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September 30, 2022: How does a leader with impressive AMEX and Disney experience run a healthcare system? Tony Ambrozie, Senior VP and Chief Digital and Information Officer at Baptist Health Florida is advancing the healthcare experience, one revolutionary step at a time. We are looking to create ‘experiences’ but where do you start? What would benefit the community? What would benefit the clinicians? What is the best technology out there for our patients, our consumers? What are the best tools, processes and methods for building out an intentional health experience?

Key Points:

  • The US healthcare system has enormous dysfunctionalities
  • We need to focus and make it simpler and more fluid, more convenient for users
  • What does transformation look like in a financial services company?
  • The data that comes out of the digital exhaust can inform us on what is working and what isn't working
  • Baptist Health Florida

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When the pandemic hit, we suddenly had to decentralize the way we were doing healthcare. But the foundation wasn't there. We are now in a world where care delivery is primarily through digital means. How do we create and maintain a modern healthcare digital foundation with people and processes at the core?

Transcript

This transcription is provided by artificial intelligence. We believe in technology but understand that even the smartest robots can sometimes get speech recognition wrong.

Today on This Week Health.

Yes, there are complexities in healthcare . But I don't know if I would give the system that escape route to say, oh, it's different. So we can't do these things. No, we can. We just need to start somewhere and focus and make it simpler and, more fluid, more convenient for users.

Thanks for joining us on This Week Health Keynote. My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of This Week Health, a channel dedicated to keeping health IT staff current and engaged. Special thanks to our Keynote show sponsors Sirius Healthcare, VMware, Transcarent, Press Ganey, Semperis and Veritas for choosing to invest in our mission to develop the next generation of health 📍 leaders.

All right. Today we are joined by Tony Ambrozie, CDO, chief digital officer, and chief information officer for Baptist health, south Florida. Tony, welcome to the show.

Well thank you for having me.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to the conversation cuz you're doing so many interesting things, but your background's so interesting as well. So it's gonna be fun and we're gonna focus in, on really advancing the healthcare experience and what that looks like. But before we get there, my listeners want me to ask this question because I know about Baptist health, south Florida, but not everybody does. So give us a little rundown of, what Baptist health is about in south Florida.

Sure. So, first of all, I'll start with, there are several Baptist healths in the United States, and so we're the south Florida one. There is one in Jacksonville and it is one in Kentucky, I believe. So we're all separate and independent Baptist health of south Florida is a 12 hospital system started probably 60, 70 years ago.

probably one of the largest in south Florida. If not the largest. we have hospitals, we have urgent cares. We have PCP, we have everything, and it's quite big about 5,005 billion in, in revenues and about 25,000 employees plus another 10,000 associate folks. So it is pretty big.

A few years ago, a little bit of a context a few years ago, the board and the executive. Decided that digital and digital transformation is very important for Baptist and for healthcare. And therefore that digital, this digital journey has started there with me being hired about two years ago.

so Baptist, south, south Florida, it's primarily Miami. Is it Fort Lauderdale? How far north do you go? cuz I'm in south Florida, I'm in Naples, but you're not on the, not on the west side. On the west side. Right.

It's really south Florida, just Palm beach county and below four counties system.

Fantastic beautiful place in the country. Talk about your path to becoming a chief digital officer at Baptist. Talk about Baptist deciding to really pursue this digital journey and and really your road to get there. Cuz I think it's interesting and it lends itself to the background that you bring into this role.

Of course. So you know, I'm gonna date myself a little bit. About 30 years ago focusing on technology computer software engineering doing a few masters along the way. And then sometime in late nineties, I started with American express, which is a fantastic company doing technology, doing digital and then when the opportunity came and things were ripe I joined Disney parks in 20, late 2013, again, doing technology and digital. then in 2020 I reached out to Baptist for this. One thing that I would say is between all these jobs.

I think there is one common thread and that is transformation change transformation at all levels. And I think that's kind of what attracts me clearly Baptist wanted to do this transformation, digital transformation just as the other two companies at the time we're doing all sorts of transformational in.

let's talk about digital transformation a little bit. So Amex financial services and Disney parks. And so what does transformation look like in a financial services company? What were some of the things back when you were with them that digital transformation would look like and also the parks? What would, what would Disney digital transformation look like?

