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- [00:02]
A
@ Athenahealth, we know your ambulatory practice wants healthier a healthier business, healthier care teams and healthier patients. But the complexities of modern healthcare tech make it hard for you and your care teams to focus on what matters most. That's where athenahealth can help our AI native all in one solutions reduce administrative burdens, streamline billing and payments, and deliver critical insights when clinicians need it most. That means fewer clicks, more time for patients, and stronger bottom Practicing medicine is complex, but running a practice can be that much simpler. With Athenahealth, see how simpler is healthier at athenahealth.com.
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B
This is Laura Dardo with the Beckers Healthcare Podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by Dr. Ashwani Bhatia, who is a chief Executive officer and chief medical officer at Baycare Clinic. Dr. Bhatia, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
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C
Thank you, Laura. Thank you for having me at Becker's podcast.
- [01:01]
B
Absolutely. Now I'm looking forward to our discussion because we'll certainly highlight some of the great things you're doing at baycare Clinic and then I'm excited to get your perspective on future growth as well. But before we dive in, I'm curious, can you introduce yourself and tell us just a little bit more about baycare Clinic?
- [01:17]
C
Sure. I have the privilege of serving as the Chief Executive Officer and Chief medical officer of BayCare Clinic. I'm a physician by training myself. It's a physician led specialty group which is the largest specialty group in Northeastern Wisconsin serving about 10 communities. We have a thousand strong workforce and we are strategic partners of Advocate Health in Northeastern Wisconsin with a joint venture at Aurora BayCare Medical center, which is a level 2 trauma center and its other campuses. What makes us unique is our model, especially where we have physicians who just don't practice with us but they are owners but they also govern and innovate and shape strategy for Baker Clinic.
- [02:06]
B
Absolutely. That is great to hear. Now when you think about the last year or so, what's the biggest winner success story that you have? Can you tell us a little bit about that?
- [02:15]
C
Sure, Laura. I think it's been twofold. I think as a healthcare organization which is physician led, we always have been a strong community supporter. One of the successes as far as our community presence has been continued to invest in the community in terms of investing in mental health awareness and health awareness in the community through our foundation, which is the Baker Clinic foundation. And we pledged about half a million dollars and over the next five years for mental health awareness in the community. And one of the first organizations to receive that grant was Family Health Services this year. So we are excited about that. And that investment is going to be put to good use in the community. From a strategic perspective, one of the successes we have had is advancing our outpatient surgery strategy, moving a lot of high volume, appropriate procedures into ambulatory settings. This has actually improved patient experience, patient throughput, and of course, the costs are reduced as well for the patients. And what it has done is it has preserved our hospital capacity for higher acuity care. And I think that has really helped us and has been a great part of our success in the last year.
- [03:41]
B
Absolutely. That's amazing to hear and, you know, really two strong examples of ways that you're not only improving care and access to care for the community, but also, you know, strengthening the organization at the same time. And so that's really impressive. You know, when you look at where we're at today, I know there's so much happening within the healthcare space. What are the top two to three issues that you're focused on right now?
- [04:04]
C
I think for us, one of the focuses has been continuing to expand access to our underserved communities. We have realized that the BayCare strategy has to be meeting those patients in their communities rather than bringing them to sometimes higher level of care. So we have created a strategy where our physicians, specialists, our subspecialists are traveling to these communities. Some of them are rural communities which really need that specialty care. As we continue to expand and improve the patient satisfaction, I think meeting those patients in their communities and providing care is our biggest focus. And again, other than that, I do feel cybersecurity is going to be one of our big focuses over the next two to three years. We have a chief security officer who has identified certain gaps, but I think as healthcare remains the top targets, we have over the last year also heavily invested in infrastructure and staff training. I do feel cybersecurity is just not an IT issue anymore. It has become a patient safety issue as well, because the disruption it causes is of magnified proportions.
- [05:26]
B
Absolutely. I think that's fascinating. And both issues I wanted to ask you just a little bit deeper now and expanding access to communities. I know you talked a little bit about bringing in more of an ambulatory strategy and having outpatient surgery as well as other types of outpatient care closer to the patient and potentially even in virtual care as well. So from your perspective, what does that do to the kind of overall way that the organization is thinking about healthcare delivery and how do you balance investing in some of those different bringing care to the patient opportunities versus the traditional inpatient hospitals and larger clinics?
- [06:10]
C
You know, that's a great question, Laura. We have realized that it's hard for sometimes patients to be able to get certain care in their community because of the lack of resources. So we appropriately want to triage those patients who can come to our larger facility for complicated care because of the post op care needed for their complicated medical issues, but especially for certain elective procedures. We have been able to partner with other health systems as well to be able to provide care in certain rural hospitals. We do have a great partner in advocate health and they have certain hospitals in critical access areas or smaller hospitals where we have been able to partner with them and provide that care to those specialists. Going there and doing outreach and you're talking about some telehealth. We are looking at a strategy where we can do post op visits through telehealth as well so that we reduce even some of that distance traveled by some of our patients in our communities.
- [07:18]
B
Absolutely, that makes a lot of sense and it's helpful to see a bit deeper into the strategy there. Now I know you touched on cybersecurity and looking at investing in the infrastructure, training, staff and really thinking about it as a patient safety issue and something that is really top of mind to make sure that patients get that continuity of care no matter what. I'm curious, as you're looking at this type of investment in the future and just really providing that organization that can do whatever is necessary to prevent a cyber attack, how do you, I guess, see that growing or evolving? I know it's hard to say exactly what will happen in the future, but it does seem like more and more resources are having to go to technology, especially as AI and other tech advances come in and so to keep things safe. What's that governance process or how do you think about that in a strategic way?
