Inside Angle

Physician burnout is overwhelming clinicians, but ambient technology can help create time to care.

What exactly does autonomous coding mean and how is it different from tools within the electronic health record (EHR)? Dive into the definition of coding automation with Diana Ortiz as she explains the ways EHRs and coding solutions work together to achieve complete and compliant documentation.

You may be familiar with social drivers of health (SDoH), but do you know how they are documented and shared as part of the medical record? Can sharing SDoH data ultimately improve care and close health equity gaps? Get answers from Lauren Riplinger, JD, and Priya Bathija as they describe what some health systems are doing to record SDoH and ideas for how we can do even more.

How can we infuse health equity into a system that wasn’t originally created with that goal in mind? Dr. Melissa Clarke sat down with Dr. Aditi Mallick, acting director of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Office of Minority Health (OMH) to discuss social drivers of health, risk adjustment and other factors that impact health equity. Discover CMS models that are currently being employed to advance health equity and dive into new models coming down the pipeline.

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools have revealed a world of ideas for new devices, vaccines and other inventions, but are those creations unpatentable? How can humans work collaboratively with AI to create an effective inventive system? Our guest Robert Plotkin, author and patent attorney at Blueshift IP, dives into the nuances surrounding AI and invention and how these tools are revolutionizing discovery as we know it.

Medicare Advantage has been around for decades, but how much do you know about this historic program? Learn directly from one of the driving forces behind Medicare Advantage, Tom Scully, former administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). He dives into the history of the program, how health plans have evolved over time and how value-based care models will shape the future of health care.

The landscape around health equity continues to evolve, and recent regulations and measures have been introduced to help address the issue, but what role can hospitals and health systems play in closing existing health equity gaps? Dr. Melissa Clarke sat down with two experts from the American Hospital Association (AHA), Joy Lewis and Akin Demehin, to explore equity-based best practices and actionable steps hospitals can take to strive toward greater health equity. 

Forty years after its implementation, the Medicare Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) has been a largely successful payment system. What led to this victory and what best practices can we take away on the road to value-based care? Take a step back in time with Rich Averill as he describes the history of IPPS and glimpse into the future of how this history could inform future programs.

 https://insideangle.3m.com/his/podcast-post/Outpatient procedures are growing in popularity due to cost effectiveness and convenience, and some procedures, like orthopedic surgery, are moving off the inpatient only list. How can we ensure the continued safety of these procedures outside of the hospital setting? Join our guest Miki Patterson, PhD as she describes how data from outpatient visits can be analyzed and applied to create time to care for clinicians and lead to cheaper, safer, more effective health care for patients.

Speech recognition technology has been around for longer than you might think. Discover how it has evolved and advanced over the years from Thomas Schaaf, principal research scientist at 3M HIS. He started his career in the speech recognition environment in the 1990s, working for companies like Amazon and Toshiba. Listen as he shares his insights into the future of the technology for health care and beyond.

Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is advancing at a remarkable rate and there is a lot to consider when it comes to how applications like ChatGPT are used and regulated. In this episode, Prem Devanbu, distinguished research professor at UC Davis and renowned expert in empirical software engineering and AI, reflects on the evolution of large language models, deep learning, natural language understanding and more.

Mothers in the United States face a reality of worsening maternal mortality and morbidity rates, especially mothers in the BIPOC community. What factors are contributing to these maternal health outcomes inequities and how can we reverse this negative trend? In this Inside Angle episode, Dr. Steven Calvin, board-certified OB-GYN and maternal-fetal medicine physician, shares his more than 40 years of experience caring for moms and babies, and discusses ways maternal outcomes could be improved.

All of us have experienced trauma in our lives. How has trauma shaped your life and what did you learn from that experience? For Allison Massari, navigating a life altering accident and its aftermath has taught her many lessons and continues to inform her unique perspective on resilience and healing. Hear Allison’s story and don’t miss her full keynote at the 3M Client Experience Summit, May 22-25 in Atlanta.

Technology isn’t a cure all for every problem facing the U.S. health care industry, but saving a doctor 30 minutes every day so they can spend more time with patients is something worth working toward. Thomas Polzin, director of natural language processing at 3M Health Information Systems, explores how natural language understanding, machine learning and artificial intelligence can work transform how clinicians deliver care.

