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Prescription Medications

July 24, 2015 by angishields

Health Connect South

Prescription Medications

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Prescription Medications

We talked about prescription medications on this week’s show. It’s true, prescription medications are an important part of the care we need for a number of health-related issues. It’s also true that many of these medications can be very expensive, particularly those that are not yet available as generic options.

There are also some worrisome statistics related to prescription medications that are worth noting:

As much as 27% of ER visits are related to medication-related problems
Up to 69% of all hospital admissions are related to medication-related problems
~11% of hospital re-admissions are related to medication-related problems
~ $140 billion in hospitalization costs are related to medication-related problems
~ 10% of all healthcare insurance expenditures are related to prescription medications

This week’s guests are using technology to address both the cost of these meds as well as working to reduce the amount of problems that can come from ineffective management of the medicines patients are taking.

Charles Stephenson is the founder of AuthentaScripts. AuthentaScripts is a web-based platform that works much like travel bidding sites such as Priceline. The user logs in, enters the name-brand medication they’ve been prescribedc, and, based on where they are geographically, the system displays the expected cost for that med at pharmacies within a 15 mile radius.

The patient has the ability to tell the system how much they’re willing to pay for the medicine and it will display places where it’s possible to find that price.

Dr. Sheila Woodhouse is a practicing Emory cardiologist and creator of DoxMed. DoxMed is a technology platform that becomes a complete database of a patient’s medications, why they’re taking them, how much, etc. The system allows patients to better understand what/why they’re taking what they are and better comply with the recommended regimen.

DoxMed also enables physicians to see the full gamut of meds a patient is taking and why, and make better decisions about what additions/changes should be made to avoid drug interactions, toxicity, etc., when prescribing for them.

Special Guests:

Dr. Sheila Woodhouse, MD, CEO/Founder of DoxMed

Doctor of Medicine, Temple University School of Medicine
MBA, Business Administration and Management, Georgia State University J. Mack Robinsons College of Business
Board Certified, Cardiology
CEO/Founder, Sentikon Technologies & Consulting

Charles Stephenson, CEO/Founder of AuthentaScripts

BA, Management, University of Phoenix
Former Phase Team Leader, US Army
Founder, RescuePigeon
Previous Field Engineer, Lockheed Martin

Jimmy Godwin, Pharmacy Intern at Publix

Doctor of Pharmacy, Mercer University
Member, Georgia Pharmacy Association

Alii Healthcare

July 18, 2015 by angishields

Health Connect South

Alii Healthcare

00:00 / 01:06:22

Alii Healthcare

On this week’s show we hosted experts from the telehealth platform, Alii Healthcare. Dr. Sylvan Waller, Founder/CEO of Alii Healthcare, Dr. Reginald Nesbitt, Christie Sherman, RN, and Alii client, Jennifer Smith joined us to talk about how the technology solution works. They have created a mobile app called, “Bond”, which uses a mobile device’s camera to allow a patient to engage face-to-face with an ER physician to determine best course of action with minor, but time-sensitive complaints.

Sylvan shared how today, the average wait time for patients to be seen by a doctor from time of request for appointment is as much as 18 days. We also talked about the fact that it is not uncommon for less acute complaints such as respiratory infections, minor cuts, sprains, etc, to wait in an ER for 2-4 hours (or more).

Having been an ER physician for a number of years, he saw first hand how these patients can become dissatisfied with their experience due to the fact that they’ve had to wait so long before being seen. He felt there must be a better way.

He and his partners set out to take advantage of telehealth technology to create an application that uses a mobile device’s camera to allow a patient to request to speak with a physician, and within seconds or a few minutes at most, they can “Facetime” with a qualified ER physician. Using the mobile device’s camera, the doctor can view a patient’s throat, swollen ankle, minor cut, etc. From there he/she can make recommendations for medical prescriptions or treatments, or recommend the patient is seen in an urgent care or ER.

