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today on Newsday.

Laura O'Toole: We all want the same thing. The ultimate goal is to drive an alignment of how efficiency and access can make us all more efficient, and be able to make a difference for the communities that we serve.

Newsday discusses the breaking news in healthcare with industry experts. Now let's jump right in.

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Sarah Richardson: Welcome to Newsday, where I am joined by Laura O'Toole, who's the founder and CEO of SureTest a company revolutionizing healthcare IT automation with over 30 years of healthcare industry experience. Laura is an operational and strategic leader specializing in client services, global consulting and acquisition strategies.

SureTest provides intelligent test automation solutions that empower health systems to transform their EHR and third party application testing processes. Their short managed automation solution eliminates thousands of analyst testing hours and improves patient outcomes by automating healthcare testing processes.

Laura, welcome back to the show.

Laura O'Toole: Well, thank you, Sarah. My goodness, you do a much better introduction for me than I do for myself. I appreciate that. It's great to see you.

Sarah Richardson: It's great to see you, and it's always easy to say nice things about people that you respect and enjoy being partners with and friends.

But financial constraints are tightening and the ability to do more with less is crucial for some of these healthcare organizations. So what are been some of your thoughts about workforce impact? How we're accelerating transformation, just the investment that it takes to really be thoughtful about going down this path.

Laura O'Toole: Well, I think that's the key. It's about being thoughtful and if you think of what our health systems are dealing with today, never in my career have I seen, and I say this all the time, the CIO and their cabinet's job is harder than I certainly have ever seen it be in my career. And the pressure that's coming from every single cornerstone of those buildings.

The access and the efficiency and certainly automation. Machine learning, which is a space that I live in, is definitely one path. I think there's many paths. I think what's most important, and we're starting to see this now, is really some governance around this. Uh, I think in order to really get the ROI, everything's about change management and you can't just snap your fingers and move to automation without the conversation and the trust.

That needs to be built where people aren't worried about their jobs. What they are able to take the step toward is, how can I work at the top of my license? How can I spend time with a patient, spend that extra minute with a patient to make their day a little better? And I believe the tools and technologies that are really hitting the market by storm and SureTest is just one of them.

Sarah Richardson: Well, and it also directly addresses the staffing shortages. By reducing that administrative burden on clinical staff, but then SureTest automation solutions also align with some of these priorities and put a lot of those tools equally into the hands of some of the IT teams.

Laura O'Toole: Yeah, I think certainly, we start with the CIO and those surround teams and those analysts.

And for us, what we believe is most important is in giving that time back. A lot of times when you come in with any automation solution, I think fear is a natural. Just emotion that people have. I'm a big believer that whether in your personal life or in your professional life, we operate on the spectrum of love and fear, right?

Love has clean motives. Fear one way or another somehow has a dirty motive. And if we can get the conversation going, and to get back to the change management aspect of this, where. The employees and the clinicians that are working at these health systems feel like these are tools that are going to make me better for the communities that I serve, and allow me to do more meaningful work.

That's where patient care. Gets affected and that's what I get most excited about. I had a client this week and I, I we're working on a white paper together, so I don't wanna mention the client yet, but they're working on doing an expansion. So we, automated all the EPIC testing and some of the surround applications.

And of course they have a huge digital transformation effort and they wanna really take a look at the access for their patients and how, you know they're going to engage in patient engagement. The last thing you wanna do is put in all this patient engagement, and you haven't tested it with your clinical workflow and in the downstream regression integration testing.

So, when you can begin to really drive metrics to prove an ROI that allows people to say, let's start with this. Let's see that it works. Build trust, build community, work with them on the change management aspects so that people aren't scared. So it's not about I'm going to eliminate your job necessarily.

Sarah Richardson: That's exactly what we're hearing in conversations with health systems where even St. Luke's and Boise with the Reids team they're doing AI literacy training and as part of the implementation of new products, they show them how to use 'em with prompts, with new ideas, and in these labs, they're able to start to figure out, this is not about taking your job away, this is about making you better at your job so you can do things you like better and things that are actually a little bit harder, that need more time assigned to it.

So it's taking away exactly to your point, the fear factor that can be associated with some of these solutions. And it takes us into our second conversation about. Healthcare IT leaders prioritizing ROI and workforce support. So from HIT Consultant Media, a recent survey revealed that healthcare leaders are focusing on maximizing returns on their investments while addressing the resource strain.

How you're handling your end users. Because if you have clinical end user education and knowledge transfer, that's really well baked into your environment. Then the physicians as an example, or clinicians using some of these tools such as ambient listening. Yeah. They also start to trust it in other areas, whether it's automation of testing, so use of copilot for creation of different aspects of their job.

So I'd love to hear from you that, how does testing automation really improve the reliability and adoption of existing technologies and some of the impact in terms of. Where those resources can be allocated most effectively in the organization. You touched on it, but I know there's more to the story.

Laura O'Toole: Yeah, absolutely. And I completely agree with you. Cyber is here to stay and the threat is here to stay and it's going to get worse, not better. I. So I think, whoever would've thought right pre Covid that we would be sitting here and saying, we can do so much of healthcare in a virtual environment.

