Podcast
Unlocking Healthcare’s Horizon in 2024: The Critical Nature of Understanding Your Value Equation
John Farkas
CEO
On this episode of Healthcare Market Matrix, John Farkas is joined by Taylor Underwood, Content Director at Ratio, to discuss the top three problems the healthcare industry faces today. Having completed the fall healthcare conference season, John considers the industry’s goals and priorities for 2024. How is healthcare addressing the clinician shortage? How can we improve payment processing and payer-provider relations to create less friction? How can we enhance the patient experience?
Show Notes
(1:16) Introducing Taylor Underwood
(2:36) John’s Takeaways from the Fall Conference Season
(8:47) The Healthcare Industry’s Near-Term Priorities
(16:58) Artisight, a Transformative Tool
(20:58) How Technology Is Solving the Clinician Shortage
(25:20) Payer-Provider Relations and Payment Processing
(29:53) Improving Patient Experience
(37:42) The Challenges of Point Solutions
(40:14) Closing Thoughts
Listen Now
Transcript
Introducing Taylor Underwood
John Farkas:
All right. Greetings, everybody, and welcome to Healthcare Market Matrix. I’m your host, John Farkas, and joining me in the podcast realm today is none other than my fellow Ratio teammate, Taylor Underwood. And Taylor, in my mind, really defies categorization, but since we need to put words around things because we’re humans, her title here at Ratio is content director.
But Taylor spent over a decade in the healthcare universe helping organizations articulate meaning surrounding their value propositions. And so, Taylor is going to help me today trying to sort out some of the thoughts around what we are seeing happen in the healthcare market now. So, Taylor, welcome into the Ratio Studio here.
Taylor Underwood:
Thanks, John. I’m excited to be here. I’ve been listening all season long to Healthcare Market Matrix. Excited to be part of it this time.
John Farkas:
Well, glad you’re here.
Taylor Underwood:
So I know today we’re going to flip the switch a little bit and I’m going to have the opportunity to interview you, John, so hope you’re prepared and ready for the rapid fire.
John Farkas:
Yeah. I’m trying to calm down a little bit and get ready to endure whatever you’re going to put toward me here.
John’s Takeaways from the Fall Conference Season
Taylor Underwood:
Yeah. It’ll be wild. So we’re coming off a busy fall conference season and it just kind of-
John Farkas:
Yes, we are.
Taylor Underwood:
… wrapped up, and the health tech industry is feeling that across the board. Lots of folks are traveling and having important conversations and convening it to talk about some of the biggest issues that we’re seeing in our industry.
And for the Ratio team, we had the chance to sponsor the third annual Telehealth Academy in Nashville, and John and I both got to attend that, and it was a very full day of some important conversations about what the digital future of healthcare looks like, because the future and the current is definitely digital. So it’s good that we’re all kind of moving in that direction.
John, I know you also got to attend the Healthcare Sessions in Nashville as well as the recent Becker’s Health IT Conference and then, of course, HLTH kind of being the big closer in Vegas last week. So we’re just excited today to hear from you, and what would you say some of your biggest takeaways that you gleaned from all those interactions?
John Farkas:
Yeah. Boy, it sure was a festival of panel discussions. I don’t know if any industry does panel discussions quite as well as healthcare does, but we certainly do it well, don’t we? And there were a lot of them, and hard to put a fine point on any of this. What I will say is that it’s very clear that there’s some big movements getting ready to happen. There have been some big movements happen. There’s lots of mergers, lots of companies announcing partnerships, and different elements that are trying to consolidate what’s going on.
But the big overall idea I had, especially looking at what was going on at Becker’s and then at HLTH, was, “Wow, I wonder how many of these organizations, of these booths I’m walking by are going to exist two years from now.” And a lot of the reason for that has been what we’ve seen happen around the funding curve for healthcare technology and then combining that.
I mean, we just saw record amounts of money poured into the healthcare technology realm in 2021, 2022, maybe even going back to the start of 2020, and then a dramatic pullback that happened really in the last 18 months that has corresponded directly with a dramatic, I would call it a budget crisis within many of the healthcare providers that has really changed the game as far as their ability to purchase technology and look at new opportunities and think in more expansive ways.
Many of them, many provider organizations are figuring out how to just keep the lights on right now, and that has major implications for innovation and technology, and not just in the obvious ways. I mean, there’s definitely some exciting conversations going on right now and some innovation that’s being forced by some of the challenges. So that’s some of my quick observations, is just the awareness of the meta of the pending change.
Taylor Underwood:
Yup. Just lots of yo-yoing, it feels like. We had the big influx and then we’ve got the decrease, and it’s just resulting in not enough space for everybody as you’re kind of seeing into the future, that not all of these companies are going to still have the same booths in two years, whether that’s through mergers and acquisitions or other changes.
John Farkas:
That’s absolutely right. And so, right now, I would say, if you have a valuable solution to offer the healthcare system, 2024 is going to be the year that you need to prove it. So typically, on our podcast, we interview leaders of healthcare organizations about how they approach the problems they face that technology can help them solve.
And one of the things we keep hearing over and over, repeated on from our podcast guests is that if you’re a vendor, then you need to lead with a clear understanding of your direct value tailored to who your buyer is, what their problems are, and what you’ve been able to research and know about them. And that is super important to understand their context, and we’ve been hearing that loud and clear.
Taylor Underwood:
Yeah. And all of that’s going to mean… We’ve been doing a lot of talking in 2023 and a lot of ideating, and now it’s time to start to prove that out and to see what actually is going to be viable and stick around for the long term. What would you say to health tech vendors who are looking to establish that clear value proposition within their buyers’ specific context?
John Farkas:
Well, first of all, just please realize, and this is another very common refrain we keep hearing from our guests, it’s not about your technology. It’s not about the features you represent. It’s about the real savings you provide or the care quality increase you make possible. And hopefully, somehow, it’s the combination of both of those things. But don’t hear me say that technology doesn’t matter. It does, because you have to have a solution that has good integrity.
But if you don’t have a clear line on the value you bring and the facts to back that up in a way that is convincing and demonstrable, then you’re really on a slippery slope. And right now, when budgets are tight, if you want to even get looked at, if you even want to have a shot at getting somebody who’s a decision-maker to look at what you’re bringing, you have to have that clearly articulated and be really able to back it up.
The Healthcare Industry’s Near-Term Priorities
Taylor Underwood:
Yup. Absolutely. We know there’s a lot of opportunity right now. Every area of the healthcare ecosystem needs innovation and needs change. It can be kind of overwhelming and there’s just so much to choose from, and we can’t do it all in a short amount of time. So what would you say are the industry’s priorities for the near term?
John Farkas:
Yeah. So it’s no secret that the reason that the value equation is so critical right now is because budgets are so tightly constrained. And while there might be some interest in innovation for long-term advantage, those solutions are getting pushed back to the back of the line, well behind things that will make an immediate and clear difference in some of the critical areas facing the ecosystem.
And so, what I want to try and do is attempt to put some of those problems in what we see as priority order. Now, here’s what I know. Anytime you prescribe an order in this realm, somebody is going to take issue with it, and I don’t pretend for a second to have the corner on this insight. But this is just some of what we’ve been able to see prove out now in the market with our clients in the kind of attention that they’re getting and the kind of companies that we’re seeing really take flight in the space that we’re in currently.
