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Today on Newsday.

would you rather have.

You're hip operated on by the organization that, you can get an appointment. You can work with efficiently or the one where you're on hold. Your call has gone into some voicemail box. Nobody's called you back. There's going to be very direct effects on your revenue if you're a CFO.

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 [00:01:00] time. Newstay discusses the breaking news in healthcare with industry experts

Now, let's jump right in.

(Main) All right, it's Newsday and today we are joined by Scott D'Entremont Chief Revenue Officer for Parlance.

Scott, how's it going? It's been a little bit of time since we talked.

It's going great. It's going great. We're at the end of a really great year for the company and looking forward to a great 2025 as things continue to develop in our marketplace and across the country.

We're pretty excited.

You guys are right smack dab in the middle of what everybody's talking about at this point, right? We're trying to create these personal experiences with all this data \ for something that we thought was going to happen as a result of meaningful use, but never really happened, but now it feels like we have the tools to make it happen.

Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it. It's a situation where we feel like our time has come, our company's been around a long time 27 years, and we started out doing very directed speech recognition services, which had a lot of utility to [00:02:00] help navigate, but was frankly limited by where technology was at that point.

And today, we've just come so far where we're really able to understand intent in these conversations. And that intent really then feeds into being able to do things like personalization. And as somebody in healthcare, it's great to see then that what we've seen in the consumer world is being brought forward into healthcare now.

So it's an exciting time for us.

All right. So we're going to hit this article and it's an interesting article. It's a Harvard business review article. Why isn't healthcare more personalized? Seems to be right in your wheelhouse, by the way. And the beautiful thing about this is two of these authors have been on the show before.

John Glasser has been on the show. Robbie Hughes has been on the show before. Robby Hughes is with Lumion, and I think Lumion was bought by Health Catalyst. They were bought by Health Catalyst. And John Glasser used to be the CIO up at Mass [00:03:00] General Brigham. And I think he's, I think he's just teaching now, if I'm not mistaken.

If he hears this, he can correct me. You picked this article and I'm glad you did because I'm having a lot of conversation about where's AI going and how is it going to enable us to do certain things? What jumped out on this article from your perspective?

I think one of the things, and I know, other organizations are looking past just how deep can you go into the record and pull out, appointment or tests that you may need to have or not have. And I think that's interesting. And I think that's going to really be important as we go forward.

But I was struck by the way in which the article was like now that everybody's personalizing stuff, we can go even deeper. We spend all day meeting with people who are thinking about doing it, who are part of the community. 80 percent of healthcare organizations that think they will have done something in the next five years, but it's more like five or 10 percent that have [00:04:00] done anything with it now.

And my average conversation with people will start much more we'd like to do stuff like this, but we're not quite ready. Lots of workflow stuff on the back end isn't in place, Scott, what's a practical way to get started? How do we better serve the people that are calling in and need to interact with us?

So I felt like these guys jumped forward a little bit, and it'll be interesting to talk about jumping back and saying, what are the building blocks to a good consumer experience that we're all talking about in healthcare now? And personalization is a big part of it. And it's just nice for somebody to know who you are when you call.

I'm going to take on different roles and I want you to convince me. So I'm going to start with the CFO. I'm the CFO, Scott, you're sitting across from me, the CFO. Why should I even care about personalization, right? Is that going to help the bottom line at all? Is it going to create more efficiency?

What am I going to get as the CFO of a health system?

I think my question for you right back would be, are you interested in having a consumer driven organization? Do you take that seriously? [00:05:00] People give it a lot of lip service that we are going to be much more consumer focused, but are you going to make the kind of investments that deliver upon that?

That's why I started with the CFO, because the CFO is just going to look at you and say, eh, don't know. When I'm sick, I want to see a doctor and I want to, whatever. And what you're telling me is, hey, I can really make that a frictionless experience and I can create, a chat like interface for some of these things and we can enable your system to really speak back to the patient and make it a better experience.

But as a CFO, I'm sitting there going, where am I going to see that? Where's the dollars I'm going to see?

think where you're going to see it very straightforwardly is against sort of your competition. It's going to become the standard. It's well established that this directionally is something you'll be doing.

