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59 million Americans rely on social media influencers for healthcare decisions.
In this episode, Dr. Geeta Nayyar, a globally recognized healthcare technology leader, shares her opinion on what she believes should be the proper application of technology in healthcare delivery. Throughout this conversation, she delves into the hype versus reality of artificial intelligence in healthcare, the role of data, and the challenges the healthcare industry faces in leveraging technology to improve patient experiences. She addresses the critical issue of trust in medicine and the impact of misinformation on individual health and organizational imperatives. She also discusses insights from her book, “Dead Wrong: Diagnosing and Treating Healthcare's Misinformation Illness,” which calls for a unified strategy in the healthcare C-suite to combat misinformation using technology effectively.
Listen to this episode to learn about strategies for a trustworthy, tech-infused, patient-centric future in healthcare!
For more about how Clarify Health can help your organization, visit Clarifyhealth.com
Healthcare Unbound_Geeta Nayyar: 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 everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Healthcare Unbound, brought to you by Clarify Health. I'm your host, Saul Marquez, and I'm excited to host today's podcast guest. Her name is Doctor Geeta Nayyar. She is a nationally recognized healthcare technology leader who has served as chief Medical officer for Salesforce and AT&T. Doctor G, as she is affectionately called, is the author of the USA Today and Wall Street Journal best-selling book, Dead Wrong: Diagnosing and Treating Healthcare's Misinformation Illness, a post-pandemic look at the rise of medical misinformation in the digital age. In the book, she talks about how healthcare organizations can apply emerging technologies to improve health literacy and advance strategic business goals. Doctor G, welcome to Healthcare Unbound!
Dr. Geeta Nayymar:
Thank you so much for having me, Saul. Before we get into it, I have to ask you because you have such a cool name, have you seen Better Call Saul?
Saul Marquez:
I just, I definitely have, yes.
Dr. Geeta Nayymar:
Great. No, no, ... out there.
Saul Marquez:
And whenever I meet people after that show, I just say, better call, better call. Thank you for that, yeah. And so, look, one question that I always love to start with is, what inspires your work in healthcare?
Dr. Geeta Nayymar:
Oh, gosh. I mean, I think for me, my work in healthcare all relates to the practice of medicine. So, I mean, I've wanted to be a doctor since I was a little kid, got into medical school when I was 17, and I've just always loved science and people, and it's been the perfect profession for me, perfect marriage for me. I got into tech very much later in my career and life, and really, that was very much inspired from going to paper to digital in my residency. My generation of docs will tell you how old I am, but my generation of docs literally went from paper to digital. And so the benefits, the risks, it was all very blatant and obvious to me in my 20s at the time, and I really saw the future of medicine in that transition and journey, and I continue to see the future of medicine in that journey. So that's, I would say those are the things that inspire me at this moment.
Saul Marquez:
I love that. And your career path has certainly been a reflection of your inspiration being at the intersection of business, medicine, and technology. What puts you on a path to becoming the chief medical officer of Salesforce and AT&T?
Dr. Geeta Nayymar:
Well, you know, I have to tell you. So I belong to an immigrant family from India, both my parents are physicians, and I will tell you, you know, growing up with all the stories of them coming to America, and they're like triple boarded each of them and speak five languages. And when I called, specifically my dad went very close to say, you know, I got this amazing job, and I'm going to be the chief medical officer of AT&T. And I could just hear the phone kind of drop on the other side, no pun intended, because he was like, let me just understand this, we came to America, we paid for medical school, and now you work for the phone company. I'm incredibly, like I'm incredibly confused and disappointed, and you know, it was definitely an accident. Definitely, again, not at all why I went to medical school. But I do think a lot of it, like so much in life, is timing. I happened to be at that stage in career where I felt the future was very much in tech, and I also saw very clearly the disconnect between tech, political leadership, and healthcare delivery. And I saw the role sort of of a chief medical officer as the person who could connect all of those dots and intersections, and it continues to be where we fall down in healthcare. The technologists want to build a lot of stuff that we don't need as doctors, we don't need as nurses, we're now burned out from. And so that continues to be a really big need in the industry, is how do you actually use technology and apply it correctly and implement it correctly in healthcare delivery; AI, EHRs, you name it, that continues to be the biggest problem, and weakness that we have.