So I’m going to attempt to put some of these in priority order. Very subjective. And there will certainly be people that hear this and say, “Well, no, I’m totally fixed on this one thing that you didn’t even mention.” Well, sure, because there’s lots of different healthcare institutions out there dealing with lots of different things. But here are some of the currents that we’ve heard and otherwise discerned about the now and some of the trend lines indicated by some of the industry leaders and analysts about how 2024 horizon is shaping up.
It’s worth saying that if your solution doesn’t take a big and direct bite out of one of these issues, then traction is just going to… It’s going to be hard to find right now, and any amount of great marketing work is not likely going to help you see the ROI you want. So just know you’ve got to be tying your values to some of these critical issues as you look to bring those to market.
Taylor Underwood:
Yeah. So with all of that said, what is the top problem? What are we seeing as the most important issue that tech solutions need to address right now?
John Farkas:
Yeah. The top of this challenge chain here, and it’s not going to come as a surprise to many, but it’s the things related to healthcare staff shortages and the burnout rates that we’re seeing. That has to lead the list. And there’s a whole set of related factors that we attach to that mega problem. Right? I mean, it’s not just staff shortages. There’s a lot of downstream effects that come of that. And most of what I’ve read say something like, right now, turnover and burnout rates within healthcare have increased tenfold since 2020.
And for the last couple years, healthcare has had one of the highest job opening rates in the US, and that’s coming in second only to hospitality and food service. So it’s not just among clinicians, although it’s acutely among clinicians, but there’s an increased turnover and staff shortages within patient billing and revenue cycle management positions as well. And so, it’s sort of double jeopardy. Healthcare organizations are having a hard time providing the services and they’re having a hard time billing for those services.
So if you have looked at any of the projections for the increase in demands on our care system as a result of the influx of boomers aging into more acute care needs and things like that, the implications of these shortages are really scary, and it gets scary in the near term. I mean, those curves are happening now. The influx of folks aging into acute care need is pretty dramatic.
Taylor Underwood:
Yeah. The numbers are just not adding up in the way that we need them to, and we’re going to run out of clinicians to treat all the patients who need care, unless we do something about this quickly. And it’s a scary reality that we are all facing and that our clients and their clients are working to solve.
John Farkas:
No doubt.
Taylor Underwood:
So with that at the forefront, what would you say are the primary considerations around developing tech solutions to address the staffing shortage and related problems?
John Farkas:
So there’s a couple things here. First, we have to look at solutions that really impact and improve clinical workflows. And this has to mean removing buttons, not adding buttons. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve heard from clinicians how technology that was supposed to improve their lives has actually made it more difficult and somehow more complicated, and I know any of you around this space have heard that story.
So any solution that touches clinical workflows has to remove steps and interfaces and automate tasks that are being done manually now. In other words, it has to be a quantifiable force multiplier, and the stuff has to work. I mean, this is so important. And I was really grateful to hear Kelly Aldrich, who was a guest with us, really kind of lay the gauntlet down here. She was very emphatic in saying, “You can’t have something that works most of the time here. It has to work all the time in a bunch of different nuanced situations.”
And so, when you’re bringing something to the market and you’ve tested it in a couple places, you really got to keep going and make sure it’s going to keep working in a bunch of different situations. Kelly is the director of innovation and the professor of nursing informatics at Vanderbilt, and she really is a nursing ninja. She has been at the head of nursing informatics at HCA and has a lot of experience with a variety of situations, and she just underscored the importance of a solution having to work no matter what.
Taylor Underwood:
Yeah, because we’ve got patients’ lives at stake otherwise. And errors and issues, that would lead to patient safety being compromised if the technology doesn’t work the way it should.
John Farkas:
Yeah. When you’re dealing with clinicians that are under pressure, that are overworked, and already having that layer of frustration over them, if something that’s supposed to work doesn’t work, if something that’s supposed to make life easier makes life harder somehow, it’s a very quick fuse to anger. It’s a very quick fuse to frustration. It’s what’s leading to a lot of the burnout and scenarios that I keep hearing. It is really remarkable to hear, just in some of the challenges with EHR latency.
That’s one of the things that keeps coming out over and over again, just the fact that the systems are so slow. And when you’ve got somebody who’s spending so much of their time that they don’t want to be spending in data entry in one form or another, having those systems that just cause consternation and frustration is really frustrating.
Taylor Underwood:
Yup.
Artisight, a Transformative Tool
John Farkas:
We have a client, Taylor, that I know that you’re really familiar with that we see is doing a lot to help this. Do you want to tell folks a little bit about Artisight?
Taylor Underwood:
Yeah. Artisight has a smart hospital platform that is truly future-ready. It serves as that future-ready infrastructure that automates tests, optimizes processes, and simplifies communication across an entire healthcare system, enabling clinicians to streamline workflows and elevate care at the bedside. And this is… Go ahead, John.
John Farkas:
And I was going to say Artisight’s a platform. Right? It’s a broad solution. It’s broad and it goes deep, and it leverages AI with computer vision and an optical sensor network to create what they call ambient intelligence. It learns. It understands. It responds to a healthcare organization’s environment and workflows, and we could take a whole episode to go into that solution.
But that kind of change where it’s really taking a whole chunk of challenges around some of the workflows, what I know is that in some of their implementations, they are seeing such dramatic decreases in turnover in nursing staff that that alone is worth the move. And when you start looking at what they’re able to achieve with fall reduction and just job satisfaction of clinicians, and I was interviewing one of the Artisight nurses at one of their hospitals, and she just started crying and explained how… The solution, when she first heard about it, she was so cynical and so frustrated that there was going to be another thing that was going to come into her world and technology that was going to disrupt their lives, and she was just dreading it.
And she said, “This has been the most remarkable thing that I’ve ever come across in my career. This has been so helpful in making our jobs as nurses better and easier.” And it was just so great to hear that, because that is what we need in the system right now. We need that kind of systemic-level fix that makes… It doesn’t just make a practical difference to the bottom line, but it affects people’s lives, minds, hearts, and experiences.
Taylor Underwood:
Yeah. And I think one of the biggest things we’ve learned from our work with Artisight is, they’ve got a team of clinicians who’ve really been able to give us some of that insider perspective on the clinical side of things. And they’ve mentioned how one of the first things you learn in medical school or in nursing school is to keep your eyes on the patient.
And yet, all of this technology has been introduced over the last couple of decades that takes clinicians’ eyes off the patient. And so, what Artisight is doing is coming in here and allowing those eyes to go back to where they belong, which is on the patient, and really empower the people who studied so much, who have gained all of the clinical expertise to do their job in that realm and be able to improve patient outcomes.
John Farkas:
Yeah. That’s another major theme that I heard both at all of the events that we were a part of this fall, just the importance of bringing physicians, clinicians back in proximity to the people they’re working the care for. That’s just increasingly important and something that I really look forward to technology continuing to help effectively enable.
How Technology Is Solving the Clinician Shortage
Taylor Underwood:
Yup. And I know that this clinician shortage and burnout problem, we’ve got a bit of time we can devote to that today because it is so significant. So what else would you see as next on the list of considerations for technology that is working to solve those problems?