The team brought with them, Alii Healthcare client, Jennifer Smith. She talked about her experiences using the Bond app to get diagnosis and prescriptions for minor injuries suffered while running and a respiratory infection.

Jennifer talked about how intuitive the application’s interface is and how quickly she was able to speak directly with a physician without having to leave her home.

Special guests:

Dr. Sylvan Waller, MD, CEO/Founder of Alii Healthcare

Doctor of Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine
Residency, Emergency Medicine, Emory University School of Medicine
Former Assistant Professor, Emory University School of Medicine
Previous Entrepreneur-in-Residence, ATDC

Dr. Reginald Nesbitt, MD, President, Bond House

Doctor of Medicine, University of Texas, Galvaston
Residency, ER, University of Chicago Hospitals
Board Certified, Emergency Medicine

Christie Sherman, RN, Director of Physician Engagement, Alii Healthcare

RN Diploma, George Brown College
BSN, University of Phoenix
MSN, Nursing Science, University of Phoenix
Previous VP of Client Operations, Schumacher Group

Jennifer Smith, Alii Healthcare client

Juris Doctor, Georgia State University College of Law
Previous Director of Reimbursement, Resurgens Orthopedics
Senior Associate, Ken David & Associates LLP

Fighting Infections

July 6, 2015 by angishields

Health Connect South

Fighting Infections

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GeoVax — Debora Carrier, Michael Hellerstein, Jay Schafer

Fighting Infections

This week we hosted two experts whose companies are fighting infections from different directions. Michael Hellerstein is the Director of Regulatory Affairs and Quality Systems for GeoVax. They’re a biotechnology company that’s developing vaccines for Ebola and HIV.

Debora Carrier combined her experience as a fashion model and a healthcare provider to think of a better-looking scrub uniform that is both better looking and resistant to spreading infections. She founded Twice As Nice Uniforms to give health workers and physicians a more visually appealing choice while at the same time helping reduce the alarming rate of infections acquired in health delivery environments.

Michael talked about how GeoVax has been fighting infections through innovative approaches to vaccine development, utilizing vaccine-like particles to tackle HIV and more recently, Ebola. He shared how prevalent HIV remains today and that more work is being focused on treating the disease versus developing vaccines to prevent it.

He shared how technology has evolved that allows biotech companies to identify genetic components to viruses, which enables them to incorporate pieces of this material and instill it into a harmless organism. Then, as the organism reproduces, it produces a copy of itself that has some characteristics of the pathogen the vaccine is designed to fight. This “recombinant” vaccine doesn’t make the body sick but it does prompt an immune response from the body against the pathogenic virus, providing protection against infection.

GeoVax is able to create particles that are safer to use than vaccines that contain live pathogen, allowing people who may have some immune compromise to get some protection as well in some cases.

The company has used this technology to get a vaccine that is showing some promise for preventing HIV infection. Michael talked about how the clinical trials are progressing and how long it takes to get a vaccine approved for use in people versus the time it takes to develop a medication to treat disease.

Debora talked about her story as a healthcare provider for over 20 years led her to think of a scrub design that looks much better than the bulky, wrinkle-prone scrubs the health community has been using for decades. She talked about how frequently the environment is very cool, prompting workers to wear long sleeves and/or jackets while delivering care.

We discussed how long sleeves prevent washing the lower arms as is recommended and how the fabric can readily carry bacteria and viral material from one patient to another. Debora investigated various athletic materials that can help regulate body temperature in various climes, while at the same time possessing antimicrobial properties.

Twice As Nice Uniforms utilize an American-made material that controls moisture and uses a scrub design that incorporates a removable liner that allows the worker to be comfortable when the rooms are very cool.

In looking at the design of the garments, it’s clear she brought her experience in modeling to bear in the style/cut of the uniforms they’re creating.