Interested in learning about health care startups and what they can bring to the table, but aren’t able to attend technology conferences? Look past the colorful booths and swag and dig into true health care innovation with Chelsea Plant, an investment manager with 3M Ventures. She provides key insight on what many of these companies are focused on for 2023 and beyond, discussing factors that go into a successful startup and a successful partnership.

The average patient chart contains thousands of words and those words add up fast when caring for multiple patients a day. Doctors everywhere can be overwhelmed with all this data, that is often scattered throughout emails, electronic health records (EHRs) and phone calls, but what is the solution to this information overload? How can we redesign EHRs and other health care tools to support the way doctors work today? Dr. Subha Airan-Javia, hospitalist for the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and CEO and co-founder of CareAlign, proposes ideas to relieve the cognitive load placed on providers.

Is your health system considering taking on more downside risk? In this episode, join Dr. Sandeep Wadhwa, global chief medical officer at 3M Health Information Systems, as he dives into key Medicare, Medicaid and commercial insurer payment trends that will influence risk adjustment, quality and population health.

In this episode, AI evangelist Juggy Jagannathan, PhD, discusses the advancement of speech recognition technology with Detlef Koll, global vice president of research and development at 3M Health Information Systems. Travel along the timeline of speech recognition history, starting with isolated word speech recognition all the way to continuous word speech recognition and automatic transcription technologies that create time to care for physicians.

What does it mean to be an anti-racist health care organization? How can health systems move beyond buzzwords and check boxes to take real action toward achieving health equity? In this episode, host Dr. Melissa Clarke and guest DeAnna Minus-Vincent, executive vice president, chief social justice and accountability officer at RWJBarnabas Health System, explore how small change can drive systemic change and ultimately lead to more equitable care for all.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, health care workers were hailed as heroes, but many have since decided to leave the health workforce. Why? In this episode, host Dr. Travis Bias and guest Dr. Bianca Frogner, professor in the family medicine department in the School of Medicine at University of Washington, take a closer look at issues affecting health care workforce retention and recruitment, like lagging wages, lack of coordination and workplace violence.

Telemedicine is far from perfect, but during the COVID-19 pandemic it became an essential tool for delivering care. Will the trend towards telemedicine continue after the pandemic, or fall by the wayside? Dr. Matt Sakumoto, a virtualist primary care physician at Sutter Health in San Francisco, describes the concept of digital empathy in telemedicine and how it could help this technology be more than just a blip on the health care radar.

Let’s face it: Value-based payment models are still a work in progress. How can we create value-based programs so that historically underserved populations, both rural and urban, can experience improved care outcomes? Dive into the topics of health equity, advanced payment model design and more with guest Dr. Amol Navathe, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medical ethics and health policy at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Great user experience is paramount in our digital world. But it doesn’t always translate to health care settings. With more than 20 years as a usability/user experience (UX) engineer and manager, Dr. Randolph Bias has spent his career helping software developers make human-computer interfaces “user friendly.” Learn how these ideas can be applied to the medical world, including in the electronic health record (EHR) and for advancing telemedicine.

Introducing Dr. Melissa Clarke and Dr. Travis Bias, new hosts of the Inside Angle podcast! Dr. Clarke is senior medical director for health care transformation and health equity, and Dr. Bias is chief medical officer of the clinician solutions business at 3M Health Information Systems. In this episode, Melissa and Travis discuss everything from their time providing health care and training to physicians abroad, to how we can address physician burnout and incorporate technology to meaningfully impact care outcomes and payment models.

Each month Melissa and Travis will talk to industry experts about the challenges they face, what solutions they have tried, what’s worked and what hasn’t, and the lessons they’ve learned along the way.

Getting into health care somewhat accidentally as a child, Dr. Kyna Fong, CEO and co-founder of Elation Health, set out to create clinical first technology to bolster primary care. What is clinical first technology? Listen to Dr. Fong’s perspective on the importance of health care innovation that supports the core of care: the physician patient relationship.

