August 20, 2025 • 21 mins
Join host Daniel Williams on the MGMA Insights Podcast as he sits down with Dr. Alpesh Amin, Associate Dean for Clinical Transformation at UCI Health. Dr. Amin previews his upcoming session at the 2025 MGMA Leaders Conference in Orlando while sharing practical strategies for leveraging digital health and virtual care. Learn how to optimize ambulatory space, improve patient access and expand clinical capacity without building new facilities.
[4:07] - Redefining Ambulatory Space Optimization
[6:30] - Implementing E-Consults for Specialist Access
[9:28] - Using Remote Monitoring to Reduce Hospital Length of Stay
[10:45] - Leveraging Parking Lot Check-ins and Virtual Platforms
[13:35] - Treating Healthcare as a Team Sport
[17:11] - Embracing Technology Across All Age Groups
[18:47] - Goal-Setting and Team Building
Resources:
- 2025 MGMA Leaders Conference - September 28 - October 2 in Orlando, FL - Register Here
Leaders Session: "Ambulatory Space Optimization with Digital Health Transformation" Tuesday, Sept. 30 @ 1:00 PM
- UCI Health - University of California, Irvine Health System
Additional Resources:
Email us at dwilliams@mgma.com if you would like to appear on an episode. If you have a question about your practice that you would like us to answer, send an email to advisor@mgma.com. Don't forget to subscribe to our network wherever you get your podcasts.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Daniel Williams (00:02):
Well, hi, everyone. I'm Daniel Williams,
host of the MGMA Insightspodcast. In today's episode, we
are previewing a session fromthe twenty twenty five MGMA
Leaders Conference. It's part ofa series. We really wanna bring
awareness to that compconference.
It's gonna be in, Orlando,September 28 through October 2.
(00:25):
We're really, really excitedabout that. Alright. And we are
joined today, by Dr. AlpeshAmin. Doctor Amin is associate
dean for clinical transformationat UCI Health in California.
And Dr. Amin will share how toleverage digital health in
virtual care templates tooptimize ambulatory space. So
(00:50):
first of all, doctor Amin,welcome to the show.
Dr. Alpesh Amin (00:53):
Well, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
Daniel Williams (00:56):
Yeah. I it's so good to have you. We were
talking a little bit offline. Iknow that, you've been busy.
I've been busy, but we workedout our schedules.
And I love it that, we're havingan opportunity to talk to you.
So first of all, just tell us alittle bit about your background
in health care and how you,wound up at UCI Health. Any
(01:17):
highlights you might wanna sharewith us?
Dr. Alpesh Amin (01:19):
Well, thank you. You know, I started my
career kind of having had someexperience in the startup world
in both bio and tech. You know,came to UCI for training. Yeah.
You know, started our hospitalmedicine program and division
(01:39):
here, served as chief of generalinternal medicine, and then
became vice chair for clinicalquality and ultimately chair of
medicine at UC Irvine where Ispent, three terms or sixteen
years doing that.
And then and now I'm associatedean for clinical
transformation. Also, do a lotof real world, evidence, both to
(02:04):
drive better health caredelivery, technology, and health
care, as well as, yeah, bothprecision health and population
health. And, you know, how doyou make things better for
people? Right? You know, asthey're as they're accessing
health care is is really, reallyimportant.
You know? So I kinda bring theworlds of, have background in,
(02:26):
engineering and in business andand obviously medicine. So I
kinda try to bring those threeworlds together to do public
good if I can.
Daniel Williams (02:36):
That is wonderful. And it dawned on me,
that you're at UC Irvine whenyou mentioned that, and I had
had read that earlier as well.Back from 2000 to 02/2003, I was
working in a building just justacross the street from the
campus. Wow. Yeah.
(02:57):
I was in the media at the time.I was working at the Orange
County Business Journal, writingabout real estate there. And, I
used to sneak over on my lunchbreaks to that In N Out, burger
place. It's right there. And itwas always about a thirty it
took me the entire lunch breakto just sit in the line and get
my burger and go back
Dr. Alpesh Amin (03:17):
to my desk,
Daniel Williams (03:18):
but it was worth it.
Dr. Alpesh Amin (03:19):
So it was good. Yeah. I have a lot of I have a
lot of international friendswhen they come into town,
believe it or not. They likegoing to nice restaurants, but
they always wanna stop off at InN Out Burger at some point
during their trip.
