In this packed episode of This Week in Health Tech, we welcome Dr. Brett Oliver, Chief Medical Information Officer, Baptist Health KY and IN to talk about telehealth, eVisits, digital transformation, interoperability, cultural change, and more.
To kick it off, we jump into the latest COVID situation in Kentucky and the strain its' putting on healthcare. Dr. Oliver indicated that the Delta variant is very highly transmittable and rural facilities are suffering because vaccination rates are relatively lower. Smaller community hospitals are not able to transfer patients to bigger facilities because every hospital is overwhelmed with COVID patients. Jimmy asks Brett about remote monitoring and remote visits with patients. Brett indicates that Baptist is really trying to improve remote visits both asynchronously and synchronously. Plus the technology is improving and multi specialty remote visit is also now possible.
Brett then jumps into e-visits, they have centralized it for urgent and evisits. These visits happen organically from the website and it is a cash paying service. The service level agreement to provide the eVisit within 30 min has been received really well by the patient population. Baptist is also expanding clinical content and recommendations that are provided to patient.
 Vik and Brett then discuss few personalized experiences the can be provided online including scheduling and referrals.
 Patients are ready for this cultural shift to eVisits and online healthcare experiences, but healthcare organizations also need to adapt fast and the culture change discussions have to happen.
Jimmy asks both Vik and Brett about any future challenges with digital transformation. Vik indicates that we could go from a very basic experience to a very overwhelming experience where patients have to choose from hundreds of apps which could again defeat the purpose of digital transformation.
Brett agrees with that and also points out the challenge of data silos.
This is where interoperability is still one of the biggest challenges in healthcare. Patients own their healthcare data however it is still not easy for patients to access and share their data with new providers or health systems.
CMS / ONC are pushing for better interoperability with Patient FHIR APIs, Provider FHIR APIs and this will definitely help move away from today's data silos in healthcare.
Brett points out that there are still big holes with post acute care, and integration with nursing homes or long term care is still a big challenge. Maybe this is where smart phones can be the bridge and patients can hold their patient record on their phones and they should be able to easily share that with nursing homes or long term care.
Vik and Brett then discuss how the conversations happen with executive or physician teams for digital transformation and cultural change needed.
The group then talks about AI and how artificial intelligence could be very well oversold today. The future is bright for AI but many times when companies or products mention AI is it truly AI or just analytics at this point.

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Linkedin: Vik Patel
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Linkedin: Dr. Brett Oliver

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