When South Shore Hospital Clinical Documentation Integrity (CDI) Director Kim Conner was tasked with analyzing the organization’s existing CDI program, she decided it was time for big changes. In this episode, Kim shares how she worked alongside coding, quality and physician teams to ensure complete and accurate documentation of patient encounters. Physician buy in through positive, data driven feedback and education has been key to the organization’s success, as well as recognizing physician burnout and working on ways to reduce it.

What are the fundamental drivers of high costs and low quality care in the U.S. health care system? In this episode, Sophia Tripoli, director of health care innovation at Families USA, describes her organization/s work on value initiatives that focus on re-orienting the health care system to deliver health. She also discusses forwarding consumer-focused policy agendas to improve health care delivery and payment systems.

Many states and health plans have adopted value-based payment models to address social determinants of health. How do these models work and are they working? In this episode, William Bleser, PhD at Duke Margolis Center for Health Policy, digs into the details of some of these models, bringing to light key strategies for successful payment reform and pitfalls to avoid.

In order to practice medicine, doctors have to take and pass board certification exams to prove they are current in their field. Dr. Richard Baron, president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine and the ABIM Foundation, reveals the importance of these exams beyond testing medical knowledge. He shares ideas about the future of primary care, quality measurement and what it truly means to be a good doctor.

When U.S. business leaders noticed that their employees in other countries were getting better care and outcomes for less cost than in the U.S., they knew something needed to change. Enter the Primary Care Collaborative (PCC), a not-for-profit, multi-stakeholder organization dedicated to sharing best practices to support the growth of high performing primary care. Ann Greiner, president and CEO of the PCC, describes the organization’s work and commitment to finding a solution to the current state of primary care in the U.S.

How can we fix the U.S. health care system so that it is both less costly and provides better patient outcomes? It’s a complicated question with no easy answer. One solution is to invest more in high quality primary care, with an emphasis on continuity of care that fosters a partnership between providers and patients. Chris Koller, president of the Milbank Memorial Fund, shares how the organization is working with public officials to improve the health of all populations and their work with states to set health care cost growth targets.

Have you ever created a bucket list? Has overwork and burnout prevented you from realizing those dreams? Ben Nemtin wrote the book “What Do You Want To Do Before You Die?” to remind us to step back from the day to day and focus on helping ourselves and others achieve lifelong dreams.

The health care industry is changing. Is your organization keeping up? Best selling author, inventor and technologist Nicholas Webb explores the trends disrupting the current state of health care and details three things that hospitals and clinics can do to prepare for survival.

Employers are fed up with the current health care system. They recognize that high quality care means a healthier workforce and are looking to hospitals, health systems and health plans to move faster on health reform. Elizabeth Mitchell, president and CEO of the Purchaser Business Group on Health, discusses her organization’s innovative work redesigning care delivery and driving affordability.

Why are health care costs so much higher in the U.S. compared with other countries? In his new book “Never Pay the First Bill: And Other Ways to Fight the Health Care System and Win,” investigative reporter and author Marshall Allen shares stories from real people dealing with high medical bills and details concrete steps for how individuals and employers can challenge the system.

Care guidelines and protocols are designed to address discreet aspects of health, not necessarily the complexities of the human condition. When Dr. Elvin Geng of Washington University in St. Louis realized standard rules and practice were preventing him from addressing a complicated issue for a patient, he recognized the situation called for more discretionary decision making, evidence of what our second guest, author Michael Lipsky, discusses in his seminal book “The Street-Level Bureaucrat.” Find out how this concept relates to health care and how it is now shaping the way care is delivered.

At its core, health care is fundamentally about relationships. Yet, over the last several decades, care delivery has evolved into a transactional model reinforced by EHR tick boxes, shift work and the notion that clinicians are interchangeable. Dr. Christine Sinsky, Vice President for the American Medical Association, discusses her research on physician burnout and the connection between better patient outcomes and patient-clinician relationships based on trust and continuity.

Our nation's health care delivery system falls short when it comes to disease prevention and health promotion. Can we embrace the idea of health "holism" -- treating the whole person, not just the physical symptoms of a disease -- into our modern care delivery and payment systems? In this episode, Wayne Jonas, MD, describes how to bring primary care back to the forefront of the U.S. health care model.