John Farkas:
Yeah. I mean, it’s really practical. One of the solutions we need is solutions that help find and recruit and attract and place and train talent. Yeah. I mean, sometimes we’re talking about replacing talent and replacing people. Right? A major change that I’ve seen happen in the last couple years is that there’s way fewer people shying away from talking openly about how technology can replace head count.
And I don’t know, Taylor. I know you’ve seen this too because we’ve been in the same conversations, but it was not long ago when we were just kind of saying, “You can’t say that. You can’t say it’s going to replace people.” And now it’s saying, “We’re much less concerned about that just because the shortage is so dramatic, and we’re recognizing that, yeah, this has to do that in a lot of ways.”
Taylor Underwood:
Because we don’t have the people, so who are we even replacing?
John Farkas:
That’s right. It’s right. So if you have a robust solution that can legitimately ease or replace administrative tasks, quantify it, and put it on display loudly along with your clear understanding of how much that is actually worth to your buyer. And then also, if you’ve got a solution that is helping place and bring talent or replace talent, make sure you communicate what you’re able to do and provide clearly.
I know there’s a tremendous supply side challenge right now with solutions that I’m aware of, several different talent marketplace solutions, and the supply side is a real challenge to come across. And so, if you’ve got some solves for that and are able to deliver on providing good talent and providing a strong pipeline, you’re not going to have many problems getting meetings right now because that’s such a strong need.
Taylor Underwood:
Yup. Anything else that we want to talk about that should be considered in the efforts to solve this massive problem that we’ll be working to solve for a long time?
John Farkas:
Yeah. Well, we have to talk about telehealth. And virtual care is increasingly important in this realm because it allows clinicians to be more efficient and connect with and treat more people, because you don’t have all the in-between things. It allows patients with less acute or severe cases to get in and out and get cared for and get what they need quickly and redeem a lot of time for those clinicians.
So while we did see patients return to in-office visits post-COVID, telehealth remains much higher than pre-pandemic levels. In 2019, the telehealth market was valued at around $50 billion. And this year, it’s estimated to reach nearly $195 billion. And I’ve read projections that say by 2030, that number is likely going to reach 460 billion. It is a movement that’s here to stay and is only going to expand and has to expand in its viability. And so, effective telehealth infrastructure and the elements around it are going to continue to be an essential part of care delivery moving forward.
Taylor Underwood:
Yup. And just really emphasizing that telehealth is health. It’s one way to deliver healthcare, and it falls under the larger umbrella of digital health, which we know is just touching everything from remote patient monitoring to the way you engage with your providers on the patient portal, and any kind of access point that is digital rather than requiring people to be in person. That’s just becoming more and more the norm as it should be, and telehealth falls right under that.
John Farkas:
Absolutely.
Payer-Provider Relations and Payment Processing
Taylor Underwood:
So let’s move on to our next priority problem. What do you see as next on the list after the clinician shortage in terms of what health tech vendors need to be looking to solve?
John Farkas:
Well, remember, a lot of this ends up being economically driven right now. So our second problem falls into the category of invoicing and payment processing. So our advisory board member, Trish Rivard, who’s the CEO and founder of Eliciting Insights, really highlighted this in a recent podcast where she reviewed the study that she did this year in conjunction with the Healthcare Financial Management Association, otherwise known as HFMA, one of the famous healthcare acronyms.
So the deal is that providers keep facing an increased friction by payers throughout the payment process. That’s combined with rising costs of providing care due to the clinician shortage and inflation factors. All that has cut deeply into revenue. And so, margins right now are slim to negative. So recovering any cost, I mean, it’s kind of the squeezing-blood-from-the-turnip opportunity. Recovering any cost has been… Or I should probably say recovering any revenue is really a priority, because if you can get it and you can automate the process of getting it in some way, shape, or form, that’s an important thing right now when margins are as tight as they are.
And Trish’s study uncovered that 79% of health systems’ C-suite executives intend to acquire new solutions in finance, revenue cycle in the near future. And so, that’s a big number, and surprised me when I heard that. That was higher than I anticipated, and I wasn’t fully thinking about the implications and why that is. So right now, creating friction-free methods for patients to pay bills or automating collections or providing bill reminders and things like that, all of those are critical.
Taylor Underwood:
Yeah. We know that the revenue cycle is an intricate process, and there’s lots of areas of friction and opportunities for innovation and streamlining in order to ensure that providers can maximize reimbursement in this tight market.
John Farkas:
No doubt.
Taylor Underwood:
So what other ways are we seeing this problem impacting healthcare innovation?
John Farkas:
Yeah. The other thing that we’re seeing kind of emerge right now is the idea of insurance discovery. And I got to just admit that this is one of those crazymakers for me when I think about some of the dysfunctions in our system. But providers are now using a technology called insurance discovery to identify hidden or unknown insurance coverages for patients, especially when their insurance is denied or when they present a self-pay.
These are tools that are kind of searching out all the nooks and crannies around various payer opportunities to find any potential coverage and subsequently attempt to bill it. And I think that this is going to become the war of the AI bots, the providers trying to discover and the payers trying to obscure and kind of go on that chase. And it does make me a little crazy when I think about it, but those solutions right now are getting a lot of traction, and for good reason. It is a way to automate the discovery of revenue opportunities or expense recovery that providers are able to deploy to help that bottom line.
Taylor Underwood:
Yeah. Be able to take the information that’s out there. If these payers are able to cover something, I’m sure it’s dense and a thick population of information that they’ve got to navigate through on the provider side. So, absolutely, there’s AI opportunities all around.
John Farkas:
Yup. We’re going to see a lot more of it, and I’m not sure what that’s going to mean.
Taylor Underwood:
Yeah.
John Farkas:
And somehow it’s going to end up being more expensive for us, I have a feeling, but somehow. That’s the way it all is. It doesn’t ever reduce our costs.
Improving Patient Experience
Taylor Underwood:
That’s the downside. So we’ve covered the clinician shortage and payer-provider relations when it comes to payment processing. What’s next on our priority list of problems?
John Farkas:
Yeah. If we look at, after we get past the clinician shortage and the revenue cycle universe, then we go to solutions that improve patient experience. What’s going on right now, and we all know this because we’re all living it, as deductibles continue to increase and the overall cost of care continues to rise, the healthcare consumer is coming to the center stage here.
It’s a big movement and it’s being fed by the likes of major retailers like Walmart and Amazon, Kroger and Best Buy and Walgreens, and the list goes on. And they’re all racing into this competitive equation right now, and they’re bringing with them their understanding of the consumer trends and the preferences, and they’re combining that with fluid, friction-free user experiences and competitive pricing.
So that’s putting all kinds of pressure on the traditional healthcare organizations at a time when they need to be attracting and retaining patients, because they’ve got a lot of overhead and a lot of people that they’re needing to pay for. So to win new consumers or to retain the ones they have, providers really need to deliver an experience that matches what people expect from those big consumer brands, and that is just not an easy thing for some of these traditional organizations to do.
But it means things like easy, self-service ways for resolving most issues like downloading immunization records or booking appointments or paying bills or checking insurance status, and being able to do that stuff anywhere, anytime in a way that is convenient, not just the way healthcare has historically functioned, which is on the phone, appointments, and needing to get calls back, and some of the back-and-forth that folks are typically used to.
