S2 Ep11: S2E11: Building out a Personalized Health Journey (ft. Otto Angulo, AtlantiCare)

Otto Angulo, Senior Director Digital Consumer Engagement at AtlantiCare, discusses building out a personalized health journey experience.

Episode Transcript

(00:05):
We're here today with auto andgulo, the senior director of
digital consumer engagement atAtlanticare Health.
Atlanticare is a health systemfor those who don't know, based
in Egg Harbor Township in NewJersey with 600 inpatient beds
to hospitals, 1 payer, 10 urgentcare centers, 130 locations and

(00:26):
1100 physicians and auto.
Thank you so much for joining ustoday.
But thank you for for having me,Jordan.
And you know, looking forward tothe conversation.
Great.
So, uh, I think today what we'regoing to discuss since, uh,
you're the senior director ofdigital consumer engagement.
I understand you've been, uh,working on a project called

(00:47):
Patient 360 a focused on apersonalized healthcare journey.
Many of our listeners, as, aswe've discussed earlier, are
very interested in digital frontdoor and and and we're
interested and I'm interestedour listeners are interested in
hearing what (Atlanticare) hasbeen doing to facilitate the
personalized healthcare journey.

(01:08):
So can you tell our listenerswhat the patient 360?
Initiative is how it came to be.
And then what's what's some ofthe challenges are how it's
being implemented?
Just walk us through it.
Yeah.
So patient 360 is the way thatwe you know, we kind of have
named our our vision of how weare going to look at the patient

(01:31):
from every aspect of of the ofthe journey.
So we wanna, we're moving totowards this model of
understanding where the patientis, how can we treat him better?
Umm.
What are the things that theyneed and how do they, you know,
what are their preferences andhow can we improve their well
being but that, you know, comeswith a lot of different, a lot

(01:53):
of different pieces, one of thembeing we have to streamline our
technologies.
We have to make sure that we,you know, we we you talked about
digital front door digital frontdoor cannot be fragmented.
We have to make sure thateverything that we do is tied to
a a goal and that goal is goingto bring us bring us growth as

(02:15):
an organization.
You know, right now the patientis not happy, you know and you
know, we know that, you know,across the board healthcare
systems are are challenged withthis because there are many,
many things about the patient.
The patient knows a lot moreabout their care.
They know what they want aboutcare, and So what we wanna do is

(02:36):
we wanna be a little bit.
We wanna be ahead of what thepatient needs are so that we can
facilitate the conversationswhen they come into their
positions and that the same timethey come to their physicians,
they're engaged and we cancontinue that relationship with
Hmm.
them, you know, in a lifetimecycle so that we're not just
just bringing new people intothe system.

(02:59):
We wanna make sure that weactivate them, we engage with
them and we retain them.
So we have been looking at this,that's what we call it a patient
360.
We were looking at how thiscycle of the patient is, you
know, if you were in retail, ifyou were in other industries,
that's the way you treat your,your consumer and that's the way
From.
that we wanna make sure thatthat that our patients feel the

(03:20):
same way.
And I believe you've broken thisinto a few different verticals
for patient 360, there's Needpreferences well being and touch
points.
Can you speak about those fourdifferent verticals?
And then we'll break them downfurther.
Yeah.
So we, you know we we're we'relooking at this in, in, in three

(03:40):
in you know three or fourdifferent things.
You know what our needs?
So every every patient needs aretotally different.
Not everybody has the samehealthcare journey.
You know, my journey is totallydifferent than yours, Jordan.
And you know, whatever.
You know my wife or you knowanybody within my, you know,
they have a different journey.
But you wanna make sure that youare touching them in their.
Umm.

(04:00):
However, we need them to be, butat the same time keep their
their their nucleus or theirfamily group or their caretakers
involved in that journey.
Right now, a lot of things thathappen is that health care, you
know, is managed by somebodyelse or, you know, or by an
individual, but nobody elseknows about it.

