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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Finding ROI in your AI Program: Rebalancing People and Technology in Healthcare
00:16:23
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- [00:00]
A
Hi everyone, this is Lucas Voss with Becker's Healthcare. Thanks so much for tuning in to the Becker's Healthcare podcast series. Fantastic to have you. Today we're talking about something very interesting and excited to learn about it. Rebalancing people and technology and healthcare. And joining me for today's discussion, also very excited to have her, Tali Segaff, vice president of customer success at MindYou. Tali, it's great to have you. Thanks for being here.
- [00:24]
B
Hey Lucas, it's awesome to be here.
- [00:26]
A
Absolutely. For our audience that might not know who you are, could you just share a little bit about yourself and your work in health care?
- [00:34]
B
Yes, absolutely. Love working in health care. I got my master's in public health with a focus in epidemiology. That was my real first entrance into the world. Did some work in academic research before pivoting into digital health and that's really been my passion. It's, it's what I've been doing for the last decade plus and today, as you mentioned, I lead customer success at Mindu, where we have patient engagement tools to help healthcare organizations engage with their patient across their key points in the journey. Our core product, her name is Eleanor. She's a conversational AI that talks to patients after they're discharged from the hospital, before complex procedures to make sure they're ready and prepped long term around diabetes, blood pressure, things like that. And it's such fun and cool work to be able to be at that intersection of technology and patient care and really implement deeply with the teams that are using them today, which I know is what we're going to talk about today.
- [01:38]
A
Yeah, and you've mentioned again, you've seen this development over the last decade or so and how this developed specifically in the technology in the digital space. And obviously we have this explosion for of AI tools across the healthcare market everywhere. They're specifically being marketed to healthcare organizations. Now we often talk about the, the bright shiny objects, the bright shiny AI objects that are being offered around the corner. Right. From your perspective, what separates those tools that actually deliver measurable ROI from those that might be those bright shiny objects. Right. That over promise and potentially under deliver what's the separator for you?
- [02:23]
B
Yeah, and listen, the bright shiny objects are amazing. We've dabbled in the bright shiny objects because they're really amazing. There are amazing things happening in technology. There is huge impact to be made. Unfortunately, that does not always mean roi. And so that's a really good question. And I think there are really two things that can allow us to implement technology that leads to ROI generating programs. The first one is just to talk about it up front. A lot of tech companies and a lot of vendors don't talk about ROI because they're trying to make this general impact on patient care, on outcomes, on things like that. But once you just recognize that ROI is something that has to be discussed from the get go of any conversation with a vendor with a technology, you're already 10 steps ahead because it's on the table, you're talking about it. You are not buying or selling programs that do not already have a spelled out ROI on the table. And so making sure that that is talked about in the sale and buying process of technologies is step one. Once you have that in place, step two is making sure that it is connected to workflows. Because a lot of the times we can create these programs on a high level without understanding the tools that the care teams have on the ground, the tools that the patients have themselves. And we don't walk the line from school technology that has ROI to. But then how to actually make it happen is a challenge. And what we've learned over the years is, is you have to get in deep with the teams on the ground in order to make sure that everything you give them is actionable and can then lead to roi. So I can give an example if that's helpful, but yeah, absolutely, yeah, so community.
- [04:25]
A
So just to come back to that. So communication is that first step and then again, understanding where we're at really, as you describe the process. Yeah. If you want to share an example of what this looks like in practice, and especially when you're thinking about how leaders can also then determine, okay, I'm actually seeing value right now. I can, I can put down, okay, here's the value that I'm actually seeing.
