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Saul Marquez:
Hey, everybody. Saul Marquez with the HLTH Matters podcast. I want to welcome you back to the podcast, and if you have not subscribed yet, please go ahead and hit the subscribe button. And if you're back for more, welcome back! Today we have another amazing interview. Today it's Lisa Collins that will be hosting, she is the CEO of Optum Advisory Services and is responsible for their payer, provider, and strategy and growth teams at the Optum Advisory Services Group. She supports the growth of the teams and they've achieved top healthcare advisory services in the country. Prior to Optum, Lisa was with Cerner Corporation, where she served as vice president of Global Services, leading their consulting, managed services, and support business. Prior to joining Cerner, Lisa was managing director at Accenture in their healthcare practice, responsible for establishing and leading the healthcare provider practice. Preceding Accenture, she spent 20 years at Siemens Medical Solutions in a variety of leadership roles, including their North America services business. I'm excited to dive into some really excellent points around technology, how we incorporate things and how to best benefit patients. Without further ado, I want to welcome Lisa to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining me.
Lisa Collins:
Thank you. Very nice to be here.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah. So, Lisa, an incredible event and Optum is doing so much to transform the way care is delivered. I'm excited to have you here. Before we dive into that stuff, I want to ask you, what is it that inspires your work in healthcare?
Lisa Collins:
I guess the opportunity to, of course, to fix a lot of still what is not as seamless as it could be. Been in healthcare my entire career, plenty of opportunity to still fix and continue to drive efficiency, and I would say just obviously, provide better patient outcomes and better care for all of us as healthcare consumers.
Saul Marquez:
We need it. We need it.
Lisa Collins:
Yes.
Saul Marquez:
And you have such an impressive resume and experience, Cerner, on the care delivery side as well, Optum. So I'm excited to connect with you on a couple of things here, what are some examples of how predictive analytics are being used to forecast health trends and anticipate staffing demands?
Lisa Collins:
Yeah, we're actually using a lot to try to, first of all, predict patient volume. So once you start understanding what your patient volume is down to, even personalization around the types of care that's required, the types of, you know, whether chronic conditions and certain zip codes and even down to that kind of personalization, you then can start projecting out what are your staffing needs, what is your supply chain needs, what are your needs around room availability, surgical rooms, things like that, imaging, all of that comes downstream from being able to start forecasting your volumes.
Saul Marquez:
Lisa, what data do you use for that?
Lisa Collins:
Yeah, plenty of data, right? So you do get a lot though from the EMR data, and then you start looking at just really your population, you know, what's happening within your population in certain zip codes, things like that too, that you can start utilizing within that. But then honestly, it depends how far out in the future you're trying to go. Where we're most predictable, and I would say actually where we're most accurate in our predictions is being able to really look fairly short term. You know, you're looking days, weeks out, not months out. So social determinants and things like that are further long-term. We're not quite there on, you know, the accuracy there, the further out you go, the less accurate is. But when you can get shorter term, which is really critical.
Saul Marquez:
Super valuable, right? A couple of weeks is valuable.
Lisa Collins:
Of, days at this point is.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah.
Lisa Collins:
Hours sometimes is valuable.
Saul Marquez:
You're so right about that.
Lisa Collins:
Yeah.
Saul Marquez:
You're so right about that.
Lisa Collins:
And that's just really, it's EMR data, it's your scheduling data. It's then looking at from staffing perspective, your, whether it's Kronos data or things like that from your staffing capabilities and what you have capacity. So it's typical supply and demand like any other industry, we just haven't done enough of that focus within the healthcare industry, which Amazon can predict exactly needs of any community at any time, in any individual, right?
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, it's impressive. And so the Optum platform enables this?
Lisa Collins:
Yeah, we're building out algorithms. Yeah. So, I mean, again, we're building out algorithms that start being able to predict all this and helping our clients be able to forecast those needs. And then you continually learn on those algorithms and machine learning that continuously learns on how to improve based on that data, based on the information of how to then what is the right staffing, what is the right labor, what is the types of labor, you know, and then all the supplies, etc. that come.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, the entire chain.
Lisa Collins:
Right.
Saul Marquez:
So we're in an environment of labor challenges.
Lisa Collins:
Sure.
Saul Marquez:
And so as providers look to prepare for when patient volumes go up significantly and maybe they don't have the staff.
Lisa Collins:
Yes.
Saul Marquez:
What do they do? What are the options?
