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 2
- Vendor concern: Lack of CIO/CEO alignment
- Getting exec leaders on the same page
- “The stakes are incredibly high.”
- Value-based care “as the core of the business”
- Bucking historical trends
- “Providers need to be very humble.”
- KLAS’ next steps: “How are we going to be able to make a difference?”
Bold Statements
You can see the reasons why an organization would move forward without having all members of the executive leadership team onboard — the stakes are incredibly high.
If you think of that as an adjunct business, it really worries us. What we want is for you to view this as the core of your business, despite the fact that today’s revenue dollars are not principally coming in behind it.
Providers need to be very humble and very slow to determine future trends based off historical trends, and become more nimble, which is difficult for multibillion dollar organizations. It’s incredibly difficult. But that’s what risk-taking is about in this current environment.
We need to be back next year, and we need to see the results of the study and work KLAS is doing using this framework, and we need to continue to evolve it.
Gamble: What were some interesting findings in terms of recommendations for providers from the vendor panel?
Davis: I think the number one was the CIO to CEO relationship. KLAS interviews both camps, and we have seen in some organizations that as Meaningful Use happened, the CIO started to play more of a significant role within the C-suite in driving some of the organizational strategy. And then recently with value-based care, we’ve seen the CIO put more into a backseat in some organizations, with the CEO or the CFO directing things more. The feedback from vendors has been, ‘we can tell how unified your executive team is and if you’re really all rowing in the same direction.’ The organizations where leaders have taken the time to get on the same page and agree and work together in a positive way, are the ones that we see being successful over and over again. And those where there is in-fighting and horse-trading and difficult compromises happening more than real teamwork, are the organizations where we’re less likely to see success. So if you can get your executive team all on the same page, it’s much more likely you’re going to be successful with our products.
Gamble: Sure. It really demonstrates the importance of solid relationships, along with the consequences of failure to communicate. Fascinating.
Davis: And you can see the reasons why an organization would move forward without having all members of the executive leadership team onboard — the stakes are incredibly high. The fundamental business models are changing, but they’re not changing in clearly predictable ways. And so, there are a lot of beds that have to be made. There’s some historical baggage, and there’s a cost for not moving quickly. So when you take those all into account, there are some real reasons as to why a very well-run organization would not take the time to get everyone onboard. But that could be the moment where you’re hurrying too fast, and actually end up hurting yourself than helping yourself.
Gamble: Another interesting comment from the vendors was commitment to the future of value-based care, where they’re asking CIOs and other leaders to join with us and look down the road. What are your thoughts there?
Davis: I think the key part was when vendors said to providers, ‘it’s likely that value-based care is a small portion of the revenue. But if you think of that as an adjunct business, it really worries us. What we want is for you to view this as the core of your business, despite the fact that today’s revenue dollars are not principally coming in behind it. When you treat it as the core of your business moving forward, it demands and receives a different level of attention and focus from the organization, which is incredibly hard to do. We are an industry that is flying at 30,000 feet and we’re trying to replace the wings on the airplane. And that is incredibly difficult to do.
Gamble: Vendors also talked about the need for providers to take on more risk. Are you seeing that there is a willingness? Is progress being made in that area?
Davis: A couple of thoughts on that. One comment that struck me as very interesting was the way vendors see it, some provider organizations have been blinded by historical success. They’ve been very successful organizations for many years living in a fee-for-service model, and there’s a feeling that it gives a little bit of license to be slow in the transition toward value-based care. There’s a danger there. Providers need to be very humble and very slow to determine future trends based off historical trends, and become more nimble, which is difficult for multibillion dollar organizations. It’s incredibly difficult. But that’s what risk-taking is about in this current environment where everything is shifting, and we know the landscape is not going to look the same after all is said and done.
Gamble: That’s definitely a common theme we hear from CIOs — the larger the organization, the tougher it is to make any kind of change.
Davis: Absolutely. At the same time, success in this requires some economies of scale. There’s an incredible irony where the largest organizations are, in some way, predisposed to be the most successful, but they also need to change the fastest in order to be successful. And that’s very difficult for large organizations to do.
Gamble: In terms of the leaders who attended the Summit, it seems like you had a fairly diverse representation in terms of positions they held, and size and type of organizations represented. I’m sure this was important to KLAS in being able to get an accurate picture of where the industry stands.
Davis: It was critical. If we left out key stakeholders in this process, then the foundation on which we are building this was going to be cracked from the beginning. So it was really critical that we had a broad group of very educated folks who came together. KLAS’s mission was really to improve the industry to help the deployment of technology be more successful and not to sound too Pollyannaish, but we care about that more than we care about our own internal finances. With the mission we were looking to accomplish, we felt incredibly blessed with this group. This was absolutely the right group in our minds.
We got incredible efforts, on the vendor and on the provider side, as well as from the services firms. We had a lot of very invested folks who were incredibly busy people, who put a lot of time and energy into this to make it successful. And that was the only way in which it was going to be successful. So we felt really lucky.
Gamble: As far as the next steps, where does KLAS plan to go from here?
Davis: One of the principles of this framework is that it’s going to need to change and evolve. Some of that change and evolution is going to come from KLAS working to utilize what we built this year and apply it and measure with it next year. We’re going to get smarter and we’re going to learn from that. We’re going to realize the things we can measure, and the things we can’t measure or shouldn’t measure.
The other piece of this is that it needs to keep pace with the industry and how the industry is evolving. So with both of those pieces in place, we have a universal agreement that we need to be back next year, and we need to see the results of the study and work KLAS is doing using this framework, and we need to continue to evolve it. So that is absolutely something that we’re working toward. We’re putting together an ongoing advisory group that’s going to facilitate the roadmap.
We think this is going to be helpful for the industry over the next few years. And it’s going to be most successful if it continues to be driven by this highly talented, wonderful group of individuals who’ve already done a lot of work on this, as well as others who get involved.
Gamble: I imagine KLAS was pretty happy with that turnout, especially some of the really influential leaders in the industry, in being able to tackle the population health definition.
Davis: I would say we’re hopeful given the turnout that we had. We’ll be happy if we feel would be happy if we feel like we really made a difference with the efforts that we’ve put forward here today. I know that sounds like a nitpicking distinction, but the long-term focus is, how are we going to be able to make a difference? If in a year or a year and a half, a health system is able to walk into a population health decision and have substantially more clarity than they had before, or if an organization is looking at their current solutions has substantially more clarity that they have before, then this has been a really beneficial exercise and will hopefully drive some success.
Gamble: Great. I want to thank you for your time, it’s been very interesting to hear about everything KLAS is doing in this arena. I hope we’ll get to speak again soon.
Davis: Sure thing. Thank you.
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