It's just where you're going to be. Are you going to lead? Are you going to follow? So if you are Virtua Healthcare, which out of, 180 customers may be the one that's the most organizationally focused on [00:06:00] being a consumer driven organization, you're going to be ahead of everybody else in southern New Jersey.

And when people have choice, they're going to follow those things. By having that navigation, it leads to better access generally that is going to lead to your patient base little bit larger and have a little bit less friction in dealing with you. And I think a lot speaks to the impression, would you rather have.

All right. So revenue speaks my language for sure. Absolutely. One of the things about personal, personalized experience is this whole idea of appointment. You just talked about access. And access is very interesting to me because I want to make sure that like they're trying to come to me.

They're trying to become a [00:07:00] patient. They're trying to get set up. And I hear this story over all the time of people saying, yeah, I called the health system. And I'm a new patient and I'm not going to be able to be seen by them for six months, or the first time they call it six months. I know that's something that CFOs would love to figure out a way to get in front of.

I think one of the things about personalization that really strikes me is not the technology per se, but that the organizations take the time to think through those things. Why does it take six months? Is there a way to get around this problem? In order to do something digitally, you have to think through it.

That's true. And, knowing which channel you want to interact with me on, if I was in queue potentially for an appointment and on a waiting list. Maybe the healthcare system doesn't know that, hey, if you text me and say, hey, I got something open, then I'm going to just reply yes and fill that slot more efficiently.

So there's a lot of really practical applications for it. And once these building blocks are in place, you can start to go a little bit deeper and say, geez, we got Scott on the phone. [00:08:00] Scott has skipped his colonoscopy that he knows that he should have done. Let's ask him about that and maybe schedule that well.

as well. by having a relationship with me that's personal yet technical, it can lead to a lot more opportunity for me to have better care.

I think it like, I, as a patient, want to have a conversation with my health system as an entity.

I just want to get on a chat interface and go, find my health record. You have my health record. Find my health record. What are some things you recommend? And it says Bill, you're 57 years old. When's the last time you had a colonoscopy? And I say, this time. We should probably get that scheduled.

Here's some appointments. Would you like? I'd like to have a, literally, an ongoing conversation with my patient. With my health system and have it respond to me as if I'm talking to Nurse practitioner at the least but potentially a physician and I realize I'm talking to a technology But more and more that technology is getting better at just I mean look telling me I need a colonoscopy based on you're this age and you haven't had one in five years.

You should have one [00:09:00] That's right. Nobody's arguing can AI figure that out? Of course it can.

Yeah. Yeah. Not that heavy a lift. Not that heavy a lift. And I think there's just a lot that's unique about healthcare too. Oftentimes, it might be mom calling and mom has got three kids then underneath her.

And knowing, she's probably calling about the child that has the upcoming appointment tomorrow. And rather than needing to sort out, who this is, why they're calling, just being able to more quickly get into that conversation and help her take care of that piece of business, I think is going to really improve loyalty and make that relationship more intimate.

All right, let's put you in front of physicians. Physicians, nurses, they're maybe a little skeptical, they're worried about, you're going to take away my job or that kind of stuff. We're not talking about taking away their clinical job. We're talking about really streamlining a lot of administrative type aspects of it, aren't we?

Yeah, I think we're talking about taking away the parts of people's job that , have been [00:10:00] historically hard to even staff, and the kind of administrivia that everyone would rather not do. So wherever you can step into the breach and relieve some of that, I think you're providing a service to the clinical staff addition to the patient, for sure.

Are clinicians more open to these kinds of solutions, given we've gone through the pandemic and they've experienced burnout, they've experienced shortages, they've experienced, not enough clinicians to manage it, or is it still pushback because, hey, look this feels like it's going to take my job at some point in the future?