Well, it's interesting cuz we didn't really call. Digital transformation. We just call it digital experiences in particular, cuz it is all about experiences where there is as Disney says front of the house facing guests or back of the house and, so it was really about doing digital across the board.

When I joined American express starting doing work for them late nineties, I. There was the internet and eCommerce, what we call eCommerce at that time. Now we call it an overall digital. So it was building those capabilities that would allow consumers to interact through digital technologies with the company and do their business obviously in the best of possible way. with, Disney. It was something very similar. That's the expansion of web and then mobile. and clearly when I started at Disney those were being revamped rebuilt to the point where now clearly people go to Disney for all the magic that Disney parks. But technology is indispensable at this point to navigate and to find what you want and what you care for the best.

the last time I was at a Disney park, and this is gonna lead into the healthcare discussion. The last time I was at a Disney park, I stayed at a Disney hotel in Florida to give you context.

So you stay at a Disney hotel there, they give you the wristband. Yeah. And you go in any picture that's taken is sort of linked to the band, your credit card's linked to the band. I mean, you're paying for things. It becomes sort of a cashless kind of experience your hotel.

Key is the band. I mean, the reason I bring that up is because there are so many things in healthcare where we're like, we experience something like that? And like, why can't we have that experience when we walk onto a healthcare campus? is there a reason we can't have that experience today?

Well, there are explanations. I don't think there are showstoppers or obstacles. We just, we just need to work for them. And the magic bands, that you mentioned was a very, very comprehensive initiative. It started before I joined. So in all disclosure, with a great vision to link things together, to make things a lot easier for consumers, for guests.

It's interesting. And I don't know if I, I don't think I disclose anything secret, but Disney parks. They are so rich in experiences. There's so much to see in experience that actually sometimes it's a little bit. stressing and so the goal was always, how do we make that while optimizing what people can do and can see, how do we make that as fluid coming back to healthcare.

I think you're, you're absolutely right. We should. And we could and that's what we're focusing here, my team and I, and the others here at Baptist. There's a lot of folks, there are a lot of folks who believe that clearly healthcare is different and it is in some, in some aspects, but there are others that are other aspects that are very straightforward and it's incumbent upon us to kind of build those experiences.

Part of the reason why I'm here from a Baptist perspective is they were looking for. somebody Coming from outside with a background in consumer and consumer experiences and to be able to bring those in house. One of the things that you clearly identified with magic bands is they follow you through in a good way.

I heard there was some controversy at the very beginning, there was some sort of monitoring of people there. But whenever you need it, you have it and it opens doors, so to speak and it actually opens physical doors. But just as you said, it does a lot of other things. Now I believe you can do the same with mobile phones, all those things.

So it's a helper, it's an enabler. but one of the main things is that it, it enables across the journey. So you're not lost. You don't have gaps. It's a journey. It's a well thought through process. And that's what we're trying to do here.

Yes, there are complexities in healthcare this very well. But I don't know if I would give the system that escape route to say, oh, it's different. So we can't do these things. No, we can. We just need to start somewhere and focus and make it simpler and, more fluid, more convenient for users.

so let's, let's go into, you've been in the role for what, two years now?

Almost two years. Yes.

So. Experience, we're looking to create experiences. Where do you start? I mean, how do you identify the experience you're looking to create you come in from outside of healthcare. Clearly you spend a lot of time with clinicians and understand healthcare.

But then how do you narrow down on all right. Here's an experience that would benefit our community that would benefit our clinicians and our patients, our consumers. How do you come up with that list that you're gonna work. on

So I think at four it's interesting, cuz clearly it's a whole, it's different actors, different entities in that whole, I've split this for management purposes. If you want or managing the transformation to change into four parts, one is consumers. And the way I discovered defined consumers is they're trying to get in and get access to care or access to the inform. Then number two would be patients. So they're inside either in a a consult room or in a hospital room.

What are those experiences for them then as the clinicians the providers, the operations, clinical operations folks, what are their experiences? And then as the fourth would be let's say the general administration and staff, right. But the way. normally we, we start these things as trying to understand, let's say for consumers first and foremost, trying to understand what their normal journey is and needs to be.

And then you define that as a flow and again, as a journey, just as we talked about the. bands Is not just a particular interaction, but is the flow of interactions cuz in the end that's, that's what it is. Even if you look at a simple primary care visit, here's a finding that primary care or that practice booking an appointment.

