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Saul Marquez:
Hey everybody! Saul Marquez with the HLTH Matters podcast, and today I have the privilege of hosting two outstanding health leaders. First, I want to introduce you to Patty Obermaier. She’s the vice president of US Health and Life Science Business at Microsoft. Patty is responsible for growing Microsoft solutions, services, and support revenues across enterprise health customers in the United States. She leads a 950-person team and is accountable for a $5 billion PNL, and we’re so privileged to have her here on the podcast. And we also have the amazing Thom Bales with us. Thom is a Principal in Strategy& a part of the PwC network. He leads PwC’s Health Services sector with responsibility for their payer-provider and digital health growth. He has over 20 years of management consulting experience, and we’re so excited to have him here on the podcast as well. So with that introduction, I’m so excited to have both of you guys here, Patty and Thom, thanks for joining me on the HLTH Podcast.
Thom Bales:
Thank you, Saul, it’s great to be here.
Patty Obermaier:
Yeah, great to be here. Thanks so much.
Saul Marquez:
So we’ve got a lot of really great things to discuss and uncover, but before we get to the meat and potatoes of what we’re going to cover today, I’d love to just hear what inspires your work in healthcare.
Thom Bales:
Patty, you wanna go first?
Patty Obermaier:
Sure, happy to, Thom. I’ll give you some numbers: 8, 4, and 1. You may wonder what that means. For us, that’s the 8 billion people on this planet, 4 billion do not have access to healthcare, and a billion have disabilities, and 70% that can’t be seen. So when I try to inspire my team or even inspire myself, I think, how can we enable health to be so much better for all the 8 billion people out on this planet? So that’s what inspires me.
Saul Marquez:
I love that, 8, 4, an 1, very succinct. And Thom?
Thom Bales:
Sure, two things. One is service, just my family and the way we’ve grown up, we’ve been about service and giving back to healthcare, and making a change in society. If you look, there was a survey that came out last year that estimated that for the average family in the United States, their family income was somewhere around 60,000 or so, roughly half of that, 30,000 of it, right, went to insurance costs, the healthcare costs themselves, the out-of-pocket costs, etc. That is absolutely unsustainable for us. And when I think about what drives me in this, making a change on that keeps me going.
Saul Marquez:
Oh, I love that. And it’s so true, Thom, we have a huge opportunity to make that better, and access, and really, starts with understanding the problem and the numbers behind it. Let’s talk about how we’re adding value to the healthcare ecosystem. Would you guys like, I mean, both of you guys, great collaboration between two great organizations, PwC and Microsoft. Talk to us about how you guys are adding value in the healthcare ecosystem?
Thom Bales:
Absolutely. We look at it from several different angles, but the most important one, and the ideas that we’re coming together around, is this idea around a connected health ecosystem. And it does not matter what angle you pick up healthcare from, whether that be on access, that be around affordability, or be around equitable healthcare, we have to acknowledge that we live in a world where connectivity, whether that be around the data, the experience, the different stakeholders we’re working with, is increasingly important. And for us, we see a, almost trillion dollar shift in value moving to those systems, those organizations, players that are more connected, behind that kind of a shift, behind that kind of connectivity is an organization like Microsoft, and every single thing that they are doing today, and Patty and I had a great session this summer, and it was a lot. The checkmarks that went down the page on everything that you were addressing was incredible, and maybe you want to talk just a little bit around what that is because it hits every element of it.
