This transcription is provided by artificial intelligence. We believe in technology but understand that even the smartest robots can sometimes get speech recognition wrong.

[00:00:00] This episode is brought to you by Dr. First. Their AI powered solutions improve the accuracy of medication history, enhancing patient safety and reducing clinician administrative burdens.

From e prescribing to medication adherence, Doctor First Solutions integrates seamlessly with your EHR, informing clinical decisions and improving care. Visit thisweekhealth. com slash doctorfirst today to transform your medication management with Doctor First's innovative tools.

Welcome to This Week Health. My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of This Week Health, where we are dedicated to transforming healthcare, one connection at a time.

Now, onto our interview

We are live from Vive. I am so grateful to be joined by Dr. Colin Banas with Dr. First. Colin and I have known each other for over a decade,

at least,

at least having implemented the solution and several health care systems together, but more importantly, having a partnership now, which is so fantastic [00:01:00] because Dr.

First has been around a long time and it's not been around a long time such that it's becoming irrelevant. You continue to innovate, you continue to push the envelope, you continue to deliver. So much value to your partners. You have over 2000 hospitals on your system. Hundreds of millions of prescriptions going through your systems.

What is the innovation engine? How do you keep reinventing yourselves to stay so relevant and practical as a partner for these CIOs and beyond?

Yeah, it's a great question. And you're right. This is our 25th year anniversary. So we celebrated a birthday earlier. Regarding innovation, a lot of it has to do with listening, right?

You have to listen to your customer base. And you have to listen to the patients. We find that there's always room to improve the medication management journey. And the ultimate goal of Dr. First is to get patients on and keep them on appropriate therapy. A submission of mine as CMO is to make that experience joyful, if that's at all possible, for the provider and for the [00:02:00] patient.

And just by simply listening. You can figure out what the problems are. You don't go into partner with a solution. You go in listening to figure out what their problems are so that you can craft the solution. And we are surrounded by wonderful, talented people at Dr. First, and that's really what helps drive the innovation engine.

It's also a culture of innovation, which is really important. Leadership makes time to listen team and to figure out what their problems are. What we should be working on rather than telling us what we should be working on.

You've done such a good job with med adherence, med reconciliation, really integrating yourselves into the workflows of the hospitals.

What are you seeing now as the newer problems that are being asked to be solved by your partners? Because you listen when you go in for the new clients, but you're continuously listening for your existing clients. What are you hearing and seeing today?

The two big ones are burnout, which we've been talking about for probably over a decade.

And specialty medications, particularly as it relates to the administrative burden. We're talking about prior authorization, we're talking about price [00:03:00] transparency, we're talking about how do we make things more transparent, not only for the provider, but for the patient in that medication journey as it relates to high dollar specialty medications.

I'm pretty famous for saying that you have better visibility into your Domino's pizza order than you do for a life saving drug on the specialty side. And so Dr. First is definitely doubling down on specialty medication processes in the year 2025.

So with reimbursement really being a big concern for most health care systems right now, whether that's going to be Medicare, Medicaid, tax exempt status changing in some cases.

How are you getting in front of some of the concerns that you're hearing early with the new administration in place?

That's tough. It definitely feels like a watch and see kind of moments. Everyone's on edge in terms of what is going to happen to the existing road map that the federal government has helped lay out over the past 10 plus years, particularly around interoperability.

I am optimistic that it is an AI forward [00:04:00] administration, and I think there's a lot of excellent work that we can do as it relates to AI. That's actually one of my core jobs is to keep track. Exactly what is going on in the federal government, whether it's the ONC, whether it's Tefco, whether it's reimbursement changes.

And so this is definitely an interesting time.

And yet there's so many things that your clients can count on that doesn't change. So when you think about the bedrock of Dr. First, being in your facilities, all this change is happening everywhere. What is that core competency or those set of values that people rely on you for it?

And that what I would consider the no matter what situation.

So Dr. First, one of the things that I'm most proud of is our safety culture. You can count on our technology to help provide safe care in the medication management journey. And so I think that is one of the things that helps instill trust with your partner base is the fact that you share those core values.

I think anyone who is in healthcare has to share in that safety culture. That's what we're here for. It's to help patients get better [00:05:00] and more particularly to keep them safe. There is a lot of error that can occur in healthcare as it relates to safety. So medication reconciliation is the perfect example.

When you get that wrong, people get hurt. And we really double down on that culture at DrFirst

and more importantly, the patient safety leads to better quality, better stickiness, better desire to want to do business with those hospitals and stay with your doctor, which is sometimes hard to do.

It's do the right thing and the rest will follow. It really is. And you're right measuring outcomes is actually another core focus of Dr. First. I'm not interested in the metrics of how often the solution is being used, adoption rates, things like that. I actually want to take it. Five steps further and figure out.

Did we help the patient? Did we help prevent them from a readmission? Did we keep them out of the E. R? The culture of safety a bedrock.

So it's early in 2025. What can we expect on the road map from Dr first this year?

Yeah. So we are doubling down on A. I. Of course, that probably isn't unique. I think every booth here probably has the words A.

I. In it somewhere. [00:06:00] But we're trying to not only shift our solutions to involve A. I. But also people. We're trying Our culture as a company, our workflow processes internally, leveraging AI, but the roadmap is exciting. It's definitely, as I said earlier, specialty medications and automation. So if you go back to my original comment about reducing burnout, reducing cognitive load, as well as helping patients with these expensive and dangerous medications, we're going to put those things together.

We're going to help surface transparency for our providers and our patients. And automate this stuff because this is not the stuff that our providers should be focusing on.

It won't be necessarily. And to your point, that automation layer and all those components coming in and helping people with workflow, efficiency, managing burnout, creating spaces for people to lean into other areas of the organization where they may be seeing deficits and even some of the staffing capabilities.

So being that bedrock for them again, such a huge deal. Yeah. What else is gonna be important for our audience to know from your perspective, what you're experiencing here? What we can expect from Dr. First. What do you want people to know [00:07:00] about today?

It's exciting. It's a little cold in Nashville.

Just FYI, guys. Wasn't expecting that. But this is an exciting area. It's a more intimate venue. And there's a lot more meaningful conversations than I think you would get at some of those larger trade shows. I think as far as Dr. First, what I want folks to know is that We are here for you for your medication management journey and we have expertise in every step of the way.

And 25 years later, you haven't heard of us, you will. And I think that's important to get out.

I agree, and you've got a ton of stability on your team. You've got yourself, you've got Jeff. There's people, Dr. First, who've been there a long time and know the organization inside and out.

Yep. And they can give such a personalized perspective. of the journey, which is why the partnership is so endearing. Thank you for all that you are doing for patient safety, for quality, for our industry. And we look forward to hearing more throughout the year. Thank you very much. Of course. That's our interview in action from live here at Vive.

Yes, it's very cold, but it's warm with great [00:08:00] relationships, fun and friendships. Thanks for listening.

Thanks

for listening to this Interview in Action episode. If you found value in this, share it with a peer. It's a great chance to discuss and in some cases start a mentoring relationship. One way you can support the show is to subscribe and leave us a rating. If you could do that would be great, thanks for listening. That's all for now.