Bridging HUGE Gaps between Consumers, Providers, and Payors with Evan Osborne, Managing Partner at Diabetics United was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the latest audio-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors. Sonix is the best audio automated transcription service in 2020. Our automated transcription algorithms works with many of the popular audio file formats.
Saul Marquez:
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Saul Marquez:
Welcome back to the Outcomes Rocket, Saul Marquez is here and today I have the privilege of hosting Evan Osborne. Evan Osborne is the Founder and Managing Partner of Diabetic’s United and also president and CEO of Ride Salem and health care management consultant with a focus and quality initiatives and change management. Evan has over 10 years of professional experience in direct patient care as well as he’s held leadership roles in both the payor and provider realms of the industry. Evan has a diverse background and continuous improvement systems building and program management, and has earned a bachelor’s degree in biology at Western Oregon University and in therapeutic radiation oncology from the Oregon Health and Science University. He later earned his master’s degree in public health at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and is currently completing a doctor of Business Administration at California Southern University. I’m excited to chat about the work that Evan is doing with Diabetic’s United and really his his contributions to health care overall. So, Evan, such a pleasure to have you here with us. Thanks for joining us.
Evan Osborne:
Honored to be on your program Saul. And a mouthful that you just read off from my bio there and for working through.
Saul Marquez:
You’re a busy man. You’re a busy man.
Evan Osborne:
I like to be busy, you know.
Saul Marquez:
So one of my favorite quotes is An Idle Mind is a workshop of the devil, right?
Evan Osborne:
Yep. Yep.
Saul Marquez:
You’ve done a lot of really great stuff in health care, Evan. And I definitely want to share with everybody listening the work that you guys are up to at diabetic’s United but also Unite Salem, which is really cool, cool stuff. But before we dive into that, I love to just park for a second and better understand what inspires your work and health care.
Evan Osborne:
Certainly. Well, it stems back the turn of the century when I was pursuing career opportunities are aligned with my education, with being biology and computer science is a unique blend of potentially stepping into the health care realm. And then during that time, on a personal level, I had one of my favorite uncles call me up and told me about their brain tumor that they just developed and they were working with some health professionals called radiation therapists that is really enjoying his time with them, that they’re really good at what they do and such. And I never heard of such a field before. Around the same time, my university counsellor recommended a program at Oregon Health and Science University Radiation Oncology. So having that so close together, I’ve being told about the program. I looked into it and before I knew it, I was I was in the program, a wonderful program there in Portland, Oregon. And then 10 years later, after work, working bedside in oncology, taking on leadership roles, progressive leadership, I was exposed to bigger picture realms of health care. And then on another personal note, I later developed Type one diabetes late in life. So I went from very rarely going to health care, not really seeing it on the customers level more just as a health professional, I became a frequent flyer customer. So I see from end to end. And then my career took me into both sides of the industry and the health insurance industry hospital side and then consulting as well. So with my diverse background there and my personal connection with it, I continue to strive to contribute to improving the self to this health care system that that’s unfortunately a little bit more messed up than we’d like to admit, but with all the numbers out there, it’s easy to see that it needs improvement. And that’s what motivates me to continue getting up every day to help improve health care.
Saul Marquez:
Evan that’s that’s great, man. I mean, how those two roads kind of converge to get you into the oncology field and then you stayed in and then type one diabetes happened to you. And you just like you said, this is this is it for me. You’re contributing in a big way. I appreciate you sharing your story. Yeah. And you know what? You know, we don’t truly, fully understand until you live it and, you know, having the the steps that that you have to take to manage diabetes, you live it firsthand. And it inspired you to create Diabetics United. So tell us a little bit about Diabetics United and what you guys are doing to help the health care ecosystem and in particular, I think consumers, right?