Saul Marquez:
Totally, yeah, and kudos to you for holding your ground after your dad's reaction, because it's proven that you made a good choice.
Dr. Geeta Nayymar:
Well, no, I mean, typically, you know, my parents are very supportive of all my passions. I think it's just not the typical path for any doctor. And at that time, certainly, there was a lot of, you know, is this the right move? And most young docs make a decision between academics and clinical practice. So this idea of doing something novel, was novel at the time, I don't think it is anymore, but I continue to be really inspired by my path and feel that I'm able to impact more of healthcare than I ever could have in one-on-one patient care, so it's been a cool journey.
Saul Marquez:
I would agree. And so you mentioned something about what doctors need and what they don't need, and that really kind of leads me to my next question for you is, help us separate the hype versus reality of what this era of technology is doing. Include AI into that mix.
Dr. Geeta Nayymar:
Sure. I mean, look, the reality is, and I'm going to go back a little bit in time, right, as we went from paper to digital, and at the time, it sounded very much to the buzz you hear around AI. This is going to revolutionize practice. This is gonna make taking care of patients and having the holistic record. And it was supposed to change the game. And in many ways, the reality of how that played out as we went from paper silos to digital silos. I'm a rheumatologist. you come to me often because you have a positive blood test called an ANA. Half the time my patients come to me, they've got a positive ANA. When I ask them where it is, they say, well, you got that computer, doc; you can't just look in your computer? And I'm like, no, because that's a different institution, I'm a subspecialist or primary care doctor, right? So you get it. So I think those of us in health tech understand that while the technology has always been there, it's in the implementation. It's in the competition of capital markets, what we do and don't share. And as I think about artificial intelligence, my concern is the same. My optimism is certainly, I'm just as excited about artificial intelligence as anyone, and particularly as a physician that documents myself in clinic, and that takes documenting takes longer than actually seeing patients. So the idea that an AI-enabled documentation system can become something I use every day, super jazzed about that. However, the idea of using AI to supplement me, right, to this is the big thing that so many technologists talk about is, well, we don't have enough doctors, we don't have enough nurses. They're all burned out. Why don't we just replace them with a bunch of robots, right? That's not happening. That's not happening, likely, in our lifetime, to be frank, because there are so many nuances to healthcare and healthcare delivery, and we often forget the consumer's not there to see a robot. The consumer's there for the people part, for the trust part. Now, do I think there's ample opportunity in AI when it comes to documentation, prior authorization, clinical decision support? I think the opportunities are boundless and limitless. And even if we solved one of those, we would save millions to billions of dollars in the system. So I am just as jazzed and excited about anyone on the technology side for AI, but I continue to have that cautious optimism to say that clinical delivery part is still very special, very intimate, and needs to be applied correctly. So I don't think that's the place to start. Perhaps that's the end goal, but the beginning is these simple, simple tasks that can be automated and that you don't need someone who's been in school for 30 years to figure out. And so, that's what excites me the most about AI. But that, I think, is the biggest hype versus reality. And I'll leave you with one more thought as we think about Better Call Saul. Listen, people call you Saul, and one of the reasons they call is like the fax machine is down. So healthcare is single-handedly keeping the fax machine alive. So in one breath, we talk about AI and all these amazing opportunities. On the other hand, the reality is the fax machine is alive and well, so there are a lot of processes that are manual and outdated in healthcare, but they often work better than the technology. So we have to understand why that's the case in healthcare, and it's not because doctors don't like technology. They're only going to use technology that makes their patient care and their day, and their business work better, faster, smoother, and if it doesn't, they're not going to adopt it, and it's that simple.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah. Thank you, Doctor G. And so we talk about technology and its role. But what about data? Data is a core piece of it. What are your thoughts on data's role?
