Latest / Becker’s Healthcare Digital Health + Health IT / Dr. Richard Zane, Chief Innovation Officer at UCHealth and Professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine

Transcript

Dr. Richard Zane, Chief Innovation Officer at UCHealth and Professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine · Becker’s Healthcare Digital Health + Health IT

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  - Prepare to dive into the forefront
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  of healthcare innovation at our 14th annual meeting coming
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  up on April 8th
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  through 11th at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago, with thousands
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  of industry leaders converging over four dynamic days
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  of discussions on crucial topics from health IT
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  to executive leadership.
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  It's where the future of healthcare takes shape.
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  We can't wait to connect with you in person
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  and engage in these important conversations.
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  - This is Laura Dedo with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast.
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  I'm thrilled today to be joined by Dr. Richard Zain,
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  chief Innovation Officer at uc Health.
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  Dr. Zane's, a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
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  - Lovely to be here. Thanks for having me.
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  - Now I know we'll get into a lot of the different things
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  that you're doing there at uc Health and,
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  and really what you're looking ahead for.
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  But before we dive into the broader discussion,
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  can you tell us a little bit more
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  about yourself and your background?
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  - Sure. So I am a practicing physician.
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  I'm an emergency physician.
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  Uh, I chair the Academic Department
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  of Emergency Medicine at the University
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  of Colorado School of Medicine.
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  I also, I'm a professor at the medical school
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  and the business school, and as chief innovation officer,
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  I work with the senior leadership team at our health system,
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  which is a 14 hospital system based in Colorado to
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  identify problems where there may
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  be a technological solution.
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  And sometimes, most of the time it's a combination of
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  process people and tools.
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  And the tools are, are where we look
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  for technological solutions.
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  When we do that, we think about
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  what our ideal partnerships look like,
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  and our ideal partnerships are the problem statement is
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  valid and there isn't an out of the box solution
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  that we have a potential partner
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  that understands the problem statement
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  and we culturally are aligned, uh,
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  that we're gonna be a customer,
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  a co-development partner and an investor.
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  And when we find a problem statement that needs to be solved
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  and a partner that is as interested in solving the problem
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  as as we are, and we can meet all three of those criteria,
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  we usually can hit it out of the park
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  and then we help that product or that company scale.
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  Because if it's a problem for us, it's a problem
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  for the other 2000 hospitals
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  or systems in the United States.
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  - Well, that's so fascinating and
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  and I really think that's an interesting approach
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  and a great approach to have that win-win situation
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  of being able to work with companies that, you know,
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  really are solving problems or challenges for the system
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  and, and then again, help them grow and scale
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  and learn from, you know,
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  that real world application within uc health.
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  So that's really cool.
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  I, I'm wondering, can you dive a bit deeper
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  and tell me about one of the most successful partnerships
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  or projects from the last year or two?
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  Uh, what did you do and how did you measure the results?
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  - So I like to say that I, I have one
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  of the most interesting jobs that exist in healthcare.
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  And the reason I believe that is
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  because I get to be creative with other creative people
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  to address problems that
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  very frequently have palpable solutions.
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  So even though scientists are remarkably creative
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  and work incredibly hard
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  and are highly challenged, sometimes they wait years
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  or decades for things to come to fruition.
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  I get to say that so many people did not die,
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  or people's lives were, were better
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  or we were able to care for more patients in a,
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  in a more cost effective way
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  through the projects that we do.
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  So that's really why I love, uh, what it is that I do.
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  And the best problems are the ones
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  that are identified at the front lines, not problems
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  that I think may exist, not problems that companies come
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  and tell me I have, uh,
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  but problems that people who are responsible
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  for the work say, Hey, we can't get through this problem.
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  Uh, do you think you can help us think about a solution?
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  And when we do that, the first thing we do is have people
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  articulate a problem statement
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  and in a pretty structured way, meaning
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  here is the introductory sentence, not introductory,
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  five paragraphs or five pages.
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  Here is the quantification of the problem.
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  If we were able to solve this,
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  we would find two more cancers
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  or we would find 2000 more cancers because
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  although two is important, 2000 is really compelling.
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  And then here are the other systems that attempted to,
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  to solve it or not.
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  And we'll do an environmental scan
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  and we'll go across the country usually,
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  uh, through connections.
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  Sometimes we'll get on a plane
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  and see if anybody has actually solved it.
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  And if they have, we're gonna
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  learn and we're gonna implement.
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  We're not gonna go and start a company or we're not gonna go
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  and partner with a company to start a new product.
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  Uh, but if they haven't solved it,
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  and it's a problem for us,
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  we know it's a problem for everybody.
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  So those are the types of problems that are most ideal.
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  And you know, we're as strategic as,
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  uh, we can be.
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  Very often we're opportunistic,
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  meaning another system will say,
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  Hey, have you heard of this company?
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  Or a company will come to us
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  and we'll say, wow, that looks very interesting and,
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  and we'll do a deep dive.
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  Uh, but that's how we function.
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  And then we think about how we keep in our guiding
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  principles of how we deliver work.
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  Meaning how does it affect the patient?
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  How does it not make care more expensive and complex?
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  How do we preserve provider workflow?
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  How do we make it easier and not harder for our providers
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  and how do we make it better for our patients?
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  - That's such a great point.
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  And you know, I really appreciate that thought process
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  because so much goes into, um, having those kind of, um,
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  ways of trying to make sure you're solving the right problem
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  and, and, uh, really being impactful
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  and meaningful with how the solution is rolled out now,
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  what are some of the top priorities that you have
