care workers will thank you. Solve for them with technology. Give them the time to practice at the top of their license, and the entire health care ecosystem in this country will thank you for it.
Kevin Pho: And Angel, we’ll end with you. Share some take-home messages you would like to leave with the KevinMD audience.
Angel J. Mena: Yeah, I think I’m going to wear my clinician hat here. We are the connection. The nurses, the physicians, anyone who works at a hospital, is a connection to the patients. So we want to raise our voice. We want to come together with our leadership and make sure that we find those gaps in the processes and technologies that we can work toward together, so we can start fixing some of the problems that we see every day.
Kevin Pho: Well, thank you for listening to a special sponsored episode of The Podcast by KevinMD. We discussed transforming hospital operations: impacts on clinicians. Find out more at symplr.com. That’s S-Y-M-P-L-R dot com. BJ and Angel, thank you so much for sharing your perspective and insight, and thanks again for coming on the show.
BJ Schaknowski: Thank you, Kevin.
Angel J. Mena: Thank you, Kevin.
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