Dr. Geeta Nayymar:
Well that might be the biggest benefit we've gotten from technology is that we are in a position now to have data that's captured and longitudinal, and when we add AI on top of it, that's a better predictor. So whether it's the therapeutic space, whether it's the healthcare delivery space, this is absolutely where the story is. The story is in the data, and for physicians in particular, we are the most moved by data. And so are consumers, by the way. So when we're able to show the data but then tell a story, that's the power to say, here's the numbers. And then this is what it really means. This is what it comes down to. And we know what it means. Prevention is the key. Being in real-time is better than being after the fact, and closing care gaps is where value based care is the future of medicine, and where we have to put dollars to make those gaps closed. So I think that's really, the biggest value in technology is the things that we are able to do in capturing data, analyzing it, but even better, being able to predict next steps.
Saul Marquez:
Well said. And there's definitely a lot of opportunities for us to consider AI and tech to augment, but not replace, not anytime soon. And for anybody listening to our podcast today, I want to invite you all to join us in the conversation. We're going to post this on LinkedIn. And so take advantage of using the chat when you listen to us to share what your thoughts are there. Look, tech has so much potential to reshape the consumer and the patient experience. Why are we struggling with this as an industry still?
Dr. Geeta Nayymar:
Well, I think there's a couple of reasons. One of them we've discussed, which is the lack of healthcare leadership in the, what I call the recipe-making, right? The product roadmap. When we think about the technology piece, the technology is actually not the problem. I've worked with very smart engineers Salesforce, AT&T, and otherwise across the industry. The problem we have is connecting that to what's really happening on the healthcare delivery side. And for anyone in healthcare delivery, they would actually agree that the place where we most need technology is the back end, not the front end. So again, prior auth, documentation, clinical decision support, those are all behind-the-scenes function, but they add so much time and burden to the clinical staff that if you actually want to empower the clinical staff, it's not in that piece. It's in those invisible pieces behind the closed doors that really slow staff down, and so it's that disconnect. I think that we are not giving the technologists, the product teams, enough access to that kind of leadership and understanding of their customers' problems.
Saul Marquez:
Can you talk about trust in medicine? I know you alluded to it earlier, right? People want to see people, and the role of the pharmacist and doctor in healthcare.
Dr. Geeta Nayymar:
You bet. So look, the whole healthcare industry, it's predicated on trust. And if there's anything we learned from COVID, it's that. Is that when you're in a crisis, which I think every day in any ER around the country, you can see that healthcare is in crisis, the question is, well, you know, we think about trust. It's I have a problem. One, better call Saul. Can I call Saul? And is Saul going to show up for me? Is he going to show up for me each and every time consistently? Because that's trust. Knowing I can call you, knowing you're going to take the call, but then you're going to show up each and every time I need you, and that's really what's missing in healthcare. Is one, trying to call your doctor, one, do you have a doctor? Two, do you have access to one health insurance out of pocket, whatever it might be? And then three, is it going to be the same person? Do they know you? Do you know them? Do you like them? Do they look like you? Can you relate to them? So the trust piece, listen, in spite of healthcare, in spite of that terrible waiting room, in spite of the terrible front desk staff, people come to me. My patients come to me because I'm Doctor G, and they know me, and I know them, and that's why they come. That is the fundamental driver of what drives the patient doctor relationship. Now, that said, in a consumer-driven world where Amazon is in this space, CBS, Walgreens, the experience is so poor, and the bar is so low that when there are disruptors in this space, and they can provide a better experience, it becomes an interesting proposition, particularly for those folks who are not necessarily in the chronic disease space. So when I think about the young, middle-aged, healthy-ish population that just needs a flu shot, just needs a blood pressure check, just needs that one annual lab test, does become interesting places to go for your care and not have to deal with such a disconnected system. So I do think we're on a journey. And as I think about my daughter and what the future of medicine looks like, I don't think the consumer of tomorrow is going to look like the consumer of today. I think they're going to be a lot more demanding, and there's going to be a lot more disruption in the markets. I was just talking about Mark Cuban and Glen Tullman and the conversation at CES. I think it's brilliant that the middle layer is getting smaller and that transparency is becoming something we should demand and expect in healthcare. There's no excuse for it. You never go to Starbucks, get your coffee, and then say, I'll pay you 6 to 9 months later with however much cash I've got. This is $5, I'll give you $2. That would never fly. So why do we accept that in healthcare?