Checking in paying whatever it is and following through and getting access to the results of that visit. And so the journey is, is a flow, but there are touch points. The important part about the touch points is will always have to think about the next one. So there has to be a linking to the next touch point in that flow in that.

how do you make, cuz you know, in a touchpoint you get a certain set of activities, but they lead to something else right. From booking and you actually go and see it and then you, you checking so it's about defining those or discovering those, I should say this is like a ethnography Process simply identifying what the need customer needs consumer needs are and defining that journey.

So it's always about the journey with identifying the touchpoints now clearly it's useful for my team and I, that we do come from the outside with. Maybe ano a mindset, but also definitely a consumer and patient consumer healthcare hat. And so we come in and we look at what would be the experience that we would want as patients from there.

Once that is defined, I think the journeys, the implementation, the experience of that journey. And the tools and the technologies to support that experience are defined by the digital team which includes the product managers creatives technologists and experience folks.

that team, I cannot overemphasize how important it is to have that team that is able to come up with a. At least the first draft of that experience. However it is implemented to put in front of consumers. And one thing I would a pitch for us technologists, there are some of the technologists are surprisingly savvy at good experiences and in good creatives and mean product management.

And so that's. And then, as we have that we validate that experience with or proposed experience with consumers, whether in small batches or pilots or even after a product is launched. We validate and continuously upgrade and up tune the experience.

It's interesting that it's been the case everywhere. And I think others have sometimes even the best of thoughts and thought process, or even asking consumers what they want. Doesn't really reveal. Interesting reactions to a product that you get through a lot of people using it, using it in, in interesting ways or having problems that nobody thought about it.

And that's inevitable by the way. But you know, you have to be ready to tune and change a little bit and adapt.

📍 📍 We'll get back to our show in just a moment. I wanted to take this opportunity to share with you our next webinars. On October 13th, we have delivering better patient experiences with modern digital infrastructure. During this conversation, we're gonna discuss multi-cloud, how to modernize health it, and a blueprint for creating an agile digital infrastructure without impacting the quality of care. If all those things sound really complicated, we're gonna make them less complicated for you on this webinar. This webinar has five campaign episodes. You can view them before the webinar to learn more. You can find these episodes as they release and register for the webinar at this week, health.com. Click on the upcoming webinar section and top right hand corner, and I look forward to seeing you there.

📍 📍

Yeah. So a good digital process begets data, right? So I think of the magic band we said it doesn't really track people, but to a certain extent it does when I sort of badge in and pay for something, it sort of has this path that I'm going through the park and it can see where I get stuck or those kind of things.

And that also, I would assume. The, the data that comes out of the digital exhaust, if you will, that comes outta that process can also inform what is working and what isn't working in that process.

No. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's why I said is a lot of the information you get from real life and you collect and you observe asking folks what they want and what they like is useful.

But with a limited not always accurate, not always accurate at all. And he say, one thing, I read Tony Fidel's book build and he said they tell you one thing on Friday and then another one on. But that's, that's why it's important not to just listen to what they say, but see what they do and how they do it.

And it's exactly that, the ability to measure in. Anonymized way, nobody is judging you for using the app in a particular way. But what we can do is an aggregate way to say, Hey, most people do this in the app and therefore let's optimize it for, for the experience of most people. And that's, that's true.

Where do they go? What do they like to do? And even more, interestingly, how would we be able? And then I'm talking about in general, how would we able to. Their experience you do the the map apps on the phone, Google, apple they have algorithms to try to redirect you away from from a bottleneck in the traffic.

Right. And that's very similar to what we're trying to do. Obviously they're acknowledging their sophistication. different level, but if, I propose a particular flow for the system or in the park. Can I can I guide it in a way that it's avoids bottlenecks and maybe send you one place that way you can get to the service faster versus another. And that indeed comes from collecting that at an aggregate.

Tony, talk to me about the, I don't wanna go to the technology yet, cuz the technology is sort of the last thing, but maybe not the last thing, but it serves whatever journey you, you come up with.

Absolutely. You can do anything with software, good or bad. That's rule number.

