Healthcare Unbound-Carolyn Minnock: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Intro/Outro:
Welcome to Healthcare Unbound, a podcast powered by Clarify Health, where healthcare's changemakers discuss ways to advance care outcomes, cost, and affordability.
Saul Marquez:
Hey everyone! Welcome back to the Healthcare Unbound podcast. I'm Saul Marquez, CEO of Outcomes Rocket, hosting the show, and today, I have the privilege of hosting Carolyn Minnock on the podcast. She's an enterprise director at Clarify Health. You know, she's passionate about improving healthcare through technology. She began her career working at the Carolinas Healthcare System, now Advocate Health in their Area Health Education Center. She joined PeraHealth in 2015, taking on various roles, most notably as the Chief Growth Officer, leading their acquisition by SpaceLabs. She's always been focused on the provider space, selling software and solutions, and now she's very much focused on transforming this area of care in the payer and provider space. So, Carolyn, such a pleasure to have you here with us. So glad that you could join.
Carolyn Minnock:
Thank you for having me. So happy to be here.
Saul Marquez:
So, we're going to unpack a lot of really interesting things in today's interview. Before we do, though, I'd love to ask you: what inspires your work in healthcare?
Carolyn Minnock:
Sure! It's a good starting question. I would say I've always been drawn to healthcare. It's meaningful for me because I believe healthcare, being focused in industry, focused on how to improve people's lives. I would love to help people in their life, so people that know me, both professionally, or personally, they know that I'm eager to make connections with people, so whether it's a complete stranger or a friend or family member or, you know, in my career, maybe a patient I'll never directly meet, even in the smallest of ways, if I can have some sort of positive impact on their life, it's meaningful to me and how I spend my time.
Saul Marquez:
That's great, yeah. You know, at the end of the day, that is what we're doing this for. And so, let's dig in a little bit. What are your goals to make healthcare better?
Carolyn Minnock:
Sure, I would say it could be probably best explained if you go back to early 2000 and the crossing of the Quality Chasm in that they introduced the Institute of Medicine's six aims for improvement. And I think that in conjunction with my Lean Six Sigma background and that approach to continuous improvement, that if we, the folks that are in healthcare, have this trajectory towards continuous improvement in those six areas being safe, timely, effective, efficient, equitable, and patient-centered care, I think we're getting towards those improvements. We've succeeded in making healthcare better. So I guess in terms of my own personal goal is if I can have a piece in that that would achieve my goals.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, you know, and I think it's a great framework that a lot of great work has been based off of, solutions have been created around. Talk to us about your high level thoughts on emerging technology and specifically like how this STEEEP method, the safe, timely, effective, efficient, equitable, patient centric program has really kind of helped with that.
Carolyn Minnock:
Yeah, I mean, there's obviously many different ways in which you can probably bucket, right, emerging technology. I would say what comes kind of the top of my mind first would be everything that involves AI, machine learning, the ability to ingest such huge amounts of data, having that pattern recognition, having benchmarking, bringing that automation and efficiency to the data that we're collecting today and have collected. I've spent the last decade or so of my career in that space. It's been impactful. I'm interested to see how that will transform the future of care. That probably relates directly to the efficient side, right, of the emerging technologies. If you think about, obviously, it would be a result of COVID, remote access, telemedicine, mobile health, helping meet consumers regardless of their location or modality. I think that's allowing for more timely care or patient-centered care. It's allowing more access to that care, so that's been an important technology that's emerging. Third, I would probably say, this kind of sits in the background a little bit on the consumer side, but just the sharing of information. So through EHRs, blockchains, Internet of Things, and then having interoperability as part of that access to data, I think is obviously imperative for us to have the right system in place to lead to that efficient and effective care. And then, there's obviously like very exciting things to me as it relates to, like, inventions, right, so for 3D bioprinting of organs, for example. Innovations to me like that have always been of interest; probably stems back to, I did an internship at the University of Pittsburgh on the research side, but it was working to develop effective therapies to enhance pancreatic beta cell preservation. But there was such innovative thought that was brought into every day, and excitement. I'm excited to see how that leads to safer and effective care. I might mention two more if we have time.
Saul Marquez:
No, no, that's good. Let's do it. It's interesting.
