Healthy Data Podcast_ Brian Shea (MedOne) & Jordan Cooper (InterSystems)-20250327_110241-Meeting Recording
March 27, 2025, 3:02PM
24m 50s
Jordan Cooper started transcription
Jordan Cooper 0:03
Hey, the CIO of Med, one health partners, for those who aren’t aware Med one HealthPartners was founded in 2000.
They are the largest physician practice, exclusively dedicated to hospital medicine in central Ohio.
Brian, thank you so much for joining us today.
Brian Shea 0:19
Thanks Jordan.
Thanks for having me.
Jordan Cooper 0:21
So today we’re going to talk about connectivity of care between acute and post acute care with the one Connect tool. I’d like to just ask if you could give us some background on what one connect is and we’ll go from there.
Brian Shea 0:35
Sure, one connect.
Actually we created one connect because there was kind of what we saw a gap in the the space in the post acute care side of things especially with our our interaction with those post acute care facilities. So traditionally in post acute care sites, they have EHR such as.
Point click care or matrix care I think.
Point click care kind of being the predominant one that’s in those facilities and as a practice that’s providing providers or clinicians to.
Jordan Cooper 0:59
Mm hmm.
Brian Shea 1:04
Have oversight at those facilities.
We’re talking about hundreds of diverse Emrs, right?
You know that that are at these facilities and to have a dedicated.
Really linking together a census of our patients across all those diverse, you know, disparate I guess Ehrs was where there was a gap that that we saw.
So a couple years ago, we went on the mission to develop our own tool in this in this space that was developed by providers.
Or providers to create a workflow that allowed them to pull in the appropriate patient information from all these disparate sites in real time. So as we know, a lot of these connect up to clinic and other integration platforms or health, you know, exchanges. This allowed us to have.
Jordan Cooper 1:55
Mm hmm.
Brian Shea 1:57
A real time pulling of that information in a bidirectional, you know kind of feed with all those separate sites.
Instead of having physicians log into all of these separate Ehrs as part of their workflow, it really kind of was an overlay tool.
Jordan Cooper 2:08
Right.
Brian Shea 2:12
And that tool allowed us to really kind of bridge the gap between the acute care we provide in our hospital sites as well as, you know, the access for the the post acute care facilities.
Jordan Cooper 2:24
So I’m interested in or. Our listeners are often interested in the tech, like how you’re technically able to achieve this real time connectivity of information between disparate sites.
Different ehrs.
Do you have fire repositories and fire connectivity?
How are you able to facilitate this real time data exchange?
Brian Shea 2:46
One HealthCare Partners is 100% in the cloud.
We leverage the Microsoft Azure infrastructure is really the underlying infrastructure for one connect and how we’re doing the connectivity between these separate Emrs really is through AP is that they have available to us.
Jordan Cooper 2:55
Mm.
Mm hmm.
Brian Shea 3:06
So we’re leveraging those AP is to do the calls, pulling data, pushing data back and forth between between those systems.
And that’s how we’re kinda pulling it together.
Now when we get into the acute care space where I think where we have an issue, there’s lots of Ehrs out there, right?
Jordan Cooper 3:21
Right.
Brian Shea 3:21
And there’s a lot of, you know, the big players, of course, you know, in the acute world, like being epic or in primary care being, you know, Athena potentially. But in the post acute care side, we talked about point click care and matrix care kind of being big.
Players, but there’s a lot of other ones that that are there and there’s a lot of them that allow that interoperability.
But where we thought ours is unique, where we kind of provide is since we are both in that acute care space, the hospital.
Is as well as the post acute care.
Care. And here in the future, in primary care, we can actually see patients information.
When they’re going into a hospital setting, we actually, if they were a Med, one patient and a Med one post acute care facility that we provide services to, it actually identifies those patients and we could see their history. Like I said in real time which today that doesn.
Really happen in most in most systems.
So the hospitals may not even know that those patients were seen in a posted acute care facility.
Or even why they’re showing up in the ER. We actually have access to those notes right away to see where they’ve kind of transitioned from from care.
Jordan Cooper 4:23
Mm hmm.
Brian Shea 4:27
And then if you think about into the primary care space, they have no idea that those patients a lot of times when they’re coming in, maybe came from a post op kid care facility as well.