Yeah, we haven't heard that where we hear some sort of skepticism pushback is just does it work, it's just not enough of it around yet, as we get successful customers and kind of start, getting people to talk about it more publicly, we're seeing adoption really lift up, but it's really

is it all going to be worth it? People have been promised a lot of things, you can't go anywhere without hearing how is going to change your [00:11:00] life. And I think that it's created some just generalized skepticism on one hand, and on the other, there are places where Huge committees are formed.

We're even seeing new, executive positions just to look at AI being brought to bear and there's this overhead of analysis paralysis. So that's the thing that we see a little bit more than as a vendor of these services we'd like to see. We'd like to see people just going, hey, we're ready, but we know it just, it takes a while to prove it out.

I facilitated a discussion at a recent event around the economics of AI. And it was interesting to listen to the health systems. putting words in their mouth here, but it felt to me like they were saying, look, AI is a feature. Like I have this tool to do this, and this tool to do this, and this tool to do this.

And we're seeing it show up in those tools to facilitate the next level of reasoning so that tool can do even more than it did before. Is that how you think about AI?

Yeah [00:12:00] totally. As I mentioned, our company's been around a long time. So it's just, we've been looking to first generally an industry and then about 12 years ago focused on healthcare.

We've been looking to help people navigate healthcare systems using your voice is where it all started for us. And there was a technology stack that did that, AI has made it possible to have intent be part of that. It's made it possible to integrate with backend systems where you can do actual work and sort of transact business, if you will, rather than just direct person to the right human.

We think AI is baked in lots of different places, and is really an enabling technology, but it's not an end in itself. It needs to be something that helps us get to a better place, rather than somebody just saying, Okay, you said use AI, and now we've used AI. It's really more about what are you getting out of it, and I think people are right to look at where is the ROI directly, is this a good [00:13:00] investment?

And additionally, are we just caught up in making sure we're using the latest and not thinking about where it fits best?

That conversation at that round table was really interesting. There was almost a we're not shopping for AI. Let me say it that way.

It's it's not like we're going out to the market saying, hey, we want some AI, give us some AI. It's coming to us. The EHR partners are pulling it in and bringing it in. Oracle has a big push towards it. Epic has a big push towards it, it's not something they have to go out and learn how to train a model or that kind of stuff. It's configuration. It's they're just clicking buttons and saying, turn this one on, turn this one on. And then they have little levers and dials to, fine tune it, but we were worried that we would have to develop all of these skills and it's turning out that it's being built by somebody else like I don't have to learn how to build a car to drive a car.

Yeah, it's interesting I think, the IT professionals that we deal with understand that pretty well, and we also deal with a lot of operational professionals, and they see it a little [00:14:00] bit differently that for them it seems to be more like tell AI, whereas when you're having a conversation with an IT executive, they recognize it more like we do, which is, okay, this is just a new technology stack, it's going to have benefits, there are going to be things we have to look out for, we're going to have to invest, and we're going to really look critically at are we making good investments here.

And they look to vendors to provide things that make things better for them. They're not looking to build it all. Here and there, once in a while, I bump into someone that goes, Oh yeah, I've got guys working on this. And we go, they're working on other stuff too. And this is maybe not the place for you to invest.

We're cautious. Just how far you go down the road of using a particular technique. I've been in high tech businesses for 25 years and I have never seen anything move more quickly. So it's really about making sure you're getting the utility, taking a look at what your investment is, doing practical first steps, more than it's about, okay, we're going to use an agentic [00:15:00] approach versus, a large language model versus a rag approach and really getting into the technology and trying to bake off all these techniques.

It's much more about, who can do what for you and how it's going to positively impact, your patient community and your clinicians.

Yeah, it's interesting. This article in the roundtable was a start small, think big, but get started mindset. And, hear that in healthcare, and I think of how slowly we've moved in other areas.

From a facilitator standpoint, I just asked them, Is AI a game changer? I wanted to know, when you say, Start small, think big, do you really think it's a game changer? And they all looked at me and reluctantly said, Yeah, it is. Maybe not in its current form, but it's, Yeah. It's a game changer, yes.

Yeah, it's absolutely a game changer in our business. The ability to know why somebody might be calling the healthcare system and treating that more like a helpful [00:16:00] agent would than just, a traditional IVR that kind of, listen closely, my options have changed. You can't compare the two.