How do we provide physicians with the right resources to meet the needs of the people they serve? What will it take to ensure the best possible care when social factors hinder successful outcomes? In this episode, Dr. Bob Phillips, Executive Director of The Center for Professionalism & Value in Health Care with the American Board of Family Medicine, discusses the value of using community vital signs to identify at-risk populations, and advocates for payment redesign that accounts for social determinants of health (SDoH), which would enable more resources to meet the intensity of work for people with greater needs.

Among the many lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, one thing is clear: Whether it's gaps in our public health system or obstacles to adoption of telemedicine, the way we finance health care in the U.S. doesn't always match what we want from health care. Rebecca Etz, Ph.D., a cultural anthropologist with Virginia Commonwealth University and a leading expert on integrating mental and behavioral health into primary care practice, joins the Inside Angle podcast to discuss how outdated health care finance policies don't necessarily help people be well, prevent disease or avoid a hospital stay.

What might a better value-based payment model look like and what tools do we need in order to create that model? Dr. Gordon Moore discusses a vision for the future of value-based care with Kenton Johnston, PhD, MPH, dissecting the topics of risk adjustment, quality measures, accountable care organizations and more.

How can small physician practices be supported in their work? In what ways can practices grow their voice to get the attention of payers and ultimately realize the goals of value-based care? In this episode, Dr. Jen Brull discusses taking her practice in Plainville Kansas on a journey of continual improvement that led her to a national role as vice president of clinical engagement for Aledade, a company that helps geographically disparate primary care practices form accountable care organizations and deliver successful value-based care.

Better patient outcomes depend on high quality primary care, but primary care providers often don't get the data they need to fully understand the unique needs of their patients. In this episode, Beth Bortz, president and CEO of the Virginia Center for Health Innovation, explores how the right data in the hands of PCPs can move the needle on payment and delivery system reform.

Founded in 1963 as a health and beauty store, CVS has evolved over its 50-year history, but always maintained a focus on making health care local and accessible. In this episode, Dr. Dan Knecht of CVS Health discusses how the company's 2018 acquisition of Aetna is driving innovative, new programs where CVS clinical pharmacists are applying health plan data to identify gaps in care, improve medication adherence, and help patients manage chronic conditions like diabetes--all with the goal of helping people make progress on their unique health journeys.

Health care procedures can be risky for certain cohorts of patients. How can we identify these patients are and weigh the benefits and risks of performing certain procedures? In this episode, Dr. Victoria Sharp explores the idea of a frailty index, which scores patients based on key frailty factors to determine good candidates for surgery or other procedures. Could a frailty index provide a more well rounded view of a patient's health, leading to better outcomes?

One silver lining of these COVID-19 times? The willingness to be inventive, try new approaches and invest resources in improving care outcomes. In this episode, Samantha Olds Frey, CEO of the Illinois Association of Medicaid Health Plans, describes what happened when health plans came together with Illinois Medicaid to support members facing unprecedented challenges arising from the pandemic.

Nationwide, emergency departments struggle with super utilizers, those patients who come into the ED as often as once a day. How can hospitals reduce utilization to bring down costs and still improve outcomes? Jason Greenspan, MD, associate chief medical officer with Emergent Medical Associates describes a breakthrough approach to care management.

What problems can be solved when health plans collaborate with each other rather than compete? In this episode, we explore Project Link, a new forum that brings health plans together to understand the impact of social determinants of health (SDOH) on their members. In this episode, Michelle Jester, Executive Director of Social Determinants of Health for America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), describes innovative approaches to solving SDOH challenges achieved through health plan communication and collaboration.

Telemedicine has been around for a long time, but many health care organizations made the first moves into telehealth with the COVID-19 public health emergency. Even before the pandemic, Washington DC-based Unity Health Care devised a telemedicine strategy that targeted underserved populations. How has the pandemic impacted Unity's program and will its current initiative become the new norm? Drs. Angela Diop and Andrew Robie discuss the present and future of Unity's telemedicine services and detail strategies your organization can use to bolster its telehealth efforts.

As health care organizations face unprecedented challenges brought on by the pandemic, how can they plan for a post-COVID-19 world? In this episode, Matt Eyles, President and CEO of America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), discusses new approaches AHIP members are taking to ensure continued coverage and address surprise billing, while focusing on the big picture issues of social determinants of health and systemic racism -- all while working within state budgets that have been strained by the pandemic. What interventions will have the greatest impact, both today and in the future?