So the way we’re leveraging this tool is it kind of is that overlay, but it allows us to have that visibility into, you know both sides of the system especially.
When they’re met, one patient.
Jordan Cooper 4:48
I’d like to zoom out for a second to focus on the implications of having visibility into both acute and post acute care.
Many of Healthy data podcast guests and listeners tend to focus on acute care.
That’s also where a lot of the EHR market is focused.
That’s just where most of the business is in America.
But many of the most acute care patients, the the highest need patients, are discharged into post acute care facilities.
I’m interested.
And how the extent to which Med?
One is responsible for providing care to this population outside of the acute care from a perspective of population, health is Med one at risk for these patient lives?
Is there a value based payment system or their ecq?
Quality measures that Med one is being held accountable for by payers or by third party rating agencies. I guess what is the financial and clinical motivation?
For Med one to want to track these patients across multiple settings of care, number one and two, what are the benefits now that you are able to do so?
Brian Shea 5:58
Our mission is we want to make you know healthcare better right at the end of the day.
Jordan Cooper 6:01
Mm hmm.
Brian Shea 6:02
So there’s not only the clinical aspect of doing this, but, but also from the operational aspect of it. We are Med. One is part of an ACO for the post acute care side of things. So value based care we are part of that and I don’t want to.
Speak out of my terms of expertise, you know, necessarily through through all of this, but since we are part of.
Jordan Cooper 6:21
Mm hmm.
Brian Shea 6:24
A NACO we, we have certain things of course.
That we have to report upon, you know, from a quality perspective around those patients that are attributed patients you know for you know for U.S. hospitals on the acute care side of course they want to you know they want to keep their readmissions down of patients, right, you.
Jordan Cooper 6:36
Mm hmm.
Brian Shea 6:44
Know patients that may be discharged from a hospital site and they’re going to post acute care.
They lose visibility of those and we’re able to now bridge that gap and see the patients that may be coming back in or getting re-admitted.
To a hospital and we have had our fingertips. You know, if they were again a Med one facility of what? You know, all those notes and information about those about those patients in real time to be able to provide the the appropriate care, you know levels of care.
There so.
So yes, we are part of a value based care on the post acute care side. Our hospitals you have certain things that that they are also trying to accomplish both clinically and operationally and Med one is able to.
As a service provider in both of those spaces, kind of the bridge that gap.
Jordan Cooper 7:31
So how does one connect?
I like for, I think a lot of times our listeners appreciate hearing anecdotes of particular patients and how they’ve been affected by this by by a certain intervention.
So I think it’d be interesting if you could tell our listeners how one connect assists populations that are at risk for being readmitted to acute care settings.
How does one connect assist?
Med one.
On providers with managing that population and preventing that readmission.
Brian Shea 8:07
Yeah, that’s a good question.
And again, you know, I’m not on the clinical operations you know side of things, but some of the examples that we’re able to do is so we we have created.
We’re again.
We brought things together as we created a patient.
We have a bed, but what we call the bed board and the bed board was originally developed for the acute hospital setting, right?
So that’s where as Med one we’re able to see the.
The emissions and then those, you know, those patients that are getting admitted to Med one.
Jordan Cooper 8:38
Mm hmm.
Brian Shea 8:39
It’s basically a, you know, a board and those patients can be picked up and we, you know, we can understand their status.
So now that we’ve integrated those two with one connect, we’ve brought that solution over into the one Connect solution and that’s where when patients get admitted in the in a hospital setting or maybe in the Ed and they’re getting transferred over to Med 1S care, we inst.
Get different badging and flags that show that this patient.
Is an ACO patient or you know from our post acute care?
Your site which then gives them that instant visibility.
Visibility I guess of, hey, this is a Med one patient and then we could go back, they could, they could see right there the notes and the information that’s coming across where maybe a patient is coming into an Ed without this solution.
They’re they don’t know why they’re in the Ed.
They don’t know how they ended up, you know, maybe in the Ed, maybe from another post acute, you know, maybe from a post acute care facility.
And they don’t have any of that history.
So you’re starting over again.
Unless they’re in the EMR.
Of that hospital setting, you know already.
So this allows the patients that maybe are coming from one of those.
