Today we have another interview in action from the conferences that just happened down here in Miami and Orlando. My name is bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week health, a set of channels dedicated to keeping health it staff current and engaged. We want to thank our show sponsors who are investing in developing the next generation of health leaders, Gordian dynamics, Quill health tau site nuance, Canaan, medical, and current health.

Check them out at this week. health.com/today. Here we go. All right. Here we are from him. It's 2022 and we're here with Christmas. The CEO and co-founder of current health now, a best buy health company. That's right. , look forward to this conversation. We need to, we have a lot to talk about, so where are you in from first of all, you've got you have an

accident going here.

I do. I knew it sounds like I'm an American, but I'm originally from the west coast of Scotland and we've been no love in Boston.

Originated.

Yeah. So I was a med student, started the company in Dundee, which is about an hour north of Edinburgh. , our first office was in Edinburgh, but no 90% of our businesses in the United States market.

Although we still do really well within the United Kingdom with the national health

service. So you, , current health for those who aren't familiar with it is. Remote patient monitoring tele-health patient engagement solution. Am I capturing

you're right. We try and solve the technical infrastructure, logistical gaps in how any healthcare organization, the levels keyed into the hole to any population.

So be a hospital home population, the chronic care population. We bring all of the technology. All of the infrastructure, all of the services necessary to help them do that. And that includes things like remote patient monitoring, but also analytics and division for the HR kind of everything in a one-stop shop for them to deliver.

I would say the bricks and

mortar. So, so if a health system is looking to progress in this space, and a lot of them are looking to progress in the space and really advanced their home health capabilities. I mean, both before. , you know, we had discharged during COVID, we were trying to care for patients.

We have agent place that we're trying to do as well. If they're looking at a program like that, you, you sort of plug into the EHR on this end and

yeah,

I think, , so remote patient monitoring was the kinda big thing in 2020, but RPM is one of the gaps and how your kid is the level then to the home. It's not the whole, the whole solution.

So we try to build out the whole platform and all of the physical services. So, you know, And CA enter the home, how we install it, how we support the patient, we provide their own clinical commands and altogether, , clinical oversight of the patients on behalf of the. And we are that interface if you like between the patient on the provider, in the, in the jar.

So you have devices that go into the home as well. That's right. , what, what kind of devices are we talking about and what are you monitoring for? So

anything, I mean, we have, we're unusual in that we're both device agnostic and we have our own proprietary wearable, which does continuous monitoring of the patients and by all saints.

So things like the SPL two, the respiratory rate, but our goal is to deploy whatever devices make sense to the home for that. It's condition and rescue level. So we trying to provide one almost unified window into the home. So wherever that patient's condition is, we will monitor what is relevant for that patient, but then get that back into analytics.

So we can say this is the patient who needs some action to be taken. So

I mentioned some use cases. Talk to me about some of the use cases you saw prior to the pandemic and maybe how those. As a result.

Yeah. So I think pre COVID, most of our work was in transitional care and that makes sense. That's where the financial model generally in the United States, our lose some level of innovation, you know, those, , and incentive to shop and length of stay.

There's an incentive to avoid readmissions. It's good for the patient to go home. But joining the plan, dammit, we saw a much more focus on avoidance of hospitalization in the first place. And that's continued with the CMS acute care to home waiver, which hopefully is about to be and about to be extended.

And for me, that's the truly impactful model because now we're not just trimming around the edges, but actually seeing how do we move the whole care model into the home. We never have a patient come into a bricks and mortar facility, and that's where we see. And growth today also long-term chronic care.

What we're seeing a lot more and interests from hospital systems and longer to do management of their populations. Long-term to avoid long-term

and cost. Is there anything we need from a policy or reimbursement to drive this?

I think the biggest thing though, Keto home right now is policy and reimbursement.

And I mean the acute care home waiver from CMS is a temporary waiver for the duration of the public health emergency, which may expire shortly. Those a bell in the Senate right now to extend that for another two years. So that needs to happen is one of the most transformational things to happen within Nokia for the last two decades.

But bigger than that, I think payers and government needs to do more around reimbursement and more around alternative payment models to really incentivize more keyed into the home. A it's really rare that we get giants to do something that's bad for the patient, for the outcome, better for that experience.

And she put it at the same time. So we need to push that follow.

You would think we'd have enough information now to, you know, to analyze it and look at it and say, Hey. Not to mention the fact that this is what patients want in, in a, in a lot of cases, they're saying, Hey, you know what, , we have to care for my father-in-law, , towards the end of his life.

And, you know, it's, you almost feel trapped in the home because you're caring for them and to have a solution like this, that's. Partnering.

And honestly, the data that we see shows that patients aren't just as safe in the home. They're safer in the home in many cases than the hospital. And this isn't about taking every patient out of inpatient facilities.

It's about seeing that those are, you know, percentage of care that we deliver and bricks and mortar facilities that could be better. And the whole, I am, it's a safer place for the patient and it's a bad outcome for the patient. And it's a more,

so we're in the middle of a set up and check it here at the, , at the booth.

, I'm going to let them get through this.

This is really loud. Otherwise it's picking it up. I could actually take that out with my soundboard, but.

It's very obviously to keep going. You need to

say those requests

to keep going every time we pause.