Special Guests:

Debora Carrier, CEO/Founder of Twice As Nice Uniforms

AS, Dental Hygiene, William Rainey Harper College
Professional Fashion Model
Registered Dental Hygienist
Founder, CPR Sisters

Michael Hellerstein, Director of Regulatory Affairs and Quality Systems

AB, Biology, Harvard University
Previous Assistant Scientist, Pfizer
Co-Founder, BlueSky Biotech
President, Hellerstein Consulting

Brought to you in part by:

Mobiquity

June 26, 2015 by angishields

Health Connect South

Mobiquity

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Nirav Desai, Principal Health Strategist for Mobiquity

Mobiquity

On this week’s show, Diana and I sat down with health technology strategist, Nirav Desai, of Mobiquity. Mobiquity is a professional services firm trusted by hundreds of companies to be their mobile engagement provider. On a global scale, the trends, strategy, users, platforms, technology, development, organizational issues of mobile are complicated. Mobiquity eliminates the complexity.

We talked about how important the Mobile component is for all enterprises today, including healthcare. The ACA has created requirements for providing patients with access to portals where they can connect with their health providers and get access to their health data. Mobiquity helps health enterprises create more effective applications and platforms for handling this requirement as well as better outcomes for population health management.

Nirav shared some troubling statistics (~125,000 people/year die due to incorrectly taking their medications). We discussed how mobile technology and applications can promote better adherence to prescribed care by notifying providers if patients are taking meds as directed as well as giving providers access to real time patient data remotely.

Additionally, technology platforms can facilitate making decisions about care plans by showing aggregate data across a practice’s patient population as a whole. In this way, trends may be identified that allow more proactive approaches with the care plan.

We talked about the way mHealth and teleHealth are overlapping now. Previously, telehealth was mainly a way to deliver care to a patient, particularly in mental health. Now, with mobile health, more data can flow from patient to provider and the patient can take a greater part in achieving positive outcomes through engaging with a mobile platform. These mobile platforms can push educational information and reminders to help facilitate care plan compliance. Some telehealth platforms now have mobile components to them that enhance the patient encounter and have more robust data.

Mobiquity is also making available a behavior change platform called Delta IQ, aimed at helping to change patient behaviors such as smoking, alcohol consumption and other health behaviors. The platform “learns” as the user engages with the information, adapting what is displayed to the user to better facilitate effectiveness of suggested interventions.

Special Guest:

Nirav Desai, Principal Healthcare Strategist, Mobiquity

MBA, General Management, University of Virgina Darden School of Business
Author of several publications on telehealth
Former Global Product Manager, GE Healthcare
Previous CEO, Hands On Telehealth

Made possible in part by:

Greenway Health

June 16, 2015 by angishields

Health Connect South

Greenway Health

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Greenway Health

A couple of topics that have come up repeatedly over the course of weeks since we started the Health Connect South Radio show: Population Health and Interoperability. On this week’s show we sat down with health IT expert, Mark Janiszewski, EVP of Product Management for Greenway Health.

Mark shared how the company has recently introduced new solutions that are aimed at facilitating better population health management initiatives. Recent changes in the law are placing greater requirements for focus on preventive health and patient outcomes over the older disease-focused models that reimbursed on a fee-for-service basis.

Greenway’s platform gives providers access to data that empowers them to close gaps in care delivery and better manage a population’s high-cost problems such as diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic illnesses. Additionally, the company is providing a portal called, Greenway Exchange, that gives patients ability to see their health data, schedule appointments, and even interact with their care providers.

We talked about how the company helps their clients prepare for the coming implementation of ICD-10 coding requirements that are currently set to go into effect in October 2015. The new coding format will add a much greater degree of detail in documenting patient problems and treatments.

The goal of the ICD-10 changes is to facilitate research, improve outcomes through better case management, decrease medical errors, enhance public health, educate patients on costs/outcomes, and more.

Mark shared some of the challenges that health organizations face in meeting the expectations for the ICD-10 documentation. The company is helping to prepare their clients for the upcoming changes in coding.

