October 21, 2022 • 31 mins
As Chief Strategy and Digital Officer at Providence, Sara Vaezy leads one of the most well-respected organizations that continues to push the envelope of what’s possible with healthcare digital innovation. Consistently innovating at such a high level requires a keen sense of where healthcare is going and how to develop solutions that will benefit your organization and the consumers, patients, and providers that you serve.
Join Sara and host Shiva Mirhosseini as they discuss the 3 D’s that guide Providence Innovation Group: Deconstruction, Diversification, and Digitization.
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Episode Transcript
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S1 (00:09):
Hi. Welcome to Paving the Path. I'm your host, Shiva Meter.
Say me. People know me as a customer experience champion
and a digital executive at Fortune 50 companies. I plan
on paving the path in my show with women game changers,
thought leaders and executives touching the entire spectrum of digital
transformation in healthcare. Join me in exploring the digital renaissance
(00:33):
that's shaping healthcare today and forever changing the future of wellness,
care and health.
S2 (00:43):
Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today.
I'm very excited to have Sara wasI, chief digital and
strategy officer at Providence Health, join us. She has quite
a rich background. So I want to just this by
going through every detail with respect to her experience, but
one that really resonates with me the most and I'd
(01:06):
love for her to chime in on is the ability
and kind of the insight with respect to technology and
all that. It's all it can offer the health care
system as large as Providence Health. So with that, let
me switch quickly to Sara. So just to get us started,
if you can help us understand from your background, again,
(01:27):
such a rich background, what brought you to health care
kind of inspired you to your position, specifically hearing that today.
And if anything, you want to add to my intro,
if I missed anything. Sure.
S3 (01:40):
And thank you so much for having me, Shiva. I'm
delighted to be here with you. You know, I spent
my entire career either specifically within health care or in
sort of the translational research space. So it's something that
I always felt naturally drawn to and just the sort
of fundamental right that I believe we all have to
(02:03):
health care that is, that meets our needs, that's affordable,
that's high quality, and that is consistent with sort of
just our values and how we access other things within
our life. You know, so just I think it's a
very basic, fundamental right and have always been really interested
(02:24):
in trying to make the system better. So I've been
with Providence for just about seven years, and prior to
coming to Providence, I worked still on the health care
provider side, but more in a consulting capacity. I was
a management consultant and and then prior to that, I
worked at the intersection of health services, research and health
policy and did quite a bit of work with a
(02:47):
lot of state agencies in Washington State, which is where
I lived at the time. And I look now again
around sort of state sponsored programs around things like medical
homes for folks who were Medicaid beneficiaries. I did a
lot of early work on hip and high tech back
in 2007, 2008, and did some work on policy solutions
(03:14):
essentially for avoidable variation in rates of surgical procedures and
things like that. And so it goes kind of way
back to the early ish 2000. And then I was
a research scientist prior to that at a medical device
company that essentially was focused on drug delivery, more efficient
(03:36):
drug delivery using therapeutic ultrasound. So always been sort of
either explicitly in health care or adjacent to it in
a research capacity. And it's just been a natural draw
for me again, based on what I think is very fundamental.
So you would ask the question, there's sort of like,
where do I find myself now? And in some ways
it was very serendipitous. You know, I when I was
(03:59):
a management consultant, I really enjoyed the work. I enjoyed
working with a variety of different providers, whether they were
academic medical centers or large integrated delivery networks. But there
was always this existential sort of draw for me to
not be on the outside as a consultant. You're never
(04:19):
deep in it in the same way that an operator is,
and I wanted to experience that role as an operator
within a system. I didn't have a strong sort of
technology background in the context of what I do today
at all. And many of the folks that worked within
the digital innovation group and still continue to work within
the digital innovation group are from, you know, either big
(04:42):
tech or startups that are purely in technology. So they
have a depth of understanding around around software that I
didn't have. And I learned everything. I kind of came
here serendipitously and was recruited by my old boss through,
you know, sort of right place, right time, right circumstances,
(05:03):
met him and and he brought me on board and
taught me a lot. I learned. Everything I know about
enterprise source and direct to consumer on the job. So
it has been a very interesting seven years, and I've
learned a lot from the folks that do work on
the team that have that background. So so it was
very much like the stars aligned in a lot of ways.
S2 (05:24):
Well, it's amazing listening to you because your career progression
in a way mimics all the transformation and progression that
we are also seeing in health care. I mean, back
in the days when you started, probably look completely different
and very research oriented. Of course, all highly regulated. But
(05:47):
the role of the health care systems, potentially retail and
certainly consumers have evolved so much. So with that in mind,
and given how beautifully the stars aligned up for you
and especially for Providence to bring such a kind of
a well-rounded kind of leader to its essentially leadership table.
(06:09):
What kind of layperson's explanation of what Providence does, if
you can just tell us the basics and also what
you hope to change and how what Providence does is
different from others in the country.
S3 (06:26):
That's a broad question. And I'll start with at the
biggest picture, not just limited to what we do within digital,
but so just for background for folks. Providence is a
large integrated delivery network based in the Western United States.
We have over 50 hospitals. We have about 1000 ambulatory sites.
We are vertically integrated in that. We also have a
(06:48):
health plan. We do work in supportive housing, work in
a lot of home and community services. We do work
in education. So there's a lot of depth and breadth
of what Providence is engaged in in terms of health
care delivery and then the upstream and downstream sort of
drivers and factors around health more generally. So we extend
(07:12):
that all the way from Alaska, as far north as
Alaska and through Washington, Oregon, California, Montana, Texas and New Mexico.