And it just opens up. Much more access to the communities that are underserved, not everybody has a computer, or the bandwidth, particularly in rural communities where 45 percent of people still don't have good bandwidth, to go on a portal, and to be sophisticated enough.

to navigate the healthcare system. AI gives you the ability to let people call in on whatever device they happen to have and say, hey, this is what I need to do. It can better handle different languages and dialects. It's just really game changing.

we'll close with this concept, but one of the things I said to them is when I came into healthcare, so I came into healthcare in 2011, and the concept that I gave to the board I was a consultant and our consulting firm was doing some work and they made me interim CIO.

So as interim CIO, I said, here's the concept we have to come to grips with, which [00:17:00] is essentially how we're going to deliver care outside of these four walls. And they looked at me and they said, yep, that's right. We want to be able to deliver more and more care outside these four walls.

We're not going to keep building these massive campuses. They're too expensive and all this other stuff. That was back in 2011. Now we see a rural healthcare crisis starting and those kinds of things. And more and more, it feels to me, that conviction back in 2011 has only intensified, where it's like, We're going to figure out how to bring care to them, where they are, regardless of who they are or what their economic situation or whatever, like we are absolutely going to take care outside the health system.

Now we might need different pay models and different things, but that's the only way we're going to be able to get through. A physician shortage, a nurse shortage, a rural health care crisis. We've got to figure out how to utilize technology to support that. That was my initial thesis in 2011.

I'm curious what your thoughts are on that [00:18:00] thesis.

I think it's even more today. We recently hosted a focus group at CHIME and it was striking. I IT leaders in the room from both really rural places. Can you say that again,

please? Really rural.

Really

rural places. I barely got through it the first time, Bill. And I had people in some of the leading markets in the U. S. And it's like they have the same job title, they have very different challenges to overcome. You had people with almost limitless resources to the extent, or would certainly appear so to the rural guys and the rural guys are just trying to figure out how to turn the lights on.

They're under such pressure. And so I think supporting those communities. is just even more important. And it's real, we have people in markets where if that healthcare system doesn't make it, people are going to have to drive three hours to go see a doctor. And whereas telehealth is a huge opportunity and improvement at the end of the day, if you need somebody to [00:19:00] give you a shot or a pill.

You got to be able to be physically present. So we, all need to come together to make sure those kinds of places continue to exist and improve upon, as you mentioned, whether it's different pay models or other ways in which they're supported. The pressure on those organizations is real. We see it every day.

Fantastic. Scott, it's always great to catch up. Any we're recording this before Thanksgiving. It'll air right after Thanksgiving. are your plans for Thanksgiving? Anything exciting?

Hosting a dinner of about 10. I'm on my way out now to pick up the turkey, which sounds like it would be easy, but I've got some picky eaters that only eat organic.

I basically price shopped the turkey last night and had a sleep on it before I go make what seems to be quite a substantial investment. I want everybody to be happy on Thursday and I'm going to dip my toe in.

We just had our staff meeting and we were talking about, what was distinct about your table.

And we're all over the country. South, Northeast West Coast, whatever. Somebody was telling me [00:20:00] the South has some things that I, it just I can't imagine, but. They were saying, you cook the ham and then you make this big thing of rice and then you pour the ham Essentially the ham grease over the rice and just stir it together and I thought no way and so I reached out to some of my People I know from the south.

They're like, oh that is the best stuff ever I'm like really, I shouldn't talk about this on a healthcare podcast, but have to figure out a way to try that at some point. like a good time. If you need the recipe, I know who has it. Alright. Very good.

Thanks, Scott. Great catching up with you.

Thank you. You too, Bill. Take care.

Thanks for listening to Newstay. There's a lot happening in our industry and while Newstay covers interesting stuff, another way to stay informed is by subscribing to our daily insights email, which delivers Expertly curated health IT news straight to your inbox. Sign up at thisweekealth. com slash news.

Thanks for listening. That's all for now

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