“Greenway Health has always worked to empower our customers so they can deliver high-quality care while being financially sound,” said Tee Green, CEO of Greenway Health. “Never has that been more important given the rise of pay-for-performance, healthcare consumerism and a population with an increasing number of chronic conditions that requires coordination between multiple caregivers. Greenway Community enables providers to gain actionable insight into clinical and financial performance at all levels of the care continuum like never before.”

Greenway Health has been providing health IT solutions since 1977. Over time, the company has grown significantly, both organically and through merger. As an enterprise, the company delivers clinical, financial, and administrative information tools providers need to practice medicine the way they want to practice.

Greenway helps providers stay ahead of the complex regulatory requirements, maximize revenue and, most importantly, focus on their patients rather than on technology. The company accomplishes this through intuitive user interfaces, interoperability leadership to exchange clinical data and facilitate connected care, and a grass-roots service culture.

Special Guest:

Mark Janiszewski, EVP, Product Management, Greenway Health

Bachelor of Commerce, Concordia
UniversityGraduate Diploma, Public Accountancy, McGill University
Previous Director, Account Marketing, Nortel Networks
Former VP, Product Management, Revenue Cycle Solutions

Elder Care

June 6, 2015 by angishields

Health Connect South

Elder Care

00:00 / 01:00:43

Elder Care

This week we hosted experts whose companies address the care needs of our elderly population. We hosted Maria de la Guardia, of Assisted Living Locators, Chris Foster, of LivHome, and Blaine Warketine, of Vimty.

Assisted Living Locators is a company that provides a free service for families in search of an assisted living facility for their loved one. The company forms relationships with facilities around the community, getting to know them, the services they provide, costs, etc. They then get to know the families who connect with them seeking help through an interview process to be better able to recommend a facility based on location, type of services available, living environment, cost, etc.

We talked about the fact that many online services focus mainly on a few facilities with which they have financial arrangements, leaving out many options in the area that could potentially be a better fit for a given patient. Once they have contact information for the family it is shared with other services who then assail the family with calls and emails trying to sell them on centers they represent. Maria shared some questions families should ask when they contact an online service that purports to be the facility they think they’re contacting.

LivHome is a company that helps seniors be able to live their lives in their own home or their family’s home with the care support and equipment needed to do so. The company conducts an in-depth assessment of the needs of the patient(s) in need of supportive care/equipment through interviews with their nursing staff. From there, they can make recommendations and provide the supportive care providers necessary.

Chris shared his story about having been disappointed in the experience with home care for loved ones in the past and that he wanted to provide a high-quality service for the patients who want to be able to live in their own home. We talked about the fact that it’s actually possible to have an elderly patient live in their own or a family member’s home for less than or similar costs to an assisted living center or nursing facility.

Blaine Warketine shared some impressive statistics about how much of overall healthcare spend each year comes from providing high-acuity care in the last days of life, often for patients who didn’t actually want to have aggressive measures. Vimty is a platform that allows patients to conduct video interviews with counselors and family members wherein they are able to state their wishes for end of life care measures, along with context for why they feel the way they do.

We talked about the fact that this record has much more weight and is much more likely to prevent much of the family drama that can occur with the typical written advanced directive document (or worse, in the cases of NO document). Through the Vimty platform, patients have a permanent record that is part of their EMR that can be referenced when end-of-life measures become necessary.

Special Guests:

Maria de la Guardia, of Assisted Living Locators

MBA International Business, George Washington University
Professional Development in Gerontology, Kennesaw State University
Previous Strategy & Policy Development/Industry Analyst
Board of Directors, Strength of Nature

Chris Foster, of LivHome

Certified Senior Advisor, Society of Certified Senior Advisors
Former Member, Board of Directors, March of Dimes of Georgia
President/CEO, SportsCom, Inc.