Yeah, so, let's start with when you redoing things, so you redo the magic band, there's an awful large operational lift. Isn't there. I mean, you have to, I, I would assume that's one of the things that slows us down at healthcare. I mean, if you put the magic band in place, you have to retrain the photographers in the park and you have to read you have to swap out some equipment in order to make that work. And that kind of stuff is that one of the things that slows us down in, healthcare

I think so. And some of the you're absolutely right about the magic band. Some of it happened before my time there, but I know it was a huge, huge endeavor, but again, it was from that obsessive focus that Disney dynamics have on consumer experiences, people really believed, and they were right that this, that particular experience based on that technology.

improved dramatically, the experiences for, for folks, the ability to basically walk around the park and things are just happening for you. And they get sent to the right place. You can buy it and you can be sent to your, your hotel room. You don't have to worry about you don't have to carry bags full of gifts For the park some of the merchandise in the park is is unique and it's super attractive. And then what do you do? But that also, that is also thought through, was also thought through but you're right. There was a huge, huge change. And that is part of what is difficult in healthcare.

There are a lot of processes that will need to change. There are changing, and that takes time and. effort And, and focus. Frankly, a lot of companies, even outside healthcare would benefit from their magic band project if you want. But some, most of them do. So that's a credit to Disney, to the leadership all the way from coming down from Bob J pick in, into the folks.

But yes, absolutely. There'll be some things we change. They need absolutely need to change, but this is the interesting balancing. You want to create that experience for the consumer, for the user, whatever it is, in whatever industry how do you do that? the.

soonest Without going into completely refactoring. And re-engineering all the operational processes. That's the balance. Some of them have to be changed as you go. Some not, cuz you can easily go into that tangent and say, Hey, I have all these opportunities here in operations and automation or maybe data and all sorts of things.

But you have to also be mindful that you do want to deliver. To most folks, the soonest possible some capabilities and not wait for years for all that transformation to happen. And then that was the case also in, Disney and marketing express, things were being offered and lives were being improved.

Today, even though behind the scenes, a lot of the transformation took took longer usually by, through, through the need of upgrading systems, uplifting systems

As an equal opportunity shadow. I think I did four or five transactions on my chase account today that probably would've taken me an hour at the bank, like meeting with different people and that kind of stuff.

It's an hour out of my life. In fact right now we're, we're talk. Those will tell people when we're recording this we're talking during the apple event. So the apple event is actually happening exactly right now. Right now. Yes, it is happening. And the phone really has, has changed things.

I mean, even the magic, you don't carry the magic band anymore. It's it's on your phone cuz you identify yourself on the. Then anywhere you use your phone, you can get that personalized experience. It, it knows that, oh, that phone is connected to, to you, which is one of the things that the band did. One of the first things you did is you connected that band to bill Russell, so that anywhere you went in the park, it knew that was bill Russell and here's his account.

That's exactly right. And that was one of the fundamentals of that project. And that is now you can identify. As you go for the park before it was, anybody could get a ticket that's still possible, but it's not as valuable or rewarding, but now you have the band in, or you have the phone. You indeed, you can identify and you can get recommendations, but yeah, the phones changed a lot.

we have a mobile first. A strategy. Clearly that's not a rocket science these days is probably 10 years after all the others have done it. And for the simple reason is yes, the form factor is, as I said, but the phone follows you and frankly, sometimes you follow the phone. Right. And therefore it opens context and location insights that otherwise you wouldn't have. Right. Right. So, that's.

the amazing thing about this is we talk about personalization, but personalization is one of the things we're looking for in healthcare. Obviously that's one of the experiences when you talk to people one of the things they'll tell you, right outta the shoot is I'm, I'm tired of the episodic nature of healthcare.

I go see my primary care physician. Then they send me somewhere else. And the next place I go, they act like they've never heard of me or seen me before. And I have to give them a bunch of information again. And then they send me to get blood work and they've never seen me or heard from me now we're getting better.

Passing those transactions around, but the experience to the patient still feels disjointed. How are we starting to knit those things together?

It does feel disjointed and it feels confusing where I am, what am I doing? But that's where going back to those journeys that you identify, you say, this is, this is a particular use case persona.

However you want to structure it. And. Then you define what those, those, the journey is and those, those touchpoints in ways that indeed not only you can pass the information because the information actually follows the user. And so as the next touchpoint has that information has that access.

Absolutely. for the mobile or for whatever, definitely for a digital profile account there's a way to, I just like with the magic band, you can identify yourself to. Next point who next touch point, at which you're expected you are known I hate those forms. That's why some of the things that we do is once you have a profile and with that is you put your driving license, cuz that's required to identify that you're the right person to provide the care and insurance. Your PCP prefer pharmacy or whatever else you, those consents to once you have that.