(04:21):
And so you wanna make sure thatthat is so that's making sure
No.
that the needs are are beingtaken care of in all those
aspects.
Second, you know preferences.
You might want.
You might be, you know, all intoapps, so like how do we treat
you with an app or you know, youget the same information if you,
you know, get an email or anestimate.

(04:41):
So, like everybody's preferencesare different and we wanna make
sure that no matter where you goor what you use, your
preferences are the same.
You might be an, you know, a nondigital person and so we wanna
Umm.
make sure that if you call oneof our practices you call our
call center, you have the sameexperience and the same

(05:01):
information that somebody elsehas.
If you are using digitaltouchpoints like an app email
website, all these differentthings and the well being part,
meaning that you know, likewe're we were talking, not
everybody has the same the sameknowledge or the same goal, but
we wanna make sure that inhealth.

(05:23):
But we wanna make sure thateverybody has those, you know, a
lot of a lot of people aregetting savvier because there's
all this information online andthey think they could be their
Umm.
own doctors.
But we wanna make sure that youknow they're doing it correctly.
They're sometimes the well beingis means that you know you can.
You can get treated by the rightpeople at the right time when

(05:46):
others happen to think that wellbeing is like ohh I read an
article in Google and it sayslike I need to take an aspirin
to do this and I'm gonna be cureor you know this different
things.
And so we're building all thistechnology so that you can be
connected with us and at thesame time, if you don't have
somebody to care to, to be acaretaker, we can support your

(06:09):
health in the way that if ifyou're really sick and your
heart rate goes up and nobody'sthere to take care of you, we
can identify that you need, youneed to, you need care and you
need well being and that we canreach out, reach out to you.
And if there's no response, wecan send, you know, an ambulance
or somebody look into thatperson.

(06:29):
So it's a, it's an.
It's a an A very, you know,aggressive or very, you know,
you know, very intense plan thatwe have.
And the reason we wanna do thatis because there's there's other
things that affect ourcommunity, you know, our
community in, in, in, inAtlantic City is one of the most

(06:50):
devastated by the economy.
The expectancy of life is verylow.
Uh, there is a lot of mentalhealth issues, drugs, health
care issues and so, as thepremier health system of the
But.
region, we are, you know, we arein court, we are looking to fix
things that the governmentcan't.
And as as a health health caresystem, knowing that your

(07:12):
patients and having this patient368 can help improve the quality
of life, kind of getting provedthe quality of service that we
do and also at the at the endyou know our revenues are gonna
be better because we're nottreating people that are going
into you know only into theemergency room to take to get
care.
And that's one of the thingsthat we're trying to avoid.

(07:33):
So I'm actually glad that youbrought that up.
I'm interested.
I think our listeners would beinterested in learning what sort
of KPIs are driving thisinitiative.
So when I think aboutpersonalized care, patient
centered care, I think aboutmaybe this is part of a patient
acquisition or retentionstrategy.
Maybe it's a method forimproving clinical outcomes.

(07:54):
You just mentioned it increasesrevenue.
I'm wondering if there's morerisk based payment models that
uh (Atlanticare) is becomingpart of, especially since it's a
pave either organization.
Can you talk about what sort ofkey performance indicators are
driving this patient 360initiative and and how you will
evaluate it success?

(08:15):
So this started you know way,you know a little bit before I I
joined (Atlanticare) with.
With the you know the the theinception of having a CRM and so
having that CRM and being ableto know some certain
Umm.
determinants of health thatcould drive, you know, potential

(08:38):
campaigns to drive, you know,return on investment you know on
on, on others.
So as part of the goals, the thefirst goal that we have is we
wanna make sure that for everydollar we spend, we get 4 back.
And so that is our our, our ourinitial KPI.
So we are gonna be looking at,you know, what are the things
Umm.