And it's a very large footprint. We have millions of
patients that we serve every year. We have our health
plan is very large. And so we've got to some
of the things that Providence has done sort of more
(07:34):
generally are that, of course, we have depth and breadth
around care delivery, but we're also starting to think about
sort of the future of health care more generally and
in particular, what providers need to do in order to
remain sustainable in a very difficult situation. Right in the
last two and a half years have been very difficult.
(07:55):
And then 2022 in particular has been very difficult from
a financial perspective, as a lot of the factors are
sort of colliding around workforce challenges, inflation, a lot of
like post-acute services kind of going away. And so we
have length of stay challenges, know there's all these it's
(08:15):
kind of a confluence of factors and in many ways, unfortunately,
the perfect storm. So that's had a significant impact on
Providence as well as most other health systems. And if
you were to talk with our CEO, there's three things
that we're kind of doing that in addition to our
core work of caring for our communities and furthering our mission,
(08:38):
we are doing three things to ensure the sustainability. The
first is deconstruction. So ensuring that we really understand our
business as businesses, like an ambulatory business, a hospital business,
a health plan business. And that way we can manage
and understand, well, what are we trying to achieve with
(09:00):
each of these lines of business? And that really helps
to figure out the service models, the financial models, and
also freezes up to think about interesting new businesses that
we can that we can create. The second area is diversification.
So care delivery is going to continue to feel a
(09:22):
lot of that downward pressure that we've been feeling for
years and has accelerated significantly in the last two and
a half years and especially this year, as we just
talked about. So diversification is the mechanism by which we
can tap into new sources of revenue that are not
necessarily reimbursement dependent and able to not only advance our mission,
(09:45):
but also provide, for instance, services. We have a company
within Providence called Tegra that is a rogue cycle inside
technology services company that we can also provide to other
health systems to kind of in this mutually beneficial model
that supports Providence and our diversification goals and also provides.
(10:07):
Other health systems with those same services. So that's the second.
RD And then the third RD is digitization. And this
is where sort of the my I put my digital
hat on. And this is a very broad area. Not
like the other two aren't there very broad as well.
But digital is and digitization can mean all sorts of
(10:28):
different things to different people and different health systems. And
when you talk to one chief digital officer, you kind
of talk to one chief digital officer and each system
kind of has a different definition. And in our system,
what we've done is we've actually kind of broken it
down into different components that are owned by different folks. So,
for instance, our CIO, B.J. Moore, is focused a lot
(10:51):
on our core infrastructure, a lot of things like what
are the largest epic installs in the world? We just
went through a major cloud based ERP initiative with Oracle,
and so we've got like a huge amount of infrastructure
work that B.J. owns as well as caregiver experience. So
(11:13):
he operates a lot of the technology that influences the
experience that our doctors and nurses and other clinical caregivers,
as well as non-clinical folks with throughout the system out. Right?
So B.J. owns that. And then we get to well,
then what's the role of the chief digital officer? And
so we've spent quite a bit of time getting really
focused on where is the true opportunity and taking lessons
(11:35):
from other industries as well. And so in many other
industries think like travel or banking, that consumer facing experience
and that digital transformation that occurs around that is focused
on kind of demand generation and demand capture. And we
(11:56):
are creating within the context of my digital team as
well as marketing. So I sort of have oversight over
the consumer facing front end of the organization, both digital
and on digital. From a marketing perspective, that's what we're
focused on and generating, aggregating and capturing demand. And so
we've kind of divided up the world in that way,
(12:17):
and we build or operationalize technology on many of those
core platforms that our CIO's team runs. And we're able
to do it from a business objective perspective in order
to drive growth. And then let's bring in the consumer. Well,
what does that actually mean for the consumer? Create frictionless experiences,
(12:38):
make them more seamless, reduce the fragmentation that our consumers
and our patients experience, and then drive a level of
personalization so things are relevant to them as opposed to
generic or undifferentiated. And so those are the types of
things that we're working to build for our patients and
our consumers so that their experiences with us are more
(13:00):
congruent with what they experience in other areas of their lives,
like banking or rideshare or grocery delivery or what have you. Right?
There are lots of different examples.
S2 (13:10):
Everything you said resonates quite well. So just to play
this back, of the three, these priorities for for Providence deconstruction,
kind of really managing and looking at every every line
of delivery of care delivery as a business really, truly
And as a result of that, really getting down to
(13:30):
what are new ways, untapped, innovative opportunities and businesses that
can serve the consumer and the member and the patient through.
The second was diversification, and the third was digitization. And
the diversification very much focus on, again, the care delivery
upstream and downstream and digitization really focusing on the baseline
(13:52):
and the foundational capabilities which really the CIO is managing
and holding on. And then your role really thinking about
the consumer kind of this well-rounded experience, frictionless, all those
good stuff. The one thing I want to probably ask
you to dive a little bit deeper. I know a
all the great promises, of course, across the entire nation
(14:17):
from the start ups to mid-size to even pharmacy, you know,
the CVS and Walgreens or even Walmarts of the world. Still,
if you look at the almost $4 trillion that we
spend in healthcare, there's estimation of a good chunk of it.
Some estimate up to half of it is really either
consumed or wasted completely. It's fair to say that consumers
(14:41):
are not quite getting that frictionless experience across the board.
Can you give us one or a name, the example
of either in a lifetime experience or a kind of
focused experience for your patients, whatever it might be, diabetes, etc.,
that has gone through a major transformation. It actually has
(15:03):
shown not only better experience but also better. Consumption of
capital and less waste.
