Breaking Health

Susan DeVore has been in and around the healthcare industry for most of her life – long before she became president and CEO of Premier Inc., a company that unites an alliance of more than 4,000 hospitals and health systems and approximately 165,000 other providers and organizations to transform healthcare. It’s a little-known fact that Susan’s roots at Premier date back to her childhood when her father, a biomedical engineer, worked for a predecessor to the company. After working at Ernst & Young – including time as a partner and senior healthcare industry management practice leader, among other roles – she got the call to interview at Premier. No one was aware of Susan’s company legacy at that time, but after she joined, there were longtime employees who remembered her attending the company picnic or other gatherings as a young teenager. Susan’s lifelong focus on improving the healthcare system and her current role at Premier – driven by insight from such a vast network of care delivery organizations – combine to give her an incredibly valuable perspective for solving healthcare’s biggest challenges. Premier’s network enables it to maintain a dataset that encompasses roughly 45% of patients in the US. Those data inform Susan’s leadership and the decisions the company makes to help solve cost and quality challenges and develop a unique model of care delivery. At the HIMSS Global Conference & Exhibition in February Susan will be delivering a keynote session titled, “Healing from Within: Leading Change, Inspiring Action.” But you can hear her first on this episode of Breaking Health Podcast. Susan’s conversation with Keith Figlioli covers a number of pressing topics including: • Reducing Waste in the System – Susan talks about how there’s still 30% waste in the system and three times unwanted variation in care delivery, and how these challenges can’t be solved by insurance companies or the government. She believes the only way to tackle them is head-on, from within the system, and shares her thoughts about how data, technology, and influence within healthcare systems are all critical to driving transformation.• Changing the Social System – the decades-old social system that the healthcare industry is built upon is one that’s difficult to change. But it’s starting to change in experimental ways, driven by innovators and early adopters who recognize that it’s unsustainable for healthcare costs to grow at twice the rate of the economy, and who want to do something about it. Susan talks about how and why it’s easy to stay in a fee-for-service world and shares her thoughts on the main barriers to change.• The Path to Alternative Payments – as Susan sees it, the big thing that’s holding health systems back from adopting alternative payment models is uncertainty. If providers that haven’t adopted or are only experimenting in alternative payments think there’s a chance that fee-for-service might last longer, it’s much harder for them to make the leap. However, she talks about her view of federal regulations and how the “training wheels are coming off” to force change more quickly.• The Next Big Thing: Making Big Data Small – while increasing access to healthcare data is playing an important role in transforming the industry, one big challenge right now is the sheer volume of data that exists. Susan talks about how the next big thing on the horizon will be figuring out ways to make vast amounts of data more usable. She talks about how to get “small data” into the workflow so it’s available for physicians and patients to use in making informed decisions that change the care being delivered.To hear Susan DeVore talk about these topics and more, listen to this episode of Breaking Health Podcast.

IntelyCare CEO David Coppins details his company’s solution for nursing staffing shortages. The company makes its own nurses available to providers through a software scheduling tool, removing a lot of the juggling and guesswork. Earlier this month, IntelyCare  announced a $10.8 million round led by Leerink Revelation Partners with participation from Longmeadow Capital, previous investor LRVHealth and Bill Mantzoukas, an entrepreneur who has owned and operated a series of skilled nursing facilities. 

We like you. We really do. That’s why we’re sorry we haven’t posted a new Breaking Health Podcast in a few weeks. But we’re back on track sharing Andy Slavitt’s striking keynote commentary from DHIS. We’re also excited to share a snippet from our new podcast – Healthcare Is Hard, a Podcast for Insiders – which will bring insights from executives at the most innovative healthcare systems and payors. So you’re actually getting two podcasts this week. You’re welcome. Please subscribe to Healthcare Is Hard on iTunes and other prominent podcast platforms.