Taylor Underwood:
Yup. Continues to go back to just the theme of digital healthcare and how wide that umbrella is as it’s covering everything. Healthcare is delivered digitally in a lot of ways, and it’s what people want to be able to trust their providers to deliver the kind of service that they trust Amazon to deliver. And it’s got to change in order to deliver on those expectations.
John Farkas:
Absolutely.
Taylor Underwood:
So we know that AI is an underlying technology that makes these types of frictionless and personalized experiences possible in other industries. We all benefit from that to some degree as we are making purchases on Amazon, for example. You always kind of get things that are recommended to you because they know us better than we know ourselves. Where do we see this fitting into the healthcare patient experience?
John Farkas:
Yeah. It’s going to fit in a lot of different ways, and it was really pretty funny. It sort of became the joke at HLTH, and I say that lightly. It’s not a joke, but everything at HLTH was AI-enabled.
Taylor Underwood:
Oh, yeah.
John Farkas:
All the booths were… If they hadn’t had AI before, they do in their messaging stack this year.
Taylor Underwood:
Yeah. Now you stand out if you don’t have AI.
John Farkas:
That’s right.
Taylor Underwood:
But not for a good reason.
John Farkas:
“Where’s your AI?”
Taylor Underwood:
Yeah.
John Farkas:
And so, there’s no doubt AI is going to make a major difference, and it’s already making a major difference. I think that it is going to continue as we look at the type of interactions that AI is capable of and how it is able to do a good job of accurately assisting in a number of different ways. It’s going to find its way into a lot. And I don’t feel the need to spend too much time talking about it, because you could download probably 50 different panel discussions that were recorded over the last couple of weeks in healthcare right now talking about it. So I don’t need to be another one of those voices.
What I do want to make sure that people understand is, there’s lots of different levels of AI. And if you’re touting AI as a major solution, make sure it’s a legitimate part of your solution. Really, people are getting a lot more savvy right now on what is valuable and assistive and what is a distraction and a clutter.
Taylor Underwood:
Yup.
John Farkas:
And so, I would just want to underscore that if you’re bringing an AI solution to the market, be ready to defend that well and be ready to help, again, underscore the value of what it is you’re bringing, because it better have some good integrity under it, because people are looking at things with a lot more scrutiny.
Taylor Underwood:
Yup. Definitely. So I think that’s a strong summary of the most immediate problems on the horizon that need to be addressed, clinician burnout and shortage, payment processing, and the patient experience and how AI impacts that. Anything else we want to cover?
John Farkas:
I think that’s what we’re seeing as the big three. I think that we can take a minute here at the end to look at some of… Well, I’ll say there are several things conspicuous by their absence here in this list. We’re not talking about cybersecurity, and we need to be, because cyber threats are real and they’re going to cost a lot for systems.
But some of what we’re hearing is that some of the really pressing problems are pushing that threat back a step or two past where we want to see it. There are certainly issues surrounding value-based care and health equity and access to care that we need to address. And they are being addressed, but they just aren’t necessarily frontline scenarios right now in a lot of health systems when it comes to what they’re looking to purchase right now, and that’s just an important thing to keep in mind. So it’s not that they’re not important. It’s just that the really hot fires need to be put out first, and that’s what a lot of systems are focusing on right now.
Taylor Underwood:
And it’s kind of worth noting that these problems are all related to solving the other problems as well. The clinician shortage is most likely to impact those vulnerable populations. And so, when we run out of clinicians, it’s those that are in the vulnerable communities that are going to get hit first. So solving that clinician shortage has a trickle-down effect.
John Farkas:
Yeah. All of this is interrelated. Right? I mean, it all is. And so, recognizing that is important, but as we’re thinking about bringing solutions to market, you need to know what the headlines are and you need to have realistic expectations based on your ability to solve for those big-fire problems. That’s going to be a critical thing in these next 18 months.
The Challenges of Point Solutions
Taylor Underwood:
Yeah. So let’s take a minute to talk about the challenges of bringing in point solutions that are trying to address all of these problems separately maybe or in small doses. So what’s the challenge with that approach?
John Farkas:
Yeah. I’ve heard a lot of different things, and some people come in on different angles on this, but bottom line, I think it’s really hard right now. Most everybody is talking that I’m talking to is really trying to consolidate their stack and are looking to eliminate point solutions. When they’re looking at adopting different platforms, they’re thinking about, “How many existing elements is this going to eliminate so I don’t have those things and those integrations and those interfaces and those differences to complicate my world?” Because the staff shortage echoes just as loudly in the IT departments of health systems as it does anywhere else.
I mean, they are having a hard time keeping people in, because part of what’s happening with the budget shortage is that salaries are getting frozen. And so, they’re not able to maintain competitive pay levels a lot of times. So they’re seeing a pretty decent migration away. And so, they need to be more efficient and do more with less in those departments.
And so, when you’re a point solution provider and you’re adding another thing for somebody to do, you just need to realize that you’re coming into a scenario where there’s not enough people to do the things that they’re already doing. And so, one of the best opportunities, I think, that you have right now is to aggressively look at partner opportunities with platform providers. How can you come in with an existing platform and frame an agreement where you can provide your solution as a part of a larger constellation?
That’s going to be increasingly important. I think that that’s just the reality of the scenario right now. If you have a solution that eliminates a problem that is such a unicorn, unique problem and is timely, I think you’ve got a shot. But otherwise, the friction that I’m hearing and the challenges that I’m hearing are really hard. And so, just know that looking to integrate, looking to form what you have into a platform, I think, is going to be the move.
Closing Thoughts
Taylor Underwood:
So that’s a great summary of what the problems are that we’re facing in the immediate term, and just a quick insight into the need for platform solutions or that integration with platform solutions for point solution providers as well. So I know we’ve had a full conversation today. So it’s good to kind of get our top problems laid out so we kind of understand where we’re headed in 2024.
John Farkas:
Yeah. It really does come back down to, and as you’re looking at this market right now, know your value clearly and fly that forward first with well-documented proof, because that’s what people are going to need to see to make the kind of decisions that you want them to make. If you’re wanting them to go in your favor, you need to have that really well understood. And the other thing that we keep hearing from a lot of our folks that we’ve talked to here: Who are your buyers? They’re really wanting to make sure that you know who they are.
They’re wanting to make sure you understand some of the unique challenges that they’re facing before you communicate to them. And so, keep that in mind. That certainly crosses over into the sales realm, but certainly, any targeted marketing campaigns have an opportunity to communicate in ways that demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of what those specific problem sets are.
Know your value. Declare it loud. Don’t lead with your technology. It’s stuff we say here all the time. This is about what problems you can effectively solve and what that means for your buyers, and tell that story well and the results will follow. Well, thanks, everybody. Appreciate you tuning in, and we will be back next week with more from the Healthcare Market Matrix.
Taylor Underwood:
Thank you.
John Farkas:
Healthcare Market Matrix is a Ratio original podcast. If you enjoyed today’s episode, then jump over to healthcaremarketmatrix.com and subscribe. And we’d really appreciate your support in the form of a five-star rating on your favorite podcast platform. It does make a difference. Also, while you’re there, you can become a part of the Healthcare Market Matrix community and get access to courses and content that’s created just for you by signing up for Insights Squared, a monthly newsletter dedicated to bringing you the latest health tech marketing insights right to your inbox.