S3 (15:09):
Yeah, absolutely. I can give you a couple different examples
that are even more simple than a complex example, like
diabetes management. There are a lot of different problems that
are contributing to what you're describing. One of them, or
one set of these problems is around sort of the
knowing the individual and then tailoring experiences to them based
(15:32):
on what we know about them. So there's fragmentation in
the data as well as fragmentation in the way that
that data is brought together around a sort of profile
of an individual. And so one thing that we've done
in Providence is promise in general to all of our
patients who know me, care for me, ease my way.
(15:52):
And so that's what we're working toward with the first
step being know me. And so we've built a couple
of different things around a consumer data platform. So again,
we can know our patients across who they are and
more holistically, not just within their clinical delivery experiences, but
also around how are they engaging with us from a
(16:14):
web perspective, for instance, and what kind of services are
they looking for so that we can understand, like what
kind of information, what kind of service, what kind of,
you know, how are they trying to bring their experience
together themselves? Because a lot of it, they're forced to
do themselves right. It's this holistic sort of understanding of
who folks are. And then we're. And so eliminating sort
(16:37):
of the data problem as a first step of bringing
together the experience side of things. And then the second
is around identity. So it's not just efficient to like,
know folks, but you got to connect that to how
they actually interact with you. So we've built what we
call a simple patient identity platform that authenticates an experience
(16:58):
for a given user, and they don't necessarily have to
be a patient. They can create that account independent of
having a clinical record with us, and then that that
authentication allows them to do things like single sign on
with our properties as well as properties of our partners,
and it can allow them to initiate things like virtual
(17:21):
visits much more readily and light up experiences for them
that are relevant to them based on, again, what we
know about them and the accounts that they have with us.
So trying to eliminate the fragmentation around the data, the identity,
and then therefore the experience as one mechanism for that
or where those two things surface. So that's one example
(17:44):
of something that we're doing. Another example of something that
we're seeing and something that we're seeing very tangible results in.
And there are some on that first side too, but
I'll just keep going. So a lot of what we're
working on is from Discovery through actually like engaging around
a specific service, completing a transaction, getting the delivery done,
(18:06):
and then engaging on the backend, right? So that there's
sort of this like loop for the individual that all
comes together across the entire journey that they have. And
a simple example that folks struggle with is just let
me get the care that I need right now. Right?
Like I wake up in the morning, I feel lousy.
What do I do? Right. So first thing you do
(18:28):
is you go online and you start to search and
you want all your results to be in one place
in terms of what your options are so that you
don't have to, like, click around to 15 different places
and do tons of research when you're feeling lousy. Then
the second is you actually want to be able to
transact or like book the service or engage in that
service if it's virtually delivered. And then the third is
(18:51):
you want what you get pointed to to actually be available.
So essentially, help me find the service that's right for me,
direct me to that service and then ensure that that
service has capacity. So we built a technology around that
that takes the friction out of getting care now based
on what you need. And we actually spun that out
into a company called Decks Care. It's like it's the
(19:13):
technology platform that powers our on demand service offerings. And
some of the tangible results that we've seen is like 30%
of the patients that come in through that platform are
new to the system, right? They didn't have some sort
of engagement with us in the past, and they may
have just been, you know, maybe they didn't have any
primary care provider or maybe they tried to get in
(19:33):
somewhere else and they couldn't write. And so we're able
to actually get them in. A lot of those folks
are commercially insured because a lot of folks that are
commercially insured are online. Right. They're just they're a digitally
enabled population of people and then they engage with us
on an ongoing basis, too. So we've got measurable results.
And so in terms of downstream services that those people
(19:55):
consume when they need further care, which again, what would
those folks have done if they couldn't have gotten in?
So those are a couple examples of taking the friction out, taking,
creating sort of that connected experience. Across given journey.
S2 (20:08):
It's a perfect example because you create this seamless, frictionless experience, which,
by the way, kind of eases the way of customer
acquisition because this marketing is like the product by itself
does the job of marketing for you, which is fabulous.
It's very, very cost efficient, and I think it elevates
(20:29):
the brand even more. One of the things that this
kind of aligns well with is the future of retail
when it comes to healthcare. And some of the companies, again,
I think I mentioned surveys three times already in this file,
but like those retail shops are trying to really expand.
(20:49):
I think it's more like these new verticals, if you would,
to bring that one stop shop for all under one roof.
Like what is your take on Providence's take on this
retail zation.
S3 (21:02):
Yeah. So I think there are two themes embedded within
what we've been talking about and what you just called
out that that are super important and are reflected in
the utilization. The first is the decentralization and distribution of
actual delivery and even having a sort of, as you've
(21:23):
described it, a physical location. Those are decentralized. Like it's
not like you only go to one CVS location. There
are thousands and thousands of them. And that's the whole
value prop, right, is that they are so close to
most where most Americans live or work. Similarly with Walmart,
(21:44):
similar there's Dollar General was making some moves in that
same direction. Right? So it's the distribution and decentralization of
care delivery. That's one trend. And the second is the
coordination and interoperability of information data and enabling technology like
connectivity across it. So those are the two trends that
(22:07):
are working in service to all of this. And what
we're going to see is more and more, I think,
more and more fragmentation of care in a way so
you can go anywhere, right? You can buy a la carte, essentially.
And that's what we've been seeing with a lot of these,
especially younger folks. They don't really care, right? They just
(22:27):
want to be familiar with the brand and they want
it to be convenient to them and they want to
be able to afford it. And that model that enables
them to get that care, but then also have some
sort of connectivity on the back end from an information
perspective is what we're going to keep seeing. And so
I don't think we're going to slow. We're going to
see a slow down in terms of the different types
(22:48):
of players on the care delivery side by any means.
