Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1476979
42 THOUGHT LEADERSHIP Providence's CIO zeros in on patient loyalty By Laura Dyrda I mproving the patient experience is a top strategic pri- ority for Renton, Wash.-based Providence, even as fi- nances tighten and health systems in general are strug- gling to generate free cash flow. "We'll definitely be looking at tightening our belts on non-strategic programs and really focusing our investments in areas that improve patient experience and patient loyalty or stickiness with Providence as a system," B.J. Moore, CIO and executive vice president of real estate strategy and op- erations at Providence, said on the "Becker's Digital Health + Health IT" podcast. The CIO should play a big role in patient and consum- er loyalty, Mr. Moore said, because the IT teams have a unique view of the entire healthcare ecosystem. His team is responsible for building the technology infrastructure and road map to deliver the end-to-end-patient care. "We're really the only ones that stitch together all aspects of the patient journey," Mr. Moore said. "The nurse has a perspective, the caregiver has a perspective, and the pa- tient has a perspective, but that's really it. We are the only one that can pull together all those constituencies to have an end-to-end view. I was at Microsoft for 27 years, and I think tech companies are better at building end-to-end consumer journeys. It's a new muscle for healthcare." Improving the patient journey is a challenge in healthcare, especially since the different stakeholders typically work in silos. Care teams and patients need more seamless con- nectivity to make real-time decisions about care and easily access information. "It's really building that patient or caregiver vision first and then coming with technology to solve those problems," Mr. Moore said. To meet the patient experience goals and drive loyalty, Providence is creating a single-identity sys- tem to streamline information flow and improve the pa- tient experience. Mr. Moore said the single-identity system allows patients to log in to one application to access all their information. Patients only need to log in once, and the health system is updating the systems on the back end to remove the com- plexity and create common scenarios for consumer needs. "Our secret sauce is simplifying healthcare," Mr. Moore said. "We're far away from other consumer experiences. Most people are used to Expedia, Uber or Amazon where they get amazing consumer experiences. We're slowly making progress." n Q&A: BCBS Minnesota President and CEO Dana Erickson By Jakob Emerson D ana Erickson has been president and CEO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota since October 2021. She sat down with Becker's to discuss the lat- est trends across the health insurance indus- try and what her company is doing to lower care costs, drive health equity and navigate the healthcare landscape in a post-pandemic world. Covering more than 2.5 million lives, BCBS Minnesota is the state's largest nonprofit health plan. Ms. Erickson joined the compa- ny in 2015, bringing with her a background in clinical and medical leadership. A nurse and respiratory therapist by training, she has direct experience in home-based and rehabil- itative care. Question: What do you believe is the most important insurance trend that ex- ecutives should be keeping an eye on? Dana Erickson: Affordability of care and the rising cost of healthcare. is is not a new problem, but I think with the pandemic and certainly a lot of the focus on talent depar- tures within the industry, that will have an impact on costs. It is still the issue that we hear about from purchasers, whether that is directly from members to employers, agents and brokers. Ultimately, if we cannot provide access to care because of the cost, it doesn't matter how innovative and how personalized it is. Q: Insurance executives often cite the lack of robust data-sharing between payers and providers as the biggest challenge they see facing the imple- mentation of value-based payment models. How can the industry better fa- cilitate data interoperability within the context of alternative payments? DE: We view it as truly joint accountability for these models to be successful. Obviously, the providers are really leaning in on looking at their care models and how to be more fo- cused on outcomes, but we also need to be present and help them, which is where data is key. Everyone is worried about protecting data these days, but there are ways that we are doing that with our providers that are in val- ue-based arrangements. We're also focused on making sure that the data we give is ac- tionable. We have large integrated systems here in Minnesota and we give them a lot of data — but are we providing it in a way that's really actionable for them down at the level of the clinicians who are on the front line making decisions? Are we identifying those at-risk patients? Seamless data-sharing and making sure we're giving providers the right insights to get to the right patients are the ar- eas that we're focused on. One of the things that I'm very committed to, having been a cli- nician myself and working in different parts of the healthcare system, is how we can be even more collaborative and a partner with our provider systems to be successful in these evolving models.