In his New York Times best-selling book "The Price We Pay," Dr. Marty Makary discusses the worsening crisis of high health care costs and the impact on quality of care. Is price transparency the answer? Listen to the latest podcast episode for Dr. Makary's perspective and hear about his work as a Johns Hopkins surgeon and professor of public health, where he is researching ways to bridge the divide between cost and quality.

Electronic health records give providers an enormous amount of information, but finding relevant patient information can be like finding a needle in a haystack. The result: cognitive overload for providers, leading to wasted time and physician burnout. In this episode, 3M User Experience (UX) Design Team Lead Anna Abovyan explores ways to reduce the cognitive load on physicians by designing technology that is intuitive, easy to use, and helps, not hinders patient care.

The COVID-19 pandemic has put extraordinary stress on state Medicaid budgets. Enrollment is increasing, along with direct and indirect costs, at a time of declining state revenues. What can be done to mitigate these issues? CareMore Health, an integrated health plan and care delivery system for Medicare and Medicaid patients, is moving away from fee-for-service incentives to provide comprehensive care to its high needs/high cost patients. In this episode, Dr. Theresa Brown and Dr. Vibin Roy discuss the success of the CareMore Health clinical model, where clinicians and community resources are aligned and coordinated as a team.

There are thousands of wellness apps, devices, wearables and telehealth tools that can be used for chronic disease management and patient health monitoring at home. Although new technologies can lead to early identification of health concerns, they may also lead to unnecessary interventions that result in unintended complications and worse outcomes. In this episode, we reconnect with Juggy Jagannathan, PhD, AI evangelist for 3M, to consider which people are most likely to benefit from new care tools and strategies.

Immigrant communities and underserved populations experience disparities in care due to high poverty, limited access, cultural or linguistic differences, and other concerns. In this episode, Dr. Gordon Moore talks with Iliana Gilman, the former chief executive officer of El Buen Samaritano, an organization serving the Latino immigrant community in Austin, Tex. With a team dedicated to breaking down barriers to care, El Buen Samaritano is improving outcomes by tackling social determinants of health.

As a palliative care physician, Dr. Beth Wolf experienced the complexity of communication. As she helped patients and families navigate issues related to pain or end-of-life care, she saw that the way clinicians communicate with each other was rich with opportunity for misunderstanding. So, how do we help physicians accurately document a patient’s true burden of illness without disrupting the delivery of efficient and compassionate care? Now, as a documentation champion at Roper St. Francis Healthcare (and an advisor to 3M), Dr. Wolf trains physicians on how to incorporate accurate and concise clinical documentation into their work with patients.

When public health initiatives account for 90 percent of improvements in population health, what is the role of the care delivery system in addressing non-medical or social factors that drive outcomes? For Nico Pronk, PhD, President of the HealthPartners Institute and Chief Science Officer at HealthPartners, it means finding the right balance between caring for the urgent needs of a community and enhancing the vital conditions of a community, such as affordable housing, healthy food accessibility, and early childhood education. Based on the success of HealthPartners' Power Up 4 Kids program and other intiatives, Dr. Pronk discusses an approach that pays careful attention to the needs of a community and engages local stakeholders to improve the chances of good outcomes.

As the largest health insurance program in the country, providing the majority of mental health care and long-term services and support, Medicaid is an indispensable component of the U.S. healthcare system. Matt Salo, Executive Director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, works with state Medicaid agencies around the nation to improve quality, cost and the experience of care for patient populations that are most vulnerable. Our host, Dr. Gordon Moore sat down with Matt Salo to discuss the state of Medicaid in 2020 and beyond.

During this time of COVID-19, we've seen a striking increase in the use of telemedicine services. The Inside Angle podcast revisits an episode featuring telemedicine pioneer Barb Johnston, co-founder and CEO of HealthLinkNow, a network of clinicians providing mental health services to patients online. With nearly two decades of experience in implementing telemedicine programs, including the creation of the California Telemedicine Network (CTN), she brings her veteran perspective to the table in discussing the regulations, payment policies and technology needed to achieve the well-documented benefits of virtual health care.