And to your point, like it'll probably pick up speed
over the next several years and we're going to make
up for what you lack and what you lose under
that fragmented model through the interconnectivity and the interoperability of
the data and the systems. So I think we're going
to have a more and more sort of multimodal care.
(23:11):
That platform that I referenced around decks care, that's exactly
what they provide, is the ability to have multimodal care
and then be able to share that whatever the results are.
The after visit summary and the clinical nodes within the
context of the patient's record so that there is that
continuum of care as opposed to a fragmentation of the
(23:32):
care as well. That's the direction I think we're going
to be heading. And what Providence has done is we
created that multimodal offering as well as the enabling technology
so that we can be ahead of the game. We've
actually been working on this for about I think we
started six years ago and it really got a lot
of momentum around COVID when in the early days when
(23:55):
physical locations shut down and you needed to have like
the continuity of care from a digital perspective. And then
it all sort of started to build together around this
more holistic hybrid model.
S2 (24:06):
That makes a lot of sense. And I'm not surprised
that you guys are pioneering in that in that space.
Is there anything else in the next six or 12
months that we should kind of look forward to coming
from Providence, whether within the digital or more generally around
personalization of care?
S3 (24:24):
The diary example that I gave is a very real one.
So we're building an identity driven engagement platform that is
the foundation for that personalized care experience that's omnichannel. So
whether it's a mobile or web or in the future,
things like text based, which of course happens today, but
(24:44):
bringing them all together around one sort of persistent experience
with authenticated is what we're working toward, and we're building
an offering around that. We've got 4 million accounts essentially
live on our identity driven engagement platform today already, and
it allows for identity resolution and. Sort of verification of
(25:08):
identity and federation to partners. So we're creating an ecosystem approach.
We're not entrapping our individuals around just what we offer,
but really bringing in the kind of holistic ecosystem around
what folks need more generally to manage their care. So
that's the big thing that we're working on. And we'll
be formally kind of launching probably a new call around
(25:28):
it in the next nine months or so. So we're
really excited about that.
S2 (25:32):
That's huge. That's huge. And talk about new forms of
businesses and treating these innovations as a as a standalone business,
but very much connected to the core. One last question,
and I know we have covered a lot, but where
do you draw inspiration? Like what other trends do you
pay attention to?
S3 (25:50):
Oh, good question. We are always taking lessons from SAS
Enterprise SAS as well as sort of more direct to
consumer businesses always, and just learning from the ways in
which they think about service delivery and tech enablement. And
(26:11):
I'll give you one really interesting example is a lot
of systems are actually are a lot of technology companies
are actually working on, which is we had started thinking
about this concept of like a national virtual network. And
originally we were like, well, why don't we get all of,
you know, why don't we get all of the services
together and hire a bunch of docs and, you know,
(26:31):
be able to create this like, you know, 50 state network.
And then we thought about it and we're like, well,
you know, Airbnb doesn't own all of the properties that
they put on their platform. What if we just took
more of like this were the transaction brokering platform for
a national virtual network instead? And so, you know, it
really just shifts your thinking around that. And so we
(26:54):
just we're always trying to learn from those other industries
that have made this economic shift because digital is not
just about the technology, it's actually the business model that
it enables. We actually recently wrote and published a piece
around a digital flywheel and just the concept of how
do you bring in membership programs and other things to
(27:14):
support this great authenticated experience, but also create other add
value added services that might have new economic models for you,
but also be more you have higher utility and more
attractiveness to the end user. So flywheels are great in
other industries they've been used. I always use the example
of Starbucks, which is like my absolute favorite example, because
(27:36):
not not only do they have a great app, but
they've got a really interesting business model on the back
end around how they sell their prepaid gift cards and
what they do with the dollars that they save on
not having a transaction processor. So it's just a very
interesting model and we take a lot away from from
industries like that and the work that they've done.
S2 (27:58):
Absolutely. It's it's a great model. And what's most beautiful
about it is that it's all targeted to do what
you just said a few minutes ago, frictionless, delightful experience
that once you come back and and really increases and
lifts the brand's promise as well. So it's again, it's
(28:21):
a great analogy for doing the job right and building
businesses that last and kind of going from good to
great type of thing, which I think the U.S. health
care system is really going through that transformation right now.
So what I'd love to do is to come back
to this conversation next year and revisit some of the
(28:42):
themes that we just discussed and the progress that I
know of Providence under your leadership on digital, that overall
is going to be doing so honestly, all they're very
much top of mind progressive and ahead of the innovation curve,
a lot of what we do so so congratulations for
(29:02):
all the accomplishments in the rather short time period that
you have been the Chief Digital Innovation Officer and of course,
credit to an amazing leadership team at Providence. Any final
thoughts that you want to leave us with? Where do
we find you? Where do our listeners find you?
S3 (29:19):
So first of all, I would love to come back
next year. It'll help me, you know, keep the urgency
for our team. And so that would be great. We
actually have a big digital innovation group website that folks
can find us on. You can also find me on
LinkedIn and Twitter, but you can find us on our website, Providence,
Dash Digg dot org. We publish a lot. We have
(29:43):
a resource library where everything we've talked about, we write
our thoughts down and get them out there and love
to hear from folks because it actually helps us advance
our thinking too. So I always encourage folks to do
that and send us emails and let us know what
you think.
S2 (29:59):
Absolutely. So I highly encourage our listeners to follow you
on LinkedIn and just you I know you write a lot. You.
Podcast conferences. So you have a lot that people want
to hear. And so it's a way for folks to
kind of keep in touch and follow your thought leadership
until next time.
S3 (30:18):
Sounds good.
S2 (30:19):
So with that, thank you so much for your time.
It was an absolute pleasure and we wish you all
the very best and let's keep in touch.