Lisa Collins:
Sure. First of all, retaining labor, getting labor, finding out how to get labor. I mean, that's obviously the big focus of all healthcare providers right now, it's just a war on talent. So having said that, providing flexibility with your labor or providing opportunities for virtual and in-person, we're using technologies even to allow virtual-type assistance to maybe less-skilled nursing folks that are at the bedside. So whether it's a nurse's aide or something, but you're then supported by virtual technology that is a more skilled and trained clinician on the back end. So all sorts of, I would say right now there's a lot of innovation going on of what is that right mix, what's the right, you know, what are the tools and technologies you can use, what is the automation, and automation into the clinical journeys and to things like that that will take away from the manual task, especially within the EMR and systems, so that the labor that you do need and require at the bedside is really then focused just on the patient.
Saul Marquez:
Yes.
Lisa Collins:
And helping the patient, not on some of the back office type things or the administrative tasks.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, it's really helping nursing and physicians, I guess, practice at the top of their license.
Lisa Collins:
Exactly. Long ways to go, though. A lot more opportunity in the space, even building on to like clinical decision support systems and next best action and being able to provide those recommendations the more and more of that kind of intelligence so we can insert into this whole clinical journey, the better off will be allowing them to work at the top of the license.
Saul Marquez:
That's fantastic. Now, how would you say Optum is different than everything else out there? Now, how are you guys positioned to help health leaders succeed?
Lisa Collins:
I mean, I think the biggest thing is obviously the amount of data and analytics and insights that we have available to us to help with building up those algorithms, to try to test these algorithms, to develop machine learning, the investments we can make in that kind of technology that's required to do what I just described.
Saul Marquez:
Yes.
Lisa Collins:
Is endless. I mean, honestly, it's just endless. And part of the reason why I came to Optum, big part of the reason why I came because of that capability.
Saul Marquez:
Wow.
Lisa Collins:
So I would say that's the biggest differentiator. And then just the expertise within deep, deep expertise of clinicians, physicians, advisory type folks that are deep in healthcare. But all of those folks that we have in our organization, again, endless that we can tap into.
Saul Marquez:
Thank you for that. Now, as you think about maybe some examples, any examples of customer success and how the technology has been deployed?
Lisa Collins:
Yeah, I mean, again, I think within the Rev cycle back office in healthcare in general, same with us, you know, we actually take over a lot of our, we run revenue cycle back office billing claims, all the kinds for our clients, right? That's something that's been in the industry for a while, right? And we're always becoming better and better at that of creating intelligence into all of those administrative processes to remove burdensome manual type work, so that's absolutely a proof point. We've been doing that for years and again, now we're getting more into the clinical side and clinical dishes and support and some of that that we're building out. And we've had some success obviously with that side as well. But we need, I would say, all of us, not just Optum, but all of us need to continue to pursue that and build out that kind of really creating next best action for physicians, caregivers, things like that, that allow them to continue to really focus on just the patient and not all the other administrative type things.
Saul Marquez:
That's fantastic. Lisa, thank you So really appreciate that. And one final question for you. What are the metrics of a sustainable workforce?
Lisa Collins:
I think that's a great question. You know, what we look for is obviously engagement by your teams, are folks engaged? Are they energized? Are you seeing higher rates of sick days, PTO time? Are you seeing higher rates of, you know, even violence in the workforce, things like that? There's issues.
Saul Marquez:
Very real.
Lisa Collins:
And I would say within healthcare specifically, though, it's patient satisfaction scores, error rates, never events, all those kinds of things that you got to, you must monitor and understand is that increase or decreasing? I think those are indicators of how your workforce is feeling and how they're engaged, risk and safety scores, things like that. So, you know, in my recommendation, any of that is an, offset Optum as well as just stay connected to your teams, have everyone feel a sense of purpose, a sense of value and appreciation, and let them have a safe space to talk about any issues they are having. And again, just appreciation and thank you.
Saul Marquez:
Totally, totally. And too often we forget about that, right? We get so busy.
Lisa Collins:
So busy. And if you just need to take the time.
Saul Marquez:
It's a good reminder. Lisa. Well, listen, thank you for your time. Really appreciate the opportunity to connect with you on some of the unique things Optum is doing. What closing thought would you leave us with?
Lisa Collins:
I think just all of us need to stay focused on how do we continue to improve this healthcare delivery system, U.S., globally, across the world of just improving patient care and taking care of our workforce and the folks that are out there each and every day taking care of all of us as consumers and patients and, and just taking care of our folks.
Saul Marquez:
Let's take care of each other. Lisa, thank you so much. Really appreciate you.
Lisa Collins:
Yep. Thank you!
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