Transcript:
Healthy Data Podcast_ Otto Angulo (Atlanticare) & Jordan Cooper (InterSystems)-20240812_130733-Meeting Recording
August 12, 2024, 5:07PM
23m 19s
Jordan Cooper started transcription
Jordan Cooper 0:05
We’re here today with Otto Angulo, the senior director of digital consumer engagement at Atlanticare Health.
Atlanticare is a health system for those who don’t know, based in Egg Harbor Township in New Jersey with 600 inpatient beds to hospitals, 1 payer, 10 urgent care centers, 130 locations and 1100 physicians and auto.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
Angulo, Otto 0:30
But thank you for for having me, Jordan.
And you know, looking forward to the conversation.
Jordan Cooper 0:35
Great.
So, uh, I think today what we’re going to discuss since, uh, you’re the senior director of digital consumer engagement.
I understand you’ve been, uh, working on a project called Patient 360 a focused on a personalized healthcare journey.
Many of our listeners, as, as we’ve discussed earlier, are very interested in digital front door and and and we’re interested and I’m interested our listeners are interested in hearing what (Atlanticare) has been doing to facilitate the personalized healthcare journey.
So can you tell our listeners what the patient 360?
Initiative is how it came to be.
And then what’s what’s some of the challenges are how it’s being implemented?
Just walk us through it.
Angulo, Otto 1:21
Yeah.
So patient 360 is the way that we you know, we kind of have named our our vision of how we are going to look at the patient from every aspect of of the of the journey.
So we wanna, we’re moving to towards this model of understanding where the patient is, how can we treat him better?
Jordan Cooper 1:41
Umm.
Angulo, Otto 1:43
What are the things that they need and how do they, you know, what are their preferences and how can we improve their well being but that, you know, comes with a lot of different, a lot of different pieces, one of them being we have to streamline our technologies.
We have to make sure that we, you know, we we you talked about digital front door digital front door cannot be fragmented.
We have to make sure that everything that we do is tied to a a goal and that goal is going to bring us bring us growth as an organization.
You know, right now the patient is not happy, you know and you know, we know that, you know, across the board healthcare systems are are challenged with this because there are many, many things about the patient.
The patient knows a lot more about their care.
They know what they want about care, and So what we wanna do is we wanna be a little bit.
We wanna be ahead of what the patient needs are so that we can facilitate the conversations when they come into their positions and that the same time they come to their physicians, they’re engaged and we can continue that relationship with them, you know, in a lifetime cycle so that we’re not just just bringing new people into the system.
Jordan Cooper 2:50
Hmm.
Angulo, Otto 2:59
We wanna make sure that we activate 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 this cycle of the patient is, you know, if you were in retail, if you were in other industries, that’s the way you treat your, your consumer and that’s the way that we wanna make sure that that that our patients feel the same way.
Jordan Cooper 3:16
From.
And I believe you’ve broken this into a few different verticals for patient 360, there’s Need preferences well being and touch points.
Can you speak about those four different verticals?
And then we’ll break them down further.
Angulo, Otto 3:36
Yeah.
So we, you know we we’re we’re looking at this in, in, in three in you know three or four different things.
You know what our needs?
So every every patient needs are totally different.
Not everybody has the same healthcare journey.
You know, my journey is totally different than yours, Jordan.
And you know, whatever.
You know my wife or you know anybody within my, you know, they have a different journey.
But you wanna make sure that you are touching them in their.
Jordan Cooper 3:57
Umm.
Angulo, Otto 4:00
However, we need them to be, but at the same time keep their their their nucleus or their family group or their caretakers involved in that journey.
Right now, a lot of things that happen is that health care, you know, is managed by somebody else or, you know, or by an individual, but nobody else knows about it.
And so you wanna make sure that that is so that’s making sure that the needs are are being taken care of in all those aspects.
Jordan Cooper 4:23
No.
Angulo, Otto 4:28
Second, you know preferences.
You might want.
You might be, you know, all into apps, so like how do we treat you with an app or you know, you get the same information if you, you know, get an email or an estimate.
So, like everybody’s preferences are different and we wanna make sure that no matter where you go or what you use, your preferences are the same.
You might be an, you know, a non digital person and so we wanna make sure that if you call one of our practices you call our call center, you have the same experience and the same information that somebody else has.
Jordan Cooper 4:55
Umm.
Angulo, Otto 5:03
If you are using digital touchpoints like an app email website, all these different things and the well being part, meaning that you know, like we’re we were talking, not everybody has the same the same knowledge or the same goal, but we wanna make sure that in health.
But we wanna make sure that everybody has those, you know, a lot of a lot of people are getting savvier because there’s all this information online and they think they could be their own doctors.