Daniel Williams (03:33):
Well, it is a unique sort of place, but that
is that is so cool. So, inreading about your session, you
really are at the leadersconference. You're gonna be
focusing on ambulatory spaceoptimization. Just in a general
way, just define that. What doesambulatory space optimization
(03:54):
mean to you?
Dr. Alpesh Amin (03:56):
Well, for me, it means, it it it means access
to care. Okay. Right? You know,how do we, ultimately, bricks
and mortars is limited. Youcan't keep building bricks and
mortars to to achieveopportunity in terms of access
(04:17):
to care.
And as patients continue todevolve and age and, have
challenges, there may be otherways that they need access to
care. Right? And, and as we moveto more real time care delivery,
you need, which facilitatesaccess to care, there's ways
(04:40):
that we need to think aboutdoing things differently. Right?
And so, that could be the use oftelehealth and technology that
could be having cured deliveredat home.
You know? So there's a lot ofdifferent, using digital health,
empower and there's this idea ofempowerment that also, you know,
(05:01):
patients, as they feel moreempowered to help in their care
delivery, you hopefully willwill see them own it more,
continue, to be engaged in it.And we know that engaged
empowered patients, generally,will will do better in terms of
(05:24):
their quality and outcome over along period of time, especially
for things like chronic illness.I, you know? So so the
ambulatory setting is a veryunique setting in the sense that
you you wanna be you have somecontrol over, the ability to
optimize, and that includeseverything from templates to
bricks and mortars to spaceefficiency to, you know, working
(05:48):
at the scope of your license,when you have a
multidisciplinary team involvedto thinking out of the box in
terms of, delivering care wherethe patient may not be actually
in front of you at that momentin time.
Daniel Williams (06:01):
Yeah. That those are some great points
there. So in reading about your,presentation in your notes
there, you noticed somechallenges when you got to UCI
Health. What were you seeingthere? What stood out to you
that went, okay.
We do need to make atransformation here. We need to
adopt some of these newpractices if we really wanna
(06:22):
meet patients where they are.
Dr. Alpesh Amin (06:24):
So in some sense, UCI Health has also been
on the forefront of of, thinkingout of the box and using I mean,
we've developed over the yearover the years, we've developed
tools that will help in terms ofpatient care delivery, you know,
it may be non patient facing,where like e consults, in the
(06:45):
ambulatory space. And we've had,great success with that. Our,
what we have a one day businessday turnaround on e consults.
Think about you trying to get into see a specialist, how many
days or weeks it takes you toactually get an appointment. So
e consults, you know, in onebusiness day is phenomenal.
(07:05):
And eighty five percent of or orso of those consults are
successful. Right? So patientscan be at home while that
actually happens. Telehealth andthe versions of telehealth, we
we utilize that, then we cantalk more about the kind of the
COVID, experience that we had,but that also allowed us to,
(07:29):
think about bringing businesswhat we call business continuity
back in. Right?
So as COVID was, getting moreand more control, one of the
things that we needed to do wasrebuild our patient access in
the ambulatory setting. So atthat time, I was chair of
medicine and I, co chaired aprocess with our, one of our
(07:53):
ambulatory directors. And itwas, we were able to hit we were
asked to get to 120% of budgetin a matter of a couple of
months, and we actually did itwithin a month. Right? So it
was, and that that wastransformative in terms of the
process and how we rolled itout.
(08:14):
But, you know, I think if wekinda look at this, we're never
gonna have enough space for allthe physicians and APP, nurse
practitioners or PAs, topractice. And so we need to
think about how to incorporatetechnology in terms of the
delivery that allows patients tofeel continuously connected.
I'll I'll repeat that.Continuously connected with the
(08:37):
health system that they'rethey're engaged with.
Daniel Williams (08:39):
Yeah. I appreciate that. And then that
leads right into my nextquestion, and I really wanted to
ask you about that. In readingabout y'all's case study, you
put together this digitaltransformation. You were in in
the notes, it says you were ableto expand clinical teams, but
you didn't you did that withouthaving to build new physical
(09:01):
space.
So talk about that, thatexpansion and what innovation
you did, or what did you do soyou didn't have to, like, add on
to the space that you hadalready.