Ratio is an award-winning marketing agency headquartered in the Nashville, Tennessee. We operate at the intersection of brand and growth marketing to equip companies with strategies to create meaningful connections with the healthcare market and ultimately drive growth. Want to know more? Go to goratio.com. That’s G-O-R-A-T-I-O dot com, and we’ll see you at noon Central next week for an all new episode from our team at Ratio Studios. Stay healthy.
Transcript (custom)
Introducing Taylor Underwood
John Farkas:
All right. Greetings, everybody, and welcome to Healthcare Market Matrix. I’m your host, John Farkas, and joining me in the podcast realm today is none other than my fellow Ratio teammate, Taylor Underwood. And Taylor, in my mind, really defies categorization, but since we need to put words around things because we’re humans, her title here at Ratio is content director.
But Taylor spent over a decade in the healthcare universe helping organizations articulate meaning surrounding their value propositions. And so, Taylor is going to help me today trying to sort out some of the thoughts around what we are seeing happen in the healthcare market now. So, Taylor, welcome into the Ratio Studio here.
Taylor Underwood:
Thanks, John. I’m excited to be here. I’ve been listening all season long to Healthcare Market Matrix. Excited to be part of it this time.
John Farkas:
Well, glad you’re here.
Taylor Underwood:
So I know today we’re going to flip the switch a little bit and I’m going to have the opportunity to interview you, John, so hope you’re prepared and ready for the rapid fire.
John Farkas:
Yeah. I’m trying to calm down a little bit and get ready to endure whatever you’re going to put toward me here.
John’s Takeaways from the Fall Conference Season
Taylor Underwood:
Yeah. It’ll be wild. So we’re coming off a busy fall conference season and it just kind of-
John Farkas:
Yes, we are.
Taylor Underwood:
… wrapped up, and the health tech industry is feeling that across the board. Lots of folks are traveling and having important conversations and convening it to talk about some of the biggest issues that we’re seeing in our industry.
And for the Ratio team, we had the chance to sponsor the third annual Telehealth Academy in Nashville, and John and I both got to attend that, and it was a very full day of some important conversations about what the digital future of healthcare looks like, because the future and the current is definitely digital. So it’s good that we’re all kind of moving in that direction.
John, I know you also got to attend the Healthcare Sessions in Nashville as well as the recent Becker’s Health IT Conference and then, of course, HLTH kind of being the big closer in Vegas last week. So we’re just excited today to hear from you, and what would you say some of your biggest takeaways that you gleaned from all those interactions?
John Farkas:
Yeah. Boy, it sure was a festival of panel discussions. I don’t know if any industry does panel discussions quite as well as healthcare does, but we certainly do it well, don’t we? And there were a lot of them, and hard to put a fine point on any of this. What I will say is that it’s very clear that there’s some big movements getting ready to happen. There have been some big movements happen. There’s lots of mergers, lots of companies announcing partnerships, and different elements that are trying to consolidate what’s going on.
But the big overall idea I had, especially looking at what was going on at Becker’s and then at HLTH, was, “Wow, I wonder how many of these organizations, of these booths I’m walking by are going to exist two years from now.” And a lot of the reason for that has been what we’ve seen happen around the funding curve for healthcare technology and then combining that.
I mean, we just saw record amounts of money poured into the healthcare technology realm in 2021, 2022, maybe even going back to the start of 2020, and then a dramatic pullback that happened really in the last 18 months that has corresponded directly with a dramatic, I would call it a budget crisis within many of the healthcare providers that has really changed the game as far as their ability to purchase technology and look at new opportunities and think in more expansive ways.
Many of them, many provider organizations are figuring out how to just keep the lights on right now, and that has major implications for innovation and technology, and not just in the obvious ways. I mean, there’s definitely some exciting conversations going on right now and some innovation that’s being forced by some of the challenges. So that’s some of my quick observations, is just the awareness of the meta of the pending change.
Taylor Underwood:
Yup. Just lots of yo-yoing, it feels like. We had the big influx and then we’ve got the decrease, and it’s just resulting in not enough space for everybody as you’re kind of seeing into the future, that not all of these companies are going to still have the same booths in two years, whether that’s through mergers and acquisitions or other changes.
John Farkas:
That’s absolutely right. And so, right now, I would say, if you have a valuable solution to offer the healthcare system, 2024 is going to be the year that you need to prove it. So typically, on our podcast, we interview leaders of healthcare organizations about how they approach the problems they face that technology can help them solve.
And one of the things we keep hearing over and over, repeated on from our podcast guests is that if you’re a vendor, then you need to lead with a clear understanding of your direct value tailored to who your buyer is, what their problems are, and what you’ve been able to research and know about them. And that is super important to understand their context, and we’ve been hearing that loud and clear.
Taylor Underwood:
Yeah. And all of that’s going to mean… We’ve been doing a lot of talking in 2023 and a lot of ideating, and now it’s time to start to prove that out and to see what actually is going to be viable and stick around for the long term. What would you say to health tech vendors who are looking to establish that clear value proposition within their buyers’ specific context?
John Farkas:
Well, first of all, just please realize, and this is another very common refrain we keep hearing from our guests, it’s not about your technology. It’s not about the features you represent. It’s about the real savings you provide or the care quality increase you make possible. And hopefully, somehow, it’s the combination of both of those things. But don’t hear me say that technology doesn’t matter. It does, because you have to have a solution that has good integrity.
But if you don’t have a clear line on the value you bring and the facts to back that up in a way that is convincing and demonstrable, then you’re really on a slippery slope. And right now, when budgets are tight, if you want to even get looked at, if you even want to have a shot at getting somebody who’s a decision-maker to look at what you’re bringing, you have to have that clearly articulated and be really able to back it up.
The Healthcare Industry’s Near-Term Priorities
Taylor Underwood:
Yup. Absolutely. We know there’s a lot of opportunity right now. Every area of the healthcare ecosystem needs innovation and needs change. It can be kind of overwhelming and there’s just so much to choose from, and we can’t do it all in a short amount of time. So what would you say are the industry’s priorities for the near term?
John Farkas:
Yeah. So it’s no secret that the reason that the value equation is so critical right now is because budgets are so tightly constrained. And while there might be some interest in innovation for long-term advantage, those solutions are getting pushed back to the back of the line, well behind things that will make an immediate and clear difference in some of the critical areas facing the ecosystem.
And so, what I want to try and do is attempt to put some of those problems in what we see as priority order. Now, here’s what I know. Anytime you prescribe an order in this realm, somebody is going to take issue with it, and I don’t pretend for a second to have the corner on this insight. But this is just some of what we’ve been able to see prove out now in the market with our clients in the kind of attention that they’re getting and the kind of companies that we’re seeing really take flight in the space that we’re in currently.
So I’m going to attempt to put some of these in priority order. Very subjective. And there will certainly be people that hear this and say, “Well, no, I’m totally fixed on this one thing that you didn’t even mention.” Well, sure, because there’s lots of different healthcare institutions out there dealing with lots of different things. But here are some of the currents that we’ve heard and otherwise discerned about the now and some of the trend lines indicated by some of the industry leaders and analysts about how 2024 horizon is shaping up.
It’s worth saying that if your solution doesn’t take a big and direct bite out of one of these issues, then traction is just going to… It’s going to be hard to find right now, and any amount of great marketing work is not likely going to help you see the ROI you want. So just know you’ve got to be tying your values to some of these critical issues as you look to bring those to market.
