Fresh off a busy March for health tech conferences, Reuters recently hosted its Digital Health 2022 event in the sunny city of San Diego, with an agenda hyper-focused on sharing the technology and practices that are enabling providers to deliver high quality care.
One of the keynotes that stood out was a conversation featuring Bon Secours Mercy Health CDO Jason Szczuka and Providence Health’s newly appointed CDO Sara Veazy, who each shared pearls of wisdom surrounding streamlining clinical workflows and reaching key executives at large health systems.
BSMH’s Jason Szczuka explored strategies that vendors can use to influence decision makers when presenting their solutions, and how this usually involves taking a different approach with each stakeholder.
- Szczuka stressed the importance of knowing the entire landscape of individuals at each organization, then communicating the value of solutions appropriately for each one. The way to sway a data ops team looks much different than convincing a clinical team.
- He also shared his “jobs-to-be-done approach” to assessing potential solutions. Given that patients need to complete a series of “jobs” from intake to discharge while simultaneously facing difficult health challenges, it’s the responsibility of health systems to make these tasks as easy as possible. New technologies get looked at through this lense.
Providence’s Sara Vaezy, who was appointed to the CDO role just earlier this month, fielded a handful of questions about the types of solutions that are a priority for adoption, including technologies that help flexibly match supply and demand for care.
- Vaezy shared how the solutions that streamline workflows for clinicians are often disguised as patient-facing changes, such as enabling self service for patients in order to open up provider bandwidth.
- She also discussed how new solutions must align with all three dimensions of Providence’s services: 1) the business model; 2) the operating model from a network perspective; 3) the technology layer.
The Takeaway
While many of the themes at Reuters Digital Health 2022 had a familiar ring to them, one overarching message rang louder than the rest. Whether you’re a provider looking to deliver the best care possible or a vendor introducing a new solution to make that happen, technology is just a tool to help whoever is wielding it. Healthcare is still all about the people.