Evan Osborne:
Yes, correct. So when I first was diagnosed, I was trying to teach myself, glean all the information that I could to help manage my disease. And what I noticed was there’s pockets of information throughout the Internet, but you had to go pretty deep to get what was useful and practical to the season diabetic. So you have an exorbitant amount of information for diabetes one on one, basically. So someone that’s in the process of developing diabetes or just recently got diagnosed. You’re just basically learning the alphabet of diabetes, that’s what’s out there, but there is no actual central location where it takes it to the next level, more of a practical approach, bringing everyone together in the industry. So like a hub. And Google is the hub. And in essence, there’s so many layers to get to where you need to go. It’s not filtered out and it takes a lot of time to get what is pertinent that you’re looking for from like someone such as myself, the background of diabetes. I can kind of filter and narrow it down to what’s practical for diabetics, but also the ability to interact with it. So diabetes is a completely interactive platform. So it’s a Web based solution, you could say. So members can get on the website and add content to the site. So it’s kind of a fusion of Facebook, Amazon and LinkedIn. And we’ve got some other services that we’re hoping to roll out here in August that will be practical to this day and age being remotely accessible and such.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, you know, Evan, that’s so cool. So really, I mean, you get diabetes. What do you do? Diabetes one on just tons of information everywhere. But it’s it’s like silo, there’s a bunch of stuff here and there. You’ve done a really nice job of creating a platform where people can access not only resources to educate themselves, but also it seems like a community that they can learn from. And I think just like anything in life Right. you learn from those that have been there, done that and it shortens the learning curve.
Evan Osborne:
Exactly. So the community is kind of the Facebook fusion of it without Big Brother looking, looking down on what you’re doing, it’s run by diabetics. And so there’s no interest in sharing the data and such. It’s all about collaboration and promoting a healthy diabetic lifestyle and such. But we have a feature on there as champions as well, where we like to promote those that have our faith and day to day challenges. The most recent one is this is Oregon as a championship, as a type one diabetic in our household. So her success professionally as a mother of a type one diabetic is great to read. And we can relate to how they’re championing their disease. And we’re hoping to recruit others that want to want to share their story of their championing their disease and all types of diabetes. So I’ve been talking a lot about Type one diabetes, type two, and then Modie a lot. There’s all these other genres of types that folks want to recognize and realize that they have other challenges. Even fellow diabetics don’t even realize, and they have a platform that they can discuss and promote awareness of the type of diabetes that they are facing.
Saul Marquez:
And as you think about the platform and the resources and the community, what would you say makes diabetes united different or what makes it stand out from what what other resources are out there?
Evan Osborne:
I think it’s because of the hub aspect of it. It’s everything, anything and everything diabetes related. So it’s it’s a practical to vendors and health professionals as well, bringing folks together. So we have a diabetics might not be aware of. So even psychologists, psychiatrists and mental health and diabetes is becoming a recognized barrier. Also, even health advocates with health insurance and such, that’s just a very tumultuous ride when you’re first diagnosed with diabetes is how how you’re going to get the income or the finances for treating and managing your disease. Advocates are there to help hold your hand through there and then even lawyers. So if there’s any discrimination that you’re suffering from or you are curious as to how what your rights are as a newly diagnosed diabetics, there’s resources out there that you can find through the dye guides. And then life coaches are real big, especially the life coaches that they themselves have. Diabetes are fantastic resources. So as members of the website, they have access to those Tyagi features to help close those gaps that form. So the providers and the payers, they got their their little their role in the game. But there’s some gaps there that that they don’t realize that on a personal level, diabetics face when one thing is a prior authorization, there’s a bane of diabetics existence. So being coached on how to hold the hands of those involved with a prior authorization to expedite what you need to manage your disease, this site will help provide that for you. There’s another service that we’re going to be rolling out here shortly, almost like a personal assistant concierge help that members will have access to where we can personally help close that gap, where they can have a certain number of tokens that they cash in. If they’re having issues with prior off, they’re getting a product that they need. One personal situation is DexCom sensors. Sometimes they’ll fail prematurely. They don’t exactly like lasted for ten days, like. A promise and you need to report those, so because your health insurance will only recognize 10 days worth of service, and if you’re only having them live for seven days and you’re going to be at the end of the month, upwards to 12 days short of not having what you need to manage your disease. And so my team then would help make sure you stay on top of that inventory and report the failed sensor to the sensor that you need as a member, utilizing I can’t hear because otherwise they wouldn’t they wouldn’t pay for it.
Saul Marquez:
Right. So you’d be censored.