So

maybe remove that's a great solution. Thank you. I'm going to head to the best by questions. Again,

there's a lot of people still trying to figure out why

well, we've been, we've been talking about this show now for the better part of two and a half years. When I came in, I was like, Hey, this is a big move. This makes, I know you're going to look at this and say, this makes no sense, but here's why it makes sense. Getting into the home, actually doing work in the home is hard deal.

Cause we, we did, we did a hospital at home program at St Joe's and when we had to send our texts. They encounter all sorts of

problems, a hundred percent. And

then we had a moving the devices. We had them using them for the wrong purposes.

Honestly, a hundred percent. That's exactly it. Exactly it.

Yeah, I can't cause he done.

Oh,

all right. Let me see where they're all. I'll just pick up here. All right. So a best buy. Yep. Acquires. Current health. That was, that was huge news. I that's why I was, had, had broadcast that, Hey, we're best buy health. We're getting the healthcare. This is a major part of our strategy, but it seems like that announcement more than any other sort of catapulted into the consciousness and people go, okay, best buy health.

Why does this make sense?

Yeah, so honestly, when I announced it to our team, I think a lot of them said it must be Cressey's crazy accent. You can't just have, say, best buy and all the time we get people saying, what best buy, why are they in. But the challenges that we have experienced over the last five years is we've tried to build this company.

They're actually physical ones is how we get into the patient's home is how we get the 85 year old, who doesn't have a smartphone who doesn't have home internet. How do we get more heart connect? How do we make sure that if they have a technical problem, it's not the knots, it's not the physical. , it's technical support.

That's dealing with it in the home. And as an organization like Cardinal health, that's really hard to scale, but best buy is already doing that nationally. And that are trusted Brian for it. And to me, that was an incredible capability and that we could bring in to our, our solution. , and that that's what made it so, so powerful for me.

Yeah. When best buy said they were getting. I, , I talked to a couple of CEOs because we did a hospital home program and we, you know, we had to train people, Hey, you're going to go into homes. And there's all sorts of things. There's all sorts of legal things as well. , at a previous company, I sent texts into a home and they got harassed by the homeowner on things.

I mean, there's just so many things. And then when we put these devices, we put medical devices in people's homes, they would move them around. They would use it for different things they would break. Absolutely. And so it, it kind of makes sense. And when I talked to this, yeah, it was, I'm like, look, this is not a capability.

You look at this capability to say, oh, this is no big deal. This is a huge deal. A hundred

percent the M you know, and especially here at hems, like there's so many companies talking to. Like really sexy technology like artificial intelligence and IOT and so on. And these things are super cool. Honestly, I've spent more of my time in the last five years, just figuring out how do we get internet access and to a patient's home reliably, repeatedly.

And those are the bodies that actually prevent us truly doing kit a whole national, you know, if you're going to take a patient over at the hospital and put. You need to make sure you have chronic cavity there. You need to make sure that you can solve a technical problem at super heart. This whole

so best buy has three pillars.

I'm not going to remember them, but I know one of them is aging. , but it all centers around. The, the home being the locus of care, not necessarily taking everybody out of the hospital, but those that make sense moving

to, so they'll try to transform the home into a site of care. They'll trying to be on enable or of healthcare organizations to do that.

So they'll try to use what they're good at to help healthcare organizations they'll have our kit into the home and that's across consumer health, which is getting every device, every center, every wearable into best buy stores and making it easier for patients to access. Active aging is about helping seniors age in their own homes.

And then virtual kiosk is about how do we better connect patients to their, , to their physicians. But it's really along a continuum from am health and wellness all the way through to sickness. And how do we follow that patient across that, across that Johnny?

So there's been a couple of acquisitions by best buy too, to carry those devices, or are they still branded as current health devices?

If you go into a.

Yeah, so we don't sail and we don't retail out devices and a best buy store. We are entirely healthcare organization focus and certainly the active aging and of best buy health retail, some of the lively products and best buy stores, but we are more about how do we use, , the physical capabilities based by highs to Bayfield, the love for, for our healthcare customers.

We are still entirely B to B and you know, we're, we're focused on that.

So you're looking to have conversations with health systems

who are living exactly this and that. All of our customers are hospital systems, pharmaceutical cost, pharmaceutical organizations, and large pails that we focus on that group.

So

what are you looking to get out of hymns?

I think I was at Vive last week. It was amazing to see everyone and in person again, unbelievably strong attendance from pales healthcare organizations, pharma. I think we're just excited to meet. And the hospital systems and pharma appeals who are interested in collaborating more Caden to the home.

I think in my experience, most healthcare orgs in the U S want to deliver more Caden to the home. They have that as a strategic goal, but doing it is a whole nother thing. And that's where hopefully we can help them go from zero to one. I

love these interviews. If people are wondering why you interviewing credit.

CIO's told me you have to talk to this company. You have to look at this company. This is great stuff. And anytime a CIO tells me that I always

make

your time. And all of our Baptist, he was our Fox customer in the United States. He was, and he had vision about what we were trying to build at a point where we had very, very, very level and that faith and trust in us and his vision of where he wanted to take things at Baptiste was instrumental and it was growing this business.

Fantastic. Chris, thank you for your time. Thank you for your thing. Another great interview. I want to thank everybody who spent time with us at the conferences. It is phenomenal that you shared your wisdom and your experience with the community, and it is greatly appreciated. We also want to thank our channel sponsors who are investing in our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders, Gordian dynamics, Quill health tau site nuance, Canon medical, and current health.

Check them out at this week. health.com/today. Thanks for listening. That's all for now.