Post acute care sites that in transit, they don’t have all that necessarily information, but as soon as they get to the Ed and they show up on our board, we quickly see is that a patient that is comes from one of those post acute care sites and has.
That data real time, you know, at our hands.
I don’t know if that necessary answers your question completely, but you know as a from the technical side of things, that’s kind of how I get appropriately. Bring that example across.
Jordan Cooper 10:12
Right. Do you have, I guess as you’re able to provide enable as data becomes more available to providers that previously was unavailable. Do you have any I guess how has that been impacting operations or clinical care?
How has providing increased visibility into where the patient is?
I.
I guess what’s been the biggest impact or what what?
Has been some feedback you’ve heard from providers about having access to one connect and how it has affected their lives.
Brian Shea 10:48
Sure. So that’s a good question. And as I said, as we you know have now bridged that bed board from the acute care side into one connect being one solution. The biggest feedback we get from our providers is WOW, I have visibility into these patients that I would.
Not have otherwise right?
So they have a better holistic picture of the care spectrum for that patient, right?
You know, kind of what?
Their journey has been that they may have not ever had right, you know, because when they come into a hospital, if they did not have that historical information.
They’re just getting whatever is in that EMR at that acute facility at that moment in time.
So now if you think about having all those notes, having the information about that patient and what their care journey has been, that will really tailor from a, you know I think a lot of organizations are trying to get to a personalized patient care.
For you know, for each patient, you know each patient.
Jordan Cooper 11:44
Mm hmm.
Brian Shea 11:44
It just gives more data at their fingertips to to provide better care.
You know, I think at the at the end of the day too, and that’s the feedback.
I think that we’ve had from the providers that have used this in seeing now that connectivity of the patient coming across from a post acute care site showing up in their bedboard, they know that it’s a patient that has been seen at one of these facilities you know.
That we provide services to and they could get instant access to those notes which didn’t exist before, right? So.
Jordan Cooper 12:11
I’m one, I think some of our listeners would be listening.
I appreciate the provider feedback in a provider perspective, but you’re in the C-Suite over at Med one.
What is it like when you’re speaking with the CEO?
The CFO and the CEO and saying.
Hey, we.
I asked you for budget in order to help build this one connect tool.
Now we have it, and they’re saying, you know, what’s the ROI?
What are those conversations look like?
Brian Shea 12:37
Yeah. So another great question, especially different.
Wearing a different hat, you know, in, in that conversation of things, anytime you develop.
We originally said just to give you a little background, Med one was actually founded by a doctor and a software developer, right?
So Med one had technology roots from the very beginning 25 years ago as an organization.
Jordan Cooper 12:57
Mm.
Brian Shea 12:58
Part of that process I’ve been working with the group for a little bit over 11 years, four years as their as their employed CIO, but have consulted with the group for a long time.
So they’ve always had a very innovative approach, two things and sometimes you know it, you put the hat on of they’re they’re looking since it’s provider owned group, they’re looking at how do they make you know, patient care better as well as provider life better, right. So a.
Jordan Cooper 13:21
Mm hmm.
Brian Shea 13:22
Lot of times you jump into those different things of of how how you do that necessarily not looking at the ROI of operationally what it takes to manage an application.
So part of my goal was taking a look at all the different things that we were doing as a group, determining like putting a different hat on our, you know, are we a provider group?
Are we a software company or are we both right, you know, so that’s a lens that we had to put on one.
Connect is one of those products. As we went through our portfolio of like our tools is one that we saw really made a difference not only again to patient care but also.
Our providers.
Happiness and workflow.
Right. You know of of having a tool at their at their fingertips like this.
So the cell was easy, right?
Because the providers kinda saw it as a tool that helps them.
The ROI of running your own application.
You have your pros and cons and challenges of, I think the biggest thing is you know, we’re not necessarily a software company today, but how do we maintain this application and keep it relevant, right?
You know, so as new technologies are coming out, of course AI is Gen. AI.
Jordan Cooper 14:25
Mm hmm.
Brian Shea 14:29
All that’s been thrown around now, of course, every day we’re hearing about it and how do we make sure that if we leverage this tool effectively, how do we make sure that we’re continuing to improve it and making it relevant that something else just doesn’t leapfrog it, right?