- [04:45]
B
And that's a perfect point. Because part of what you have to do when you ask the question, can this program be ROI generating? For us, there has to be joint ownership over measuring those metrics over time. And so we, first of all, that. And again, that conversation just has to happen from, you know, if not day one, day two of the conversations that are happening, like, what is the ROI here and how are we going to measure it? Because that's another pitfall that we see a lot of the times. And so once we implement a program, we do a one month, are we on track? Check in. So first and foremost, we probably won't expect to see. Sometimes we do. But even if we don't see ROI yet, after one month, we want to make sure that the metrics are going in the direction that we need them to. So we come with our data, we need the program leaders to come with their data to then make sure that we're on the right track to seeing roi. And then we do quarterly check ins after that that are focused almost solely on ROI from the big picture perspective to make sure that the metrics are aligning with that financial value that we defined in phase one.
- [06:00]
A
Yeah, I think that's such an important thing to mention because if there is no goal, right, if there's no determined outline of here's how we're going to achieve this, then you can't really measure, you can't create measurement around okay, this is actually successful, which is so, so important. I want to touch a little bit on something that you mentioned earlier in your introduction because I think again, you're very passionate about it. You've talked about sort of the balance of human and technology and the resources attached to them. Right. And bringing the human into the fold with all of this. Digital Inn Foundation. Can you walk us through how a balanced approach changes the way health systems and payers think about workforce optimization and patient engagement and specifically also why that balance is so important, why having that balance is so key.
- [06:48]
B
Absolutely. And you know, I forgot to mention this in the beginning, but one of the wonderful things that we've been able to do at MindYou in the last year is actually in addition to implementing Eleanor into our customers care teams, we've also built our own care team where we have some of our business models or end to end service models where Eleanor plus nurse close entire gaps in care. And so we have those two business models and so it's on a personal level and professional level. It's been a very cool and rewarding experience to be able to take everything we learned from implementing Eleanor into our customers care teams over the years and and then be able to build our own hybrid team in house based on those best practices and principles that we honed over the years. And so I'm definitely speaking now from both perspectives, both how to implement these into your care teams and then what also worked for us. And you know, I think that there's a lot of chatter in the market around how to optimize care teams and it's such an important conversation because they're really burnt out. They're really burnt out, they're really overburdened and they need help and they're expensive. And so all of those things together lead to this conversation around how do we help optimize these care teams. The first thing to keep in mind, and we hear this across the board from our customers that we work with, you cannot take away from care teams what they love most, which is making an impact on patients. And so when we see technologies trying to take that away, it doesn't work as well as you would want it to from a change management perspective and an employee satisfaction perspective, because that's what they love. They love having conversations with patients. They love being able to help their patients improve from a health perspective, help them navigate their health care, get more access to healthcare. That's what they love. And so when you start talking to them about these augmentation technologies, there can be a lot of fear and a lot of distrust and making sure that you choose the technologies that will optimize them and help them focus their time and energy on doing those things that they love, as opposed to taking away those things and burdening them with more paperwork, for example. So making that choice, there are economic factors which I'll talk about in a second, but there's also that very emotional and person centered factor that you just have to keep in mind if you want this technology to be successful, you need it to work for your people. The care teams love working with patients. What we do with Eleanor is we'll put her in the front end, get her filtering out. Patients that either don't want to talk, don't need help, or can be managed end to end with Eleanor with a quick phone call. But we reserve those more complex, higher level conversations that need someone operating at the top of their license. We reserve, though, we funnel those directly to the care teams. And so the care teams get the patients who want to talk to them, the ones who need to talk to them, but they're not spending their days leaving voicemails, for example. And so that's been one of the things that's been really successful from our perspective. On the emotional side of change management and then on the economics, what organizations can keep in mind, especially with technologies like Eleanor, is looking forward, do I have staffing plans in the next couple of quarters that can be changed? Can I change this staffing model? If I need to hire 50 new care managers, you know, two quarters from now, can I reevaluate that with technologies like Eleanor and minimize that hiring by creating a more augmented team with that in mind as well, there is turnover in the market, as we all know. As turnover happens, can we prevent needing to backfill those positions through technologies like Eleanor? So those are the two Ways I would think about it, the emotional piece of am I fitting into the place that the team needs? And then also the economics behind it.