- [08:18]
C
I think the priority has to be to keep patients safe and the organization safe. At the same time, I do feel that cybersecurity has to be treated as more foundational rather than optional. That was many years ago. I think we have learned our lessons. I think it has to be selective. For example, for an organization like ours, we went with a fractional chief security officer to make sure the costs were under control, to look into where the gaps are and making sure that it is mission critical for us to take care of cybersecurity issues which are most essential, which make our organization more most vulnerable. So I think there has to be a collective effort to understand that these things are important and what staff training does, is. Makes them more aware and have interactive videos in terms of understanding what a spam looks like and what does a cyber attack mean for a company like ours. So those are the few things that we would have to understand that we will have to make sure that we invest judiciously. But also, as we know, the investments in these, in. In these endeavors can be very expensive. So we have taken a very proactive approach by involving all the stakeholders, including physicians and staff. So that I think it is. It is much more acceptable because there is always going to be a change where there is a, you know, dual security, you know, password checker and so forth. So I think, I think we have been able to at least get the culture around cybersecurity awareness in our institutions.
- [10:03]
B
Got it. That is helpful to know and understand. Thank you so much for talking through that. Now I wanted to look into the future as well. What are some of the big opportunities for growth over the next couple of years or so?
- [10:17]
C
Laura, I think, as everybody would tell you, artificial intelligence is going to be. Is going to be a word or even a statement that is going to be used repeatedly and has been used. So again, AI integration is essential. The AI healthcare investment by 2030 is going to be close to $180 billion based on certain studies. We are piloting AI tools for certain clinical decision support, looking at documentation reduction. I think the challenge for us being physician owned is going to be balancing innovation with physician trust, making sure these tools feel like partners. I think the speed of execution is going to be very important. And not only that, we will, again, as with cybersecurity, we will demystify this AI technology for physicians and patients. What does it mean? How we integrate AI into our healthcare space is going to be very, very important. With the labor shortage that we are going to be facing in many years, especially in Wisconsin, I think AI integration is going to be critical. But at the same time, what we need to make sure that we align with our staff and physicians to understand also AI, we need to demystify its. AI is a fancy term, but we need to make sure that we are using the right tools to be able to go from just having a vision and then to execution. And I think that the speed of execution is going to be very important.
- [12:00]
B
Absolutely. And I can very much appreciate that balance of trying to engender that trust within the technology and knowing that seems like across the board, with technology and AI especially being okay with Understanding the iterative process of what that takes in order to build and fully leverage artificial intelligence in a variety of ways is just much different than in previous technologies where you got a finished product that you didn't have to think about or worry about or change again.
- [12:34]
C
Absolutely. I do feel that we are going to see different iterations of, of AI. It's going to continue to improve, but we will have to make sure that our physicians, our staff also understand it and they are not scared about, you know, either losing your jobs or if it, if it is done right, I think it will reduce burnout. I do feel it will enhance quality and it will also support eventually value based care where all the healthcare organizations are striving for.
- [13:06]
B
Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. Now, before we wrap up here, what do you think it will take to lead a thriving organization over the next five years? How are you starting now to kind of build daycare of the future?
- [13:18]
C
I think if I look at maybe one thing, I think we need a disciplined growth strategy. And I think we should not forget a lot of our populations live in rural health care. We need to enhance that and meet those patients in their communities. We shouldn't forget that our population is aging. I think healthcare economics and patient preferences both point towards outpatient centers as the future. As things which were done in the hospital are moving to outpatient centers, surgery centers, and what was done in the outpatient surgery centers are moving to the office. We need to align the capital and the workforce and also community engagement to accelerate that shift to be able to affect the cost of health care. Ultimately, I feel thriving over the next five years or three years would mean leading with having a foresight, understanding that the speed of execution is going to be important and aligning our physicians and healthcare staff in changes. And ultimately we are serving the communities, we are serving the patients. I think we will have to bring in something more to the patients, just not delivering health care. We'll have to think out of the box whether with aging population we will need more assisted living facilities, whether we will need more nursing homes and how we also strengthen them to be able to create an environment where it's not a just pit stop for coming back into our healthcare system. And the next big thing I feel is the organization will have to look at is health and wellness of the physicians and the staff. And also preventative health is going to be something that a thriving healthcare organization is going to put a priority on.
- [15:20]
B
Got it? Absolutely. That's really helpful. Dr. Bhatia, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. This has been a really fun and informative conversation and I look forward to seeing you as well in November at our CEO CFO Roundtable. I know you'll be a panel speaker with us and so it'll be great to continue the conversation there.
- [15:39]
C
Thank you, Laura. Thank you for having me today.
- [15:43]
A
At athenahealth. We know your ambulatory practice wants healthier a healthier business, healthier care teams and healthier patients. But the complexities of modern healthcare tech make it hard for you and your care teams to focus on what matters most. That's where athenahealth can help our AI native all in one solutions reduce administrative burdens, streamline billing and payments, and deliver critical insights when clinicians need it most. That means fewer clicks, more time for patients, and stronger bottom lines. Practicing with medicine is complex, but running a practice can be that much simpler with Athenahealth. See how simpler is healthier@athenahealth.com.