S3 (30:27):
Sounds great. Thank you for having me.
S2 (30:28):
Thank you. Thank you. Listeners. Have a great rest of
your day.
S4 (30:33):
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(30:56):
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But we'll get there faster together. Thanks again.
Hi. Welcome to Paving the Path. I'm your host, Shiva Meter.
Say me. People know me as a customer experience champion
and a digital executive at Fortune 50 companies. I plan
on paving the path in my show with women game changers,
thought leaders and executives touching the entire spectrum of digital
transformation in healthcare. Join me in exploring the digital renaissance
(00:33):
that's shaping healthcare today and forever changing the future of wellness,
care and health.
S2 (00:43):
Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today.
I'm very excited to have Sara wasI, chief digital and
strategy officer at Providence Health, join us. She has quite
a rich background. So I want to just this by
going through every detail with respect to her experience, but
one that really resonates with me the most and I'd
(01:06):
love for her to chime in on is the ability
and kind of the insight with respect to technology and
all that. It's all it can offer the health care
system as large as Providence Health. So with that, let
me switch quickly to Sara. So just to get us started,
if you can help us understand from your background, again,
(01:27):
such a rich background, what brought you to health care
kind of inspired you to your position, specifically hearing that today.
And if anything, you want to add to my intro,
if I missed anything. Sure.
S3 (01:40):
And thank you so much for having me, Shiva. I'm
delighted to be here with you. You know, I spent
my entire career either specifically within health care or in
sort of the translational research space. So it's something that
I always felt naturally drawn to and just the sort
of fundamental right that I believe we all have to
(02:03):
health care that is, that meets our needs, that's affordable,
that's high quality, and that is consistent with sort of
just our values and how we access other things within
our life. You know, so just I think it's a
very basic, fundamental right and have always been really interested
(02:24):
in trying to make the system better. So I've been
with Providence for just about seven years, and prior to
coming to Providence, I worked still on the health care
provider side, but more in a consulting capacity. I was
a management consultant and and then prior to that, I
worked at the intersection of health services, research and health
policy and did quite a bit of work with a
(02:47):
lot of state agencies in Washington State, which is where
I lived at the time. And I look now again
around sort of state sponsored programs around things like medical
homes for folks who were Medicaid beneficiaries. I did a
lot of early work on hip and high tech back
in 2007, 2008, and did some work on policy solutions
(03:14):
essentially for avoidable variation in rates of surgical procedures and
things like that. And so it goes kind of way
back to the early ish 2000. And then I was
a research scientist prior to that at a medical device
company that essentially was focused on drug delivery, more efficient
(03:36):
drug delivery using therapeutic ultrasound. So always been sort of
either explicitly in health care or adjacent to it in
a research capacity. And it's just been a natural draw
for me again, based on what I think is very fundamental.
So you would ask the question, there's sort of like,
where do I find myself now? And in some ways
it was very serendipitous. You know, I when I was
(03:59):
a management consultant, I really enjoyed the work. I enjoyed
working with a variety of different providers, whether they were
academic medical centers or large integrated delivery networks. But there
was always this existential sort of draw for me to
not be on the outside as a consultant. You're never
(04:19):
deep in it in the same way that an operator is,
and I wanted to experience that role as an operator
within a system. I didn't have a strong sort of
technology background in the context of what I do today
at all. And many of the folks that worked within
the digital innovation group and still continue to work within
the digital innovation group are from, you know, either big
(04:42):
tech or startups that are purely in technology. So they
have a depth of understanding around around software that I
didn't have. And I learned everything. I kind of came
here serendipitously and was recruited by my old boss through,
you know, sort of right place, right time, right circumstances,
(05:03):
met him and and he brought me on board and
taught me a lot. I learned. Everything I know about
enterprise source and direct to consumer on the job. So
it has been a very interesting seven years, and I've
learned a lot from the folks that do work on
the team that have that background. So so it was
very much like the stars aligned in a lot of ways.
S2 (05:24):
Well, it's amazing listening to you because your career progression
in a way mimics all the transformation and progression that
we are also seeing in health care. I mean, back
in the days when you started, probably look completely different
and very research oriented. Of course, all highly regulated. But
(05:47):
the role of the health care systems, potentially retail and
certainly consumers have evolved so much. So with that in mind,
and given how beautifully the stars aligned up for you
and especially for Providence to bring such a kind of
a well-rounded kind of leader to its essentially leadership table.
(06:09):
What kind of layperson's explanation of what Providence does, if
you can just tell us the basics and also what
you hope to change and how what Providence does is
different from others in the country.
S3 (06:26):
That's a broad question. And I'll start with at the
biggest picture, not just limited to what we do within digital,
but so just for background for folks. Providence is a
large integrated delivery network based in the Western United States.
We have over 50 hospitals. We have about 1000 ambulatory sites.
We are vertically integrated in that. We also have a
(06:48):
health plan. We do work in supportive housing, work in
a lot of home and community services. We do work
in education. So there's a lot of depth and breadth
of what Providence is engaged in in terms of health
care delivery and then the upstream and downstream sort of
drivers and factors around health more generally. So we extend
(07:12):
that all the way from Alaska, as far north as
Alaska and through Washington, Oregon, California, Montana, Texas and New Mexico.
And it's a very large footprint. We have millions of
patients that we serve every year. We have our health
plan is very large. And so we've got to some
of the things that Providence has done sort of more
(07:34):
generally are that, of course, we have depth and breadth
around care delivery, but we're also starting to think about
sort of the future of health care more generally and
in particular, what providers need to do in order to
remain sustainable in a very difficult situation. Right in the
last two and a half years have been very difficult.