Taylor Underwood:
Yeah. So with all of that said, what is the top problem? What are we seeing as the most important issue that tech solutions need to address right now?
John Farkas:
Yeah. The top of this challenge chain here, and it’s not going to come as a surprise to many, but it’s the things related to healthcare staff shortages and the burnout rates that we’re seeing. That has to lead the list. And there’s a whole set of related factors that we attach to that mega problem. Right? I mean, it’s not just staff shortages. There’s a lot of downstream effects that come of that. And most of what I’ve read say something like, right now, turnover and burnout rates within healthcare have increased tenfold since 2020.
And for the last couple years, healthcare has had one of the highest job opening rates in the US, and that’s coming in second only to hospitality and food service. So it’s not just among clinicians, although it’s acutely among clinicians, but there’s an increased turnover and staff shortages within patient billing and revenue cycle management positions as well. And so, it’s sort of double jeopardy. Healthcare organizations are having a hard time providing the services and they’re having a hard time billing for those services.
So if you have looked at any of the projections for the increase in demands on our care system as a result of the influx of boomers aging into more acute care needs and things like that, the implications of these shortages are really scary, and it gets scary in the near term. I mean, those curves are happening now. The influx of folks aging into acute care need is pretty dramatic.
Taylor Underwood:
Yeah. The numbers are just not adding up in the way that we need them to, and we’re going to run out of clinicians to treat all the patients who need care, unless we do something about this quickly. And it’s a scary reality that we are all facing and that our clients and their clients are working to solve.
John Farkas:
No doubt.
Taylor Underwood:
So with that at the forefront, what would you say are the primary considerations around developing tech solutions to address the staffing shortage and related problems?
John Farkas:
So there’s a couple things here. First, we have to look at solutions that really impact and improve clinical workflows. And this has to mean removing buttons, not adding buttons. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve heard from clinicians how technology that was supposed to improve their lives has actually made it more difficult and somehow more complicated, and I know any of you around this space have heard that story.
So any solution that touches clinical workflows has to remove steps and interfaces and automate tasks that are being done manually now. In other words, it has to be a quantifiable force multiplier, and the stuff has to work. I mean, this is so important. And I was really grateful to hear Kelly Aldrich, who was a guest with us, really kind of lay the gauntlet down here. She was very emphatic in saying, “You can’t have something that works most of the time here. It has to work all the time in a bunch of different nuanced situations.”
And so, when you’re bringing something to the market and you’ve tested it in a couple places, you really got to keep going and make sure it’s going to keep working in a bunch of different situations. Kelly is the director of innovation and the professor of nursing informatics at Vanderbilt, and she really is a nursing ninja. She has been at the head of nursing informatics at HCA and has a lot of experience with a variety of situations, and she just underscored the importance of a solution having to work no matter what.
Taylor Underwood:
Yeah, because we’ve got patients’ lives at stake otherwise. And errors and issues, that would lead to patient safety being compromised if the technology doesn’t work the way it should.
John Farkas:
Yeah. When you’re dealing with clinicians that are under pressure, that are overworked, and already having that layer of frustration over them, if something that’s supposed to work doesn’t work, if something that’s supposed to make life easier makes life harder somehow, it’s a very quick fuse to anger. It’s a very quick fuse to frustration. It’s what’s leading to a lot of the burnout and scenarios that I keep hearing. It is really remarkable to hear, just in some of the challenges with EHR latency.
That’s one of the things that keeps coming out over and over again, just the fact that the systems are so slow. And when you’ve got somebody who’s spending so much of their time that they don’t want to be spending in data entry in one form or another, having those systems that just cause consternation and frustration is really frustrating.
Taylor Underwood:
Yup.
Artisight, a Transformative Tool
John Farkas:
We have a client, Taylor, that I know that you’re really familiar with that we see is doing a lot to help this. Do you want to tell folks a little bit about Artisight?
Taylor Underwood:
Yeah. Artisight has a smart hospital platform that is truly future-ready. It serves as that future-ready infrastructure that automates tests, optimizes processes, and simplifies communication across an entire healthcare system, enabling clinicians to streamline workflows and elevate care at the bedside. And this is… Go ahead, John.
John Farkas:
And I was going to say Artisight’s a platform. Right? It’s a broad solution. It’s broad and it goes deep, and it leverages AI with computer vision and an optical sensor network to create what they call ambient intelligence. It learns. It understands. It responds to a healthcare organization’s environment and workflows, and we could take a whole episode to go into that solution.
But that kind of change where it’s really taking a whole chunk of challenges around some of the workflows, what I know is that in some of their implementations, they are seeing such dramatic decreases in turnover in nursing staff that that alone is worth the move. And when you start looking at what they’re able to achieve with fall reduction and just job satisfaction of clinicians, and I was interviewing one of the Artisight nurses at one of their hospitals, and she just started crying and explained how… The solution, when she first heard about it, she was so cynical and so frustrated that there was going to be another thing that was going to come into her world and technology that was going to disrupt their lives, and she was just dreading it.
And she said, “This has been the most remarkable thing that I’ve ever come across in my career. This has been so helpful in making our jobs as nurses better and easier.” And it was just so great to hear that, because that is what we need in the system right now. We need that kind of systemic-level fix that makes… It doesn’t just make a practical difference to the bottom line, but it affects people’s lives, minds, hearts, and experiences.
Taylor Underwood:
Yeah. And I think one of the biggest things we’ve learned from our work with Artisight is, they’ve got a team of clinicians who’ve really been able to give us some of that insider perspective on the clinical side of things. And they’ve mentioned how one of the first things you learn in medical school or in nursing school is to keep your eyes on the patient.
And yet, all of this technology has been introduced over the last couple of decades that takes clinicians’ eyes off the patient. And so, what Artisight is doing is coming in here and allowing those eyes to go back to where they belong, which is on the patient, and really empower the people who studied so much, who have gained all of the clinical expertise to do their job in that realm and be able to improve patient outcomes.
John Farkas:
Yeah. That’s another major theme that I heard both at all of the events that we were a part of this fall, just the importance of bringing physicians, clinicians back in proximity to the people they’re working the care for. That’s just increasingly important and something that I really look forward to technology continuing to help effectively enable.
How Technology Is Solving the Clinician Shortage
Taylor Underwood:
Yup. And I know that this clinician shortage and burnout problem, we’ve got a bit of time we can devote to that today because it is so significant. So what else would you see as next on the list of considerations for technology that is working to solve those problems?
John Farkas:
Yeah. I mean, it’s really practical. One of the solutions we need is solutions that help find and recruit and attract and place and train talent. Yeah. I mean, sometimes we’re talking about replacing talent and replacing people. Right? A major change that I’ve seen happen in the last couple years is that there’s way fewer people shying away from talking openly about how technology can replace head count.
And I don’t know, Taylor. I know you’ve seen this too because we’ve been in the same conversations, but it was not long ago when we were just kind of saying, “You can’t say that. You can’t say it’s going to replace people.” And now it’s saying, “We’re much less concerned about that just because the shortage is so dramatic, and we’re recognizing that, yeah, this has to do that in a lot of ways.”
Taylor Underwood:
Because we don’t have the people, so who are we even replacing?
