Digital Transformation in Healthcare: Arti Bedi Pullins Of Pundit Consultantz On How Medical Practices Can Use Digital Transformation To Provide Better Care

An Interview With David McNeil

Patient engagement and compliance: an engaged and compliant patient is not only a healthier patient but also creates less work for their clinical teams.

As part of our series about “Medical Practices Can Use Digital Transformation To Provide Better Care”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Arti Bedi Pullins.

Arti Bedi Pullins is a strategic, data-driven entrepreneur with nearly 20 years of experience in business strategy, product innovation, digital marketing, and end-to-end deployment. As the founder and CEO of Pundit Consultantz, Arti partners with clients in the healthcare, MedTech, emerging technologies, and recruitment industries to drive innovation and define and execute strategic transformational plans, creating partnerships that allow for rapid expansion into new markets and channels. Prior to founding her business consultancy, Arti held senior leadership roles with SessionM, Glassdoor, CareerBuilder.com and she earned an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and a bachelor’s degree in business communication from Michigan State University.

Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Can you share the most interesting or most exciting story that has happened to you since you began at your company?

Sure! I started my self-funded and one-person practice in April 2017 on an educated hypothesis mixed with real-life market working knowledge and, frankly, a bit of gut instinct mixed with fear, that healthcare companies, health systems, life sciences, and medical manufacturers, retail healthcare — basically the healthcare industry ecosystem as a whole in the U.S. — needs Digital, Business Ops and Innovation excellence to help them build and create for the future. To my fortunate surprise, the market agreed! My personal hustle along with the support of my family, friends, ex-colleagues, incredible business school network (Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University), along with some of my first clients, like Medline Industries, Northwestern Memorial health system, Globant, Cushman & Wakefield gave me the opportunity to prove my work, ideas and ingrain digital, innovation and business ops changes directly in their businesses. That was a thrilling start that affirmed my company Pundit Consultantz, which was recognized by the Chicago Crain’s Business as one of the Top Notable Entrepreneurs in Chicago, only two short years after I started on this journey.

It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Then, can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Where do I start? As an entrepreneur, mistakes are our middle name :) and I agree we learn, grow and become stronger due to them. So, first to all the readers…I’ll use Denzel Wahington’s famous speech at a college commencement when he encouraged graduates to “FALL! Fall Forward, fall hard and Fall often!”

My mistake was feeling scared of saying the word “no.”

Yup, my growth-minded, type-A personality makes it hard for me to say No/Nope, Nada, Zilch! I had to learn that lesson the hard way. In 2017 and 2018 I wanted my company to grow fast and I wanted to work with every opportunity that came my way, even if it was not in the core vision or core competency, skill set of my expertise, or my team’s skills. Well, I soon realized that I/we were doing bad work, our quality was down, our customers were NOT happy and I lost two customers! That sounds like a small amount, but when you are a small company and you only have five and two leave you in the middle of a project, let me tell you that hurts A LOT! So, yes I failed those two clients, I failed my team, but I also failed myself by not saying NO to projects that were not within my/our core vision of Pundit Consultantz. A lesson learned the hard way but saying NO while building and starting off is a KEY to staying true to you and your company.

You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

• Transparency: I have learned to be fully transparent, something I was not when I was speedily climbing up the corporate ladder. In fact, I was taught throughout my corporate years, to only share with people what they needed to know. Well, I don’t lead, manage, operate or conduct business that way. I come in to solve complex problems, uncover what can be done better, to create opportunities for improvement and innovation internally that drives commercial and patient-centric digital growth models for our healthcare customers. The key is that you cannot deliver on those promises if you are not 100 percent transparent with your, teams, employees, and most importantly, customers!
• Integrity: This sure seems like an obvious one, but you would be surprised! Work, Play, Lead, Create and Operate with 100 percent integrity at all times. We deal with a lot of patient data, corporate data, insights, research, and competitive and confidential data, and if we need to lead and operate with integrity to get a better healthcare ecosystem in the United States
• GRIT: To be a successful leader in anything, you must have courage, resolve, the strength of character, and most importantly, the resilience to give it your ALL and try, learn, try again, learn again, and keep going!

What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?

We are focused on digital transformation and digitizing healthcare for all. We are working with medical manufacturers, both large and small, in delivering on that promise via bundling digital engagement, digital pathways, and personalized patient data that swims both upstream and downstream.

We are also working with analytics, insights, and research companies to make data collection, data transformation, and data curation easier, from the collection of that data to the true in-patient/market use of that data.

Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview about Digital Transformation in Healthcare. I am particularly passionate about this topic because my work focuses on how practices can streamline processes to better serve their patients. For the benefit of our readers, can you help explain what exactly Digital Transformation means? On a practical level what does it look like for a medical practice to engage in a digital transformation?

Digital transformation is a fancy way of saying how we quickly, confidentially, and effectively collect, understand, and translate patient-level health data so that the medical,/health, and clinical communities can personalize care faster to the end patient/consumer.

What are the specific pain points that digital transformation can help address in a medical practice?

Personalization and personalization! Every patient, their experiences, their lifestyle, their medical history, and their medical needs are all unique. Yet, we are still measuring a patient to statistics vs managing/treating and looking at patients at a personalized level. With the amount of personalized health data, sensors, watches, EMR systems, communication applications, data collection models, etc. that exist now, the largest pain point a medical practice has is not to have a complete picture of their patient. Well, now we have ALL the tools to get that complete patient picture.

What are the obstacles that prevent a medical practice from engaging in a digital transformation?

One of our obstacles is our payor/medical reimbursement CMS systems. We have been trying for more than 30 years to go to a care model and we are still years behind due to the way we manage, collect and pay for healthcare, medical care, and advancements in medical technology available to all

Managing a healthcare facility is more challenging than it has ever been. Based on your experience or research, can you please share with our readers a few examples of how digital transformation can help a medical practice to provide better care? If you can, please share a story or example for each.

Patient engagement, patient personalization, and community care programs are helping healthcare facilities provide better care. Look at virtual care programs like telehealth — yes it got accelerated and funded due to the global pandemic, but large acute, post-acute, and ambulatory care systems like Northwestern Medicine, United Health (payor), CVS health & wellness centers, are all providing digital and remote community care access to patients that would traditionally be left behind in our healthcare systems

Large systems like Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, etc. have made more-and-more investments in hospital at-home and virtual care programs to deliver personalized acute level care to patients where they are and in the comfort of their homes, and they are rallying Congress to continually extend CMS reimbursement rates to keep the programs funded.

Can you share a few examples of how digital interactions or digital intake processes can help create a frictionless patient experience and increase access for patients?

Life sciences and pharma are key examples here! Decentralization of data collection at a patient level has been increasing since before the pandemic. Utilizing digital engagement, digital daily data collection, patient-reported outcomes, and sensor-based, real-time monitoring tools will continue to transform the way life sciences companies collect, and analyze patient data and the way CROs continue to build better drugs and therapies.

Based on your opinion and experience, what are your “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Effective Medical Practice” and why.

1. Open Communication systems, between clinicians and patients: transparent, clear, and open communications whether through EMR systems, HIPAA compliant messaging applications- open, clear, and in non-medical language, back to the patient is a key
2. Personalized patient health data access: through health applications, digital sensors, or wearables, patients can share their personal health data with their provider and clinical teams for better outcomes
3. Patient engagement and compliance: an engaged and compliant patient is not only a healthier patient but also creates less work for their clinical teams.
4. Preventative care models vs reactive care: with the ability to access a patient’s historical and current/ongoing health needs via sharing of health data, clinical teams can be more proactive in their care delivery models and patient-centric care models vs reactive care that can cause more readmission and adverse events.
5. Digitizing Medication adherence: a lofty yet necessary goal in running an effective medical practice. Patients failing to comply with clinical recommendations on their current medical routine or failing to communicate back with medications or digital therapies that are not effective can only cause further disease deterioration in a patient and also a clinical burden.

Because of your role, you are a person of significant influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most people, what would that be? You never know what your ideas can trigger.

I would bring personalized and equitable healthcare for all! Yes, a very inspirational goal for us in the U.S., but that is the change I strive for even as a small Healthcare Innovation and Digital Transformation consultant. We have more access to care, technology, infrastructure, and medical innovation today than ever before. With healthcare, health and wellness, and the democratization of healthcare taking center stage, now is the time for the medical, health, technology, insurance, and state, and federal entities to come together to create a positive change in healthcare.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Follow me on LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/artipullins/

Review my website: www.punditconsultantz.com

This was truly meaningful! Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your expertise!

About The Interviewer: David McNeil is the President of PatientPop, a Tebra company, a market leader in practice growth technology. McNeil is highly committed to helping the company build a modern go-to-market organization that delivers great value to practices in a time of rapid change in healthcare. McNeil’s business insights have been featured in publications such as Medical Economics and Los Angeles Business Journal.