Cost Savings by Proactive Surgical Condition Management with Ami Rakshit, CEO and President at PreAcute PHM 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:
Hey Outcomes Rocket listeners, Saul Marquez here. I get what a phenomenal asset a podcast could be for your business and also how frustrating it is to navigate editing and production, monetization, and achieving the ROI you’re looking for. Technical busywork shouldn’t stop you from getting your genius into the world, though. You should be able to build your brand easily with a professional podcast that gets attention. A patched-up podcast could ruin your business. Let us do the technical busy work behind the scenes while you share your genius on the mic and take the industry stage. Visit smooth podcasting dot com to learn more. That’s smooth podcasting, dotcom to learn more.
Saul Marquez:
Welcome back to the Outcomes Rocket, Saul Marquez is here and today I have the privilege of hosting Ami Rakshit rap sheet. He’s the president and CEO at PreAcute PHM. He has started and co-started four separate for-profit health care ventures currently. His interest is in population health management and disease modeling. They utilize proprietary predictive models for several disease processes to identify and recommend matching clinical pathways for patients in the pre acute or subacute stages of disease progressions. This early intervention can reduce the number of unnecessary surgeries and lower costs. He’s been in health care for quite some time now, and his current project, well in development, is holding a very large promise to many health care providers and also population health managers across the country. And so such a privilege to have you here with us today. I’m so glad that you could join us.
Ami Rakshit:
Thank you very much.
Saul Marquez:
And so it is certainly important to approach health care in really a smart way, maximizing the data that we could collect from providers or different data sources before we dive into what exactly you guys are doing, I love to better understand and learn what inspires your work and health care.
Ami Rakshit:
Well, the inspiration comes from the fact that in healthcare we have a prospect of making tangible improvements in our lives and at the same time we can enjoy commercial success.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, I mean, that’s well, very well put. And the simple way, it’s just such a meaningful place to work. And so let’s hone into the meaningful output of what you guys are doing at how are you guys adding value to the health care ecosystem?
Ami Rakshit:
Well, the primary benefit, what we’re doing is going to be the lowering of costs. That’s the commercial for. So we help lower the number of unnecessary surgeries. So why are we focusing on this? Because surgery is the most expensive component of healthcare. Today more than 20 percent of US GDP is spent on health care and seventy-nine percent of income growth is directed towards that. So all this, about a third of all cost is spent on surgery. However, is also been known that physicians and other experts, that not all surgeries are always essential. In many ways, the same ailments can be treated successfully by using alternate methods, basically the same argument. It has also been estimated that about 30 percent of all surgeries can be avoided without compromising the quality of care. This does not include emergency surgeries or optional surgery like plastic surgery. So value proposition is a pertinent method of treatment leading to pain and suffering for the patients would, reduce the risk of bad outcomes, including death, and significantly lower the cost.
Saul Marquez:
Well, I think it’s a really nice approach. And one of the challenges that come up is when you talk about the cost of surgery, it also is the revenue of the provider. And so it’s balancing that whole cost thing. The cost on one end is dollars out of somebody else’s pocket. And so tell us a little bit more about what you guys provide that is better than what’s available today that maybe addresses that as well.
Ami Rakshit:
That’s a good question. Thank you. Yes, I think the cost balancing force on one side in terms of dollars and the other side cost in terms of the patients suffering. So we try to balance or we believe that our solution will balance these two very well. So I can enlist four things that can bring it home for your listeners. First, what we are doing differently is that we are actually emphasizing proactive care. The so-called well care vs sick care. We focus on those acute conditions which lead to valuable surgery. This particular approach has not being taken by the industry. So that’s the first thing that made a difference. Number two, we are focusing our interventions in the pre acute or subacute stages of the disease before patients become acutely ill. In this stage patients are healthier, they can respond more effectively to doctors’ treatment. This effectively bends the health trajectory away from the path of expensive treatments and save on suffering ss I mentioned earlier. Number three, I would say going down a little bit deeper. Most clinical predictive models that are out there today make that binary prediction. Whether the patients are ill or not, they are at risk or not. But we create a model in a way to accurately place patients in one of seven increasing levels of pre acuity so this provides more granularity. And number four, most data analytics companies can only predict the equity of a patient’s condition, but then leave the selection of treatments to the physicians and all the caregivers. So we in addition to more accurately identifying patients’ levels of acuity, we are able to recommend and clinically validated new treatment, or intervention protocols for physicians to consider.
Saul Marquez:
Very nice. And it’s basically you’re working in the pre acute space making sure you help people stay well and preventing them from ever going down that degeneration cascade. And so you really have a proactive approach. Are you working mainly to tackle these issues with payers like insurance companies or employers that are vested in their employees’ health that also own the cost of their employee’s health?
Ami Rakshit:
Yes, absolutely. Obviously, this can be attractive to a number of players. Certainly, payers ultimately get paid for it. But if you look at today’s SCOs and I’m sure your listeners know what SCO’s issues are, so SCOs are the ones who are taking on financial risk. They’ve become both effectively a payer as well as the provider, which is the most ideal combination because sometimes when payers are trying to make changes to the process to reduce the costs, they naturally have to depend on the provider’s cooperation. So without the provider’s cooperation where the rubber meets the road, none of these suggested improvements on health care can be effective. And so I think that an organization like an SCO is probably our most ideal partner in implementing these changes. Employers will also pay for the costs will be point bearing.