Jordan Cooper 5:31
Umm.
Angulo, Otto 5:34
But we wanna make sure that you know they’re doing it correctly.
They’re sometimes the well being is means that you know you can.
You can get treated by the right people at the right time when others happen to think that well being is like ohh I read an article in Google and it says like I need to take an aspirin to do this and I’m gonna be cure or you know this different things.
And so we’re building all this technology so that you can be connected with us and at the same time, if you don’t have somebody to care to, to be a caretaker, we can support your health in the way that if if you’re really sick and your heart rate goes up and nobody’s there to take care of you, we can identify that you need, you need to, you need care and you need well being and that we can reach out, reach out to you.
And if there’s no response, we can send, you know, an ambulance or somebody look into that person.
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 that we have.
And the reason we wanna do that is because there’s there’s other things that affect our community, you know, our community in, in, in, in Atlantic City is one of the most devastated by the economy.
The expectancy of life is very low.
Uh, there is a lot of mental health issues, drugs, health care issues and so, as the premier health system of the region, we are, you know, we are in court, we are looking to fix things that the government can’t.
Jordan Cooper 7:00
But.
Angulo, Otto 7:09
And as as a health health care system, knowing that your patients and having this patient 368 can help improve the quality of life, kind of getting proved the quality of service that we do and also at the at the end you know our revenues are gonna be better because we’re not treating people that are going into you know only into the emergency room to take to get care.
And that’s one of the things that we’re trying to avoid.
Jordan Cooper 7:33
So I’m actually glad that you brought that up.
I’m interested.
I think our listeners would be interested in learning what sort of KPIs are driving this initiative.
So when I think about personalized care, patient centered care, I think about maybe this is part of a patient acquisition or retention strategy.
Maybe it’s a method for improving clinical outcomes.
You just mentioned it increases revenue.
I’m wondering if there’s more risk based payment models that uh (Atlanticare) is becoming part of, especially since it’s a pave either organization.
Can you talk about what sort of key performance indicators are driving this patient 360 initiative and and how you will evaluate it success?
Angulo, Otto 8:15
So this started you know way, you know a little bit before I I joined (Atlanticare) with.
With the you know the the the inception of having a CRM and so having that CRM and being able to know some certain determinants of health that could drive, you know, potential campaigns to drive, you know, return on investment you know on on, on others.
Jordan Cooper 8:29
Umm.
Angulo, Otto 8:43
So as part of the goals, the the first goal that we have is we wanna make sure that for every dollar we spend, we get 4 back.
And so that is our our, our our initial KPI.
So we are gonna be looking at, you know, what are the things that are going to help determine to determine that.
Jordan Cooper 8:57
Umm.
Angulo, Otto 9:04
And by that is, you know, every year we’ve incrementally added more campaigns that are tied to this patient 360.
So as of right now, you know this, this initiative started about a year and a half, so you know, so we have about 6 or 8 campaigns that are running and we are almost doubling those by the end of the year.
Jordan Cooper 9:13
Umm.
Angulo, Otto 9:27
And by saying that is, you know we’ve we’ve determining we’ve determined some of the kind of like basic needs of the community.
We need, you know, access to primary care.
We need access to some of the key. Umm.
So the key, umm, screening screening?
You know, test or screening diagnostics, you know, like breast, long, prostate, some of the key ones that are that are there understanding some of the other things you know like I was saying like, you know, weirdly looking at the community and what is affecting the community, you know, we have a lot of hard problems.
Jordan Cooper 9:48
Questionnaire. Yeah.
Umm.
Angulo, Otto 10:05
How do we make sure that people are coming in to get getting taken care of of heart diabetes?
Ohm weight loss.
So all these different things are adding and compounding into this strategy.
And like you know, as as, as as we talked about, there’s three pillars.
But you know this these three pillars are not would not work if we don’t create a a baseline.
You know one, you know, one of the basic things that we understood and we know that is important is data and data quality and data flow and data.
Jordan Cooper 10:36
Umm.
Angulo, Otto 10:37
If we don’t have that data, we would not be able to build the campaigns will not be able to do you know, the transformation of our technology.
We don’t have a marketing strategy and so that is where all of our foundation is.
And one of the you know, I know that I diverted from the real question about KPIs a little bit, but you know what we’re measuring, you know in growth is you know for every dollar that we spend, no matter what technology it is, you know or what campaign it is, we wanna make sure that it’s a 104 initiative.
You know, we measure each campaign differently, and that’s why even talking about KPI could get a a little bit complicated in a sense because, you know we are, you know, for example we can be, we might be doing a campaign to teach, you know, our community and our patients about you know, some new tools that we have.