Robert Mittendorff, MD, partner at Norwest Venture Partners, and Bill Geary, co-founder and partner at Flare Capital Partners, review the highlights of the successful Digital Healthcare Innovation Summit held on October 11 in Boston.In this interview they discuss:The most important takeaway from the State of Healthcare by Sam Baker of Axios.An important address by Andy Slavitt of Town Hall Ventures (and speculation as to where the new firm will invest).The advances in Digital Therapeutics and Telehealth.The one technology leader traveling under the Digital Health radar.Two conversations led by CNBC’s Chrissy Farr.Start-ups working to manage patient financial responsibility.The meeting was broadcast live on Twitter. Go to the pinned tweet @dhisummit.More content on the way.

Bill Geary, co-chair of the upcoming DHIS, does Digital Health entrepreneurs a favor by spelling out what he sees as signs of a strong pitch. (See below.) We also review the highlights of the upcoming DHIS.The most profound Health Tech/Digital Health companies are either: (1) taking on novel clinical and financial risk for those highest cost and most in need or (2) providing critical solutions and services to those new and legacy risk-bearing organizations working to deliver on the opportunity in (1).I'm an optimist. Our industry is nowhere near overfunded and the market/need is enormous/largely unmet; it's that there are simply too many narrowly focused solutions providers that have raised too much capital masquerading as real companies and that's the coming reckoning.The five most interesting and best Health Tech/Digital Health customer/market segments are, in this order: pharma, self-funded employers, payers, consumers, and providers, while keeping in mind that every successful company requires penetration (perhaps simultaneously) in two of the five.No one region of the US dominates our Health Tech/Digital Health industry like it does in traditional tech; it's spread out among 10+ major metro areas including Boston, SF, LA, Minneapolis, NYC, Nashville, Denver, Houston, RTP, Chicago, and Austin.Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning aren’t verticals. They’re a set of critically important technologies to be incorporated horizontally in every successful solutions provider, just like analytics.The more screwed up our US healthcare system the more opportunity there is for all of us to fix it: complexity + regulatory issues = profound potential cost-reduction impact, which is all about showing customers a 5:1 ROI with a ≤ 12-month payback.Just like in all other young emerging private companies, strength of team is most important, market opportunity is second, a compelling business model is third, and quality of product/solution is fourth. Don’t start at number 4 and work backward.

Stephanie Tilenius, CEO and co-founder of Vida, brings her tech experience to building a powerful digital health company. They discuss the challenges in healthcare, the importance of technology and coaching, their customizable programs and success stories, and the potential of AI and machine learning in transforming healthcare.

Brigham Hyde, CEO of Precision Health AI, explains the company is building out a data platform for oncology treatment. The firm is building products to serve pharma, life science companies, providers, and payers. In this podcast, Hyde explains how Precision Health AI can help oncologists determine stage of cancer and identify adverse effects. Visit dhis.net/register to register for the October 11 Digital Healthcare Innovation Summit

Mick Farrell’s father questioned his son’s double degree from MIT when he didn’t immediately see the opportunity facing the sleep apnea company. But the younger Farrell quickly came around and helped build ResMed into a $15 billion company, with the last five years at the helm as CEO. Today, however, Farrell has ResMed beginning to take a very different path, migrating away from pure medical device sales and into selling software and other tech services to physicians.

In this dual podcast, we talk with leaders from the American Heart Association, Philips, UPMC, and Aphelion Capital about Cardeation Capital, a new venture fund aimed at funding start-ups in the digital health and medtech fields. How did the four entities join forces? What can they offer start-ups looking to disrupt healthcare? For more information go to aphelioncapital.net. You can also learn more about Aphelion Capital, the firm managing the fund, in this Medtech Talk Podcast. We also highlight one of its first investments, ExplORer Surgical in this Breaking Health Podcast.

Founder and CEO Joel Wishkovsky created Simple Contacts’ phone-based app to save contact lens wearers time and money when they need a new supply of lenses but not a new prescription. Ophthalmologists are funding the company and conducting the remote examinations. But the firm isn’t seen favorably by optometrists, who stand to lose a steady stream of business.