The only thing, frankly, you can, you need to say, you go in and say, I'm here. I mean, literally I'm here. And they say, okay, you're here, please come in. Cuz now all the other questions have, have been answered somehow. And the process behind it takes care to make sure that when you come you, you go through that journey.

Whatever has to happen and behind the scenes has happened. And there are all sorts of improvements in between one visitor or another. Yeah, conceivably. This is the part which is a little bit. In healthcare considerably, you could have changed your insurance, for example. Yeah. And everybody says, oh, I need to check the insurance.

Yeah. There's a way to, for us to do that behind the scenes. And then if you did change it, then we don't have the new one to say, Hey would you mind updating that? And then once that happened, I don't need to ask when you're in the front of the the front desk that's part of how

we are defining that journey and that it is an obsession by the way. And people say you're spending a lot of time on that. And then I'm like, yeah, that's what it takes to make it different. In terms of transactional versus we want through our digital capabilities to enhance the relationship to there is a relationship, a lot of folks have a relationship Baptist.

One of the most well known healthcare entities in south Florida, there are a lot of folks who basically are born there and now their kids are born there. And then that sort of thing there are, we want to make sure that for our digital capabilities, we, help build that relationship if it doesn't exist.

And we enhance and we maintain it. Somebody said, well, nobody comes to to a hospital because they can use a fancy app. I'm like, you're absolutely right. They come to the hospital, not even forgetting the care they want to get better. They want to be backed with their health as they, there was.

But we try to not just enable transactions, but to maintain their relat. and sometimes that means, and that's that's for our future in our future, in our vision is how do we enhance and enable folks in between visits to maintain better health. Great. And that's a whole conversation itself, but we are building relationships and you're not missed.

You're not lost while we don't see you. You're not. As much as possible. Yes. Sure. Some changes have to happen in the payer structure to enable that even beyond the the pop health space. But we do think about how to maintain that relationship in a way, not for bringing in people into, for acute transactions, but to enhance.

Yeah. So one of the things is we're starting to touch people a lot more outside of the campus, where as you talked about developing that relationship, and one of the things about that relationship is as with any relationship it's communication. So obviously you're building out multichannel capabilities to reach out plus the complexity.

I think about the market that you're in the complexity of the market you're in, I would imagine is. I don't know how many languages, but it's probably similar to Southern California. We had five or six primary languages. Every time we did something in a digital fashion, we had to figure out the complexities of that as well.

Talk about your omnichannel, how are you communicating with the patients in between visits? How are you creating that digital connection in between visits,

talking about, multi-languages yes, we support at least two English and Spanish. And then there probably others on the way. and I think that was the case or there at Disney as well.

And that's, that's important. And sometimes it's complex and just pure from my interface perspective is how do you design those elements for different languages? Some languages express the same thing in a shorter way, some longer. but the channels are clearly you have the web and we're trying to, as I said mobile first, but the web has to stay reasonably with parody. Mobile app is very important because that's where we can communicate carefully notifications and notifications are. Hey, it's a reminder for an appointment tomorrow. What have you, which is important.

Are you doing off the shelf or are you building that out?

We are. we started with again, looking at the experience and then we said, okay, how do we put this together? But in a way that doesn't look like a Frankenstein. monster a lot of places where I go as a patient. And by the way, I live in Orlando, not in south Florida, so I try to get my care at Baptist, but that's not always the possible sometimes. It's, it's very patchy. And as this system and you're right, they ask me all the information because they're not integrated to the EHR or they go to the other system.

So we said, how do we enable one experience? Like the one you have, let's say in the Amex app or in the, in the Disney app, it's. one And you log in once and you have access to all the things and therefore sometimes we can reuse or reuse, but most of the times we learn that in order to get to that experience and to be able to do things especially real time integration into the HR.

A lot of these healthcare startups, they're kind of disconnected there's basically glorified web forms and then there's some. Semi-manual process to get things from within, from those into EHR, we need to have full integration. And sometimes that means we are building it. ourselves And that sounds scary to folks like I was on a panel some, a year ago where the CEO of that system, they said, no, no, we don't build anything. We buy everything. And that's a choice. It's a valid choice, but sometimes it's not just the usability and the experience, but it's also the functionality that you can't really. just with vendors surprisingly enough.

so from an omnichannel standpoint, the communication you have the mobile app, you have web, you have email I would imagine you're using texting and, and whatnot.