- [11:09]
A
Coming back to. I want to come back to the change management piece really quickly because I think it's a, it's an important part of the conversation. Did anything in those. Again, you talk to clinicians a lot. You've mentioned you obviously they. Patient care is their main priority. That's. They love caring for patients. That's what they went into the profession for. Right?
- [11:27]
B
Yeah.
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A
Work with them a lot. But is there anything that, that, that surprised you about leaders maybe not understanding that piece of it? And really, again, working with clinicians. Right. What can leadership teams take away from that? Anything that surprised you there in those conversations around change management?
- [11:49]
B
Yes. And I know I just spoke a lot about that emotional piece of the change management and making sure that they're involved in the process and doing it in the right way. And, and that that is crucial. And we work really, you know, once we get a new customer, we work really closely on how are we going to roll this out to your team in the best way. I think. Another piece of that to keep in mind because I've seen the opposite true as well, where leaders can get a little too nervous to roll out new things to their teams. And there is a level of resilience that these teams have when they're introduced with something new and if done in the right way, where we say it always has to be rooted in the workflow, if it's rooted in the workflow in the right way. We have seen again and again that teams that are nervous at first, almost every team is nervous at first. If you do it in the right way and you give it the attention it deserves, they will start asking for more. They'll start really thinking of this technology as a part of their team, as a part of their workflow. And, and they'll start asking, oh, can Eleanor help us there? Can Eleanor help us there? And this surprises leaders who think, no, my team's never going to do this. They're never going to be. Nope, not for my team. And there is more resilience, there is more curiosity, as long as it's done in the right way. And we actually have a team now where they factor Eleanor not only into the ROI of the impact she's having on patients or the staffing models, but on employee retention. Because the team now wants solutions like ours, but specifically in this team salute, they want Eleanor because she's helping take off the work that they don't want to do so. She's now also part of their employee retention program, which is amazing.
- [13:41]
A
And it brings us, I feel like again, it brings us full circle to what we talked about earlier because I feel like again, this whole process then, if done correctly, directly impacts roi. Right. And I would assume also the organization's business objectives.
- [13:59]
B
Right, Absolutely.
- [14:01]
A
And in a successful way. In a successful way, I might add, there, which is really, really key. Tali, what a great conversation. Thank you so much for taking some time with us today and talking us through this. Again, I feel like we took a little bit of the bright shiny object and made it a little bit shinier. I feel like here and there. Anything, Anything else that you'd like to share that we haven't touched on that that might be important for our listeners to understand or learn?
- [14:30]
B
Yes, I think definitely, you know, part of, part of the ROI is also looking at what, what we're impacting directly versus indirectly. And that's, that's maybe another point just to, just to quickly look at, you know, we have so much of the ROI that we can impact indirectly in a lot of our programs. But then wherever you can create that direct line to roi, it's so much healthier for all parties involved to be able to have clarity on that issue. So in the service model that we provide the end to end Eleanor Nurse service for our customers, where actually that team itself is entirely closing end to end gaps in care, we're able to show that 90% of these gaps would not have closed without this team. That's really valuable to be able to really have the direct line from the work that we're doing to the ROI that we're providing without any of the what ifs in the middle. So there's a lot of value there. You know, we try as much as possible to get to that level of clarity on our programs. But, but I think that's, that's really it. You know, I think that idea of integrating ROI from the beginning to the end of the programs is the most important thing for us. And then connecting it to the workflows at the end of the day.
- [15:54]
A
Yeah. Making it easier for folks, creating easier workflows through this, which is so key to be able to improve the work. Tali, it's so great to have you. Thanks for sharing all of your insights. Fantastic to have you on.
- [16:07]
B
Thank you so much. Lucas, this has been great talking to you.
- [16:10]
A
Thank you so much. And we also want to thank our podcast sponsor. Remind you you can tune into more podcasts from Becker's Healthcare by visiting our podcast page@beckershospitalreview.com.