Dr. Alpesh Amin (09:12):
So I think it was multifactorial that we did.
We we had patients that weredischarged from the hospital
with COVID. We actuallyimplemented a remote monitoring
system where we were connectinginto patients, able to, measure
their oxygenation, measure,certain vital signs of the
(09:32):
patient. You know, certainly,they had to know how to use an
an you know, a smartphone orsmart device in order to do
that. But but those that couldand we actually published an
article that showed throughremote monitoring with well
developed criteria workflows andand technology and education, we
(09:53):
were able to drop the length ofstay for patients in the
hospital by a day while notadversely affecting our
readmissions, or visits to theemergency department.
So that was highly successful,but it also meant that we were
able to keep patients at homeand provide care to them that
they didn't have to wrap aroundto come back for an ambulatory
(10:15):
visit, and we could have thatambulatory visit available for
other patients that needed it.Telehealth, you know, your
traditional over Zoom, orwhatever platform is being used,
we did a lot of that kind ofwork, with patients in order to,
facilitate care delivery. Wehad, developed some digital
(10:36):
online, scheduling platforms forpatients. We made labs and
other, you know, resultsavailable online and accessible
to patients through our MyChartsystems. You know, we even had,
in order to prove efficiencywhen a patient showed up at UCI
(11:00):
Health, they would show up in aparking lot, and, they were able
to connect in with the with thenurse who would come out and do
the intake while they were inthe parking lot in order to keep
both social distancing occurringas well as allow patients to,
allow the intake, the the it's alittle bit of history and other
(11:21):
thing getting done.
I mean, you can you you know,other industries have done some
of these things. Right? Youknow, you think about drive
throughs, when patients got Imean, you talked about In N Out
earlier. Well but if therewasn't the drive through, think
about how long the lines wouldbe without drive throughs.
Right?
So so, know, you think about butthat there's new technology that
(11:44):
you need to have in order to beable to facilitate that process.
As long as we were able toregister the patient at the
appropriate site site, which wewere able to do, we could
utilize a virtual platform. Itcould be, patients at home
while, you know, the physicianwas in their office, academic
office, so that they weren't inthe clinic so somebody else
(12:06):
could use the clinic. Right? Andso there was different,
strategies that we used.
And as I mentioned earlier, ouroutcomes, were just tremendous,
as we engaged, everybody in theprocess.
Daniel Williams (12:19):
Alright. So you are giving us some great
examples around that pandemictime and some of the innovations
that were being implementedthen. As we're seeing,
technology is continuing toevolve. Health care is
continuing to evolve in the waythey meet with patients, whether
it's in person or virtually. Sotalk about that.
(12:41):
How are you currently managingworkflows and those faculty
expectations, your staff tomaintain a high quality
experience? You bring in thatfrom both sides of it so, both
the patient and, the employeesand the staff feel good about
those interactions and the carethat's being delivered.
Dr. Alpesh Amin (13:01):
Yeah. You know, it's a interesting thing. Right?
If you're gonna go play for anational football team or a
basketball team or you're gonnago to the Olympics or whatever,
think about the training that'sdone from a team perspective,
you know, pretraining andscrimmaging and all that stuff.
It's done once in advance beforeyou start, you know, real time
(13:23):
play is actually current.
In health care, we don't dothat. Right? In health care, we
throw people into the sandboxand say, figure it out while
you're doing what you'resupposed to be doing in terms of
health care. You know, I thinkas we've continued to evolve,
we've kind of set clearerclearer and clearer expectations
of different people's roles.We've kind of helped people
(13:46):
understand that health care is ateam sport, not an individual
sport, and, you know, how todelegate certain
responsibilities.
Always in any team, there'sgonna be kind of the captain of
the ship. Right? But besidesthat, then the rest of the team
is, is kinda is supporting thethe process, and everybody has
(14:07):
an important role in thatprocess. And so we've kind of
encouraged that. We are a bigbeliever in, the
multidisciplinary care.
So, you know, the doctor doesn'tshouldn't have to spend their
time trying to educate about,about social work needs or
dietary needs or whatever. Youknow, the the practice should
(14:29):
have those types of resourcesavailable. Now they also don't
actually have to be all on-siteeither. Right? They could be
referrals.