Blaine Warketine, of Vimty

Doctor of Medicine, Medical College of Wisconsin
Residency, Orthopedics, University of Maryland School of Medicine
Fellowship, Orthopedic Knee Conditions, Long Beach Memorial Medical Center
MBA, Entrepreneurship, University of Utah David Eccles School of Business

Healthgrades

May 27, 2015 by angishields

Health Connect South

Healthgrades

00:00 / 01:00:37

Healthgrades

This week, Diana and I sat down with Dr. Brad Bowman and Nickey Scarborough, of Healthgrades. They’re a healthcare IT company that provides several valuable services to the community at large as well as to the healthcare industry. One of Healthgrades’ core offerings relates to transparency and healthcare consumerism. When you need to find a physician to address a particular health need from primary care to a specialist, the company’s website allows the patient and/or their family to conduct a search of their database.

The Healthgrades platform utilizes a number of available data sources to compile a match score that gives a measure of confidence a particular physician has sufficient experience and positive outcomes to be considered as a viable option for providing your care. You can search by provider name, specialty, condition, or procedure, along with location/radius.

Your results will give a list of possible providers, each with a rank for volume of this given procedure they’ve performed, along with a report of any sanctions or board actions that have been taken. Similarly, Healthgrades provides prospective patients with access to outcomes and patient satisfaction data across the gamut of service lines and procedures they offer. Patients can review a given hospital’s rank and compare it to the national average for that procedure.

But, these useful services are only scratching the surface for what Healthgrades is able to do for health systems and hospitals. The company is able to use a wide array of readily-available health and consumer data for patients in a given service area to give valuable predictive insights around outcomes for a given health problem. Things such as number of rooms in your home, whether it’s rented or mortgaged, how financially stable a family is, along with buying habits combined with numerous other data points can give surprisingly accurate pictures of what a given population’s tendency toward ER re-admissions or poor outcomes/compliance with care.

Through an engagement with Healthgrades, using their population analytics, a health system can be very strategic in their marketing efforts to help make that revenue spend be far more likely to help the system achieve its goals and deliver a higher level of care/outcomes.

Special Guests:

Brad Bowman, MD, Chief Medical Officer, of Healthgrades

Nickey Scarborough, VP of Digital Editorial, Healthgrades

MHA, Health Administration, Xavier University
Former Director, Client Delivery Services, WebMD
Previous Content Director, PERFECT SENSE digital, LLC
Former Senior Consultant, Deloitte & Touche

This show brought to you by:

Hospital Acquired Conditions

May 22, 2015 by angishields

Health Connect South

Hospital Acquired Conditions

00:00 /

Hospital Acquired Conditions

According to CDC, there were over 700,000 hospital acquired conditions in 2011 (in this case, infections). When you add those numbers to other preventable situations such as falls, wrong drug/dose/patient, and others, it’s clear that hospitals can be potentially-dangerous places. This week, Diana and I sat down with two experts from companies that are tackling this problem from different directions.

HanGenix, an Atlanta-based start-up is developing an innovative technology that employs ultrasound transmitters/receivers on soap dispensers, on the clinicians’ badges, and in the patients’ rooms with the goal of increasing compliance with hand-washing standards. CEO, Jeff Kline, talked about how each patient bed is “guarded” by an ultrasonic receiver that communicates with the clinician’s badge and soap dispenser in the room or nearby.

The system starts a clock that will alert the health worker that they need to re-wash their hands if too much time elapses between washing their hands and touching the patient. The bed’s zone receiver also prompts an audible alert on the worker’s badge if they approach the patient’s bed without having registered a hand-washing event detected by the system.

Early returns from health systems that are participating in the testing of the prototype have shown that hand washing compliance is as low as 40% before implementing the technology and rises rapidly once it is deployed. This is significant, as hand-washing has been identified as one of the most effective means to prevent spread of infections from patient-to-patient in a healthcare environment.

