Perspectives on Health and Tech Oracle Health

Mental health remains a significant area of concern in healthcare, especially after the pandemic. Universal screening tools, such as suicide risk assessment, have become a vital resource. One of the best ways to normalize mental health screening is by integrating it into your clinical electronic health record (EHR) workflow. However, with the influx in risk assessments, is your staff confident and prepared to handle the needs that arise? And does your organization have the infrastructure required to support those needs?
While telehealth has alleviated part of the burden for providers, it has also exposed many ways technology can create barriers to care, especially for communities who are already at a disproportionate risk for suicide and addiction. So, how can we better coordinate care across the illness-wellness continuum? Join Danny Gladden and Dr. Sarah Matt as they discuss the progress and opportunities to support mental health and improve suicide prevention.
Guests:
Danny Gladden, director of behavioral health and social care, Oracle Health
Dr. Sarah Matt, vice president of product strategy, Oracle Health
Hear them talk about:
Education and training for physicians regarding suicide assessment and prevention treatment (2:00) Suicide screening assessments and lack of staff resourcing and infrastructure to meet those needs (4:15) Crisis intervention training for first responders and the increased availability of mental health first aid (11:15) Telehealth doesn’t solve access to care issues—there’s still a gap in equity and barriers to care (13:00) Benefits of behavioral health data collected on digital record (15:15) Moving toward a consumer-focused patient experience (17:20) Suicide prevention resources (19:18) Learn more about Oracle Inpatient and Outpatient Behavioral Health solutions
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Episode Transcript:
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;30;09
Danny Gladden:
You're listening to Perspectives on Health and Tech, a podcast by Oracle, where we have conversations on creating a connected healthcare world where everyone thrives. Hi there. I'm Danny Gladden, clinical social worker, director of behavioral health and social care here for Oracle. Dr. Matt, so glad you are here.
Dr. Sarah Matt:
Thank you, Danny. I'm so excited. You know, when it comes to suicide prevention, I think there's so many problems that we could talk about, but I think there's also solutions and things we can do next.
 
00;00;30;16 - 00;01;06;28
Danny:
So I'm excited that we're talking about this topic today. Yeah. And, you know, I think we've made some great progress. And I say we as the collective, we myself, I'm a clinical social worker that practices in mental health services. I've actually ran one of the National Suicide prevention lifelines, but suicide prevention takes all of us. And so, you know, I'm actually just curious, you know, you're a physician—think about your preparation into sort of medical school and residency.
 
00;01;06;28 - 00;01;26;15
And you know what does what did your preparation look like as a physician assessing for and treating suicide risk?
Sarah:
So I went to med school a long time ago, I will say, But when it comes to training, it was very traditional. So four years of med school. And then I did my residency in general surgery and my fellowship in Burns.
 
00;01;26;17 - 00;01;56;05
So I'd say that when you think about structured learning for mental illness, it was pretty scared. Most of it was around inpatient mental health services. So that's the rotations that we did in medical school. Now there was the small bits and pieces you may have gotten on your primary care rotation, but it really wasn't a focus. Now today are unclear how the clinical rotations are going and how the medical schools have changed their training.
 
00;01;56;12 - 00;02;19;17
But I would say that for the generations of doctors that are in my age category, it definitely

As part of the No Surprises Act, healthcare systems must now provide comprehensive good-faith estimates for the cost of care—both from their own organization (relatively easy) and from outside providers (much harder). Listen to industry leaders Seth Katz, University Health, and Josh Mast, Oracle Health, discuss with Jodi Busch, Oracle Health, the impacts of good-faith estimates on health organizations and how to use this phase as an opportunity to streamline workflows and better prepare your teams for the next iteration of the No Surprises Act.