Carolyn Minnock:
I think another one is all around the idea of prevention. So today, we have apps. We have wearables, there's remote patient monitoring, there's other diagnostics in place. And so being able to access, one, my own health data, is so different than I think of even when I was younger, right? To get your information about your health information, you call the doctor's office, they would literally go into a file and then read it from a printed piece of paper. And just to see how that's transformed today, being able to access my own data, having it more patient centered, and that prevention component has just made it more effective for me as a consumer of my own kind of healthcare. And then lastly, as we'll be speaking about more and more, I'm sure today is just through data itself and analytics. And so can we bring together and bring together today, right, like clinical research, other social data from all different sources. And how can we use that data to advance care to help speed up communication? Is there a way in which we promote healthcare innovation for that more equitable and effective care? So I would say there's, I guess, in my mind now, like six merging type of groupings somewhat align, have some overlap with the six Institute of Medicine aims for improvement, but all of which are exciting, and I think they are moving us into that direction of when you connected to the goals that I had that were making those incremental changes and improvements.
Saul Marquez:
That's great. No, I really appreciate you sharing that, and really around this improving patient outcomes with these focus areas, these analytics really help capture a lot of the data that's necessary to understand if, say, a Medicare Advantage patient is doing well. And as a payer, am I really getting the data that I need to say, Yes, they are, so therefore, I should be doing this or that? You've done not only a lot of exploration of technology, but you've also authored a chapter in a book, Whole Person Index. Now I'm a Believer. Talk to us about that chapter, and really, kind of how you believe this Whole Person Index is making a wave in our space.
Carolyn Minnock:
Yeah, absolutely. I was honored to be asked by Dr. Katie Kaney, who authored the book for that particular chapter you mentioned. I think just given my background in the various unique data sets that are being used in healthcare, with that goal to create a meaningful, impactful change. I realized when I take a step back, a lot of those data sets are are not working together. Instead, they're very much were and are fragmented. And if you can think about the impact we could achieve if those data sets were united, and so a Whole Person Index brings in all of that meaningful data, it layers in intelligence from AI, machine learning algorithms, has that idea of interoperability at the forefront to get that information to the right person, at the right time, in the right place. And so Whole Person Index, bringing in all drivers of health into that vantage point that we would have on every person, the four drivers of health of which we summarize in the chapter being clinical, social, genetic, and behavioral, and then breaking down those drivers and understanding the impact that that has on a patient's health and their stability. And so if we can put clinical, for example, at the 10% mark, social at 20%, genetic at 30%, behavioral at 40%, you get this comp 40, you have this comprehensive view all on a common scale, using scientifically valid methodology to help predict and understand that stability for each of those health drivers from that, right? The idea would be, can we inform prioritization? Can we personalize the patient's care more and create more of a balanced treatment approach? As you're probably aware, right, 80% of healthcare spending is focused on that clinical side. Yet we found that about 10% of a person's health is actually impacted by those clinical drivers, mainly given the clinical care is for very ill people. It's a lot of reactive care. But when you actually dig into the other drivers social, behavioral, and genetic that we're only spending 20% of our funding on in the United States, you know, collectively that's actually impacting 90% of a person's health. So I would say, so like that is the area in which enormous change can occur by having that sum, right, of all the drivers of your health stability. And that's what the Whole Person Index takes into account.
Saul Marquez:
That's fantastic. It's very clearly laid out. And my thoughts are, while it's clear, why haven't we adopted this, and why haven't we been able to successfully engage people in all of the four quadrants that you shared with us?
Carolyn Minnock:
Yeah, I mean, obviously, we've kind of created an infrastructure that's complex. Change is obviously very difficult that we all know and have experienced in our own lives. And if you think through the current economic engine of healthcare today as it relates to the services that are provided, those are predominantly, as I mentioned, in the clinical treatment space. And if public health is addressing large populations, mostly the underserved, and we have a lot of data. But again, there's this complicated current complex infrastructure with fragments of data that just are not working in harmony, and so we're looking at that. Where is that ability for us to at the end of the day, obviously healthcare is here to help support people in their lives and their health, but it's also a business as well. And so balancing all of those components of the infrastructure we have and figuring out how do we care for people, care for them well, but is there a way we can do that and reduce costs?
Saul Marquez:
Yeah. No, it definitely is. And I feel like Clarify has a nice home in this space to be able to offer the visibility to a lot of these drivers so that those actions can be visible, and we can actually make some of that change happen. From your perspective, what's one healthcare trend or technology that you feel is going to change healthcare as we know it?