Saul Marquez:
Got it, not very good. Thank you so much. And so as you explore the idea and the approach, what would you say is the key thing that you do to improve outcomes or make business better?
Ami Rakshit:
Well, primarily, we would be looking to improve by reducing the number of surgeries. There are about 80, 20 percent approach the classical management approach towards addressing any issue. So surgery is having in about a third. There are about 20 and 30 very common surgical areas that cause about 80 percent of all the expenses. So we try to focus on those conditions that lead to one of those popular surgical conditions. We are not at exotic conditions that may cause like 10 million dollars a pop. Infrequent and trying to address all of them is going to be quite expensive and unnecessary. But the knee replacements you need, replacement back surgeries, cardiac surgery, there could be cheaper anywhere from like and to fifty thousand dollars from the heart surgeons. One hundred thousand dollars, bUT do you do thousands of those a day around the country? By focusing on those, we have a much more efficient approach towards cosmetic.
Saul Marquez:
Very targeted approach Ami. I love how you guys have honed in on those particular surgeries looking to reduce those high volumes, mid-high-cost surgeries. As you’ve worked on the approach, what would you say is one of the biggest setbacks you’ve experienced and key learning that’s come out of it thus far?
Ami Rakshit:
Well, probably wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone today that it is COVID-19. Frankly, this was sent by God. None of us had any control on it. And this has really set us back significantly. But we’ve been under clinical trial, but we’ve been set back. So there isn’t much to learn from this experience. That’s pun right there. Other than that, I would say, which is probably also very common for any early-stage company, is the lack of access to sufficient capital.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah. And so it’s a problem that is very common. And hey, you know, the unfortunate thing with COVID, especially around surgical procedures, right., I mean, those came to a complete standstill. Now it seems like things are cranking back up again. And so I’m hopeful that as we get back into things that your project gained some steam and catches up.
Ami Rakshit:
Yes. Yes, I sincerely hope so. The vaccines so we’ll be well and good before you know it. I don’t want six months a year. It’ll be over, but the old problems will still be there. Totally agree. What are you most excited about? Well, that is obviously the biggest benefit or the biggest excitement would be that we can help patients really avoid unnecessary trauma that comes out of the research. And that’s probably the most exciting thing. But, you know, at a lower level, we are very excited about the success of the marketing. We’ve been doing pretty commodity for quite a while now, probably more than 20 years. And one faction of the other, not a simple process, but for this particular model, all indications are we’re doing it very well based on internal measures and correctly identify patients in the appropriate stages.
Saul Marquez:
That what we are most certainly important to have in that target area. You guys have it. It sounds like it’s working out and definitely promising right. I mean, we definitely want to be in charge of our own health care. And many times it’s those nudges, those little nudges that you’ll get to maybe push you to want to get that surgery. Is there anything that the platform you guys put together to help coach a patient or even if there’s even more deeply embedded, like institutional nudges to not do it?
Ami Rakshit:
Well, for every situation, this is a primary of the solution. So we provide a solution to the physician. As the physicians help, we will not give ourselves, but provide options for the physicians as part of that option that we provide. That is an individual or patient information package. We take it from within. Sources such as health-wise and we customize it, package it to this particular patient’s condition so the patients get to understand and also understand how what they can do at this early stages to avoid the problems of it.
Saul Marquez:
So there’s a light touch there, but mainly be to be. Yes, got it. Cool. Well, I mean, this is great. You know, sounds like you guys are putting a lot of clinically validated testing into it. And there’s an exciting opportunity for folks looking to scale back on unnecessary surgeries and also the impact of those surgeries on patients and cost to the system. I really appreciate you jumping on with us today before we conclude. I love if you could just share a closing thought with us and then the best place for the listeners could get in touch with you if something that we discussed today resonated with them.
Ami Rakshit:
Well, look for us to do more clinical trials, so, OK. We were hoping to do so in the fourth quarter of this year, but obviously, we had to push back, really push back by six months. We will come out fresh and strong. In terms of being in touch with me, looking at my telephone number 030171539 or you can email me ararkshitpreacutephm.com. Ami is my Rakshit is my last name as Raskhit. We do have a web page, but out of necessity, we really don’t put a lot of information on the web page. I’d be happy to engage in a dialogue with prospective customers who wants to know a little bit more about what we do.
Ami Rakshit:
I really appreciate it. And folks will provide those contact methods in the show notes. So make sure you check out the podcast Show notes on Outcomes Rocket dot that health. Type in Ami – AMI Rakshit RAKSHIT and you’ll find everything there, including a full transcript and short notes of our discussion. Ami this has been a ton of fun and I really appreciate you jumping on the show with us today.
Ami Rakshit:
Well, thank you, Saul. Thank you for inviting me. This has been a very interesting experience for me. I haven’t done any podcast before, but I’m very, very happy to be here and to be part of this.
Saul Marquez:
I get what a phenomenal asset a podcast could be for your business and also how frustrating it is to navigate editing and production, monetization, and achieving the ROI you’re looking for. Technical busywork shouldn’t stop you from getting your genius into the world, though. You should be able to build your brand easily with a professional podcast that gets attention. A patched-up podcast could ruin your business. Let us do the technical busy work behind the scenes while you share your genius on the mic and take the industry stage. Visit smooth podcasting dot com to learn more. That’s smooth podcasting dot com to learn more.
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