Featuring: 

Seth Katz, Vice President of HIM and Revenue Cycle, Finance, University Health  
Josh Mast, Director and Product Regulatory Strategist, Oracle Health  
Jodi Busch, Senior Director of Financial Alignment Organization, Oracle Health  


Hear them discuss: 

An overview of this year’s iteration of the No Surprises Act (1:16) 
How have these changes impacted safety net hospitals/organizations? (3:36) 
How are schedulers at hospitals/organizations handling the increased duties of working good-faith estimates? (5:05) 
Was it difficult to gain internal buy-in from your staff for these changes? (6:57) 


Have you had any issues sending the good-faith estimates back to patients in the allotted time? (9:39) 
Are there penalties for non-compliance? (10:59) 
How does the enforcement discretion potentially impact the overall process? (13:29) 
Where are you at in terms of combining providers inside and outside of the organization? (15:06) 
What has been the response back from patients regarding good-faith estimates? (16:10) 


What's coming next? (17:29) 

Notable quotes: 

“We have to remember that we work in healthcare to help take care of people and make them better and that the No Surprises Act, price transparency, information blocking are good things for the patients.” – Seth Katz 
“At the end of the day, this is about trying to get patients and consumers information prior to receiving care so that they are better informed.” – Josh Mast 

In the US, big leaps have been made toward industry-wide interoperability in recent years. From establishing a standard set of health data that must be exchanged, to broadening the scope of the ban on information blocking—recent regulations have driven positive advancements to simplify health data sharing across vendors and venues of care.
 
On top of all that, the Office of the National Coordinator and The Sequoia Project, the Recognized Coordinating Entity for the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) established under the 21st Century Cures Act, announced the first applications accepted for Qualified Health Information Networks (QHINs) under the TEFCA. That short list included CommonWell Health Alliance, of which Cerner, 
now Oracle Health, was a founding member nearly a decade ago. 


This is a leap forward in achieving our vision for interoperability. Our shared goal with CommonWell joining TEFCA is to build a nationwide health information exchange, 
leveraging a collaborative trade organization, that will help give patients access to their healthcare data regardless of where they receive care. 
 
Listen in as we talk about the exciting progress toward nationwide interoperability and how it will benefit patients and providers.
 
Featuring:
Paul Wilder, Executive Director, CommonWell Health Alliance
Sam Lambson, Vice President of Interoperability, Oracle Health
 
Hear them discuss:
• TEFCA and what it means for advancing interoperability (2:10) 
• Benefits of better information exchange for providers and patients (3:49)
• How a record-location service is more accurate, efficient and secure than geo-locating like many systems use today (6:45)
• When does TEFCA start affecting patients and providers at the point of care? (13:04)
•How does TEFCA impact gaps between care, translating care, and settings of care, like telehealth? How does it affect patient engagement and involvement? (17:00)


• Ways to learn more and ask questions (19:20) 
 
Notable quotes: 
"Me having my data is not just a toy. It’s not just I want the image because it’s interesting … I want the report. It’s that I want to manage my health, or that of my children, or my parents in a better way—which I think in the end is really going to benefit the provider." - Paul Wilder 

"And think of mental health—it gets even more robust as we’re expanding services a lot right now. If we don’t do it efficiently, it’s going to get very expensive. And getting past all those administrative flows to get to the care you need at the level the person can do it in front of you—as opposed to what the data is allowing you to do—is, I think, really important." - Paul Wilder
 
Resources
TEFCA: A leap toward achieving nationwide interoperability Sequoia Project CommonWell Health Alliance Reacts to QHIN Application Approval

The very definition of healthcare communication has shifted over time. Today, fewer clinicians practicing at the bedside have highlighted the need for advanced communication tools and processes. 
Join Jason Schaffer, MD, vice president and chief medical information officer at Indiana University Health and Liz Harvey, MSN, chief nursing officer at Oracle Health, as they discuss the evolution of clinical care team communications and how increased demand for healthcare has made better collaboration tools both a necessity and an opportunity for innovation.