Patty Obermaier:
Yeah, sure, happy to. First of all, I think Microsoft is incredibly privileged to work with organizations like PwC, and our mission is to empower every person and organization on this planet to achieve more. So when you look at the health ecosystem, that’s tons and tons of organizations, and so we have to think about the big problems, the big issues, and make sure we’re creating the technology that can solve those, and Thom talked about connected care. We saw during COVID in particular, virtual health, quickly turned on virtual health for amazing organizations out there, but there was a subsection of our population that couldn’t access it because they didn’t have broadband, they didn’t have devices. So then it became a question of equitable care, and so at Microsoft, we work really hard to democratize care, but how can we democratize it if people don’t have access to it? So when we look at connected care, we have technology, our team’s product, we can run virtual health, which is awesome, but then we’ve also got to step back and work with communities to make sure we’ve got broadband so people can have access to it. We have an initiative going on with recycling PCs, I mean simple things so that we can start to get out the technology that, candidly, for myself, I take granted, for granted every day. I’m sure, Thom, you, and your organizations, we have access to so much, but yet there are folks that don’t. And so while we talk about connected in terms of bringing the data forward, making sure we’ve got great outcomes for our patients, working on physician burnout, and we can get into some of the techs around that, sometimes you got to step back and say, are we enabling it for all? And so that’s some of the work we’ve been doing around broadband devices and they just enabling the cloud, which we see every day, and we see what other industries are doing, so I feel like we have an obligation in some cases to take what other industries are doing and working with our amazing partner PwC to bring it to the forefront of healthcare.
Saul Marquez:
That’s fantastic, thank you for that. And yeah, a big element of this is the infrastructure and the access. If the railroad doesn’t get to that neighborhood, then the train ain’t get in there, right? And we do have to focus here. I’m so glad that we’re having this conversation because it is a much-needed problem that needs solving, and great to have you guys in your minds on it. So let’s talk about really, like the perspective on healthcare overall. Where are we today? Where does it need to go?
Thom Bales:
The good news is we’re making progress. It’s, oh, it’s better than it used to be. The bad news is there is so much more to do. And when we talk about this concept of connected care, the significance of care gaps, Patty just talked about seamlessness across the different venues, the different experiences that you have, even the data itself, right? We talk about these gaps, and they’re not just around that data itself, but there’s, actually they tie back to simple things around, even waste. And the kinds of insights that you can get out of data, out of something like what Microsoft has with Azure, they start to point to that, right? That’s the kind of gaps that we’re trying to close, right? And that’s what the opportunity is, and we all know we have so much more to do.
Patty Obermaier:
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I think data is going to be such a critical element, it is such a critical element of all the work that we’re doing in healthcare, not only improving outcomes for patients, but even the patient experience. There’s data all over the place, especially in hospital systems sometimes, I’m sure, Thom, you encounter this as well. Large hospital systems are just trying to figure out where all the data is and spending days and weeks trying to find it. And I used to chuckle because years ago I used to say, Look under the desk for the servers that are sitting under the desk. And sometimes there still are, especially in research organizations, so we got to get it out from under the desks. We got to get it into the cloud.
Saul Marquez:
Yes, I’m glad you brought that up, Patty, the cloud. So it’s something that we all need to be keeping in mind. How is the cloud helping solve for some of these issues that that we’ve come up with today, and where are we in that adoption life cycle?
Patty Obermaier:
I think the cloud has been able to do amazing things and especially for healthcare. So there are very basic and critical elements like security and privacy. So those elements of the cloud are, Microsoft spends, as you can imagine billions on securing data and securing our products, which is absolutely critical in the healthcare arena. But then it also provides data lakes and the ability to pull data into one location so we can capture that location for patients. It also enables huge, high compute power, so think of all the genomics where there’s a lot that’s been going on in the last couple of years and probably the last decade around personalized care, that’s an end of one. So how do you enable providing the right care, the right medications for one, that’s me, one person at one time, and so a lot of that’s going to be around the genomics work that we’re doing. So you’ve got to be able to have compute power to do amazing work around analyzing gene snippets and so forth. So the cloud brings trust, it brings security, it brings the privacy elements, it brings extensibility in terms of adding it up and down in terms of compute power, and then, of course, it also brings massive hypercompute, which we need in healthcare.
Thom Bales:
Yeah, I would also say it brings portability. When we talk about a consumer-driven world, I’m sure many of us at this table have been through the time period where we have our own personal health record, and that personal health record looked like us sitting down and typing in our latest information from the doctor. And how often did that really ever happen? I did it, and it died, right? But we’re now in a world where consumers can request that information, it has to be made available to them, right, it has to be stored for them, and they have to be able to take it where they want to be able to take it. So can you think of any other environment better than cloud to enable the, really meet consumer needs, much less what it does for the organizations that have to maintain all of this.