They could be telehealth. Theycould be go down the street, and
somebody will be able to seeyou. I mean, there's all kinds
of different variations of that.But but having access for
patients to themultidisciplinary team, I think,
(14:50):
is really, really important. Andthat the communication between
the multidisciplinary team isimportant.
So we're using things like,Teams and, Epic Chat and and
other tools to help facilitatethe communication between the
multidisciplinary team around asingle patient so that, you
(15:11):
know, info critical informationis not lost. Right? You know?
Yeah. The more information Iknow, the better I can make a
decision about the patient whenmy when I'm being asked to step
to the plate.
Right? And if I can hand offthat information like a baton to
the next person, then they'restepping up to the plate, in an
(15:32):
easy way if I can transmit thatinformation, they can do their
job better too. Right? And thatcreates camaraderie. That
creates an opportunity forpeople, but you need the tools,
to help facilitate that.
Daniel Williams (15:45):
Right. I wanna ask a question about the
patients themselves. Have y'alldone studies, any research to
get a feel for how the patientshave responded to y'all's
transformation and the waythey're being treated?
Dr. Alpesh Amin (16:00):
Yeah. I you know, we've done we've done
different types of research. Youknow, where do patients want to
get do they wanna use digitalhealth, or do they want to go to
a traditional ED urgent care,you know, office visit to to get
their care delivered? Right? Andwhat are the demographics of the
(16:20):
types of patients that want itone way or the other?
What's the cost associated withdoing it, one way or the other?
Right? Let's do our patients andusing technology to facilitate
their health care. And, youknow, we've been actually quite
nicely surprised that actually,you you know, maybe there was a
time when you might have thoughtthat the younger generation was
(16:41):
more apt to using tech and theold the more elderly generation
would be less, you know,interest in using it. But I
think our studies and researchhave shown that, more and more
people, even as they age, areare utilizing tech to facilitate
their health care delivery.
And, whether it is justconvenience factor. I don't
(17:03):
wanna have to leave my house togo and get the to do get my
information or to talk tosomebody. Or whether it is,
something to do, you know, athome using devices and tech to
allow for it. Of course, there'salso yo. You don't want people
testing medicine on their own.
(17:23):
And I actually think the worldof AI is gonna change a lot, is
gonna impact this in a greatway, and, you know, we should,
we should be on the forefront ofof trying to figure out best
practices and the utilization ofAI for better and more efficient
health care delivery thatoptimizes quality.
Daniel Williams (17:42):
Yeah. Fine. Thank you so much for that final
question then. For any of ourMDMA listeners who are
considering implementing thesepractices into their their
clinic, their system, what'ssome advice? What's some first
steps that you'd wanna recommendto them?
Dr. Alpesh Amin (18:03):
Well, my first thing is be open to the fact
that there could be differentways of doing things. Right? And
to create the team of folks thatwill work with you. It doesn't
have to be a big team, but, ateam to say, to ask the
question, how can I do itdifferently to meet my goals? It
(18:23):
could be a 10% growth, 20%growth in your in your practice.
It could be, easier, ataccessibility of patients to
health care delivery, or tocontinuity. It could be the how
to ensure, your no show rate isis as low as it can be. Right?
So there's a lot of different,or how do you avoid, urgent
(18:47):
cares and EDs, which are moreexpensive than office visits and
and home visits and or or homecare in some sense. So you can
think about your goals.
You can so I would set certaingoals, make sure the entire team
knows what goals you're tryingto achieve. You don't have to
hit all the goals in one year.You can this can be an
(19:07):
evolutionary process of how youbuild on those goals to to get
there. But but I I think itneeds to be it needs to lead to
accessibility. It needs to becustomer friendly or patient
friendly, and it needs to becoworker friendly in terms of,
how you are building systems todrive, better delivery in health
(19:29):
care.
And I would I think it startswith identifying your goals,
identifying your team, gettingeverybody, on the same page in
terms of what you're trying toaccomplish, and then boldly
going to accomplish that. Right?And and do an iterative process
of of understanding where gapsare every step of the way and
(19:51):
close those gaps and and, andhit your successes, celebrate
your successes and your wins asyou're continuing to move
forward. And at the end of theday, the patients are the ones
that will win, and that's that'swhat we want.