How do you personalize that? If you're doing orthopedics, you could be doing that for a high school athlete, and you could also be doing it for an 85 year old hip replacement. how do you try to deliver the communication in the channel? That's gonna get the most response.

Well, it's, it's basically identifying who the consumer. Different personas just as you said. And what is the best, this best approach we're gonna introduce the ability for consumers to define their type of interactions in their channels. So like some of them, they basically say, no, just, just text me.

I don't care. I don't read emails. My wife is the other way around, send me emails. I don't care about texts. And so that, that will be a. But there are also others where meaningful notifications could only happen in a more sophisticated ecosystem, like the mobile app.

and that's, that's where we think through what is the best way to not Indian date consumers with all sorts of things, but also what's the medium. They're most useful. And it just so happens that the mobile app is much richer cuz you get a notification there and then there's a link to something else in there that makes it useful versus a simple text.

Sometimes a text is, is what you have. but it's, attention to what is the journey? Where are they in the journey? And what's the best way to get attention and get, them.

All right. So Tony, I'm gonna ask you to put your, your I don't know your forward thinking hat on here and I'm gonna give you a little bit of power and say What could we change in healthcare? What would a change be in healthcare? Let's assume you had the ear of an EHR CEO, or you had the ear of the president or the head of HHS or CMS. Somebody who can make some changes. Are there changes that would help us to Start to jump, start this.

Hey, it's kind of funny cuz you, you said the same thing I did. When I came into healthcare, I said we're gonna move to the cloud and they're like, oh, oh, don't get too. That's too far out there. I'm like, no, no, look, this is like 10 years past. Everybody else went to the cloud 10 years ago. We're just it's not like we're doing it for the first time.

Healthcare still lags other industries. Is there a conversation that you would have with one of those entities to say, Hey, if you make this change, we could, we could really move things forward a lot quicker to benefit the clinician and the patient.

Of course. And I think that's, that's exactly. It is just that you have to have lots of conversations with lots of folks. And I had the same, I got the same thing when I came about the cloud. Oh no, no, no, this is not gonna work for us. And I basically said It's something do electrons go through the kid in copper wires in a different way, healthcare.

And yeah, look, it's the Phi information, very important, but so is PCI for a financial company, right? there ways, frankly, to protect that their least as good, if not better than on per, but going to the, your main question is yes, they have to be a lot of convers. And if you were talking about a, you said the CEO of an EHR, I assume one of the EHR companies.

Yeah. I would tell them focus on the provider experience, cuz it's just madness. I would never design my consumer experiences and clearly they're more sophisticated, more complex, but the way that some of the UI UX is designed in those EHRs and some of it is frankly, they looks like windows 90.

Microsoft access and windows 95. That's a lot. Yeah. We can talk about machine learning about how it gets intelligent and the system having all this intelligence, just start there. Cuz it just, it just madness. We wouldn't, frankly, we wouldn't ask elsewhere people to do such a cumbersome, have such a cumbersome experience on their desktops.

As we're asking physicians and other provider. To do those. So focus there and I told a number of, of those folks and, they're getting it, absolutely getting it, but it's, it's still a long, long journey provider CEOs provide a system CEOs. I think it's just a conversation of these are the benefits and usually is well, is there a benefit for the operations, for the.

and you can talk about consumer satisfaction, patient satisfaction, patient loyalty that gets built through great experiences over long periods of time. But there's always an element of show and tell or tell and show if, how, however you wanted to say, okay, let's stars ball, and let's see how it goes.

And then we can extrapolate. Then you have an success and they. And then you end you say, let's go, go a little bit bigger, make a little bit more changes or add or build more and then they can extrapolate and then they can see one thing that is it's interesting is it's just something that others have learned many years ago with the self servicing.

It empowers the users. Absolutely. But also it's interesting. It simplifies some things for the operations, for the. I don't have to I being a front desk person or a, somebody on taking a call to actually create the appointment because the patient did in the formation is there. And they just said, I want this at this time in this date and with this provider.

So it's interesting that there are benefits simply because of that. And if you think about it, all those places where you go and you get this stack of papers and it's all sorts of things and, and consent and all, have you, somebody has to do something with those, put them in a system. Well, that's, you are, you're eliminating that.

