Digital Transformation in Healthcare: Brian Chapman Of ZS Associates On How Medical Practices Can Use Digital Transformation To Provide Better Care

An Interview With David McNeil

Faster decisions — Usually synonymous with less resource intensive decisions. In many cases, the ability to best assimilate all the data and information about a patient a chart the path forward can be automated, summarizing recommendations and easing outcomes.

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

Brian is a Partner with ZS in the Evanston office and leader of ZS’s Medtech Practice. Brian joined ZS in 2004 and has exclusively focused on med tech consulting for more than 18 years. Brian is able to provide a unique perspective having split his career spending about half of his time outside of the US.

Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I started my career as a chemical engineer. To someone fascinated by technology but firmly rooted in the practical reality business, it isn’t hard to see why medical technology appeals. When my mother’s life was saved by medical technology, it moved from career to passion.

Can you share the most interesting or most exciting story that has happened to you since you began at your company?

There are so many. ZS and medtech consulting has taken me to 40 different countries so it is difficult to find just one. The fascinating intersection for me is between technology, business and policy. But if you wanted to press me for a single day, it would be the time I unsuspectingly became a patient in a tier two city in China.

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?

My biggest mistake early on was to discount the value of my perspective when I felt I was still an outsider. Now as a near 20-year veteran of the space, I am constantly reminding myself the value of the outsider perspective. Medtech can get very insular and incestuous if we aren’t careful!

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?

I had a formative training called “Situational Leadership”. I don’t like to think of myself as a disciple of anything, but maybe I am of this way of thinking. It’s up to you as a leader to flex what you do to lead your teams based on the situation. I love this concept of meeting the team, or the client, where they are, not where you wish they were. This has to be my most important learning as a leader.

Supporting talent, no matter what the constraints is the second point. A narrow view of what it means to be talented might fit a short term narrative but disqualifies so much of the talent around us. I am dedicated to discovering and nurturing talent around us, no matter the background or constraints.

Humility is the third. The moment you walk into a conversation thinking you have nothing to learn and are there only to share your perspective — well that’s the moment you’ve lost your way.

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?

It can be tempting to shoot for the stars in this definition to include AI, virtual and other capabilities that exist in theory but are far from reality. So, I think any functional definition of digital transformation needs to include a few elements –

First, using digital tools to bring insights into patient care. This can be wearables, patient reported outcomes or other data sources to give insight into the patient condition between visits.

Second, a digital transformation needs to move beyond readily available electronic medical records and actually improve decision making. Today there are too many instances where EMR interfaces actually interfere with a patient visit instead of enhancing it.

Third, there is a transformation in the mundane things like billing, coding and referring. To be honest, this is probably the thing that is closest to real today.

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

I would say the three mentioned above are pain points that digital transformation can help address. Not having enough patient insights, interfaces interfering with patient visits and decision making, and lastly billing, coding, and referring.

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

The biggest hurdles are interoperability, fragmentation and incentives.

In terms of interoperability, the barrier is that the “builders” of this future are most likely to be the integrated delivery network which is in many cases hospital centric. Because of this hospital centricity, they are inherently confined to local geographies. Until there is interoperability among systems, anything that is built for a patient essentially loses all value when a patient moves. Imagine the senior who travels lives half the year in Michigan but spends winters in Florida — they have two completely different care teams with huge gaps in care.

The second is related to fragmentation. This is fragmentation amongst providers and across sites of care, as well as fragmentation in payers.

The issue of incentives is the one which feels almost insurmountable to me. If we want a physician to look at data and tailor a care plan, we need to pay them for that time. Physicians are service providers who need to value their finite time and today, they are paid primarily for seeing patients. Just providing more data actually makes the problem worse, not better. The problem of translating data into insights which is a primarily technical one needs to be accompanied with the incentives for physicians to work in a different way.

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.

• Better decisions — For example, using technology that helps diagnose more breast cancer on more mammograms.
• More consistent decisions — Systems that help implement guidelines and suggests follow-ups. This can be automating care plans based on diagnosis at discharge as an example.
• Faster decisions — Usually synonymous with less resource intensive decisions. In many cases, the ability to best assimilate all the data and information about a patient a chart the path forward can be automated, summarizing recommendations and easing outcomes.
• Frictionless implementation — typically this is making systems work together to schedule follow-up, simplify prior-authorization, and automate billing are examples of how digital transformation can make implementation frictionless.

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?

Some of the best examples come in remote patient monitoring. Facilitation and automating the collection of patient-reported outcomes can keep a COPD patient on meds and free of exacerbations. Assembling vitals can help predict and intercede to keep heart failure patients out of the hospital. Home diagnostic testing can isolate infectious disease and find appropriate treatment without exposing a whole pediatric office to contagion.

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.

My deepest interest is in connecting the disconnects plaguing digital health. I talked about this in my recent webinar. You can watch it here.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Readers can visit https://www.zs.com/ and https://www.zs.com/about/our-people/Brian-Chapman

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.