Daniel Williams (20:07):
Love it. Alright. Well, doctor Amin, I
wanna thank you so much forjoining us today on the MGMA
podcast.
Dr. Alpesh Amin (20:14):
Well, it's my pleasure, and thank you for
including me.
Daniel Williams (20:17):
Alright. So for those attending the twenty
twenty five MGMA LeadersConference, be sure to check out
doctor Amin's session. It'stitled "Ambulatory Space
Optimization with Digital HealthTransformation. Now I'm gonna
put a direct link to the eventin our episode show notes. You
(20:37):
can click right to it and readmore about it and register and
hope to see y'all in Orlando andbe on the lookout for more
interviews with our leadersspeakers.
So until then, thanks everyonefor being MGMA podcast
listeners.
Well, hi, everyone. I'm Daniel Williams,
host of the MGMA Insightspodcast. In today's episode, we
are previewing a session fromthe twenty twenty five MGMA
Leaders Conference. It's part ofa series. We really wanna bring
awareness to that compconference.
It's gonna be in, Orlando,September 28 through October 2.
(00:25):
We're really, really excitedabout that. Alright. And we are
joined today, by Dr. AlpeshAmin. Doctor Amin is associate
dean for clinical transformationat UCI Health in California.
And Dr. Amin will share how toleverage digital health in
virtual care templates tooptimize ambulatory space. So
(00:50):
first of all, doctor Amin,welcome to the show.
Dr. Alpesh Amin (00:53):
Well, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
Daniel Williams (00:56):
Yeah. I it's so good to have you. We were
talking a little bit offline. Iknow that, you've been busy.
I've been busy, but we workedout our schedules.
And I love it that, we're havingan opportunity to talk to you.
So first of all, just tell us alittle bit about your background
in health care and how you,wound up at UCI Health. Any
(01:17):
highlights you might wanna sharewith us?
Dr. Alpesh Amin (01:19):
Well, thank you. You know, I started my
career kind of having had someexperience in the startup world
in both bio and tech. You know,came to UCI for training. Yeah.
You know, started our hospitalmedicine program and division
(01:39):
here, served as chief of generalinternal medicine, and then
became vice chair for clinicalquality and ultimately chair of
medicine at UC Irvine where Ispent, three terms or sixteen
years doing that.
And then and now I'm associatedean for clinical
transformation. Also, do a lotof real world, evidence, both to
(02:04):
drive better health caredelivery, technology, and health
care, as well as, yeah, bothprecision health and population
health. And, you know, how doyou make things better for
people? Right? You know, asthey're as they're accessing
health care is is really, reallyimportant.
You know? So I kinda bring theworlds of, have background in,
(02:26):
engineering and in business andand obviously medicine. So I
kinda try to bring those threeworlds together to do public
good if I can.
Daniel Williams (02:36):
That is wonderful. And it dawned on me,
that you're at UC Irvine whenyou mentioned that, and I had
had read that earlier as well.Back from 2000 to 02/2003, I was
working in a building just justacross the street from the
campus. Wow. Yeah.
(02:57):
I was in the media at the time.I was working at the Orange
County Business Journal, writingabout real estate there. And, I
used to sneak over on my lunchbreaks to that In N Out, burger
place. It's right there. And itwas always about a thirty it
took me the entire lunch breakto just sit in the line and get
my burger and go back
Dr. Alpesh Amin (03:17):
to my desk,
Daniel Williams (03:18):
but it was worth it.
Dr. Alpesh Amin (03:19):
So it was good. Yeah. I have a lot of I have a
lot of international friendswhen they come into town,
believe it or not. They likegoing to nice restaurants, but
they always wanna stop off at InN Out Burger at some point
during their trip.
Daniel Williams (03:33):
Well, it is a unique sort of place, but that
is that is so cool. So, inreading about your session, you
really are at the leadersconference. You're gonna be
focusing on ambulatory spaceoptimization. Just in a general
way, just define that. What doesambulatory space optimization
(03:54):
mean to you?
Dr. Alpesh Amin (03:56):
Well, for me, it means, it it it means access
to care. Okay. Right? You know,how do we, ultimately, bricks
and mortars is limited. Youcan't keep building bricks and
mortars to to achieveopportunity in terms of access
(04:17):
to care.