(07:55):
And then 2022 in particular has been very difficult from
a financial perspective, as a lot of the factors are
sort of colliding around workforce challenges, inflation, a lot of
like post-acute services kind of going away. And so we
have length of stay challenges, know there's all these it's
(08:15):
kind of a confluence of factors and in many ways, unfortunately,
the perfect storm. So that's had a significant impact on
Providence as well as most other health systems. And if
you were to talk with our CEO, there's three things
that we're kind of doing that in addition to our
core work of caring for our communities and furthering our mission,
(08:38):
we are doing three things to ensure the sustainability. The
first is deconstruction. So ensuring that we really understand our
business as businesses, like an ambulatory business, a hospital business,
a health plan business. And that way we can manage
and understand, well, what are we trying to achieve with
(09:00):
each of these lines of business? And that really helps
to figure out the service models, the financial models, and
also freezes up to think about interesting new businesses that
we can that we can create. The second area is diversification.
So care delivery is going to continue to feel a
(09:22):
lot of that downward pressure that we've been feeling for
years and has accelerated significantly in the last two and
a half years and especially this year, as we just
talked about. So diversification is the mechanism by which we
can tap into new sources of revenue that are not
necessarily reimbursement dependent and able to not only advance our mission,
(09:45):
but also provide, for instance, services. We have a company
within Providence called Tegra that is a rogue cycle inside
technology services company that we can also provide to other
health systems to kind of in this mutually beneficial model
that supports Providence and our diversification goals and also provides.
(10:07):
Other health systems with those same services. So that's the second.
RD And then the third RD is digitization. And this
is where sort of the my I put my digital
hat on. And this is a very broad area. Not
like the other two aren't there very broad as well.
But digital is and digitization can mean all sorts of
(10:28):
different things to different people and different health systems. And
when you talk to one chief digital officer, you kind
of talk to one chief digital officer and each system
kind of has a different definition. And in our system,
what we've done is we've actually kind of broken it
down into different components that are owned by different folks. So,
for instance, our CIO, B.J. Moore, is focused a lot
(10:51):
on our core infrastructure, a lot of things like what
are the largest epic installs in the world? We just
went through a major cloud based ERP initiative with Oracle,
and so we've got like a huge amount of infrastructure
work that B.J. owns as well as caregiver experience. So
(11:13):
he operates a lot of the technology that influences the
experience that our doctors and nurses and other clinical caregivers,
as well as non-clinical folks with throughout the system out. Right?
So B.J. owns that. And then we get to well,
then what's the role of the chief digital officer? And
so we've spent quite a bit of time getting really
focused on where is the true opportunity and taking lessons
(11:35):
from other industries as well. And so in many other
industries think like travel or banking, that consumer facing experience
and that digital transformation that occurs around that is focused
on kind of demand generation and demand capture. And we
(11:56):
are creating within the context of my digital team as
well as marketing. So I sort of have oversight over
the consumer facing front end of the organization, both digital
and on digital. From a marketing perspective, that's what we're
focused on and generating, aggregating and capturing demand. And so
we've kind of divided up the world in that way,
(12:17):
and we build or operationalize technology on many of those
core platforms that our CIO's team runs. And we're able
to do it from a business objective perspective in order
to drive growth. And then let's bring in the consumer. Well,
what does that actually mean for the consumer? Create frictionless experiences,
(12:38):
make them more seamless, reduce the fragmentation that our consumers
and our patients experience, and then drive a level of
personalization so things are relevant to them as opposed to
generic or undifferentiated. And so those are the types of
things that we're working to build for our patients and
our consumers so that their experiences with us are more
(13:00):
congruent with what they experience in other areas of their lives,
like banking or rideshare or grocery delivery or what have you. Right?
There are lots of different examples.
S2 (13:10):
Everything you said resonates quite well. So just to play
this back, of the three, these priorities for for Providence deconstruction,
kind of really managing and looking at every every line
of delivery of care delivery as a business really, truly
And as a result of that, really getting down to
(13:30):
what are new ways, untapped, innovative opportunities and businesses that
can serve the consumer and the member and the patient through.
The second was diversification, and the third was digitization. And
the diversification very much focus on, again, the care delivery
upstream and downstream and digitization really focusing on the baseline
(13:52):
and the foundational capabilities which really the CIO is managing
and holding on. And then your role really thinking about
the consumer kind of this well-rounded experience, frictionless, all those
good stuff. The one thing I want to probably ask
you to dive a little bit deeper. I know a
all the great promises, of course, across the entire nation
(14:17):
from the start ups to mid-size to even pharmacy, you know,
the CVS and Walgreens or even Walmarts of the world. Still,
if you look at the almost $4 trillion that we
spend in healthcare, there's estimation of a good chunk of it.
Some estimate up to half of it is really either
consumed or wasted completely. It's fair to say that consumers
(14:41):
are not quite getting that frictionless experience across the board.
Can you give us one or a name, the example
of either in a lifetime experience or a kind of
focused experience for your patients, whatever it might be, diabetes, etc.,
that has gone through a major transformation. It actually has
(15:03):
shown not only better experience but also better. Consumption of
capital and less waste.
S3 (15:09):
Yeah, absolutely. I can give you a couple different examples
that are even more simple than a complex example, like
diabetes management. There are a lot of different problems that
are contributing to what you're describing. One of them, or
one set of these problems is around sort of the
knowing the individual and then tailoring experiences to them based
(15:32):
on what we know about them. So there's fragmentation in
the data as well as fragmentation in the way that
that data is brought together around a sort of profile
of an individual. And so one thing that we've done
in Providence is promise in general to all of our
patients who know me, care for me, ease my way.