Jordan Cooper 11:14
Umm.
Angulo, Otto 11:24
So what?
You know what?
For us, that KPI would be is, yes, you know, we might not need to invest in technology because we already did something, but we are going to look into this baseline.
We were getting, you know, X amount of appointments.
Jordan Cooper 11:38
Umm.
Angulo, Otto 11:38
Can we duplicate or triplicate that number of appointments over the period of time that we’re running that campaign?
And so that comes into, you know, an individual campaign by campaign base.
But overall, our goal is you know more, you know, to drive more employments, to drive more revenue and to drive growth through those service lines that we are that we’re working on.
Jordan Cooper 12:02
Got it.
And so I I appreciate you answering the question about KPI as I see how you’re able to, you said every dollar spent, I’m assuming on something like your CRM, you’re trying to get some ROI.
You said 4X some campaigns to drive more appointments.
Obviously that increases revenue more, more, more patient visit visits, more diagnostics, more stuff happening.
And then I guess also trying to keep the community well, when you’re in a risk based model trying to to, you know, have more shared savings.
So that all makes sense.
But you also mentioned that all your campaigns are dependent upon data and I think that’s where the greatest interest in this audience are.
Listening audience now is interested in hearing about.
Can you tell me how are you able where is your data coming from?
How are you able to integrate all this data into the many different applications that are required to conduct these outreach campaigns?
Angulo, Otto 12:59
So.
You know a lot.
You know, a lot of us, you know, in the in the health care systems, you know, we’re probably, you know, are talk about data in many ways because data is so fragmented across the board.
Jordan Cooper 13:13
Mm-hmm.
Angulo, Otto 13:14
And you know, and it it comes with, you know, acquisitions, it comes because you know you have different service lines that use any different EMR, you have different things and you don’t 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 at where the data was coming and how the data was flowing through across the different systems that we use.
And we identified that it was not coming from the same system, that there was no source of truth.
And so one of the one of the things that we saw it was that we were we were using data that was pretty much you know kind of like a a replication of data across different systems without one being the source of truth.
Jordan Cooper 13:46
Umm.
Angulo, Otto 14:01
So let’s say you know the the way that I explained this to other people that are not data experts is like, think about, you know that, you know Jordan and I are working on the same project.
Then I created an Excel file that then you know I give to Jordan and then Jordan makes things.
But then Jordan then shares it with Peter and then you know which file is the one that is the original file.
If we don’t have a source of truth, because you might have done work.
And so that’s what was happening is we were getting something that was copied and copied and copied and we were storing data in different systems that didn’t need to be stored storing data instead of being, you know, transactional CRM is not a storage database is not a transaction, it’s it’s a, it’s this them where, you know you ingest data from source of truth or data platforms.
So that showed us that we needed to kind of step back and that’s why our first pillar was data quality and data flow.
How do we make that our first we had we saw we identified that the place where the data was coming, it was a database.
It was a great database, but as we started looking, this database was just an aggregator of a dental lake and so we saw that you know, how do we go to the source of truth and connect the right, the right, the right systems.
And so we are creating sort of a a short term solution, a middle midterms solution and like a future solution that the first step of the solution was hey, you know we need to clear what data we don’t need and what is not valuable out of the systems that don’t need to.
And so that was our short term solution.
And so now just debate the most important data that needs to flow is flowing through our systems into our CRM.
Our marketing automation tools, the middle term solution is now that we identify that there is a data lake is connecting that source of truth into our system.
Angulo, Otto 16:01
So that then we can create.
We can create our own dashboards.
We can create our own data repositories of, you know, filtering data for our campaigns.
We can use that for ohm you know for, for, for, for, for the access center.
So the access center has the right the same information and then we create patient experience.
So what?
What would that means?
Is that if you call the Axis Center and you schedule an appointment today, the access center was not knowing that you schedule an appointment because the data was so delayed in those copies.
By going to the source of truth, now we know that hey.
Yeah, you’re schedule an appointment and is in this location and it’s at 4:00 PM and we can give you directions or we can give you some some of the same thing is, you know, we can cry on our digital painting experience portions.
Jordan Cooper 16:50
Right.
Angulo, Otto 16:56
You know, there were.
We had three different systems doing the same thing, so we’re transitioning that all into one system to do that.
So all the preregistration alerts were coming from different systems and now because we have the source of truth, we can tell, hey, Jordan, you have an appointment in two days.
Here are some forms that you need to fill before you get to your appointment and that information then goes back and gets stored in the source of truth and then the practice knows that hey Jordan, pretty registered.