And as patients continue todevolve and age and, have
challenges, there may be otherways that they need access to
care. Right? And, and as we moveto more real time care delivery,
you need, which facilitatesaccess to care, there's ways
(04:40):
that we need to think aboutdoing things differently. Right?
And so, that could be the use oftelehealth and technology that
could be having cured deliveredat home.
You know? So there's a lot ofdifferent, using digital health,
empower and there's this idea ofempowerment that also, you know,
(05:01):
patients, as they feel moreempowered to help in their care
delivery, you hopefully willwill see them own it more,
continue, to be engaged in it.And we know that engaged
empowered patients, generally,will will do better in terms of
(05:24):
their quality and outcome over along period of time, especially
for things like chronic illness.I, you know? So so the
ambulatory setting is a veryunique setting in the sense that
you you wanna be you have somecontrol over, the ability to
optimize, and that includeseverything from templates to
bricks and mortars to spaceefficiency to, you know, working
(05:48):
at the scope of your license,when you have a
multidisciplinary team involvedto thinking out of the box in
terms of, delivering care wherethe patient may not be actually
in front of you at that momentin time.
Daniel Williams (06:01):
Yeah. That those are some great points
there. So in reading about your,presentation in your notes
there, you noticed somechallenges when you got to UCI
Health. What were you seeingthere? What stood out to you
that went, okay.
We do need to make atransformation here. We need to
adopt some of these newpractices if we really wanna
(06:22):
meet patients where they are.
Dr. Alpesh Amin (06:24):
So in some sense, UCI Health has also been
on the forefront of of, thinkingout of the box and using I mean,
we've developed over the yearover the years, we've developed
tools that will help in terms ofpatient care delivery, you know,
it may be non patient facing,where like e consults, in the
(06:45):
ambulatory space. And we've had,great success with that. Our,
what we have a one day businessday turnaround on e consults.
Think about you trying to get into see a specialist, how many
days or weeks it takes you toactually get an appointment. So
e consults, you know, in onebusiness day is phenomenal.
(07:05):
And eighty five percent of or orso of those consults are
successful. Right? So patientscan be at home while that
actually happens. Telehealth andthe versions of telehealth, we
we utilize that, then we cantalk more about the kind of the
COVID, experience that we had,but that also allowed us to,
(07:29):
think about bringing businesswhat we call business continuity
back in. Right?
So as COVID was, getting moreand more control, one of the
things that we needed to do wasrebuild our patient access in
the ambulatory setting. So atthat time, I was chair of
medicine and I, co chaired aprocess with our, one of our
(07:53):
ambulatory directors. And itwas, we were able to hit we were
asked to get to 120% of budgetin a matter of a couple of
months, and we actually did itwithin a month. Right? So it
was, and that that wastransformative in terms of the
process and how we rolled itout.
(08:14):
But, you know, I think if wekinda look at this, we're never
gonna have enough space for allthe physicians and APP, nurse
practitioners or PAs, topractice. And so we need to
think about how to incorporatetechnology in terms of the
delivery that allows patients tofeel continuously connected.
I'll I'll repeat that.Continuously connected with the
(08:37):
health system that they'rethey're engaged with.
Daniel Williams (08:39):
Yeah. I appreciate that. And then that
leads right into my nextquestion, and I really wanted to
ask you about that. In readingabout y'all's case study, you
put together this digitaltransformation. You were in in
the notes, it says you were ableto expand clinical teams, but
you didn't you did that withouthaving to build new physical
(09:01):
space.
So talk about that, thatexpansion and what innovation
you did, or what did you do soyou didn't have to, like, add on
to the space that you hadalready.
Dr. Alpesh Amin (09:12):
So I think it was multifactorial that we did.
We we had patients that weredischarged from the hospital
with COVID. We actuallyimplemented a remote monitoring
system where we were connectinginto patients, able to, measure
their oxygenation, measure,certain vital signs of the
(09:32):
patient. You know, certainly,they had to know how to use an
an you know, a smartphone orsmart device in order to do
that. But but those that couldand we actually published an
article that showed throughremote monitoring with well
developed criteria workflows andand technology and education, we
(09:53):
were able to drop the length ofstay for patients in the
hospital by a day while notadversely affecting our
readmissions, or visits to theemergency department.