Evan Osborne:
Exactly. And the frustrating thing is, as a diabetic, you’re on the phone so much throughout the month hours and you’re battling with health insurance companies, are battling with free products or battling with pharmacy. You’re setting up appointments with providers. Like I said earlier, you become a frequent flyer and you win that lottery that nobody wants to win. And you you have to utilize health care so much more than you want. And it’s bad enough that you have to spend so much time of your life on the phone. It’s hard enough to manage your disease. And it’d be great to just have that time taken care of from a professional that knows what they’re doing. And you can go and focus on living your own life rather than battling phone trees, arguing with people. So one of the motivating factors.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah. And so, Evan, I mean, this is so great. And one of the things that the concierge service would do is help people with that. So instead of making all the calls themselves, the concierge would do it.
Evan Osborne:
Correct. So they would fill out a form to say, yeah, I think it’s very innovative and we’ll have a little bit of a learning curve as we deploy it. Such but my texting is actively rolling that out right now and trying to streamline it once it does occur and do a little quality improvement down the road to dial it in. But I’m really excited about it. I personally hope to utilize it myself if a team of firing on all cylinders and stuff. So I’m really excited for it. I think it will help close some of those gaps that are occurring between the air provider, vendor, pharmacy rollercoaster.
Saul Marquez:
You know what? If I had diabetes, that would be something I would sign up for. How much does it cost and how much time do you think on average you can save somebody?
Evan Osborne:
Let’s start with the price. So we’re starting out with a twenty five dollar application fee because there are privacy hoops that we have to jump through, just filling out a record release forms so that we can speak on behalf of the patients to the different members on their care team. And then a monthly fee of thirty nine ninety nine three three tokens to start out. So that means that they have three issues that they know that they’re going to take some time on the phone and it’s worth thirty nine. Ninety nine to Tashima that tells you to save them time. We’re talking four to five hours a month of your time, even even beyond that battling phone every five hours and such.
Saul Marquez:
Just like a little thing here, little thing there. And then before you know, and at the end of the month you’re five hours out.
Evan Osborne:
Yeah. It takes like ten minutes to find the right person to talk to. And if you’re working eight to five, typically that’s how the other businesses work. You don’t have time to step away from a meeting or Right. you waste your lunch dealing with this just so you can just send a quick message to the concierge and we’ll run with it, maybe a little bit of back and forth. Just make sure we got all our ducks in a row and take care of it for you.
Saul Marquez:
And that’s great. I think that’s a that’s a great service. I would like I said I would sign up.
Evan Osborne:
Good to hear.
Saul Marquez:
Can they do other things like can can they, like, order pizza and stuff for me? If I want.
Evan Osborne:
It would have to be all diabetic in terms of your conditions. It lays it down where it’s all happening, you diabetic related. So, yes. I mean, you know, when was there. Yeah, exactly. Maybe down the road something other fields of.
Saul Marquez:
No, that’s great though. I mean it’s a true value add. And you’re right. I mean a lot of the issues happen during the workday and you have to get them addressed during the workday. And so you’re busy, you’re working. How are you going to do it? Right. So you’re taking time out of work to get these things addressed and it’s decreasing in productivity. I mean, even thinking about it from an employer standpoint, my mind always just goes to the employer standpoint. Right. so much of the bill is footed by the employer. So what about your employees that are spending those five hours a month doing this? How much more productive could they be? And how about on the employer level, I mean, any any opportunities for you and your team eventually to to take on a pool of employees?
Evan Osborne:
Yeah, once we have evidence based that what we’re doing is improving time efficiency during the workday. So we’d have to show all of the calls coming in during the eight to five hours. We could potentially go to employers and kind of lobby or sell it to them, as I see true. That would help their business outcomes. But that’s down the road for sure.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah. So what would you say is one of the biggest setbacks you’ve had in either diabetic’s United and and what did you gain from that setback to learn an error? It could be somewhere else like it just in general in your career and.
Evan Osborne:
With diabetics and everybody associated with this pandemic. I was talking with my tech team way back in November, proposing these programs that I wanted to roll out through the website. And one of them was telehealth feature I like. This is the new future of health care. I believe in it. I mean, one thing with diabetics is having to go to the provider at least every three months. And when you think about it from your doorstep to clinic room and back to your doorstep, how much time you invest into just getting to the provider and basically hearing what you already know because you’ve had the disease. And the big discussion basically is just what are your numbers, what’s your emergency and what not? And you can do that remotely. So you don’t need to sit in front of the provider and hear hear this so we can just get the lab report and know what you need to do. The endocrinologists are great in adjusting if you have a pump and then what your your basal rates are and such as your insulin and stuff. So my math is you can always be better than endocrinologists. It’s what they do and they can inject those numbers safely for you. So they are a necessity in health care for sure.