I do like to be a glass, generally half full kind of gal. We would never have been on the trajectory that we are now in terms of being able to leverage automation and the tools that we have today in a virtual way. And make no mistake, it is a war for talent. Out there because of that virtuality, I think our health systems are in a war for talent and I think it's gonna get much worse.

So when we think about the solution that we bring to market in terms of automation and really automating that full integrated workflow and the workflow that flows into the downstream systems where you're continually regression testing that, think about the risk that you're eliminating, there's nowhere near enough time to test everything that you need to test.

Have better job satisfaction. So we have a couple of clients that use this as a recruiting tool. You come and work here, we have automated testing. You don't have to test, you don't have to do that. You can be out solving, optimizing, enhancing the build, being out, solving problems with your clinician counterparts, and that's an attractor.

So I think for us to be able to drive that ROI and make a difference for our IT teams that are drowning, that are exhausted, that are working harder than I have ever seen them work. 30 years in my career. And if we can be a small part of giving them relief through automation with this solution I'm thrilled about it.

Far more importantly, share some intelligence among our client group. That's been my ultimate dream for the company because if you think about all our libraries de-identified, but if I have a client like UNC that does a particular surgical workflow and 40 steps, and I have a client like UVA that does it in 59 steps.

And we're just thrilled to be a part of that.

Sarah Richardson: You know, That people were nervous or afraid of it in some aspects. However, all of the clients that we know that utilize Sure, test, have said, what else can we automate?

Laura O'Toole: Absolutely. So I think when you start to look at the third parties that are now in our library, it's pretty clear. You can see a very consistent path of. The majority of our clients use, say these ten third party applications, so they would make sense. If you look at where healthcare is going from an ERP perspective and moving up the enterprise, we know that Workday is winning, right?

We see Workday, we see in four, we see some Oracle. So certainly some synergies around what makes the most sense as we go up the enterprise level for sure. Will make a difference. And the key for us is we're testing at the end user level and that's where we're really eliminating some risks.

They have pushed us. They have pushed us to be better. You know how I feel about partnership, right? It is a partnership and it needs to be a partnership and how we can make each other better. And this is just gonna get worse. the drive to, get more ROI and documented tangible ROI.

So one of the things we did is just incorporate a whole new system. That, every single click, every mouse click. We scoured the market and we built our secret sauce, our frameworks, our speed to value on top of a tool called Eggplant Keysight. And they are a great strategic partner of ours.

And creating a situation. Whereas if you think about it, we're doing it at the end user. Back to your training component, we've recorded every single keystroke. So now how easy is that to put into an electronic e-learning document that if somebody forgets what they need to do, they can just, click on the link and watch that in real time.

So I think there's a whole host of things to go up the value chain. But at the end of the day, it's about how can we best serve our clients to make a difference for them, save them money, help them keep high satisfaction amongst their employees. The cost of recruiting is exorbitant.

Exorbitant. The burnout factor is insane. And if we can give them a tool that says, Hey, you can let your people work at the top of your license, I feel we've brought something to the market.

Sarah Richardson: Well, everything that you've shared thus far is such a perfect corollary. We've got our third, conversation navigating healthcare workforce challenges this year.

So you touched on the burnout epidemic. So nearly half of all healthcare workers experience burnout, which is creating more absenteeism and reduced productivity. There's EHR inefficiency, whether the inability to integrate effectively creates challenges. The demographic to me is the one I'm watching most closely to a degree, and that's the retiring boomers um, person that's gonna create more, more staffing shortages.

And at one of our recent summits, we had a academic medical center say, at the 10 year mark for my Epic clinical analysts, I'm paying them X. They're getting poached and paid 50% more to be. Either remote or virtual, or a consultant for some of these other organizations, and I think about that whole connection between whether your system is integrated, whether it's reliable, whether you have satisfaction and growth from the teams by.

Because the intent is not that people are doing twice as much,

Laura O'Toole: right? The intent is to give back meaningful hours for meaningful work. And at the end of the day, everybody wants to do meaningful work. They don't wanna do mundane tasks. They wanna be able to operate at the top of their license. And as I think about automation and I think about how our health systems retain their people first and foremost.

Let's stop talking about automation for a minute. I think it's about leadership and I think it's about connection. You wrote something the other day where you said, none of us should be doing this on our own. people need to be in this together, and most people wanna feel like they're a part of something bigger than themselves.

So at the end of the day, if we're all working more efficiently and a solution like SureTest is giving you back 30,000 hours a year when you go to budget time next year. You should be able to add some of those projects that are in the queue, that the squeaky wheel out there that the clinicians want done can start to get done and then not add more operational overhead.

So do more with less and allow people to use the tools that are available to them to make them feel innovative. I just think that's so, so important that we do that for people in their work lives and in their career. And I just think there's a tremendous opportunity here for us all

What are some of the lessons learned or things that you believe are most important from a strategic perspective for healthcare organizations to successfully adopt and maintain these enhanced efficiency solutions?

Laura O'Toole: No, this is gonna sound so basic. But I actually have now put together and had our team put together.