And and leave it.
Antiquated. So everything from how do we integrate ambient listening tools into our documentation?
Because documentation burnout is one of the biggest things that providers of course are are talking about.
You know today, so we have to continually look at what tools are out there, what makes sense for us to develop on our own right and build it ourselves versus partnering with somebody where there’s products that we can plug into it to make our product even more. Rob.
With it so challenging, costs scalability with it staffing you know and expertise maintaining levels of expertise to be able to continue to grow it again and maintain relevance with it.
Those are all challenges that we have to be able to take forward to our leadership team and our board in explaining here is our spend for one connect.
What do we where do we want to take one?
Connect, you know, is one.
Connect a Med one tool.
Is it something we offer? Is software as a service, you know to other provider groups to leverage a tool such as this?
Those are all questions that we’re having at the leadership level all the time.
Jordan Cooper 15:50
I love that one.
Connect is not just an acute care setting tool, but also but it connects acute care to post acute care.
I wonder what data source challenges you found in a post acute care setting that hasn’t necessarily been an issue in hospitals, or what is unique about providing care in the post acute care setting?
Brian Shea 16:13
I think it, yeah.
Jordan Cooper 16:13
From a data perspective, not a care.
Brian Shea 16:15
So for my so for my data perspective, as I said, these are all disparate Ehrs. Now. Fortunately, the majority of the sites that we’re at have one or two of those two big players that we’ve talked about that are in that space.
So once you establish what those APIs need to look like from a connectivity perspective, it’s easy to carry that over site to site.
There might be some differentiators in what systems they integrate with.
Jordan Cooper 16:42
Mm hmm.
Brian Shea 16:43
You know when you start getting into, you know, E prescribing or whatever, right?
You know that in in there of how do we make sure again?
From a data perspective, what they’re using at this facilities, we can pull, pull across and making sure Data’s clean, right.
I mean, as we know, garbage in, garbage out, you know, kind kind of thing.
So we need to make sure that we’re receiving good data from from those Ehrs and then how is it pulled into our systems, into patient records, making sure it’s the appropriate patient information being pulled into the appropriate patient in one connect as well. And those checks and Bal?
Jordan Cooper 17:08
Mm hmm.
Mm hmm.
Brian Shea 17:19
Just from, you know, a safety.
You know, perspective.
So I would say it’s challenging because.
As they change, those Ehrs change as well.
And those APIs may change. We could see things that break right because we’re dependent upon these third party systems, we integrate it with faxin solutions and other things as well, right?
So as they as organizations change their tools, we have to be prepared and watch for, you know, is something not passing appropriately.
Correctly? And how do we fix that?
Jordan Cooper 17:53
So it sounds like an integration engine that could ensure clean data and and and keep up with the latest upgrades and updates from Ehrs and and make sure that the API is the the latest and incorporate Gen. AI and you know ambient listening that that that kind of.
Solution is something that would be useful.
What are you seeing in terms of integration or an integration engine at your organization?
And what were you looking for when you selected that engine?
Brian Shea 18:22
Yeah. So, Jordan, that’s a that’s a, that’s a hot topic here at the moment for me from a technical perspective today, we do not have an integrations engine per SE or an interface engine.
We’re doing direct AP is and leveraging the AP is that those providers?
Allow us to leverage, right, which could cause some challenges of how those AP is are written or and we take some things out of our control. You know, a little bit.
So we’re currently heavily investigating.
You know this, this this year as we want to integrate with these other tools as as well and we as we add more sites and more facilities and more service lines and potentially you know integrating with other Ehrs that we don’t integrate with today, we find that it.
Going to be very important for us to have some sort of integrations layer, engine interface engine where we can use that as the traffic cop, right between one connect.
And all those, you know, disparate systems that we’re integrating a web.
I don’t think just the direct AP is that we have today is scalable, right?
Jordan Cooper 19:26
Mm hmm.
Brian Shea 19:26
You know, in the model of what we have one connect we have to add that layer that integrations engine layer into our organization to to be more effective. I think with it and managing the data flows and you know all those notifications and alerts and things like that.
That come along with it and having better visibility in the data flow side of things.
We’re gonna need to invest and and put that that technology is part of our stack.
