Nursing and healthcare technology have an unforeseeable future, so a healthcare leader is taking matters into his own hands.
Raymond Lowe is the senior vice president and chief information officer at Los Angeles-based AltaMed Health Services.
Mr. Lowe will serve on panels "Telehealth, Mobile Health and Digital Transformation: The Best Ideas Today" and "CIO as Storyteller: The Key to IT Change Management" at Becker's 7th Annual Health IT + Digital Health + RCM Annual Meeting: The Future of Business and Clinical Technologies. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference, which will take place Oct. 4-7 in Chicago.
To learn more and register, click here.
Question: What are you most excited about right now?
Raymond Lowe: In January 2022, California's Department of Health Care Services launched California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal and Enhanced Care Management as part of the "Continued journey to a Healthier California for All." This Medicaid program provides health plans with a defined patient population that are eligible. The ECM population focus: 1) Individuals and families experiencing homelessness and 2) Adult high utilizers. 3) Adults with serious mental illness/substance use disorder. We're excited to be included and serve these ECM patients. We are further extending our patient care setting to meet them where they are in addition to the clinic setting. From a technology perspective, in order to achieve this, we are looking at health plan data sources, our Epic EMR models, and aligning acute, ambulatory and community-based organizations to serve this patient population.
Q: What challenges do you anticipate over the next two years?
RL: The continued shortage of qualified patient-facing staff and technical staff. We want to grow our own and create career paths that allow individuals to follow their dreams in nursing, technical or other areas. Tied to the staffing challenges is overall staff burnout and helping team members to have the ability to recharge and reenergize. Another area is that health systems will increase the number of multiple priorities, whereas, in the pandemic, everyone had the same focus. A tremendous amount of innovation was accomplished in short order, perhaps more than in the previous 10 years in healthcare delivery across the country.
Q: Where are the best opportunities for disruption in healthcare today?
RL: Predictive data analytics and the association of structured and unstructured data from multiple sources and areas. As we continue with patient-centric care, leading institutions have amazing predictive models and real-time data notifications so that patient intervention can occur. Also, the continued integration of the home setting, wearables, patient-at-home remote monitoring, and an often overlooked area is social interactions. There is a great deal of loneliness, and we have the ability to reach out to people where they are and include them, so they don't feel forgotten. I also evaluate and strategically plan our robotic process automation opportunities. There is excellent RPA potential with patient administration, claims administration, record management systems, patient appointment reminders, scheduling and case management opportunities. Other items around insurance enrollment, claims submission and inventory management would add business value.
Q: How is your role as a CIO evolving? How are IT teams changing?
RL: I would define the CIO role by the letter I: information, informatics, innovation and influence. From a strategic perspective, the CIO understands the organization's ecosystems and must have solutions before the organization utilizes the solution. As evident by the pandemic, CIOs had to utilize all of these skills as we pivoted healthcare across the country practically overnight. The days of the CIO managing the back office only are in the rearview mirror and we are able to affect the strategy and outcomes. The challenge is change management for staff to embrace new workflows effectively. Technology and workflow account for 15 percent of solutions, while the other 85 percent is all people.
IT teams have to skill up to meet new technology and apps. Having a blended ecosystem of on-prem data centers, cloud computing and hosted applications, all while being cyber-vigilant. The cloud and mobility are enablers of digital transformation. I look to have teams with defined scope within an area and for the leaders to blend how their teams work together, creating new learning opportunities. As we deploy new technologies, it's nearly impossible to have all the skills to successfully implement, thus a stronger reliance on vendors and partners to help us stand up a solution and for the organization to operate. As Wilbur Wright stated, "It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill." This is an exciting time in healthcare IT, and I expect the opportunities and pace to continue to meet the demands of our patients, providers and team members.