Saul Marquez:
Love that. And there's some great examples there. Even like things, like I was having a conversation with another entrepreneur on opium medications, like the support for opium and going to the pharmacy, and they don't have it. On Amazon, you know, if something's in stock or not. So these simple things can be applied, and I love your examples so much. I'd love to take the last few minutes that we have here, Doctor G, to talk about your book. So in your book, you talk about misinformation as a growing threat to individual health and organizational imperatives like clinical recruitment. Can you talk to us more about that? And it's, really impacts on the US health system.
Dr. Geeta Nayymar:
No, I really appreciate it. Thank you, Saul. Look, what excites me about technology is the ability to scale and reach people. And again, during COVID, it's one of the things that we learned is that we were reminded that health is, well. Everybody wakes up in the morning, and they want to be healthy. I don't know anyone who wakes up in the morning, doctor, patient, or otherwise, that says, how can I be misinformed today, right? How can I take the wrong supplement, eat the wrong thing? Now, we're all human. We may not do the right thing, but it's about making informed choices. And when I think about technology, particularly where we are when it comes to TikTok and Instagram, social media influencers, 59 million Americans turn to social media influencers for decisions about their healthcare. Not their doctor, not Saul. It's who do they call. That's who they're calling because they're accessible, they're relatable, and they're reachable. Now flip that dynamic. If healthcare could be that source, if healthcare were to embrace the right, scalable technologies in patient engagement, in physician engagement, I believe they're both tied, we would actually be able to take science back because, in so many ways, science is the PR campaign, right? We've seen that through this post-pandemic lens. And so my call to action in the book is really to say for everyone in healthcare, for everyone touching technology or in charge of the imperative that your organization patient engagement, patient acquisition, retention, physician engagement, it all leads back to a consumer that is smarter, better, faster, and knows how to interact with the healthcare system. And so, using consumer tech today with healthcare tech is an imperative. And for some reason, in healthcare, and your team will understand this, we've disconnected them. We've said marketing is separate, tech is separate, and clinical is separate. The truth is the metrics are the same across the board. You have a chief medical officer, they're in charge of making sure the docs are happy, and you're optimizing your tech. The CIO is in charge of picking the right tech, and the marketing team is in charge of your brand loyalty and your brand impressions, and engagement in the community. The truth is all of those metrics are connected, but when we look at our tech strategy, we're not thinking of it that way. And in healthcare, we've often thought of marketing as cute, nice to have, those of us in academics would actually frown upon marketing and PR, when the reality is that's how consumers are consuming their healthcare knowledge. So why not from your doctors? Why not from your nurses? And I specifically include a chapter on the Cleveland Clinic and how their chief marketing officer worked across the C-suite to say, hey, this is more than we're at the corner of 7th and 11th, and we offer 24/7 service. This is my doc. This is what they can offer you, like what you saw? Follow us here. Click here for an appointment. You get it. But that's the disconnect, but that's where consumers are, and if we're not there in healthcare, if healthcare leadership is not there, we leave a gap open for all the misfits out there profiting off of our patients, selling that supplement, saying, you know what, don't worry about that mammogram. Forget that colonoscopy. I've got the right thing for you. And so that's where people really get jaded about healthcare, and they lack trust. And when other people can win their trust before we can, it's hard to get it back.
Saul Marquez:
Totally agree with you. It's time. Now is our time to take that stance and make the moves that we can make, to make our future brighter and take control. Folks, in the show notes, we'll leave a link so that you could check out a copy of Doctor G's book, Dead Wrong: Diagnosing and Treating Healthcare's Misinformation Illness, so make sure you check that out in the show notes. So, Doctor G, thank you so much for walking us through the book, the premise, and what it's about. What inspired you to write it?