Evan Osborne:
But as far as the face to face, that’s not a necessity. So rolling out of telehealth feature and diabetes management is where it needs to go. And it’s been a long time coming. And I think making lemonade out of lemons, this pandemic kind of helps health care in a way. It’s going to clean up the industry. It’s going to show that there’s a lot of steps in health care that are unnecessary and redundant. It can all a lot of it can be done remotely. A lot of the outpatient clinics can be done remotely. It’s just those lab services and whatnot that need to be done in person. And not even some of the remote monitoring systems. And all the vongole is a big product company that’s coming out with those remotely accessible medical equipment and such. So as technology evolves and we are more in the house together, away or whatever, that hashtag, we’re in this together where we’re not the platform of telehealth is in the future. So I propose that back in November and that pandemic came along and they had to scramble and have to adjust to the new work environment as well and go remotely themselves and just kind of threw us off or a trajectory of launching in June is what I was hoping to do. But then push back a bit.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, yeah.
Evan Osborne:
And so that’s going to be going through. Yeah. I think you’re going through a feature so that you guys is basically like a LinkedIn type of format where they can promote people that work directly with diabetics, have skills to help diabetics in day to day challenges. What they can do is set up their appointments through the back page and it’ll send invites, video conferencing invites to the patient and the provider. And also the provider can input how much those appointments cost. So there are some price transparency available there so the patients know what they’re getting themselves into. They can preserve on the calendar what works best for them to invite to their provider can have requests. Once that point is made, they can have a to do list before they meet with a patient like what records are needed and whatnot. And so when they show up, their time is spent wisely and efficiently and we don’t need them. One hour block like being chronology side, you can do like 15, 30 minutes. So you have that time they’ll be efficient and everybody will benefit from it.
Saul Marquez:
That’s great. Yeah, and that’s that’s pretty exciting to have that opportunity through the dive guides. What would you say you’re most excited about today?
Evan Osborne:
Just growing, connecting with other vendors and folks that are in the profession as well as fellow diabetics. Just going on some of the blogs and social media sites. You learn something new every day personally that I can apply to because diabetes is a complicated disease and dealing with your diet, exercise, your lifestyle, your medications, your products and such, there’s so much information that you’re continually learning every day and being able to share that on a public platform. What I learned today, I don’t have as much time or interested in digging deep. That’s really fun to be able to educate fellow diabetics and such and help improve health care in the long run as well.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, for sure. It’s it’s a great privilege and you guys are doing a great job of it. While early in the process you guys are making some big moves. So I certainly appreciate you sharing the work that you’re up to with all of us folks. Diabetics United Dotcom is where you could find Evan and his team. Evan, why don’t you leave us with the closing thought and then the best place for the listeners could get in touch?
Evan Osborne:
I would recommend people readjusting their vision and mission to not just reduce the symptoms of but what medicine is today is it’s not incentivized to cure diseases that more or less is encouraged to put like a Band-Aid over the symptoms and hope that the patch doesn’t fall off before the 30 day readmit quality metric. So focusing on the long run. And I think health insurance companies would be the ones that really should focus on this initiative, because they’re the bankers in health care. They’re the ones that spend the money or they lose the money that instead. So focusing on incentivizing health care initiatives that cure diseases, products that are focused on curing diseases rather than just putting patches of barely covers symptoms. So I just want to do a rallying cry around focusing on charity as opposed to just treating symptoms.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, that’s a great, great closing thought, Even And if anybody was interested in collaborating, whether it be with the diet guides as a vendor or patron or member or even just collaborating with you on the project, what’s what’s the best way for them to reach out?
Evan Osborne:
There is a contact us form in the diabetic’s dot com website and then I am also on LinkedIn to connect me professionally. Those are two great resources to get a hold of the.
Saul Marquez:
Outstanding, whether you have it listeners. Evan Osborn with Diabetic’s United. Reach out Connect. See what he’s up to. Certainly great work being done to help in the health care environment. So having such such a pleasure to have you with us. Thanks so much for taking the time.
Evan Osborne:
Pleasure Saul. Honored to be on your program. Thanks.
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