Hear them discuss:
• How have trends in healthcare communication changed? (1:20)
• What types of technology are now available for teams and what are the benefits for patients and caregivers? (3:21)
• Important points teammates should agree on regarding critical communications (8:04)
• Knowing your message responsibility and escalation paths in critical situations (12:35)
• How to create flexibility with communication when needed (15:20)
• How can a unified communication strategy help organizations proactively address system-wide challenges? (17:20)

Notable quotes:
“We should be separating technologies for the right speed and urgency of communication.” – Jason Schaffer, MD

“We can’t solely rely on technology. We have to engage our brains and use the years and years of school that we have all spent learning how to be clinicians as we start to look as some of these messages that we receive and talk about the criticality.” – Liz Harvey, MSN
Learn more about Oracle clinical communication and collaboration tools.

The Federal Joint Health Information Exchange connects the health records of the Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, and Coast Guard by helping provide continuity of care from the time Veterans enter the service, throughout active duty, and the rest of their life.
Now that the Joint HIE has been live for more than two years, what successes are we seeing? How has it impacted Veterans and improved the care they receive?
Listen as Amanda Cournoyer, Interoperability Director of the Electronic Health Record Modernization Integration Office at U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, talks about advocacy and interoperability at VA with Sam Lambson, Vice President of Interoperability at Oracle Health.
Hear them discuss:
• Amanda’s personal journey from active military service to working in interoperability at VA (1:50)
• An overview of a few of the interoperability solutions VA is implementing to improve care for Veterans (7:53)
• Why interoperability is a big deal for Veterans’ and active-duty service members’ care (11:45)
• Why it’s a benefit to VA providers and community care providers (14:10)
• What she is looking forward to improving in data exchange nationwide (15:11)
Notable quotes:
“One of the things I don’t think people understand is that 60% of the health care DoD provides to their family members and active duty is actually provided outside in the community. And on the VA side, 30% of our care is [health care] purchased in the community.” – Amanda Cournoyer

"It’s not just about making sure our VA providers, our DoD providers or our patients have access to their data, we want to make sure the providers taking care of our patients have access agnostic to their location or their affiliation or their health IT platforms." – Amanda Cournoyer

"We’re putting this data into the workflows for the first time. It’s not just a view, review, maybe decide you want to copy and paste into your clinical notes and your encounters—we’re using it for care coordination." – Amanda Cournoyer
"That’s some exciting work that you’ve accomplished bringing so many points of a disparate network that was trying hard to get together for so many years finally integrated as one body to support Veterans and active [duty] service members. It’s truly phenomenal." – Sam Lambson

With significant and ongoing changes in the health industry in recent years, healthcare leaders have had to rapidly adapt to new ways of thinking and doing in order to stay resilient in the face of change. Yet some leaders push past the status quo and view these opportunities as a chance to explore new avenues for patient care, new partnerships for growth, and new ways to ease provider burden and boost their workplace culture.
In this episode, Stephanie Trunzo, senior vice president and general manager of Oracle Health, shares her experiences within change management and how to instill enterprise-level thinking within one's team.
She discusses:
• Bringing entrepreneurial experience into larger organizations to become an intrapreneur (0:55) • How you need to think about the people first in transformation process (1:45)
• How to embrace and mitigate risk and create a safe space for your team to create change alongside you (3:54)
• How to avoid becoming stale and losing clarity and instead surrounding yourself with fresh ideas and people to stay sharp (6:58)
• Getting an entrenched workforce onboard with change (11:09)
• What we should be thinking about when trying to instigate long-term change (14:10)
• What they’re excited about in bringing Oracle and Cerner together (16:50)
• Pandemic introduced change, but how healthcare can now bring consumers along (18:38)
Notable quotes:
“We don’t work for org charts. We work for people we believe in. We work for the purpose that makes us get up and be excited about the work that we’re doing. It’s not different for the workforce you’re trying to move forward – how do you connect them back to that purpose in the first place?” – Stephanie Trunzo
“Do you want to be right, or do you want to get it right? If you’re on the path of ‘be right’ you’re going to be blind to the kinds of changes that need to happen.” – Stephanie Trunzo
“People sometimes fall in love with complexity. The very things that they want to change is what they derive their own value from … you want to help them see that by making this thing simpler they actually can show value in a much more important and different way.” – Stephanie Trunzo