Synensis’s Chief Innovation Officer, Rick Stone, joined the conversation to talk about how their company works with their healthcare clients to assess the organization’s internal culture relating to behaviors that reduce hospital acquired conditions such as falls, infections, and other sentinel events. Through an in-depth assessment at the outset of their engagement, Synensis’s team formulates a picture of how an organization prioritizes policies/procedures that can reduce/prevent those sentinel events.

The company then begins to interface with all levels of leadership and front-line providers to raise awareness and put in place actions such as debriefings after untoward events occur so that better team work can result. Synensis also helps hospitals identify areas of their organization that have particularly low rates of sentinel events to draw from their localized culture/approach to prevention to the betterment of the organization as a whole. As Rick stated, “Hospitals have teams of experts. But, few have expert teams,” pointing out that in many industries, healthcare included, poor communication and/or teamwork is the primary culprit in accidents.

Special Guests:

Jeff Kline, CEO/Co-founder, HanGenix

MBA, Goizueta Business School, Emory University
Previous Manager, Deloitte Consulting
Former Director of Marketing, BARD Urology Division
Previous VP Marketing, Genesis Biosciences

Rick Stone, Chief Innovation Officer, Synensis

MS Clinical Psychology, Vanderbilt University
Former President, StoryWork Institute
Previous StoryAnalytics Master, IDEAS
Fluent in Spanish

This program made possible by:

SkyTherapist

May 14, 2015 by angishields

Health Connect South

SkyTherapist

00:00 / 01:00:39

SkyTherapist

This week we sat down with the co-founders of SkyTherapist. Sky Therapist, Inc is a virtual platform for mental health support addressing the major complaints of patients in their course of treatment. They offer integrative solutions for intelligent patient-therapist matching, quick initial assessment, and continuity of care.

CEO, Afshan Ali, and CFO, Keith Jones, shared their story about how they decided there must be a better way to provide patients in need with access to a mental health professional such as a psychologist or psychiatrist.

Keith talked about how as a teenager, he was present when his father died, causing him to experience great anxiety and emotional pain. He was hospitalized for a few weeks but felt he did not receive very effective mental health care while he was there.

Afshan discussed how she developed an interest in neurology and mental health during her years in medical school before changing career paths. The two of them looked at the landscape of how mental health is delivered and felt there was an opportunity to create a new platform that could help people in need find the therapist best suited for them.

As they got to work on building their virtual platform that incorporates telemedicine technology, they felt that a key element that would set them apart was going to be a matching algorithm, paired with carefully-chosen intake questions for the patient-to-be. The purpose of this design is intended to make the process of linking up with a professional that is experientially suited and a fit personality-wise.

We talked about the fact that for persons in crisis, the process of trying to find that personal fit that allows them to be able to be open and get the most of their therapy can be overwhelming. Having to go through talking about what the reason is for seeking help over and over to professional after professional, trying to find a fit can often cause patients in need to give up on finding help.

SkyTherapist is able to quickly provide several professionals for the patient to talk to who are much more likely to be a good fit for the patient. The platform also provides for some communication through correspondence with their provider between sessions. It also has a component that allows provider and patient to agree upon self-care activities such as exercise or others and actually track their compliance.

The company will be focusing much of its early launch (July 2015) on providing services to businesses with Employee Assistance Programs. This will give them ability to scale more quickly while providing their client companies with much more effective and cost-efficient care to employees who need access to a mental health pro.

When you have the chance to hear how/why these experts built this healthcare platform it’s clear they are dedicated to insuring patients in need of professional mental health care, SkyTherapist is clearly providing a promising solution.

Special Guests:

Afshan Ali, CEO/Co-founder of SkyTherapist

BBA, Management Information Services, Southern Methodist University Cox School of Business
Former Senior Consultant, Deloitt Consulting
Active Healthcare Consultant
Speaks English, Hindi, Urdu

Keith Jones, CFO/Co-founder of SkyTherapist