All this information is correct.
You paid his copay right now.
It’s not that you know you cannot see that that capabilities and then the future term is to kind of go into you know and not a data platform and build this through you know all this connections through a data platform instead of creating you know kind of intermediate API and and connectors.
So that’s where our data is.
Angulo, Otto 17:49
It’s very complicated, but you know we’ve made we’ve made some tweaks and changes to make it work for us into our journey.
You know, for this short term towards you know our you know 2024 goals.
Jordan Cooper 18:05
I appreciate you walking me through your short middle and long term solutions for creating a source of truth.
Auto, we are approaching the end of the episode and so I do wanna kind of wrap up with with a question that I’m sure many of our listeners will be wondering themselves at this point, which is many of our listeners are faced with the decision to either buy or build.
Many people have trouble like (Atlanticare), developing that source of truth.
The especially with there’s a lot of merger and acquisition activity going on and now you have a diversity of different electronic health records.
I know you’re on Cerner EHR, but as you said, there are many outpatient centers, there’s urgent care centers, there’s hundreds of locations for (Atlanticare).
So you’re trying to reconcile data across all those different sources, you’re looking to build the data platform and you’re looking to buy a data platform.
How do you decide where to allocate your attention and and where to invest your resources?
How do you make the decision to to buy versus build?
Angulo, Otto 19:05
So you know, so one of the things that that we’ve started doing at (Atlanticare) is you know we you, we were siloed there was there was technology, there was you know there was marketing, there was you know medical, you know health, you know medical or you know the medical staff or the operational staff.
We were all kind of like, you know, trying to solve problems and they were all bringing kind of solutions and we were probably, you know, and we identified that we all were bringing the same solution.
So one of the things that we did is we created a governance and a governance team.
You know where all this teams that need and and and and have needs, you know, are having the conversation.
So like Ohh, we’re trying to solve for this problems like ohh we already have this, we don’t need to.
We don’t need to buy it or we don’t need to build it.
Angulo, Otto 19:55
And you know, one of the things that we have is our our leadership created what we call a Shark Tank.
You know, similar to Shark Tank.
You know where you you know the the the the show on on TV where as a as an organization if you are you have to go if you’re bringing a new technology or you’re bringing something you have to go Peach your and and sell it you have the you know elevator pitch you know 5-10 minutes you know you gotta sell it.
You know why you have it?
There’s, you know, you have to answer those questions.
And at the at the table, this governance team is there and then we can say like hey, well, you know this already exists.
Why you trying to reinvent the wheel?
You know, we’ll connect you with the people and that’s one of the ways that we have solved for some of this problems that we have because before you know, it was kind of like run wild, run for yourself and get, you know results.
Jordan Cooper 20:44
Umm.
Umm.
Angulo, Otto 20:51
And by adding this layer of governance and and Shark Tank, we are able to understand what we need to do is we need to build it if we need to buy it, you know, we are in a kind of a way of like trying to avoid the build the you know our own because you know what happens if you build it and the resources to build it are gone.
You know, there’s a lot of legacy systems that you know, and there are some course systems, you know, within healthcare that you can kind of leverage that can help you and take you through you know, so you know you don’t want to build your own EHR, you don’t want to build your own CRM.
You know, there’s kind of things that you kind of know.
And so there’s, you know, there’s experts in those fields and partnering with those experts is sort of like the way that we are.
We’re working through that.
Jordan Cooper 21:36
Are appreciate that.
I appreciate you walking us through in this conversation, Otto, your patient 360 strategy at (Atlanticare) trying to have, I think a goal that many organizations across the nation have, which is we’re operating on a thin margin.
Every dollar we spend, we’d like to have some measurable ROI.
So you have a 4X ROI.
I think that’s a KPI that many of our listeners can identify with.
You talked about data quality and flow, and no matter how you want to personalize a patient’s experience, whether you want to leverage Turner’s healthy intent but you want to have a data feed from somewhere else, you wanna incorporate that into a CRM for an outreach campaign and it needs to be in a method that the patient prefers, whether that be paper mail or an app or something, what needs to happen is you need to have integration of data, you need to have a source of truth.
You need to make sure that the right information is being promulgated across all the different systems being used, and then of course there’s some application rationalization has going on in a governance committee and that’s used in order to avoid redundancy.
And of course, ensure that every dollar you spend does maximize return.
You wouldn’t want to spend the same dollar on the same solution multiple different times, so I think you took us through an interesting journey, Otto, I appreciate you joining us today.
So thank you for joining us, Otto.
Angulo, Otto 23:03
No, thank you for having me and not looking forward to, you know, further conversations as we move forward with our patient physician.