Carolyn Minnock:
Yeah. One, I'll maybe add a little bit to what you mentioned with, right, what Clarify has today. So we have the largest claims data set, and that's really helpful in looking at those past encounters to be able to project demand, right, for a health system to understand how they can best strategically grow, to look at the referral intelligence. We also have a subset of data, and that is looking at all of the price transparency data, and so that's helping support hospitals' health systems and negotiating rates. All of that brings in some clinical data, some behavioral data, some social data, still touching on pieces of the pie. But I think if I could focus in on one, it would be social determinants of health. Obviously, I'm sure you're aware of this, right? The conditions in the environment where people are born, they live, they worship, they work, they play, and how it has an impact on a wide range of health and functioning and quality of life outcomes. I would say I'm probably biased in this because my wife, who is a nurse of 20 years, a family nurse practitioner, she is found in the shares with me, right? The majority of patients that she has that are technically labeled as non-compliant are really that because they're lacking a basic human need. And so when you think through Maslow's hierarchy of needs and then the five-tiered model on the motivational theory and psychology, right? So you have physiological, safety, love, belonging, esteem, self-actualization, if those lower basic needs are not met, food, water, shelter, safety, you can't fulfill the higher ones. And so when I think about that and overlay that with healthcare, right? How does a person who is lacking a basic need, how does that transpire into the challenges that are going to come around to how to support that person's health, right? So, in the most basic state, if a person cannot pay for have the means for food, how are they going to actually pay for medication? And so I think in some ways just having the ability right for providers, creating that trusting relationship, having capabilities of others within their organization, be able to support the patient from care navigators, social work, dieticians, health coaches, all of those things is where I think you get to see that holistic view because you're bringing in those other drivers of health and then can have those wraparound resources and services to make that impact. But, you know, again, that's where the change is difficult, comes in because today, our general model is set up that a provider gets 10 to 15 minutes appointment time for a slot, say, with a chronic disease patient. And so how are you going to address all of these multiple things that actually could be leading to that disease in that amount of time? And so I think kind of unwinding that and understanding how can we change or adapt to that structure we have today, and as I mentioned, provide those resources so that we can see an impact on that patient, looking at them more as a whole person and not just what they're there for that day.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah. No, I love that. Carolyn. I'm glad that you went there and didn't go to AI.
Carolyn Minnock:
Some others may be glad as well.
Saul Marquez:
Or Gen AI, I mean, look, that's cool stuff. But the reality is I'm glad that you went to a needle-moving area and that social determinants of health. And it really ties nicely to your message around that Whole Person Index and the areas that we should be thinking about. We cannot do it alone. We have to partner together. There's no way that, as a health system, you could knock out all four of these. There's just no way. So I think what Carolyn's telling us here is let's partner for success, and I love that you went there.
Carolyn Minnock:
Yeah, happy to. And I think it probably relates to your first question of why I'm in healthcare is that connection point. And we can't, you know, I think even across having the physician or provider connect with those patients in those visits is so imperative because without learning and getting to know and having those trusted relationships, you're never going to be able to uncover all that you may need to really be able to achieve a better health outcome for that patient.
Saul Marquez:
So yeah. Well said. Well said, Carolyn. Well, folks, I could chat with Carolyn all day here, but unfortunately, we're here at the end. So I've got one last question for her. Carolyn, what closing thought do you want to leave us with? I mean, you've shared so much. What's the thing that you want us to walk away with, and what's the best place the listeners could follow you and get more information on Clarify?
Carolyn Minnock:
Sure. I think as relates to Clarify, you can go to ClarifyHealth.com or Google us, and you'll find a lot of insights about what we're doing in both the payer and provider side. For me personally, you can reach out to me on LinkedIn under Carolyn Minnock. It's a great way to reach out. Happy to connect. And as it relates to a message to leave behind, I think, in addition to what I've shared, of just taking that time to connect with people is so meaningful, but I am a quote person, so. Although there's been, there's always, I've been seeing a few things that maybe Gandhi did not say this quote, Saul, so I'm not going to technically say it's Gandhi, but whomever it was, I've always loved the quote and try to live by of, Be the change that you wish to see in the world. It has to start with you and that small change, and then, you know, obviously, hopefully see that expand, so.
Saul Marquez:
Love it. That's such a great way to close, Carolyn; I appreciate that. Be the change you wish to see in the world. That is the best way to go about this. The Whole Person Index, the entire model that Carolyn shared with us around STEEEP. Make sure you check out the show notes in ways to get in touch with her, as well as Clarify Health. This is the best way to make it happen and make your healthcare unbound. So, Carolyn, thank you so much for being with us.
Carolyn Minnock:
Absolutely. Thank you, Saul.
Intro/Outro:
Thank you for listening to Healthcare Unbound. We hope today's episode was insightful. If you want more information on how Clarify Health can help you, please visit ClarifyHealth.com.
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