We have a whole methodology, but at least now we're offering up. I think what's happening is our leaders in healthcare are so incredibly busy. It's like their heads are spinning off. Their body like in, uh, the Exorcist. That's what it feels like to me. And then everyone's grabbing at them.

What's gonna happen to my job? Wait, this is what I need to do. So I think we've learned we can be far more prescriptive and help those leaders. This is basic change management 1 0 1, and really pushing down communications in the right way so that people feel comfortable. And now what we're starting to do is bring our implementation teams into the sales process.

So that they get to know the people that they're gonna be working with because this has to be about connection and about trust. And at the end of the day, and I, you and I have talked about this. I hate being called the vendor if I'm not your partner. It's really uninteresting to me. I live my life believing that everybody can win and that it's every leader's responsibility to do their part, to help everybody win.

They are a group of leaders that had it together. And they listened. They took our methodology. They said, you see how this has done? Well, we're gonna adopt what you're suggesting here. And we had their entire library developed and ready for deployment. I wanna say it was two to three months.

, and this is a children's hospital, right? So these are very important, complex workflows. So, some hospitals take a little longer, but I think the biggest lesson learned I've had is don't be afraid to step up and say can we call a time out here? Because I know everybody has their own process, but I.

Project, but really integrate into what their teams are doing. And those are the ones I think that where we've seen the most success. And, the ones that, bucked the system a little bit. It just took us a little longer, but they saw the value and now we're expanding and it's all, it's all good.

But I think I would speak up a little bit sooner. Obviously when you're doing consulting and, we provide this fixed fee as a managed service. We wanna be respectful of our clients, but If you're my partner and you think I should be doing something better and I can do it better, I sure hope you would tell me.

Reducing an ROI and innovating and really transforming where we need to go with automation, machine learning, whatever those innovations might be that are gonna move the needle on patient care and getting access sooner. I think those are the ones that lead and that lead from the front, and those are the clients that I'm most attracted

[Mic bleed]

Ultrasound for Uber, Uber for ultrasound, just one of the things that they do. What about all the ancillary shortages? Think about x-ray checks, ultrasound checks, echo checks. How are we going to move people in general? With Innovation and using some of these tools to help people get smarter. Think about what we can do from a remote hands perspective, right?

Because at the end of the day, especially in the poor rural areas where people just don't have the access to care that they need, and I'm not gonna get on a political soapbox here, but how do we make that better for people that are the underserved? And make sure that they have access to good care. So here's an example.

I didn't realize this Medicare, it's the radiologist's license that's reading the test. That is what you need to put the claim together to bill. It's not the ultrasound tech. Now they all get their certifications and whatnot, but I kid you not I am no clinician I had an earphone in my ear, a Doppler, and I did an echo.

It was in a test environment, obviously. And this is another example of where automation, test automation can go. Think about all this virtual devices we can test. It's limitless what we can do. And think about how you can take smart people and have them school up. How can we use medical assistants?

How can we use CNAs? How can the hospitals use the staff that they have at their disposals that aren't, RNs to do some work with the support of a model that's scalable. That's where we need to go, and all of that needs to be tested because we cannot risk harming that downstream integrated workflow.

You're gonna have radiology con, can you imagine a nightmare that's gonna be for our CIO colleagues? The governance has to get in place, so I think we need to be thoughtful. The technology's there. The technology's gonna get there. Let's get there the right way in a thoughtful way so that we don't end up spending tons of money going through a whole nother application rationalization exercise with no governance and no leadership,

Sarah Richardson: and there's a level of responsibility that says.

Okay. And when is good enough? Not gonna be advanced enough for things that we need to do. And to your point, that rationalization activity is maybe we do need some resources for this solution here and this other space is good enough. But I'm always very cognizant of the impact of all your eggs in one basket, because to me that's stymies in innovation.

And when you are in a scarcity space, you can be the most innovative, but you can't be innovative if you're just. Relying on what's going to be delivered to you, you've got to create and push that envelope forward

Laura O'Toole: at a minimum. You not only have to push the envelope, but you need to ask the questions and not say.

We've automated a whole Cerner and surround application library for them and they made the decision, they're moving to Epic, they just went to Madison. They're in the throes of their implementation. And so we're talking to them about, okay, how do we, at the right point, when you get to that integrated time in that build with testing, 'cause you want everybody to test, it's a great way to learn and I'm all for that.

But think about the number of integrated test runs that we can do. Building the automation alongside of the implementation. Yes. And then better than that, you get to the end of the implementation. You're not two or three upgrades behind because the automation has kept up with it. To me, that is innovation.

That's the way to really maximize what's available and make a difference for your employees and come out as an innovator. On

So thank you for joining me. As always, I love the things we talk about. I love how we don't really hide some of the bigger ideas that we believe need to be discussed and tying it into what's happening today so people can bring all those pieces and parts together for a clear picture of some ideas of what they could pursue next to find these successes within their own healthcare organizations.

Laura, thank you for joining me. Thank you for your partnership with SureTest, and I look forward to our next conversation.

Laura O'Toole: Always great to be with you and the team. Thanks so much, Sarah. Great to see you.

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