So that was highly successful,but it also meant that we were
able to keep patients at homeand provide care to them that
they didn't have to wrap aroundto come back for an ambulatory
(10:15):
visit, and we could have thatambulatory visit available for
other patients that needed it.Telehealth, you know, your
traditional over Zoom, orwhatever platform is being used,
we did a lot of that kind ofwork, with patients in order to,
facilitate care delivery. Wehad, developed some digital
(10:36):
online, scheduling platforms forpatients. We made labs and
other, you know, resultsavailable online and accessible
to patients through our MyChartsystems. You know, we even had,
in order to prove efficiencywhen a patient showed up at UCI
(11:00):
Health, they would show up in aparking lot, and, they were able
to connect in with the with thenurse who would come out and do
the intake while they were inthe parking lot in order to keep
both social distancing occurringas well as allow patients to,
allow the intake, the the it's alittle bit of history and other
(11:21):
thing getting done.
I mean, you can you you know,other industries have done some
of these things. Right? Youknow, you think about drive
throughs, when patients got Imean, you talked about In N Out
earlier. Well but if therewasn't the drive through, think
about how long the lines wouldbe without drive throughs.
Right?
So so, know, you think about butthat there's new technology that
(11:44):
you need to have in order to beable to facilitate that process.
As long as we were able toregister the patient at the
appropriate site site, which wewere able to do, we could
utilize a virtual platform. Itcould be, patients at home
while, you know, the physicianwas in their office, academic
office, so that they weren't inthe clinic so somebody else
(12:06):
could use the clinic. Right? Andso there was different,
strategies that we used.
And as I mentioned earlier, ouroutcomes, were just tremendous,
as we engaged, everybody in theprocess.
Daniel Williams (12:19):
Alright. So you are giving us some great
examples around that pandemictime and some of the innovations
that were being implementedthen. As we're seeing,
technology is continuing toevolve. Health care is
continuing to evolve in the waythey meet with patients, whether
it's in person or virtually. Sotalk about that.
(12:41):
How are you currently managingworkflows and those faculty
expectations, your staff tomaintain a high quality
experience? You bring in thatfrom both sides of it so, both
the patient and, the employeesand the staff feel good about
those interactions and the carethat's being delivered.
Dr. Alpesh Amin (13:01):
Yeah. You know, it's a interesting thing. Right?
If you're gonna go play for anational football team or a
basketball team or you're gonnago to the Olympics or whatever,
think about the training that'sdone from a team perspective,
you know, pretraining andscrimmaging and all that stuff.
It's done once in advance beforeyou start, you know, real time
(13:23):
play is actually current.
In health care, we don't dothat. Right? In health care, we
throw people into the sandboxand say, figure it out while
you're doing what you'resupposed to be doing in terms of
health care. You know, I thinkas we've continued to evolve,
we've kind of set clearerclearer and clearer expectations
of different people's roles.We've kind of helped people
(13:46):
understand that health care is ateam sport, not an individual
sport, and, you know, how todelegate certain
responsibilities.
Always in any team, there'sgonna be kind of the captain of
the ship. Right? But besidesthat, then the rest of the team
is, is kinda is supporting thethe process, and everybody has
(14:07):
an important role in thatprocess. And so we've kind of
encouraged that. We are a bigbeliever in, the
multidisciplinary care.
So, you know, the doctor doesn'tshouldn't have to spend their
time trying to educate about,about social work needs or
dietary needs or whatever. Youknow, the the practice should
(14:29):
have those types of resourcesavailable. Now they also don't
actually have to be all on-siteeither. Right? They could be
referrals.
They could be telehealth. Theycould be go down the street, and
somebody will be able to seeyou. I mean, there's all kinds
of different variations of that.But but having access for
patients to themultidisciplinary team, I think,
(14:50):
is really, really important. Andthat the communication between
the multidisciplinary team isimportant.
So we're using things like,Teams and, Epic Chat and and
other tools to help facilitatethe communication between the
multidisciplinary team around asingle patient so that, you
(15:11):
know, info critical informationis not lost. Right? You know?
Yeah. The more information Iknow, the better I can make a
decision about the patient whenmy when I'm being asked to step
to the plate.
