Latest / CareTalk: Healthcare. Unfiltered. / Differentiating From The Epic Standard w/ Amenities Health CEO, Aasim Saeed | HealthBiz Brief

Transcript

Differentiating From The Epic Standard w/ Amenities Health CEO, Aasim Saeed | HealthBiz Brief · CareTalk: Healthcare. Unfiltered.

• 0:06
  Welcome to Health Biz Briefs.
• 0:08
  With me, David Williams, president of Health Business Group.
• 0:11
  My guest today is Dr.
• 0:12
  Asim Saeed, CEO and founder of Amenities Health, a digital front door for providers.
• 0:18
  ASiM, most leading providers have standardized on epic and its Mychart portal.
• 0:23
  So if they have all standardized, how can they differentiate?
• 0:27
  That's a great question.
• 0:28
  So I think fundamentally we embraced exactly what you just said, which is to say epic is now the standard.
• 0:34
  But then we ask providers, is your market strategy to go with standard to be standard?
• 0:41
  This is kind of the thing that you have to get past is if you're going to differentiate yourself and earn greater patient acquisition, greater patient loyalty, you kind of inherently have to do something better, and especially in competitive markets like Dallas Fort Worth, Boston, Los Angeles, et cetera.
• 0:59
  So we think that competition is a good thing.
• 1:01
  And to differentiate yourself, you're going to have to go beyond that.
• 1:05
  Now, you do need something that works with Epic well, and obviously we're very well versed with that.
• 1:09
  Yeah, I know some of these healthcare organizations spend so much money on epic, they may just say, hey, it's in epic.
• 1:15
  So I've already paid for it and I'm kind of like exhausted my ability to pay anything more.
• 1:21
  First of all, is that true and is it a fair assessment on their part?
• 1:25
  Well, I think one thing that you're describing is the fallacy of looking at these types of systems as just sunk cost and just cost centers.
• 1:33
  And by the way, it's not just the HR, it's EHR crms, their entire website, their patient portal.
• 1:40
  And I think that's unfortunately a huge mistake that most health systems are viewing these as.
• 1:44
  Well, we got to do it because either is saying this or we got to be modern XYZ, it's never going to make us any money or it's unquantifiable.
• 1:51
  Absolutely not true.
• 1:53
  Everything that we do is meant to turn those legacy investments, including the cloud, by the way, into revenue generating, consumer driven, ROI driven investments.
• 2:03
  Because if this isn't all getting you better customers, new customers, better patient loyalty, what's it all for?
• 2:08
  And by the way, that's probably dismissing a huge clinical outcomes, but that's not what we do.
• 2:13
  But that's obviously important.
• 2:14
  But these should all be revenue generating legacy systems that their investments pay off for.
• 2:20
  So you've been speaking for some time about the importance of membership plans in healthcare like Amazon prime and healthcare.
• 2:27
  So my question know now that Amazon bought one medical and they're offering kind of a membership there, I mean, is Amazon prime the Amazon prime of healthcare.
• 2:38
  I would argue it is strongly not, but for two reasons.
• 2:41
  One is, I think we believe that patients love their one medical memberships now available at Amazon prime, but they don't love them for, I think, the massively differentiated experience.
• 2:55
  We've talked to 100 plus one medical members and they're like, yeah, I can get an appointment tomorrow.
• 2:59
  So in other words, that's the bar.
• 3:01
  The bar is very low.
• 3:02
  And the thing that impresses them about it is very low.
• 3:05
  Equivalently.
• 3:06
  That being said, it doesn't solve a dozen other problems.
• 3:08
  The cost of hospitalization, a surprise bill, lack of price and transparency.
• 3:13
  And frankly, that's why I think also you're not seeing a lot of loyalty associated with it.
• 3:19
  So even though Amazon bought one medical, the vast majority of finances for the one medical model are paid by partner health systems.
• 3:27
  And the idea was there, well, if they partner with one medical, they'll get those referrals.
• 3:32
  And unfortunately, I think a concierge primary care membership has only proven that that promotes no loyalty overall to the system.
• 3:39
  And so I think there's a huge opportunity for a different type of loyalty.
• 3:43
  But the point is very well taken that it's got to go beyond one medical.
• 3:46
  It's got to be differentiated.
• 3:48
  And being able to get next day appointments is kind of assumed.
• 3:51
  But there's a lot of other problems to be fixed that we think memberships can address.
• 3:55
  In the past decade or so, there's been a lot of use of data and technology to try to make healthcare better.
• 4:00
  Think about things like big data.
• 4:02
  Now we're talking about, there was predictive modeling, and now we're talking about AI.
• 4:06
  A lot of people have seen it in 2023, just how big of a role can technology or AI play in healthcare, and how do you see that rolling out over the coming years?
• 4:16
  So I think technology is going to be massive sometimes.
• 4:21
  I'm a clinician by background in public policy and otherwise, and I kind of fell backwards in my career in becoming a product person.
• 4:27
  I love it, but I think sometimes I'm like, oh, but our technology is simple.
• 4:32
  A digital front door, like finding a doctor booking an appointment.
• 4:36
  These are not blockchain or AI or other stuff, but it takes a lot of technology to connect all these dots and to make it seem seamless.
• 4:43
  So it's very much technology is a critical part of the solution.
• 4:47
  But I think the one thing that I always try to overemphasize, that I find underemphasized in the market is you got to start with the problem that you're solving.
• 4:55
  And unfortunately, I think often we're trying to point the fanciest technology at the most marginal, fringe problems.
• 5:03
  And that's what I don't love.
• 5:04
  And so I'll give you a concrete example.
• 5:08
  We're seeing a lot of AI being explored in the.
• 5:12
  Well, the physician's inbox is now flooded because everyone post Covid has downloaded the app and they want the MyChart messages to get the free visit.
• 5:22
  Basically, that's not a technology problem.
• 5:24
  There's no amount of AI that's going to solve that.
• 5:26
  It's a business problem.
• 5:28
  They downloaded the app, they want the free visit.
• 5:30
  What are you going to do differently?
• 5:31
  Overall, it's nothing to do with can AI respond, because no matter how many algorithms you teach it to do, the predictive one, if a physician is still involved, you still have the problem of is the patient getting a free visit?
• 5:43
  Is the physician asked to do a bunch of uncompensated work?
• 5:46
  Those are inherent.
• 5:47
  That has nothing to do with the technology.
• 5:49
  And we seem to be like, throwing technology at that problem.
• 5:52
  And so that's one where, again, we have to solve for a new business model that excites both those parties.
• 5:57
  Not just be like, CHGT will take care of it for you, because it won't.
• 6:01
  There's no world where that happens.
• 6:04
  Well, we'll have to come back to a parallel universe, and maybe we'll find it somewhere over there.
• 6:09
  Well, that's it for another episode of Health Biz briefs on the Caretalk podcast.
• 6:13
  If you like what you heard, be sure to subscribe on your favorite service.
• 6:17
  Thank you, team.
• 6:18
  It was a pleasure. Thanks for having me.