Twenty (20) LIG members met at LIVE on June 11 in Chicago. While this cross-discipline, cross-functional group covered a wide swath of topics, the focal topic that emerged during our discussion was harnessing analytics (including AI). The end goal of this push into analytics:
Maximize each human touch in order to optimize patient progress.
How we define analytics is important. For some it implies a traditional data warehouse, while others are forging headlong into technologies such as Generative AI, which allows us to organize and evaluate our data in new and powerful ways. Whether you take a new-school or old-school approach, making sense of data is a front-burner initiative.
Below are some other main themes discussed in the course of the roundtable.
Culture
You can't have a leadership gathering without covering culture! Here are a few of the characteristics noted about desirable cultural attributes.
Evidence-Based: Moving ahead, the expectation for clinical providers will be standards- and evidence- based practice throughout.
Employee-Led: Allowing employees to participate actively in the organization creates the buy-in that fuels retention.
Supportive: In a rapidly changing world, supporting employees' need to balance work and life is an essential norm.
Employee Service: Some companies view employees as the "number one customer." These companies ask themselves questions such as: How can we infuse the essence of customer service into our approach to empowering employees? How can we serve them so that they can thrive in their roles?
Growth Mindset. If you want employees to value learning and development, you have to hire people disposed to a growth mindset.
Artificial Intelligence
Our discussion of AI yielded more questions than answers. Among the questions being mulled by the group:
Is it better to lead or follow when it comes to the bleeding edge of AI?
Can we trust AI inherently - or do we need to practice informed skepticism?
How do we get our human resources on board with their machine partners?
Virtual Care
When it comes to finding the right blend of in-person intervention and virtual tools, our group agreed: the human touch still rules. While some of this sentiment is fueled by discomfort with the role of machines in care delivery, the general sentiment is more about ensuring timely patient progression through the emphasis of capable hands-on care.
Diversification
Edginess with the payer landscape has led to a flight to diversify, meaning some providers are taking a "risk mitigation via service portfolio" approach. This includes increasing the mix of privately paid services in the portfolio.
Overhead
Back Office remains a bane and, as such, a key target of efficiency initiatives.