(09:01):
that are going to help determineto determine that.
And by that is, you know, everyyear we've incrementally added
more campaigns that are tied tothis patient 360.
So as of right now, you knowthis, this initiative started
Umm.
about a year and a half, so youknow, so we have about 6 or 8
campaigns that are running andwe are almost doubling those by

(09:25):
the end of the year.
And by saying that is, you knowwe've we've determining we've
determined some of the kind oflike basic needs of the
community.
We need, you know, access toprimary care.
We need access to some of thekey. Umm.
So the key, umm, screeningscreening?

(09:47):
You know, test or screeningdiagnostics, you know, like
Questionnaire. Yeah.
breast, long, prostate, some ofthe key ones that are that are
Umm.
there understanding some of theother things you know like I was
saying like, you know, weirdlylooking at the community and
what is affecting the community,you know, we have a lot of hard
problems.
How do we make sure that peopleare coming in to get getting

(10:09):
taken care of of heart diabetes?
Ohm weight loss.
So all these different thingsare adding and compounding into
this strategy.
And like you know, as as, as aswe talked about, there's three
pillars.
But you know this these threepillars are not would not work
if we don't create a a baseline.
You know one, you know, one ofthe basic things that we

(10:31):
understood and we know that isimportant is data and data
quality and data flow and data.
Umm.
If we don't have that data, wewould not be able to build the
campaigns will not be able to doyou know, the transformation of
our technology.
We don't have a marketingstrategy and so that is where
all of our foundation is.
And one of the you know, I knowthat I diverted from the real

(10:52):
question about KPIs a littlebit, but you know what we're
measuring, you know in growth isyou know for every dollar that
we spend, no matter whattechnology it is, you know or
what campaign it is, we wannamake sure that it's a 104
initiative.
You know, we measure eachcampaign differently, and that's
why even talking about KPI couldget a a little bit complicated

(11:13):
in a sense because, you know weare, you know, for example we
Umm.
can be, we might be doing acampaign to teach, you know, our
community and our patients aboutyou know, some new tools that we
have.
So what?
You know what?
For us, that KPI would be is,yes, you know, we might not need
to invest in technology becausewe already did something, but we
are going to look into thisbaseline.

(11:35):
We were getting, you know, Xamount of appointments.
Umm.
Can we duplicate or triplicatethat number of appointments over
the period of time that we'rerunning that campaign?
And so that comes into, youknow, an individual campaign by
campaign base.
But overall, our goal is youknow more, you know, to drive
more employments, to drive morerevenue and to drive growth

(11:57):
through those service lines thatwe are that we're working on.
Got it.
And so I I appreciate youanswering the question about KPI
as I see how you're able to, yousaid every dollar spent, I'm
assuming on something like yourCRM, you're trying to get some
ROI.
You said 4X some campaigns todrive more appointments.
Obviously that increases revenuemore, more, more patient visit

(12:21):
visits, more diagnostics, morestuff happening.
And then I guess also trying tokeep the community well, when
you're in a risk based modeltrying to to, you know, have
more shared savings.
So that all makes sense.
But you also mentioned that allyour campaigns are dependent
upon data and I think that'swhere the greatest interest in

(12:43):
this audience are.
Listening audience now isinterested in hearing about.
Can you tell me how are you ablewhere is your data coming from?
How are you able to integrateall this data into the many
different applications that arerequired to conduct these
outreach campaigns?
So.
You know a lot.

(13:03):
You know, a lot of us, you know,in the in the health care
systems, you know, we'reprobably, you know, are talk
about data in many ways becausedata is so fragmented across the
Mm-hmm.
board.
And you know, and it it comeswith, you know, acquisitions, it
comes because you know you havedifferent service lines that use
any different EMR, you havedifferent things and you don't

(13:25):
have sort of a source of truth.
So when we when I when I joined(Atlanticare), one of the first
things that we did was look atwhere the data was coming and
how the data was flowing throughacross the different systems
that we use.
And we identified that it wasnot coming from the same system,
that there was no source oftruth.