(15:52):
And so that's what we're working toward with the first
step being know me. And so we've built a couple
of different things around a consumer data platform. So again,
we can know our patients across who they are and
more holistically, not just within their clinical delivery experiences, but
also around how are they engaging with us from a
(16:14):
web perspective, for instance, and what kind of services are
they looking for so that we can understand, like what
kind of information, what kind of service, what kind of,
you know, how are they trying to bring their experience
together themselves? Because a lot of it, they're forced to
do themselves right. It's this holistic sort of understanding of
who folks are. And then we're. And so eliminating sort
(16:37):
of the data problem as a first step of bringing
together the experience side of things. And then the second
is around identity. So it's not just efficient to like,
know folks, but you got to connect that to how
they actually interact with you. So we've built what we
call a simple patient identity platform that authenticates an experience
(16:58):
for a given user, and they don't necessarily have to
be a patient. They can create that account independent of
having a clinical record with us, and then that that
authentication allows them to do things like single sign on
with our properties as well as properties of our partners,
and it can allow them to initiate things like virtual
(17:21):
visits much more readily and light up experiences for them
that are relevant to them based on, again, what we
know about them and the accounts that they have with us.
So trying to eliminate the fragmentation around the data, the identity,
and then therefore the experience as one mechanism for that
or where those two things surface. So that's one example
(17:44):
of something that we're doing. Another example of something that
we're seeing and something that we're seeing very tangible results in.
And there are some on that first side too, but
I'll just keep going. So a lot of what we're
working on is from Discovery through actually like engaging around
a specific service, completing a transaction, getting the delivery done,
(18:06):
and then engaging on the backend, right? So that there's
sort of this like loop for the individual that all
comes together across the entire journey that they have. And
a simple example that folks struggle with is just let
me get the care that I need right now. Right?
Like I wake up in the morning, I feel lousy.
What do I do? Right. So first thing you do
(18:28):
is you go online and you start to search and
you want all your results to be in one place
in terms of what your options are so that you
don't have to, like, click around to 15 different places
and do tons of research when you're feeling lousy. Then
the second is you actually want to be able to
transact or like book the service or engage in that
service if it's virtually delivered. And then the third is
(18:51):
you want what you get pointed to to actually be available.
So essentially, help me find the service that's right for me,
direct me to that service and then ensure that that
service has capacity. So we built a technology around that
that takes the friction out of getting care now based
on what you need. And we actually spun that out
into a company called Decks Care. It's like it's the
(19:13):
technology platform that powers our on demand service offerings. And
some of the tangible results that we've seen is like 30%
of the patients that come in through that platform are
new to the system, right? They didn't have some sort
of engagement with us in the past, and they may
have just been, you know, maybe they didn't have any
primary care provider or maybe they tried to get in
(19:33):
somewhere else and they couldn't write. And so we're able
to actually get them in. A lot of those folks
are commercially insured because a lot of folks that are
commercially insured are online. Right. They're just they're a digitally
enabled population of people and then they engage with us
on an ongoing basis, too. So we've got measurable results.
And so in terms of downstream services that those people
(19:55):
consume when they need further care, which again, what would
those folks have done if they couldn't have gotten in?
So those are a couple examples of taking the friction out, taking,
creating sort of that connected experience. Across given journey.
S2 (20:08):
It's a perfect example because you create this seamless, frictionless experience, which,
by the way, kind of eases the way of customer
acquisition because this marketing is like the product by itself
does the job of marketing for you, which is fabulous.
It's very, very cost efficient, and I think it elevates
(20:29):
the brand even more. One of the things that this
kind of aligns well with is the future of retail
when it comes to healthcare. And some of the companies, again,
I think I mentioned surveys three times already in this file,
but like those retail shops are trying to really expand.
(20:49):
I think it's more like these new verticals, if you would,
to bring that one stop shop for all under one roof.
Like what is your take on Providence's take on this
retail zation.
S3 (21:02):
Yeah. So I think there are two themes embedded within
what we've been talking about and what you just called
out that that are super important and are reflected in
the utilization. The first is the decentralization and distribution of
actual delivery and even having a sort of, as you've
(21:23):
described it, a physical location. Those are decentralized. Like it's
not like you only go to one CVS location. There
are thousands and thousands of them. And that's the whole
value prop, right, is that they are so close to
most where most Americans live or work. Similarly with Walmart,
(21:44):
similar there's Dollar General was making some moves in that
same direction. Right? So it's the distribution and decentralization of
care delivery. That's one trend. And the second is the
coordination and interoperability of information data and enabling technology like
connectivity across it. So those are the two trends that
(22:07):
are working in service to all of this. And what
we're going to see is more and more, I think,
more and more fragmentation of care in a way so
you can go anywhere, right? You can buy a la carte, essentially.
And that's what we've been seeing with a lot of these,
especially younger folks. They don't really care, right? They just
(22:27):
want to be familiar with the brand and they want
it to be convenient to them and they want to
be able to afford it. And that model that enables
them to get that care, but then also have some
sort of connectivity on the back end from an information
perspective is what we're going to keep seeing. And so
I don't think we're going to slow. We're going to
see a slow down in terms of the different types
(22:48):
of players on the care delivery side by any means.
And to your point, like it'll probably pick up speed
over the next several years and we're going to make
up for what you lack and what you lose under
that fragmented model through the interconnectivity and the interoperability of
the data and the systems. So I think we're going
to have a more and more sort of multimodal care.
(23:11):
That platform that I referenced around decks care, that's exactly
what they provide, is the ability to have multimodal care
and then be able to share that whatever the results are.