Saul Marquez:
Oh yeah, it’s just a heavy lift, and it sounds like the cloud does give us that compute power, it gives us accessibility when we need it, how we need it, and to whoever needs it, the advantages are there. What do you guys think is going to take massive adoption of it? What are some of the common obstacles that we could be thinking, like that people could be thinking about, hey, how can I adopt this?
Thom Bales:
Yeah, so there’s a couple of things, and it’s almost, if you roll back the tape on this, right? And so we’re talking about the organizations that are investing into the cloud. It started with this idea of a cloud strategy. It’s not really a cloud strategy, it is how are we doing business faster, greater capabilities, lower cost, more extensibility, which happens to be enabled by the cloud, right? We’re actually at that pivot point right now. We’ve, when I say we, as an industry, the health systems, payers, providers, whatnot, have put this kind of an infrastructure in place where, the cloud, but they’re just getting going on, how do they actually take advantage of it. The consumer demand, and let me give you just one stat that I think will help put this into perspective. We did a survey last year, 65% of consumers told us they were likely to switch providers. Okay, 65%, it’s incredible, right? The moment they move, they want to take the information with them, and when that starts happening, then we see the momentum.
Saul Marquez:
And why, I’m just curious, did you get any data points on why they want to move? Like, why do consumers want to move?
Thom Bales:
It’s actually interesting. For what it’s worth, we did other data or surveys that show that after two bad experiences, consumers will leave a brand. It doesn’t take much. The reality is what they experience within our healthcare system, it’s not satisfactory, right? It’s not convenient, right? When we think about the person coming home from school, and they just want their children taken care of right then and there because there’s a fever, they want it right then and there, and they’re very willing to go beyond that. Now, that’s not everything, and I don’t want to discount because there’s absolutely incredible points of care and stories that drive loyalty, but we have to acknowledge that’s the kind of world we live in.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, and provider organizations, folks, you’re listening to this, you’re thinking, yeah, we need to make our health system more sticky. How do we do it? What we’re talking about here with Thom and Patty is critical to how you increase the stickiness. So, Patty, what thoughts do you have on patient retention as it relates to the cloud? How does it help with the experience?
Patty Obermaier:
I would have to say over the last, since COVID, predominantly, this, over the last three years, a lot of my discussions with leaders across health systems, and even pharma and MedTech as well, has been around the patient experience as a competitive differentiator. That’s the huge difference. So it used to be, I’m going to provide the best care, which you have to be able to do, but then all of a sudden there’s the element of, huh, I’ve got to compete against the different health systems. As Thom mentioned, that loyalty is not there because they want the convenience, they want it at a price point that they think is reasonable, assuming they have transparency into that price, and they want to be able to go quicker and faster, and have, in some cases, analytics at their fingertips. For example, I want to know, does Dr. Thom do knee surgeries for a patient like me? And if he does, what’s his outcomes and so forth, trying to make much better health decisions. So our work has been a lot focused around creating that patient experience, creating that omnichannel which enables the care, very similar to what retail has, they know a lot about the patient in totality, in addition to what happens within the four walls, or online, if it’s virtual care for the patients. And the cloud enables that, enables the ability for leading-edge technology like Microsoft’s Digital Contact Center, as well as our Dynamics product, to be able to leverage the data that it has to be able to use technology around speech and voice recognition. So think of health bots or bots when you call a call center, many times these days you’re dealing with a bot that is able to triage your request. We have found in some cases patients will tell more to a bot than they will to their doctor or human, you got to capture that. All that unstructured voice data has to be captured, put, structured, put into structure, and then be able to leverage it. So that’s what the cloud is going to enable, which I think is going to be phenomenal. I would love to be able to have a doctor or a hospital system call me up and say, hey, Patty, you’ve got three tests you haven’t had filled. You know, you got a mammogram, you got an order, or your knee needs to be checked, whatever the case may be. Hey, let’s do it all at once, rather than, I’m calling for this reason, that reason, and that reason. I think we’re going to transform healthcare a lot, focused in, again, on the patient.
Saul Marquez:
Thank you, Patty.
