At first glance, the idea of gathering dozens of the most influential leaders in health IT together to come up with a definition might not make a lot of sense. But with an area as complex as population health, what the industry needs more than anything is clarity. And that is what KLAS believes it’s on its way to achieving, says Taylor Davis, VP of Analysis and Strategy and author of the Keystone Summit White Paper. In this interview, he talks about how the organization is working toward to goal of defining core provider population health IT functionality, the most interesting findings that stemmed from the Summit in terms of provider and vendor concerns, the framework that’s been in the works for months, and what are the next steps.
Part 1
- Defining population health IT functionality
- Diversity with solutions & “disconnects”
- Creating a framework
- 6 verticals of core functionalities
- “The fundamental business model is changing.”
- Providers to vendors: ‘come live in the trenches with us.’
- Honesty in sales
Bold Statements
If you have an RFP for a population health solution, you could have two vendors come out whose products have almost no functionality overlap. So it creates a situation where clarity is critical to success.
Healthcare is the most complex services industry the world has ever seen, and its fundamental business model is changing. It’s changing by bringing together several pieces that has historically been separate: quality, cost, and availability.
The functionality list becomes incredibly long, and participants of the Summit say that it’s going to get even longer in the future as we start to have a vertical for community engagement.
Several providers who were on the panel said they wish they had more requests from vendors saying, ‘hey, can we send several people over to live in the trenches with you and see how this works and how you live?’ There was an invitation broadly from providers to vendors saying, come see us and realize how much more we need than what you’re delivering to us today.
Gamble: I’d like to talk about the findings that came out of the Keystone Summit, which was held in late September. But first, can you give us a little background about the Summit? Was it focused solely on population health, and how was it structured?
Davis: Yes. Only those organizations who are playing a role in the shaping of population health IT were invited to attend. And frankly, it wasn’t a fully inclusive group. We could have easily quadrupled the number of attendees, as it’s a fairly critical subject, and there are a lot of great people and great organizations across the country that are doing a lot with this. But the goal was to have a manageable group where we could work together effectively; so it was small, and heavily focused on population health IT.
Gamble: Why did the KLAS feel it was so important to establish a definition for population health IT functionality?
Davis: There’s a sincere desire to help a lot of these provider organizations. In the conversations we’re having with people from all over the country, KLAS is constantly hearing from organizations who are purchasing population health solutions and dealing with a dizzying labyrinth of options and differences in different packages and functionality offerings.
If you have an RFP for, let’s say, a laboratory information system, you have maybe one or two vendors come out, and their offerings are pretty similar in terms of functionality. If you have an RFP for a population health solution, you could have two vendors come out whose products have almost no functionality overlap. So it creates a situation where clarity is critical to success. KLAS has been studying this market, but frankly we haven’t been going deep enough. Hopefully, with some of these efforts, we can go even deeper to provide some clarity for providers.
Gamble: How was the Summit set up — were leaders put into specific groups? How was the information collected?
Davis: We had two main goals for the Summit. First, we wanted to define the core functionalities for a population health IT solution. As you can see in the white paper, there are a lot of functionalities, so we have a lot of work ahead in cutting that down. But first, we wanted to define it. The second goal was to identify some of the disconnects or the critical challenges that are occurring in the industry where providers could help vendors be more successful, or vendors could help providers be more successful, so that we can all work together to be more successful at this.
So each of those are two somewhat separate goals. The first one came together as our four provider leaders who started working on this as a lead group — Shawn Griffin, MD, Richard Vath, MD, Keith Fernandez, MD, and Rick Schooler — put together a framework before anyone even got together, and that framework was circulated with all Summit participants. In fact, we’ve been working for most of 2016 on building that framework, circulating it, getting feedback, and then applying additional iterations. We went through a number of iterations before the Summit even began through the feedback we obtained during conference calls with vendors and providers. So we were really working to build something that was pretty good before we even get together. And when it began, we had some breakout groups and we had a large group discussion to be able to get that finalized. So it wasn’t just at the Summit that the major work was done; it was during the months leading up to it.
Gamble: Right. Now you brought up core functionalities. In the white paper, the core functionalities are broken down into six verticals, then further divided into basic or advanced groupings. So this gets pretty involved. Is the goal at some point to make that a little less complex or palatable?
Davis: Yes, and the challenge is that, there are a lot of things that need to be there. Healthcare is the most complex services industry the world has ever seen, and its fundamental business model is changing. It’s changing by bringing together several pieces that has historically been separate: quality, cost, and availability. It’s changing in pretty significant ways where you need to have everything in order to be able to be successful.
For those reasons, the functionality list becomes incredibly long, and participants of the Summit say that it’s going to get even longer in the future as we start to have a vertical for community engagement. There’s going to be more work with social determinants of health, and more efforts focused on specific diagnosis or chronic care conditions. Some of these things we’re working on right now by asking vendors, ‘What functionalities do you have today that we should go validate?’ If no vendors are offering some of these functionalities today, then going out and validating that with providers is not going to make a lot of sense. So we’re working to cut down the list and build some reports next year that we can present to the industry.
Gamble: You said the second goal is to identify the challenges — first for vendors, and then for providers. I can imagine there were some interesting discussions there. Let’s start with the recommendations for vendors. What were some of the responses or findings that stood out?
Davis: In both of these cases, we did one-on-one interviews with participants who were coming to the Summit, and put together a lot of these findings before the Summit even started. Then we were able to meet together as a group and have a panel expound on the most common things folks were saying, and so that’s where those recommendations came from — a great panel from the provider side, a great panel from the vendor side, and some audience participation as well.
From our initial interviews, we were able to say to the provider panel, ‘one of the most common things we heard was that vendors underestimate complexity. Can you give us some details around what that means?’ They were able to verbalize that, and we were able to get some group consensus on the common challenges and the common disconnection opportunities providers are seeing, and vice versa on the vendor side.
Gamble: Clearly there’s no quick solution and it has to be an ongoing effort, but when you talk about the issue of vendors underestimating the complexity, it seems like one thing that could work toward that is more engagement, which can get vendors and providers closer to being on the same page.
Davis: Yes. What is interesting is that several providers who were on the panel said they wish they had more requests from vendors saying, ‘hey, can we send several people over to live in the trenches with you and see how this works and how you live?’ There was an invitation broadly from providers to vendors saying come see us and realize how much more we need than what you’re delivering to us today.
Gamble: Another issue that come up was honesty in sales, and the problem of overselling when it comes to population health solutions. Can you talk about that?
Davis: Sure, and it’s fairly well known. I don’t think anyone in the room was shaking their head saying, ‘no, that’s absolutely not a concern in the industry.’ But what an opportunity when you have many of the leaders from the provider community in this nation — and internationally — who say, ‘if we heard less yes’s and more no’s from you in the RFP process, it is going to do some good things for you. Because what we really want to hear is, realistically, what you can do? Not the best-case scenario, but what is actually possible.’
Share Your Thoughts
You must be logged in to post a comment.