The after visit summary and the clinical nodes within the
context of the patient's record so that there is that
continuum of care as opposed to a fragmentation of the
(23:32):
care as well. That's the direction I think we're going
to be heading. And what Providence has done is we
created that multimodal offering as well as the enabling technology
so that we can be ahead of the game. We've
actually been working on this for about I think we
started six years ago and it really got a lot
of momentum around COVID when in the early days when
(23:55):
physical locations shut down and you needed to have like
the continuity of care from a digital perspective. And then
it all sort of started to build together around this
more holistic hybrid model.
S2 (24:06):
That makes a lot of sense. And I'm not surprised
that you guys are pioneering in that in that space.
Is there anything else in the next six or 12
months that we should kind of look forward to coming
from Providence, whether within the digital or more generally around
personalization of care?
S3 (24:24):
The diary example that I gave is a very real one.
So we're building an identity driven engagement platform that is
the foundation for that personalized care experience that's omnichannel. So
whether it's a mobile or web or in the future,
things like text based, which of course happens today, but
(24:44):
bringing them all together around one sort of persistent experience
with authenticated is what we're working toward, and we're building
an offering around that. We've got 4 million accounts essentially
live on our identity driven engagement platform today already, and
it allows for identity resolution and. Sort of verification of
(25:08):
identity and federation to partners. So we're creating an ecosystem approach.
We're not entrapping our individuals around just what we offer,
but really bringing in the kind of holistic ecosystem around
what folks need more generally to manage their care. So
that's the big thing that we're working on. And we'll
be formally kind of launching probably a new call around
(25:28):
it in the next nine months or so. So we're
really excited about that.
S2 (25:32):
That's huge. That's huge. And talk about new forms of
businesses and treating these innovations as a as a standalone business,
but very much connected to the core. One last question,
and I know we have covered a lot, but where
do you draw inspiration? Like what other trends do you
pay attention to?
S3 (25:50):
Oh, good question. We are always taking lessons from SAS
Enterprise SAS as well as sort of more direct to
consumer businesses always, and just learning from the ways in
which they think about service delivery and tech enablement. And
(26:11):
I'll give you one really interesting example is a lot
of systems are actually are a lot of technology companies
are actually working on, which is we had started thinking
about this concept of like a national virtual network. And
originally we were like, well, why don't we get all of,
you know, why don't we get all of the services
together and hire a bunch of docs and, you know,
(26:31):
be able to create this like, you know, 50 state network.
And then we thought about it and we're like, well,
you know, Airbnb doesn't own all of the properties that
they put on their platform. What if we just took
more of like this were the transaction brokering platform for
a national virtual network instead? And so, you know, it
really just shifts your thinking around that. And so we
(26:54):
just we're always trying to learn from those other industries
that have made this economic shift because digital is not
just about the technology, it's actually the business model that
it enables. We actually recently wrote and published a piece
around a digital flywheel and just the concept of how
do you bring in membership programs and other things to
(27:14):
support this great authenticated experience, but also create other add
value added services that might have new economic models for you,
but also be more you have higher utility and more
attractiveness to the end user. So flywheels are great in
other industries they've been used. I always use the example
of Starbucks, which is like my absolute favorite example, because
(27:36):
not not only do they have a great app, but
they've got a really interesting business model on the back
end around how they sell their prepaid gift cards and
what they do with the dollars that they save on
not having a transaction processor. So it's just a very
interesting model and we take a lot away from from
industries like that and the work that they've done.
S2 (27:58):
Absolutely. It's it's a great model. And what's most beautiful
about it is that it's all targeted to do what
you just said a few minutes ago, frictionless, delightful experience
that once you come back and and really increases and
lifts the brand's promise as well. So it's again, it's
(28:21):
a great analogy for doing the job right and building
businesses that last and kind of going from good to
great type of thing, which I think the U.S. health
care system is really going through that transformation right now.
So what I'd love to do is to come back
to this conversation next year and revisit some of the
(28:42):
themes that we just discussed and the progress that I
know of Providence under your leadership on digital, that overall
is going to be doing so honestly, all they're very
much top of mind progressive and ahead of the innovation curve,
a lot of what we do so so congratulations for
(29:02):
all the accomplishments in the rather short time period that
you have been the Chief Digital Innovation Officer and of course,
credit to an amazing leadership team at Providence. Any final
thoughts that you want to leave us with? Where do
we find you? Where do our listeners find you?
S3 (29:19):
So first of all, I would love to come back
next year. It'll help me, you know, keep the urgency
for our team. And so that would be great. We
actually have a big digital innovation group website that folks
can find us on. You can also find me on
LinkedIn and Twitter, but you can find us on our website, Providence,
Dash Digg dot org. We publish a lot. We have
(29:43):
a resource library where everything we've talked about, we write
our thoughts down and get them out there and love
to hear from folks because it actually helps us advance
our thinking too. So I always encourage folks to do
that and send us emails and let us know what
you think.
S2 (29:59):
Absolutely. So I highly encourage our listeners to follow you
on LinkedIn and just you I know you write a lot. You.
Podcast conferences. So you have a lot that people want
to hear. And so it's a way for folks to
kind of keep in touch and follow your thought leadership
until next time.
S3 (30:18):
Sounds good.
S2 (30:19):
So with that, thank you so much for your time.
It was an absolute pleasure and we wish you all
the very best and let's keep in touch.
S3 (30:27):
Sounds great. Thank you for having me.
S2 (30:28):
Thank you. Thank you. Listeners. Have a great rest of
your day.
S4 (30:33):
Thanks for tuning in. If you like what you heard,
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(30:56):
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might have a lot of work to do in health care.
But we'll get there faster together. Thanks again.
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