(13:46):
And so one of the one of thethings that we saw it was that
Umm.
we were we were using data thatwas pretty much you know kind of
like a a replication of dataacross different systems without
one being the source of truth.
So let's say you know the theway that I explained this to
other people that are not dataexperts is like, think about,

(14:07):
you know that, you know Jordanand I are working on the same
project.
Then I created an Excel filethat then you know I give to
Jordan and then Jordan makesthings.
But then Jordan then shares itwith Peter and then you know
which file is the one that isthe original file.
If we don't have a source oftruth, because you might have
done work.
And so that's what was happeningis we were getting something

(14:30):
that was copied and copied andcopied and we were storing data
in different systems that didn'tneed to be stored storing data
instead of being, you know,transactional CRM is not a
storage database is not atransaction, it's it's a, it's
this them where, you know youingest data from source of truth
or data platforms.
So that showed us that we neededto kind of step back and that's

(14:52):
why our first pillar was dataquality and data flow.
How do we make that our first wehad we saw we identified that
the place where the data wascoming, it was a database.
It was a great database, but aswe started looking, this
database was just an aggregatorof a dental lake and so we saw

(15:12):
that you know, how do we go tothe source of truth and connect
the right, the right, the rightsystems.
And so we are creating sort of aa short term solution, a middle
midterms solution and like afuture solution that the first
step of the solution was hey,you know we need to clear what

(15:34):
data we don't need and what isnot valuable out of the systems
that don't need to.
And so that was our short termsolution.
And so now just debate the mostimportant data that needs to
flow is flowing through oursystems into our CRM.
Our marketing automation tools,the middle term solution is now
Mm-hmm.

(15:55):
that we identify that there is adata lake is connecting that
Umm.
source of truth into our system.
So that then we can create.
We can create our owndashboards.
We can create our own datarepositories of, you know,
filtering data for ourcampaigns.
We can use that for ohm you knowfor, for, for, for, for the

(16:20):
access center.
So the access center has theright the same information and
then we create patientexperience.
So what?
What would that means?
Is that if you call the AxisCenter and you schedule an
appointment today, the accesscenter was not knowing that you
schedule an appointment becausethe data was so delayed in those
copies.
By going to the source of truth,now we know that hey.

(16:42):
Yeah, you're schedule anappointment and is in this
location and it's at 4:00 PM andwe can give you directions or we
can give you some some of thesame thing is, you know, we can
Right.
cry on our digital paintingexperience portions.
You know, there were.
We had three different systemsdoing the same thing, so we're
transitioning that all into onesystem to do that.

(17:03):
So all the preregistrationalerts were coming from
different systems and nowbecause we have the source of
truth, we can tell, hey, Jordan,you have an appointment in two
days.
Here are some forms that youneed to fill before you get to
your appointment and thatinformation then goes back and
gets stored in the source oftruth and then the practice
knows that hey Jordan, prettyregistered.

(17:23):
All this information is correct.
You paid his copay right now.
It's not that you know youcannot see that that
capabilities and then the futureterm is to kind of go into you
know and not a data platform andbuild this through you know all
this connections through a dataplatform instead of creating you
know kind of intermediate APIand and connectors.

(17:47):
So that's where our data is.
Umm.
It's very complicated, but youknow we've made we've made some
tweaks and changes to make itwork for us into our journey.
You know, for this short termtowards you know our you know
2024 goals.
I appreciate you walking methrough your short middle and

(18:08):
long term solutions for creatinga source of truth.
Auto, we are approaching the endof the episode and so I do wanna
kind of wrap up with with aquestion that I'm sure many of
our listeners will be wonderingthemselves at this point, which
is many of our listeners arefaced with the decision to
either buy or build.
Many people have trouble like(Atlanticare), developing that

(18:30):
source of truth.
The especially with there's alot of merger and acquisition
activity going on and now youhave a diversity of different
electronic health records.
I know you're on Cerner EHR, butas you said, there are many
outpatient centers, there'surgent care centers, there's
hundreds of locations for(Atlanticare).
So you're trying to reconciledata across all those different