Thom Bales:
And I would just add to that, when you start to think about, then what enables that, and it’s the ability to draw those insights near real-time in the midst of a conversation direct towards the personalization of care, make a recommendation, and we haven’t quite talked about it yet, but we’ll get there. And this is, when we talk about driving health equity, health equity at the end of the day is about understanding who we are as individuals, where our starting point is, and what we need to get to our definition of health. That kind of data insight, understanding, knowing me as a person, this massive amount of data that sits around me, that then turns into equity-based discussions, equity-based recommendations, understand who I am and what I am going to react to in terms of my behaviors. That’s where we’re headed.
Saul Marquez:
Now, I think, spot on, guys. And so, there’s so much change in healthcare and the world is driving all this change.
Thom Bales:
It’s a great question, and it’s actually threaded through everything we’ve said here, and it comes back to the consumer really. There’s a lot that’s going on with regulations, but when we say what’s really driving demand, what’s driving the change in expectations, how I show up, what do I do? Even where the dollars of investment were worth, this incredible conference right here, we look around, all of these startups that are here, many of them are about solving problems that better meet consumer needs.
Patty Obermaier:
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. Patient consumerism is, I think, going through the roof and the expectations they’re bringing to their health experience, similar to what they have in other industries, I think is spot on, and we have to be able to address it because they will take their money and go elsewhere. They do have high expectations, and I think we’re seeing some very leading-edge organizations that are starting to train doctors, caregivers, in a unique and different way, focusing much more on the holistic patient because they know they’ve got to differentiate that experience to be able to get the loyalty that’s there.
Saul Marquez:
I think, such a stimulating conversation and you think about all the front doors to healthcare now. Like there used to be one, and Patty, you mentioned the patient experience. If you’re not driving a KPI on patient experience, they’re going to eat your lunch.
Thom Bales:
That’s it.
Patty Obermaier:
And we used to focus just on satisfaction. We don’t ask the question, we started to see the shift, though, to loyalty, to the experience, to the, will you refer, that kind of, because you could be satisfied but never refer somebody, potentially, or be totally loyal?
Thom Bales:
It’s fascinating because we talk about this sort of experience in the moment, this, and you think about it, we are driven by annual enrollment, right? We showed up at the doctor, etc., this industry now is thinking far more upstream from that, right? They’re thinking about, how is it I drive early influence? How is it that I actually start to think about, and we say this it’s the consumer, but the patient, as the consumer early on, and the surrounding caregivers, influencers that drive them to choice first on their plan, then on their provider, right then on their ecosystem of providers, the whole care team on a continuous basis, that is a different kind of a thinking than what we’ve had in this industry 30 years ago.
Saul Marquez:
Totally agree, totally agree. It’s so exciting to be here with you guys and thank you for your insights. For everybody listening, you don’t have to do it alone. There are partners like Microsoft and PwC that are thinking about these problems just like you. That’s the key word here, it’s Partner for excellence and solutions. Thom, Patty, I want to thank both of you for being with us today. What closing thought would you leave the listeners with and what’s the best way for them to get in touch with you?
Patty Obermaier:
My leaving thought would be, just know that there’s such innovation on the horizon, and for me, that inspires us. What we experienced today in HLTH, I think it’s going to be very different going forward and that’s exciting.
Thom Bales:
That is the, I had a discussion with our team last year as we came out of COVID and everything that we learned during COVID, and in the room, there was a sense of can we just take a breath? Can we just pause for a moment? And the challenge that we put forward is, no, now is the time for transformation, it’s the call to do something different. We have the pressure of the consumer demand, we have the momentum that we’ve seen, how quickly things can change when we start to release other constraints? So what I would leave everybody with is this sense of the next five years, but seize the opportunity for transformation.
Saul Marquez:
Love that, that’s a great close there, Thom, and Patty, thank you both. And where can people learn more about you guys, your companies?
Thom Bales:
Absolutely, PwC.com.
Patty Obermaier:
And Microsoft.com. We’re both out there.
Saul Marquez:
Love it. And folks, we’ll leave, we’ll leave the things that we discussed on today’s podcast in the show notes, so make sure you take a look at those, make sure you subscribe because you do not want to miss the interviews that we’re having here at this amazing conference. Thom, Patty, thank you both for your time.
Patty Obermaier:
Thanks so much, my pleasure.
Thom Bales:
Thank you, Saul, take care.
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