Jordan Cooper 19:52
Got it. And is that something that you would be interested in hosting and managing yourself since you’re so, do you know, hands on shop or is that something that more you’d be looking to get out of the data center management piece and have someone else manage it in?
Azure or some other cloud environment.
Brian Shea 20:08
Yeah. Initially I would see that.
I would look to a partner you know for that somebody that has I like to call my it we run a pretty lean it for for Med one.
I like to call our internal it specialized it and then we leverage service partners and things like that where it makes sense for us for either tool, stack or expertise. I would say definitely initially that we would be looking to you know a partner that somebody has that.
Level of expertise to manage that for us as you scale of course and as your internal team grows and change.
Jordan Cooper 20:33
Mm hmm.
Brian Shea 20:38
Changes you can potentially bring some of those things more in house with management side of things. I would always look for more of a SaaS based type offering from a tech stack side of things.
As I said, we’re 100% in the cloud today, which is unique from a healthcare organization, but we saw how it can, you know, benefit us from managing our resources, again, appropriately what we’re focusing on from an IT perspective.
Jordan Cooper 20:52
Is it?
Brian Shea 21:05
And then allowing us to grow the way that we have.
Is leveraging those those different kind of software as a service type partnerships?
Jordan Cooper 21:13
So Brian, we are approaching the end of this podcast episode.
I’d like to ask you a final question. If you if there was one thing that you could change or one thing that you would wish for or something that you would recommend that someone approaching a similar problem in a different organization should consider, what would that be? What?
Brian Shea 21:18
OK.
Jordan Cooper 21:31
What one thing would are you looking to accomplish that that if you had a magic wand, you could wave it and and make that problem go away?
What would that be?
Brian Shea 21:40
It would probably be as most.
I that’s a tough question, right?
Because there’s a lot of things that I’d love to have, you know, but I think the biggest thing of if I were to reapproach this again.
Is making sure that you lay out the blueprint of.
What are you really trying to accomplish right?
You know, with with your tool as I, as I said, there’s a lot of players, a lot of startup companies that are always coming out with different.
Ways of doing things that invest very heavily.
That may be VC backed, right?
You know or or dedicated software companies?
I think our product is unique because it’s again designed by providers for providers, it’s doing some things that other products are not doing today in the market where it’s bridging some of that, some of that gap.
There. But how do we?
How do we take this to the next level?
Right. You know, and and how do we, you know, it’s a differentiator for for Med one?
You know which is, which is great, but you know, how do we?
How do we leverage this in make healthcare better, more globally, right?
Using a product like this and I think those are things that as a group, how do how do we do that effective, you know, how do we do that effectively, you know, making sure that we’re spending appropriately for the tool for ourselves.
But as I said, if we could have taken a step back and magic wand.
Of what would have been that road map, you know, or what is the road map to?
To make this, you know, more prevalent outside of even Med, you know Med one, because we do feel that it’s special and it is bridging the gap there and those are the conversations that we’re having.
So again, going back to the magic wand would be, how do I find a partner that can help us navigate, you know, navigate some of those? Some of those challenges to to take this where we think it should be?
Jordan Cooper 23:31
Well, Brian, I really appreciate this interview.
We’ve touched upon a number of topics that have emerged from other episodes you just spoke about obliquely about the commercialization of software, looking at a healthcare delivery organization which across the United States, at least from an acute care side, you’re looking at margins often of one to two.
Percent. But when you’re, you know, at Med one you say, look, we’ve developed their own software, many healthcare organizations have and they’re considering should we try to get into.
Ware business and manage and upgrade all that and try to generate new revenue streams and sell it as a SaaS software as a service product to similar organizations and provide value to them.
Should we be 100% cloud?
How should we manage populations that are shifting among many different Ehr’s and different settings of care?
I think these are challenges that many organizations across the United States are struggling with, and so.
I think that what you’re doing with one connect is exciting.
And I appreciate the opportunity that you provided our listeners to hear more about it. So thank you, Brian.
Brian Shea 24:38
Now, thank you, Jordan.
Jordan Cooper 24:39
So for our listeners has been Brian Shea, the Chief Information Officer of Med, One HealthCare Partners in Columbus. OH.
Thank you for joining us today.
Jordan Cooper stopped transcription