John Farkas:
That’s right. It’s right. So if you have a robust solution that can legitimately ease or replace administrative tasks, quantify it, and put it on display loudly along with your clear understanding of how much that is actually worth to your buyer. And then also, if you’ve got a solution that is helping place and bring talent or replace talent, make sure you communicate what you’re able to do and provide clearly.
I know there’s a tremendous supply side challenge right now with solutions that I’m aware of, several different talent marketplace solutions, and the supply side is a real challenge to come across. And so, if you’ve got some solves for that and are able to deliver on providing good talent and providing a strong pipeline, you’re not going to have many problems getting meetings right now because that’s such a strong need.
Taylor Underwood:
Yup. Anything else that we want to talk about that should be considered in the efforts to solve this massive problem that we’ll be working to solve for a long time?
John Farkas:
Yeah. Well, we have to talk about telehealth. And virtual care is increasingly important in this realm because it allows clinicians to be more efficient and connect with and treat more people, because you don’t have all the in-between things. It allows patients with less acute or severe cases to get in and out and get cared for and get what they need quickly and redeem a lot of time for those clinicians.
So while we did see patients return to in-office visits post-COVID, telehealth remains much higher than pre-pandemic levels. In 2019, the telehealth market was valued at around $50 billion. And this year, it’s estimated to reach nearly $195 billion. And I’ve read projections that say by 2030, that number is likely going to reach 460 billion. It is a movement that’s here to stay and is only going to expand and has to expand in its viability. And so, effective telehealth infrastructure and the elements around it are going to continue to be an essential part of care delivery moving forward.
Taylor Underwood:
Yup. And just really emphasizing that telehealth is health. It’s one way to deliver healthcare, and it falls under the larger umbrella of digital health, which we know is just touching everything from remote patient monitoring to the way you engage with your providers on the patient portal, and any kind of access point that is digital rather than requiring people to be in person. That’s just becoming more and more the norm as it should be, and telehealth falls right under that.
John Farkas:
Absolutely.
Payer-Provider Relations and Payment Processing
Taylor Underwood:
So let’s move on to our next priority problem. What do you see as next on the list after the clinician shortage in terms of what health tech vendors need to be looking to solve?
John Farkas:
Well, remember, a lot of this ends up being economically driven right now. So our second problem falls into the category of invoicing and payment processing. So our advisory board member, Trish Rivard, who’s the CEO and founder of Eliciting Insights, really highlighted this in a recent podcast where she reviewed the study that she did this year in conjunction with the Healthcare Financial Management Association, otherwise known as HFMA, one of the famous healthcare acronyms.
So the deal is that providers keep facing an increased friction by payers throughout the payment process. That’s combined with rising costs of providing care due to the clinician shortage and inflation factors. All that has cut deeply into revenue. And so, margins right now are slim to negative. So recovering any cost, I mean, it’s kind of the squeezing-blood-from-the-turnip opportunity. Recovering any cost has been… Or I should probably say recovering any revenue is really a priority, because if you can get it and you can automate the process of getting it in some way, shape, or form, that’s an important thing right now when margins are as tight as they are.
And Trish’s study uncovered that 79% of health systems’ C-suite executives intend to acquire new solutions in finance, revenue cycle in the near future. And so, that’s a big number, and surprised me when I heard that. That was higher than I anticipated, and I wasn’t fully thinking about the implications and why that is. So right now, creating friction-free methods for patients to pay bills or automating collections or providing bill reminders and things like that, all of those are critical.
Taylor Underwood:
Yeah. We know that the revenue cycle is an intricate process, and there’s lots of areas of friction and opportunities for innovation and streamlining in order to ensure that providers can maximize reimbursement in this tight market.
John Farkas:
No doubt.
Taylor Underwood:
So what other ways are we seeing this problem impacting healthcare innovation?
John Farkas:
Yeah. The other thing that we’re seeing kind of emerge right now is the idea of insurance discovery. And I got to just admit that this is one of those crazymakers for me when I think about some of the dysfunctions in our system. But providers are now using a technology called insurance discovery to identify hidden or unknown insurance coverages for patients, especially when their insurance is denied or when they present a self-pay.
These are tools that are kind of searching out all the nooks and crannies around various payer opportunities to find any potential coverage and subsequently attempt to bill it. And I think that this is going to become the war of the AI bots, the providers trying to discover and the payers trying to obscure and kind of go on that chase. And it does make me a little crazy when I think about it, but those solutions right now are getting a lot of traction, and for good reason. It is a way to automate the discovery of revenue opportunities or expense recovery that providers are able to deploy to help that bottom line.
Taylor Underwood:
Yeah. Be able to take the information that’s out there. If these payers are able to cover something, I’m sure it’s dense and a thick population of information that they’ve got to navigate through on the provider side. So, absolutely, there’s AI opportunities all around.
John Farkas:
Yup. We’re going to see a lot more of it, and I’m not sure what that’s going to mean.
Taylor Underwood:
Yeah.
John Farkas:
And somehow it’s going to end up being more expensive for us, I have a feeling, but somehow. That’s the way it all is. It doesn’t ever reduce our costs.
Improving Patient Experience
Taylor Underwood:
That’s the downside. So we’ve covered the clinician shortage and payer-provider relations when it comes to payment processing. What’s next on our priority list of problems?
John Farkas:
Yeah. If we look at, after we get past the clinician shortage and the revenue cycle universe, then we go to solutions that improve patient experience. What’s going on right now, and we all know this because we’re all living it, as deductibles continue to increase and the overall cost of care continues to rise, the healthcare consumer is coming to the center stage here.
It’s a big movement and it’s being fed by the likes of major retailers like Walmart and Amazon, Kroger and Best Buy and Walgreens, and the list goes on. And they’re all racing into this competitive equation right now, and they’re bringing with them their understanding of the consumer trends and the preferences, and they’re combining that with fluid, friction-free user experiences and competitive pricing.
So that’s putting all kinds of pressure on the traditional healthcare organizations at a time when they need to be attracting and retaining patients, because they’ve got a lot of overhead and a lot of people that they’re needing to pay for. So to win new consumers or to retain the ones they have, providers really need to deliver an experience that matches what people expect from those big consumer brands, and that is just not an easy thing for some of these traditional organizations to do.
But it means things like easy, self-service ways for resolving most issues like downloading immunization records or booking appointments or paying bills or checking insurance status, and being able to do that stuff anywhere, anytime in a way that is convenient, not just the way healthcare has historically functioned, which is on the phone, appointments, and needing to get calls back, and some of the back-and-forth that folks are typically used to.
Taylor Underwood:
Yup. Continues to go back to just the theme of digital healthcare and how wide that umbrella is as it’s covering everything. Healthcare is delivered digitally in a lot of ways, and it’s what people want to be able to trust their providers to deliver the kind of service that they trust Amazon to deliver. And it’s got to change in order to deliver on those expectations.
John Farkas:
Absolutely.
Taylor Underwood:
So we know that AI is an underlying technology that makes these types of frictionless and personalized experiences possible in other industries. We all benefit from that to some degree as we are making purchases on Amazon, for example. You always kind of get things that are recommended to you because they know us better than we know ourselves. Where do we see this fitting into the healthcare patient experience?
