Today in health, it, we take a look at health conference

day two up here in Boston.

My name is bill Russell.

I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week in health.

It.

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Alright, day two of the health conference.

Let me give you a little of what happened today.

So I did a lot of interviews today, so my day was stilted.

I did go to a couple of the sessions, got to see the Walmart presentation,

general session, got to see the.

Cigna.

Presentation.

As well as the Mayo clinic presentation, but at the end of the day, I didn't

get to a lot of general sessions.

I did go to one breakout session.

And that was, Glen Tullman and Jonathan Bush.

And I won't go into that a little bit in, in a minute.

And I did some interviews.

So you will hear some of those later this week.

I did talk to Mike McNamara.

the president and CEO,

from impact health the company that did all the.

Screening for the conference.

They did all the testing.

And screening for the conference.

And I thought it was a fascinating interview just to understand how they ramp

those things up, who they're doing it for.

They do it for companies like MGM grand, opening up Las Vegas.

Again.

They do it for states.

They do it for large employers.

And obviously they do it for conferences as well.

And we had a really cool discussion, got some statistics from him on

how that process really went down.

They, process between four and 5,000 people.

Onsite doing the COVID testing.

And I thought the process was pretty good now.

Granted there could have been more people there, but

at the end of the day, it takes 20 minutes to process the test.

So there's 20 minutes built in there and there's going to be a line of some kind.

And, you just have to do that.

I was making note to someone who said they didn't like the line that.

My line took about 20 minutes, but the reality was if that line went

any faster, they didn't have enough seats for us all to social distance

and to sit appropriately apart.

So at the end of the day, the line couldn't really go any faster.

Anyway.

And the line was actually interesting.

Cause you met some people that you hadn't seen in a while.

You had a great conversation and the 20 minutes.

Seeing like three minutes.

So I really enjoyed the process.

Enjoy the conversation with Mike McNamara.

Look forward to sharing that.

With you.

I talked to Derek Baird used to be with Avia and I had known Derek

for a while and really appreciated the work that he did at Avia.

He left there.

And went to be the president of the north America operation.

For sense, sign health.

Another interview I did this morning.

Interesting company in the data space.

It's a pretty busy space right now.

Very hot space.

And we talk a little bit about that, about the competition in that space,

and also making the transition from Europe to the U S so the set

sign has a very large presence

in the UK.

Working with NIH and they are bringing those same capabilities over to the U

S and we talk a little bit about that.

So that's going to be.

A good conversation as well.

And then I did spend some time with Glen.

Tullman talking about the Walmart announcement and it's

an exciting announcement.

And I think a precursor to a lot of other announcements that are

going to be coming down the pike.

You're going to hear that.

Interview on Monday, I believe.

I think I'm going to air that instead of a news day show.

Because I'm not really gonna have time this week to record a new state show.

So we will.

Air that in its entirety.

With regard to some of the other events.

Of the day.

So I thought one of the more interesting ones was Dr.

Cheryl Pegas.

She is with Walmart health.

And I love how she frames things up a great communicator.

One of the things you started off with was that.

I think it's one of those things that just escapes us.

We just don't even think about.

But it's not oh my gosh, Walmart getting into healthcare.

Walmart has been into healthcare.

And this is why the business insider story.

I just made me giggle when I saw that Walmart was getting out of

healthcare and I thought that there's no way Walmart is getting out of

healthcare and sure enough, it's not.

And let me give you their perspective on this, because I

think it's really interesting.

She talks about.

Affordable, accessible and human centered care.

And one of the things that they focus in on is the fact that

we're on 40% of health is based on social determinants.

About 30% is based on personal behaviors, right?

Our decisions that we make, and then 20% is actually clinical care.

Which is interesting because, sometimes we forget that sometimes we put a

lot of emphasis on political care.

And forget that an awful lot of what goes on that impacts people's

health is outside of critical care.

And I'm going to paraphrase here so

she was conveying her view of healthcare.

And she said, my job is to make sure that people feel that accessing healthcare

is as easy as planning their vacation.

The focus is on access.

We have to not stay in our private offices from nine to five, Monday

through Friday, but we have to provide care the way people live.

And sometimes people think about healthcare on Saturday afternoon.

Go figure.

And that's where Walmart comes in while we're, it has a couple of things going

for them that are pretty interesting.

One to me, is that.

They're everywhere, right?

Their stores are literally everywhere and she cites that 4,000

of their stores are actually in medically underserved communities.

And she said our people live in these communities.

And part of what they do as an organization is they listen to

their employees and what their employees are telling them.

And one of the things she noted that I found interesting as well, was that one

of the benefits that they have is people feel healthcare is accessible when they're

talking to people that they recognize people from their community, people that

are from the same demographic as them.

And so they employ people in that community.

They employ people to deliver care in that community.

And when they come in, they're actually talking to their neighbors.

And so that is one of the, I think interesting aspects of Wal-Mart's.

Plan.

The other aspect obviously is where else can you do so much

around your health in one visit?

And she drove that point home a couple times.

I don't know if I have a specific quote in here, but it's, it is one

of those places where you can go.

And you can see a clinician.

You can actually see a dentist.

You can go to a pharmacy, you can get food that you need.

You can get a durable goods and items that you need for health.

There's just so much you can do in a single visit.

And that is impressive.

Again, I thought it was a really great presentation of

why Walmart is in healthcare.

And why Walmart is a player in healthcare.

Now, do I expect Walmart to be standing up hospitals know?

And she talks about that.

We partner, we want to partner.

We want to partner with long-term care facilities.

We want to partner with people delivering care in the home.

We want to partner with the local care communities, and it's one of the

reasons that they selected epic as their EMR so that they can integrate

into the larger healthcare ecosystem.

Again, great conversation.

Really interesting.

I could talk about the Jonathan Bush and Glen Tullman presentation.

It was brilliant.

It was funny.

It was engaging.

It was interesting to think about what they're doing today in healthcare,

what they have done in healthcare and what is possible in healthcare.

These are two great storytellers and they did a phenomenal job in that presentation.

I might go back to that another time.

But in the interest of time, I do want to cover the fact that Sirius computer

solutions, which serious health care is a part of an announcement was

made today with the intent of CDW to purchase serious health care, which

I think is a pretty big announcement.

It'll be interesting to see how that plays out.

I think this is just the nature of the fact that there's just a lot

of money out there in the space.

And I think we're seeing some of that money get put to use.

In the form of consolidating assets in the industry.

Sirius healthcare has a great reputation in the industry.

And I'm not just saying that because they're a sponsor of the show.

They have great talent within their organization.

They hire great people and they have done great work within the industry.

I know a lot of people have relied on them pretty heavily.

For things like cybersecurity things like moving to the cloud, things like EMR.

Hosting and disaster recovery planning amongst a million

other services that they offer.

So we're going to keep an eye on that one.

We're excited about the potential and the possibilities there, and just

wanted to make you aware of that.

So that's all for today.

Check back off and we're going to continue to post.

Information on the health conference, different interviews, and maybe

one more of these diaries.

We have a whole day tomorrow, I'm going to be doing a bunch of

interviews and more conversations.

So I'll continue to share those.

Into next week, leading up to the chime conference where we are going to do not

a live Newsday episode with Drexel nigh,

but an onsite recorded episode of Newsday.

And I hope to have some of our friends from the industry stop

by and join the conversation.

I think that will be a blast.

That's all for today.

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