And so there is a benefit to the system not necessarily reducing costs, but which is also important, cuz it's costs for, for providers, this cost for patients, but also the, the, the ability. Redirect some of that labor that you would actually to something that is closer to the patient.

All right. Let me ask you we'll close out with this question and this, this will be a fun one. So CVS just bought signify health. So their plans that they wanna go after primary care and MSO and also home Amazon care has been talked about over and over again. You have United healthcare obviously is big player and their digital initiatives continue to get better.

Walmart has plans in terms of healthcare, as well as you, as you look at that landscape, what do you think of that landscape? What does that landscape mean to, to Baptist south, south Florida?

incidentally I just saw this morning something that we're United and Walmart are joining for some, for some capability, which is interesting. I think clearly, and I said this before. The healthcare system in the us has enormous dysfunctionalities and I'm not saying anything that smarter people haven't said before me to say the least, I mean, we're more expensive than everybody else. And yet we're number 39 in the world, which is crazy.

So there is that. And then there is the patients. In general level of frustration with the system that is a rather a rather pervasive in the system as a whole in the United States. I'm think talking about plus the other trends that affect basically most of the Western world the developed world we're all getting older and the providers are getting older, so we need to do something cuz it's not gonna we're all gonna.

Needing more health and we are gonna be able to dispense less unless there are some changes and some changes come through technology and more things to be done on a continuous basis, not episodic, but at home or whatever, however much that that is possible. I think that that that's gonna be happen more and more.

And there are the, these business opportunities. I think that a lot of folks are. This gigantic 4 trillion spend on healthcare. And then they say we want a cut of it. And they do bring some, some capabilities that would be beneficial. So I think for providers, the traditional providers, per se I believe my message would be buckle up because there are gonna be a lot of changes.

Some of them will not be success. but just because one particular thing is shut down, doesn't mean that this trend is not happening and not gonna succeed. Cuz it's just the scale or the, the incentives for change are so, so incredibly great that that's not gonna go away. It was a lot of heavy has been said about Amazon care.

I think it was a limited thing. They shut it down. Everybody says, see, they felt. I didn't, think that they were but you know, they're gonna try to do more and that will mean the provider assistance, redefining what they are and what they're good at. And I think Baptist is good.

A lot of things that at neither CVS nor at least in our geographic area, not the CVS nor Amazon is gonna be for a very long. But we need to evolve. And part of that is all of us. We should be ramping up our digital digital capabilities at least to not be at the obvious disadvantage to, to everyone else.

They're going to a PCP is not a high acuity. And if there is no digital, the digital experience is miserable. Patients may say, you know what I like Dr. X, but everything around there, the processes and the digital in the app and the web is terrible. Too much hassle I'll just go to Amazon one medical.

Yeah, whatever it is that could happen. I think everybody has to ramp up their digital offering because it's for their own benefit, but also the benefit of consumers.

Fantastic. Tony, I want to thank you for your time. If you could convince the executives, if they want to come over. West, south Florida and then Baptist health, south Florida will cover the whole south Florida. I'd be open to that and more than happy to spearhead the conversation. So you can acquire one of the smaller players over here, cuz from a digital standpoint, it's, it's almost non-existent so.

I think some of the things that I talk and thank you again for inviting me, but other venues where I talk is it's not about. And sometimes it's not just about Baptist, it's about spreading the word and how do you do things? And, what we can do. Some of us who are maybe a little bit more advanced thinking to spread, and because that's gonna be in the end if more systems and they don't all have to be associated with baptism, but most systems and more systems provide that digital experience to more of their patients. Those patients are gonna be better off. So that would be a good thing for me. And to be able to push forward.

Yeah, absolutely. Tony, thanks for your time. Really appreciate it. Thank you. And glad to introduce you to the community. And look forward to catching up with you next year, to see 📍 how things progress.

What a great discussion. If you know someone that might benefit from a channel like this, from these kinds of discussions, go ahead and forward them a note. I know if I were a CIO today, I would have every one of my team members listening to a show like this one. It's conference level value every week. They can subscribe on our website thisweekhealth.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. Apple, Google, Overcast, everywhere. Go ahead. Subscribe today. Send a note to someone and have them subscribe as well. We want to thank our Keynote sponsors who are investing in our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders. Those are Sirius Healthcare. VMware, 📍 Transcarent, Press Ganey, Semperis and Veritas. Thanks for listening. That's all for now.

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