John Farkas:
Yeah. It’s going to fit in a lot of different ways, and it was really pretty funny. It sort of became the joke at HLTH, and I say that lightly. It’s not a joke, but everything at HLTH was AI-enabled.
Taylor Underwood:
Oh, yeah.
John Farkas:
All the booths were… If they hadn’t had AI before, they do in their messaging stack this year.
Taylor Underwood:
Yeah. Now you stand out if you don’t have AI.
John Farkas:
That’s right.
Taylor Underwood:
But not for a good reason.
John Farkas:
“Where’s your AI?”
Taylor Underwood:
Yeah.
John Farkas:
And so, there’s no doubt AI is going to make a major difference, and it’s already making a major difference. I think that it is going to continue as we look at the type of interactions that AI is capable of and how it is able to do a good job of accurately assisting in a number of different ways. It’s going to find its way into a lot. And I don’t feel the need to spend too much time talking about it, because you could download probably 50 different panel discussions that were recorded over the last couple of weeks in healthcare right now talking about it. So I don’t need to be another one of those voices.
What I do want to make sure that people understand is, there’s lots of different levels of AI. And if you’re touting AI as a major solution, make sure it’s a legitimate part of your solution. Really, people are getting a lot more savvy right now on what is valuable and assistive and what is a distraction and a clutter.
Taylor Underwood:
Yup.
John Farkas:
And so, I would just want to underscore that if you’re bringing an AI solution to the market, be ready to defend that well and be ready to help, again, underscore the value of what it is you’re bringing, because it better have some good integrity under it, because people are looking at things with a lot more scrutiny.
Taylor Underwood:
Yup. Definitely. So I think that’s a strong summary of the most immediate problems on the horizon that need to be addressed, clinician burnout and shortage, payment processing, and the patient experience and how AI impacts that. Anything else we want to cover?
John Farkas:
I think that’s what we’re seeing as the big three. I think that we can take a minute here at the end to look at some of… Well, I’ll say there are several things conspicuous by their absence here in this list. We’re not talking about cybersecurity, and we need to be, because cyber threats are real and they’re going to cost a lot for systems.
But some of what we’re hearing is that some of the really pressing problems are pushing that threat back a step or two past where we want to see it. There are certainly issues surrounding value-based care and health equity and access to care that we need to address. And they are being addressed, but they just aren’t necessarily frontline scenarios right now in a lot of health systems when it comes to what they’re looking to purchase right now, and that’s just an important thing to keep in mind. So it’s not that they’re not important. It’s just that the really hot fires need to be put out first, and that’s what a lot of systems are focusing on right now.
Taylor Underwood:
And it’s kind of worth noting that these problems are all related to solving the other problems as well. The clinician shortage is most likely to impact those vulnerable populations. And so, when we run out of clinicians, it’s those that are in the vulnerable communities that are going to get hit first. So solving that clinician shortage has a trickle-down effect.
John Farkas:
Yeah. All of this is interrelated. Right? I mean, it all is. And so, recognizing that is important, but as we’re thinking about bringing solutions to market, you need to know what the headlines are and you need to have realistic expectations based on your ability to solve for those big-fire problems. That’s going to be a critical thing in these next 18 months.
The Challenges of Point Solutions
Taylor Underwood:
Yeah. So let’s take a minute to talk about the challenges of bringing in point solutions that are trying to address all of these problems separately maybe or in small doses. So what’s the challenge with that approach?
John Farkas:
Yeah. I’ve heard a lot of different things, and some people come in on different angles on this, but bottom line, I think it’s really hard right now. Most everybody is talking that I’m talking to is really trying to consolidate their stack and are looking to eliminate point solutions. When they’re looking at adopting different platforms, they’re thinking about, “How many existing elements is this going to eliminate so I don’t have those things and those integrations and those interfaces and those differences to complicate my world?” Because the staff shortage echoes just as loudly in the IT departments of health systems as it does anywhere else.
I mean, they are having a hard time keeping people in, because part of what’s happening with the budget shortage is that salaries are getting frozen. And so, they’re not able to maintain competitive pay levels a lot of times. So they’re seeing a pretty decent migration away. And so, they need to be more efficient and do more with less in those departments.
And so, when you’re a point solution provider and you’re adding another thing for somebody to do, you just need to realize that you’re coming into a scenario where there’s not enough people to do the things that they’re already doing. And so, one of the best opportunities, I think, that you have right now is to aggressively look at partner opportunities with platform providers. How can you come in with an existing platform and frame an agreement where you can provide your solution as a part of a larger constellation?
That’s going to be increasingly important. I think that that’s just the reality of the scenario right now. If you have a solution that eliminates a problem that is such a unicorn, unique problem and is timely, I think you’ve got a shot. But otherwise, the friction that I’m hearing and the challenges that I’m hearing are really hard. And so, just know that looking to integrate, looking to form what you have into a platform, I think, is going to be the move.
Closing Thoughts
Taylor Underwood:
So that’s a great summary of what the problems are that we’re facing in the immediate term, and just a quick insight into the need for platform solutions or that integration with platform solutions for point solution providers as well. So I know we’ve had a full conversation today. So it’s good to kind of get our top problems laid out so we kind of understand where we’re headed in 2024.
John Farkas:
Yeah. It really does come back down to, and as you’re looking at this market right now, know your value clearly and fly that forward first with well-documented proof, because that’s what people are going to need to see to make the kind of decisions that you want them to make. If you’re wanting them to go in your favor, you need to have that really well understood. And the other thing that we keep hearing from a lot of our folks that we’ve talked to here: Who are your buyers? They’re really wanting to make sure that you know who they are.
They’re wanting to make sure you understand some of the unique challenges that they’re facing before you communicate to them. And so, keep that in mind. That certainly crosses over into the sales realm, but certainly, any targeted marketing campaigns have an opportunity to communicate in ways that demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of what those specific problem sets are.
Know your value. Declare it loud. Don’t lead with your technology. It’s stuff we say here all the time. This is about what problems you can effectively solve and what that means for your buyers, and tell that story well and the results will follow. Well, thanks, everybody. Appreciate you tuning in, and we will be back next week with more from the Healthcare Market Matrix.
Taylor Underwood:
Thank you.
John Farkas:
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Ratio is an award-winning marketing agency headquartered in the Nashville, Tennessee. We operate at the intersection of brand and growth marketing to equip companies with strategies to create meaningful connections with the healthcare market and ultimately drive growth. Want to know more? Go to goratio.com. That’s G-O-R-A-T-I-O dot com, and we’ll see you at noon Central next week for an all new episode from our team at Ratio Studios. Stay healthy.
About John Farkas
John is the Founder and CEO of Ratio, an integrated marketing agency that helps B2B healthcare technology companies realize their market potential. With over 14 years of experience in the industry, John has led his team to create and implement strategies that bring complex, innovative products to market in a meaningful way for their clients. John is also the Host of Healthcare Market Matrix, a podcast that helps B2b healthtech marketing leaders gain insight into the problems healthcare leaders face that technology can help them solve.
John’s expertise lies in founder/CEO/CMO advisory, brand strategy, content strategy, growth and performance marketing, and event engagement strategy. He is passionate about empowering B2B tech leaders to connect with their prospects and customers in profound and impactful ways. John frequently contributes to tech publications, industry blogs, and podcasts, sharing his insights and best practices on B2B tech marketing.