Dr. Geeta Nayymar:
Well, thanks for the question. I think that's the question most people ask me. It takes a while to write a book, so you definitely have to be inspired to sit down and do it. And I just remember sitting there through COVID and saying, this feels so much like deja vu, because I trained at a time of the height of the HIV epidemic. So I trained at George Washington in DC, and it was the time where there was senseless, preventable death. I was a young physician, gung ho about saving lives and being a doctor for the first time. And every other patient myself and my colleagues would touch would essentially walk in ... There was nothing for us to do. There was the same confusion around the science. There was a lot of stigma. And at the time, the institution of medicine told us, you're going to be better doctors for having trained through this. This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. This is unusual. This is just not something that happens every day, because we were in training, and all of our professors were trying to reassure us. Then we hit March 2020, and I'm teaching medical students, and we're saying the same thing. This pandemic, very unusual, once in a lifetime, you're going to be better doctors for it, and no one hates you. Don't worry, the science is real. And so it just felt like the story had to be told, Saul. And I think too often in medicine, we're so focused on getting the fires out that we don't look to see where they're starting or who's lighting the fire. And so much of what happened, both with HIV Aids and with COVID, and with so many myths and theories out there, is that we just don't have the facts right. And the everyday consumer is easily confused and lost by the people that try to win their trust when healthcare is silent. We've not owned the narrative. And, you know, one of the quotes in the book that I love is the one that says mis and disinformation grow in the dark. If healthcare doesn't take a leadership position, somebody else will, and they're going to profit off of our consumers and off of our patients. So I felt like it was the untold story of healthcare. And yet every one of us has an uncle, a friend around the table at Thanksgiving that says, you know, if you want to cure baldness, all you're going to do is take some ginger and turmeric and jump upside down three times, right? It's been around forever, but I just think the story hasn't been told, and mis and disinformation in the era of tech is spreading six times faster than the facts. So this is something that has the potential to get worse before it gets better if we, as healthcare leaders, are not smart about addressing it.
Saul Marquez:
Love that. No, thank you so much. What a great inspiration, and I'm personally very excited to pick up the book and read it myself. And so, really, just to conclude here, what would you say the book sort of calls the reader to action? What does that conclusion that you want to leave us with?
Dr. Geeta Nayymar:
Sure, thank you. And I appreciate you saying that about the book. You'll have to tell me what you think about it when you do pick it up. So look, the call to action is really saying to the C-suite in healthcare, right? From the CEO to the CIO, the CMO, pick all your alphabets. The bottom line is, if you are in charge of brand loyalty, if you are in charge of patient acquisition, retention, physician engagement, consumer experience, all of these things lead back to having a strategy on mis and disinformation, and they all have technology touchpoints. And so, it really requires the C-suite to not work in the traditional silos that we have in the past. But actually, for the chief marketing officer to work with the chief medical officer and the chief information officer to then drive metrics for the CFO and the CEO, right? So, you know, I recognize that there's not a healthcare organization out there that has someone in charge of their mis and disinformation strategy, but they do have plenty of people in charge of all those different metrics. And at the end of those, the enemy that you're combating is mis and disinformation. And if we're not intentional in healthcare, someone else is. And they are out there trying to win your brand loyalty and trying to win your patients and keep them, and they are very much not in favor of science. And so science needs a comeback story and healthcare needs to own that. And then we keep our patients. It all leads back to trust, and the ideal patient experience is a cradle-to-grave experience, but healthcare has to own it and be intentional.
Saul Marquez:
A very clear call to action there, and we really appreciate you sharing it with us. If the listeners today want to get in touch with you and learn more, what would you say the best way to do that is?
Dr. Geeta Nayymar:
Thanks so much, Saul. My website has everything you need DrGeetaNayyar.com, but I'm on all across all social channels from Instagram to LinkedIn, and I look forward to hearing from you.
Saul Marquez:
Love it! Thank you so much, Doctor G. And thanks, everybody, for tuning back into the Healthcare Unbound podcast.
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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