Right? And if I can hand offthat information like a baton to
the next person, then they'restepping up to the plate, in an
(15:32):
easy way if I can transmit thatinformation, they can do their
job better too. Right? And thatcreates camaraderie. That
creates an opportunity forpeople, but you need the tools,
to help facilitate that.
Daniel Williams (15:45):
Right. I wanna ask a question about the
patients themselves. Have y'alldone studies, any research to
get a feel for how the patientshave responded to y'all's
transformation and the waythey're being treated?
Dr. Alpesh Amin (16:00):
Yeah. I you know, we've done we've done
different types of research. Youknow, where do patients want to
get do they wanna use digitalhealth, or do they want to go to
a traditional ED urgent care,you know, office visit to to get
their care delivered? Right? Andwhat are the demographics of the
(16:20):
types of patients that want itone way or the other?
What's the cost associated withdoing it, one way or the other?
Right? Let's do our patients andusing technology to facilitate
their health care. And, youknow, we've been actually quite
nicely surprised that actually,you you know, maybe there was a
time when you might have thoughtthat the younger generation was
(16:41):
more apt to using tech and theold the more elderly generation
would be less, you know,interest in using it. But I
think our studies and researchhave shown that, more and more
people, even as they age, areare utilizing tech to facilitate
their health care delivery.
And, whether it is justconvenience factor. I don't
(17:03):
wanna have to leave my house togo and get the to do get my
information or to talk tosomebody. Or whether it is,
something to do, you know, athome using devices and tech to
allow for it. Of course, there'salso yo. You don't want people
testing medicine on their own.
(17:23):
And I actually think the worldof AI is gonna change a lot, is
gonna impact this in a greatway, and, you know, we should,
we should be on the forefront ofof trying to figure out best
practices and the utilization ofAI for better and more efficient
health care delivery thatoptimizes quality.
Daniel Williams (17:42):
Yeah. Fine. Thank you so much for that final
question then. For any of ourMDMA listeners who are
considering implementing thesepractices into their their
clinic, their system, what'ssome advice? What's some first
steps that you'd wanna recommendto them?
Dr. Alpesh Amin (18:03):
Well, my first thing is be open to the fact
that there could be differentways of doing things. Right? And
to create the team of folks thatwill work with you. It doesn't
have to be a big team, but, ateam to say, to ask the
question, how can I do itdifferently to meet my goals? It
(18:23):
could be a 10% growth, 20%growth in your in your practice.
It could be, easier, ataccessibility of patients to
health care delivery, or tocontinuity. It could be the how
to ensure, your no show rate isis as low as it can be. Right?
So there's a lot of different,or how do you avoid, urgent
(18:47):
cares and EDs, which are moreexpensive than office visits and
and home visits and or or homecare in some sense. So you can
think about your goals.
You can so I would set certaingoals, make sure the entire team
knows what goals you're tryingto achieve. You don't have to
hit all the goals in one year.You can this can be an
(19:07):
evolutionary process of how youbuild on those goals to to get
there. But but I I think itneeds to be it needs to lead to
accessibility. It needs to becustomer friendly or patient
friendly, and it needs to becoworker friendly in terms of,
how you are building systems todrive, better delivery in health
(19:29):
care.
And I would I think it startswith identifying your goals,
identifying your team, gettingeverybody, on the same page in
terms of what you're trying toaccomplish, and then boldly
going to accomplish that. Right?And and do an iterative process
of of understanding where gapsare every step of the way and
(19:51):
close those gaps and and, andhit your successes, celebrate
your successes and your wins asyou're continuing to move
forward. And at the end of theday, the patients are the ones
that will win, and that's that'swhat we want.
Daniel Williams (20:07):
Love it. Alright. Well, doctor Amin, I
wanna thank you so much forjoining us today on the MGMA
podcast.
Dr. Alpesh Amin (20:14):
Well, it's my pleasure, and thank you for
including me.
Daniel Williams (20:17):
Alright. So for those attending the twenty
twenty five MGMA LeadersConference, be sure to check out
doctor Amin's session. It'stitled "Ambulatory Space
Optimization with Digital HealthTransformation. Now I'm gonna
put a direct link to the eventin our episode show notes. You
(20:37):
can click right to it and readmore about it and register and
hope to see y'all in Orlando andbe on the lookout for more
interviews with our leadersspeakers.
So until then, thanks everyonefor being MGMA podcast
listeners.
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