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  for the next 12 months or so?
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  What will really be top of mind for you?
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  - Well, what we're working on now is broadly,
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  we spend a lot of time
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  thinking about the virtualization of care.
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  And when people say virtual health
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  or telehealth, they have an immediate picture
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  of a doctor in front of a computer speaking
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  to a patient on the other side, that's not what we mean.
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  We mean using intelligence and intelligence.
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  Like innovation can mean everything and nothing, uh,
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  but using math, whether it's AI
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  or whether it's prescriptive analytics
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  or generative AI to do the work
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  that would usually require people to do so that the people,
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  um, can use human brains to adjudicate.
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  So what we like to do is think about
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  human adjudication and think about what we can automate.
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  So we think a lot about automating care
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  where there are so many confounding variables
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  of single human can't possibly adjudicate 2000
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  or 2,500 variables.
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  And then we do the same with administrative automation.
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  Things like how do you do capacity management
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  across 14 hospitals?
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  How do you load balance acuity across different units?
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  How do you do revenue cycle and automate it?
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  Uh, how do you interact on a, on a patient basis,
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  uh, with, you know, a verbal, uh, like a,
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  a series like, uh, interface.
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  So that's a lot of what we work on is making it easier
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  for our patients, making it more accurate and safer
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  and more automated.
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  And broadly that's what we look at.
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  And we do everything from helping
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  providers choose pharmacotherapy for their patients so
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  that when they prescribe a medication,
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  not only is it the right medication,
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  but it's also a medication that their payer
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  or their pharmacy benefits manager actually covers.
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  So we don't have a third
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  of the prescriptions being left at the pharmacy
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  'cause the patient shows up
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  and realizes there's a $500 copay.
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  We know exactly what that copay is gonna be
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  and we can have a conversation
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  with the patient when it's gonna be something
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  that is substantive for that patient.
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  So our pharmacy left behind rate went from, you know, 20
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  to 30% to almost zero
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  because we are able to drive patients to medications
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  that are clinically equivalent
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  and covered by their their payer.
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  Uh, we've been able to do things like harness, you know,
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  linguistic modeling and AI to keep track
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  of incidental findings.
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  And incidental findings, um, are scary
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  because there are thousands upon thousands of tests done.
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  And even though the tests are done for a specific reason,
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  sometimes tests identify other things
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  that need to be followed up.
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  If I do a chest x-ray on you
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  because I'm worried that you have pneumonia,
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  I will say you do or don't have pneumonia.
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  But if there's also something there could be a nodule
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  and a nodule on a chest X-ray could be cancer,
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  then we need a process to be able to, to keep track of that.
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  And there wasn't great processes
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  and this is a national problem.
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  So sometimes the report will be written,
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  the report will be forwarded to a primary care doctor,
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  even if that primary care doctor didn't order that test.
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  And then it would rely on the primary care doctor
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  or their assistant to read the entire report, make note
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  that John Smith has a nodule
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  and needs to have a follow-up chest x-ray in a year
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  or even a CT scan to follow that up
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  and then multiply that times all the types of tests
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  that people get, whether it's chest x-rays or pap smears
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  or mammograms or biopsies
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  or blood tests or MRIs.
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  The MRIs are done for a specific indication,
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  but there's often something else that is seen.
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  So how do we keep track of that?
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  We invested
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  and partnered with a company called Eon Health
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  that does exactly that.
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  And what we found is that we went from pretty good,
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  um, following up incidental findings, not great,
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  pretty good maybe okay to 98.3%,
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  which is hundreds upon hundreds
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  of either cancers being eliminated from someone's
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  problem list or identifying a cancer way earlier than it
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  otherwise would've been identified.
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  So that is a big win for us and our patients.
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  - Absolutely. It, it is really impressive and,
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  and what a great and empowering story of how, you know,
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  the team can work together
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  and bring technology in the process, um,
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  to be a huge difference maker
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  and move the needle for um, patients who really,
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  as you mentioned in the beginning of our discussion,
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  are having their lives saved by the fact that these techno
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  or that their, um, cancers
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  and illnesses are identified early
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  and then the right treatments are, are administered.
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  So that's really powerful and great to hear.
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  Uh, before we wrap up, I'm wondering, you know,
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  if you look into the future
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  and just all the possibilities as technology continues
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  to evolve and as healthcare, um, evolves as well,
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  how do you anticipate that your role in teams will change?
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  - I think that there will be exponential pressure
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  because of the fundamental alterations
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  and the finances of medicine that we've seen post pandemic.
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  I am very fond of saying
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  that it's white knuckle time in healthcare
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  and it's white knuckle time in healthcare, uh,
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  health systems are not able to generate the amount
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  of margin that they need to be sustainable.
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  And there are exceptions to that rule,
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  and that is the biggest change.
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  And healthcare cannot be
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  or can no longer be the last bastion of industry
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  where deploying technology increases complexity and cost.
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  We need to deploy technology to decrease complexity,
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  to decrease cost, to make things safer, better, faster,
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  meet patient patients where they want to be in a way
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  that they can actually afford, that society can handle
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  that type of a cost.
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  'cause the cost now is not sustainable societally.
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  And one of the things in addition to payer reform,
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  pharmaceutical reform is going to be understanding
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  what technology can and should do
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  and where that line between technology
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  and humans interfaces.
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  - Absolutely. Dr. Zane, thank you so much
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  for joining us on the podcast today.
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  This has been a fascinating discussion
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  and I look forward to connecting with you again soon.
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  - Thanks. Bye.