(18:52):
sources, you're looking to buildthe data platform and you're
looking to buy a data platform.
How do you decide where toallocate your attention and and
where to invest your resources?
How do you make the decision toto buy versus build?
So you know, so one of thethings that that we've started
doing at (Atlanticare) is youknow we you, we were siloed

(19:13):
there was there was technology,there was you know there was
marketing, there was you knowmedical, you know health, you
know medical or you know themedical staff or the operational
staff.
We were all kind of like, youknow, trying to solve problems
and they were all bringing kindof solutions and we were
probably, you know, and weidentified that we all were

(19:34):
bringing the same solution.
So one of the things that we didis we created a governance and a
governance team.
You know where all this teamsthat need and and and and have
needs, you know, are having theconversation.
So like Ohh, we're trying tosolve for this problems like ohh
we already have this, we don'tneed to.
We don't need to buy it or wedon't need to build it.

(19:55):
Umm.
And you know, one of the thingsthat we have is our our
leadership created what we calla Shark Tank.
You know, similar to Shark Tank.
You know where you you know thethe the the show on on TV where
as a as an organization if youare you have to go if you're
bringing a new technology oryou're bringing something you

(20:17):
have to go Peach your and andsell it you have the you know
elevator Peach you know 5-10minutes you know you gotta sell
it.
You know why you have it?
There's, you know, you have toanswer those questions.
And at the at the table, thisgovernance team is there and
then we can say like hey, well,you know this already exists.
Why you trying to reinvent thewheel?

(20:38):
You know, we'll connect you withthe people and that's one of the
ways that we have solved forsome of this problems that we
Umm.
have because before you know, itwas kind of like run wild, run
for yourself and get, you knowresults.
Umm.
And by adding this layer ofgovernance and and Shark Tank,
we are able to understand whatwe need to do is we need to
build it if we need to buy it,you know, we are in a kind of a

(21:02):
way of like trying to avoid thebuild the you know our own
because you know what happens ifyou build it and the resources
to build it are gone.
You know, there's a lot oflegacy systems that you know,
and there are some coursesystems, you know, within
healthcare that you can kind ofleverage that can help you and
take you through you know, soyou know you don't want to build

(21:22):
your own EHR, you don't want tobuild your own CRM.
You know, there's kind of thingsthat you kind of know.
And so there's, you know,there's experts in those fields
and partnering with thoseexperts is sort of like the way
that we are.
We're working through that.
Are appreciate that.
I appreciate you walking usthrough in this conversation,
Otto, your patient 360 strategyat (Atlanticare) trying to have,

(21:45):
I think a goal that manyorganizations across the nation
have, which is we're operatingon a thin margin.
Every dollar we spend, we'd liketo have some measurable ROI.
So you have a 4X ROI.
I think that's a KPI that manyof our listeners can identify
with.
You talked about data qualityand flow, and no matter how you
want to personalize a patient'sexperience, whether you want to

(22:08):
leverage Turner's healthy intentbut you want to have a data feed
from somewhere else, you wannaincorporate that into a CRM for
an outreach campaign and itneeds to be in a method that the
patient prefers, whether that bepaper mail or an app or
something, what needs to happenis you need to have integration
of data, you need to have asource of truth.

(22:29):
You need to make sure that theright information is being
promulgated across all thedifferent systems being used,
and then of course there's someapplication rationalization has
going on in a governancecommittee and that's used in
order to avoid redundancy.
And of course, ensure that everydollar you spend does maximize
return.
You wouldn't want to spend thesame dollar on the same solution

(22:53):
multiple different times, so Ithink you took us through an
interesting journey, Otto, Iappreciate you joining us today.
So thank you for joining us,Otto.
No, thank you for having me andnot looking forward to, you
know, further conversations aswe move forward with our patient
physician.