Digital Transformation in Healthcare: Cecilia Laube Of STORMICO- Strategic Transformation Consulting On How Medical Practices Can Use Digital Transformation To Provide Better Care

An Interview With David McNeil

Patient Experience Design- it is all about getting to know the patient well and being able to anticipate their needs. For example — Doctors should have enough time to review a patient’s file and history before seeing the patient.

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

Transforming Businesses and Support Functions into Value-Add Partners. Creating strategic alignment and execution focus.

Strategic and result oriented professional with over 20 years of experience driving and implementing strategic change in organizations around the world. An expert consultant in strategic transformation working with a variety of organizations in aligning business priorities to organizational strategy, building capabilities, improving organizational health and change leadership across eight different industries. A fast-paced inclusive change leader with very strong problem solving, communication and innovation skills. A team-player, system thinker with a growth mindset that can drive growth and efficiencies across multiple business units and functions. International experience includes LATAM, European and USA markets. Six Sigma Green Belt and Change Management certified professional. Specialties: Fluent in Spanish and English. Basic knowledge of Portuguese and Dutch.

Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Before we dive in, 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 believe every one of my roles throughout my 20+ years career journey have contributed to where I am at today. With every opportunity I have learned more about myself, my passions and dislikes, areas to develop, and areas to share with others.

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

One of my passions is to learn new cultures. In 2006 I had the opportunity to relocate to Europe for two years. I learned so much about the Dutch and European cultures, and that opportunity combined with my experience in the USA and LATAM have made me deeply appreciate the value of different perspectives.

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?

One of my first jobs involved being in charge of the daily pricing of our financial instruments. One day I selected the wrong keyboard key and generated a very significant loss for our company, which caught the attention of our CFO at our headquarter offices. The next day, my manager was waiting for me in her office.

What I learned was the importance of validating my work, since we are all human and mistakes can happen to anyone. I also learned to own my mistakes, which gave me a strong motivation to improve the process that I was following.

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?

1. Not being afraid to fail — I strongly believe there is no success without failure, so it is important to create an environment where employees are not afraid to fail. This is a pre-requisite for innovation. Not being afraid of making mistakes enables me to move faster.
2. I am a catalyst — challenging the status quo is the only way to make meaningful progress. Businesses have to evolve, otherwise they become obsolete. Evolution doesn’t come from doing the same things and expecting different results; it comes from doing different things.
3. Solution oriented — I focus on solving business problems. I leverage a system thinking approach to understand the interconnection between all of the various elements and find the right fit for the desired outcome. I spend less time on “how we got here” and more in designing “how do get there”.

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

I cannot think of a better time than now for rethinking how things are done. The COVID-19 global pandemic has challenged so many business assumptions and have certainly accelerated digital transformation across many industries. One of my newest initiatives is to help Human Capital Leaders (CHRO’s and Chief Learning Officers) understand the importance of developing leaders that value and are accountable for organizational health. Businesses are an ecosystem made of multiple small sub-systems. Understanding the dependencies and drivers among those systems is fundamental to achieve the right results. It is exactly that balance that organizational health measures.

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?

In reality there is no one definition of Digital Transformation and each institution will have their own. Having different definitions is not the problem, the challenge is when there is no alignment on a common direction. From my perspective, I use the following definition: the adoption of digital technology by an organization. In practice it means that some tasks/steps/activities that were performed by humans are now replaced with machines or technology.

If done well, one of the outcomes of digital transformation should be a better patient experience, however about 70% of digital transformations fail.

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

1. Efficiency — converting paper forms to digital records should help accelerate the collection and maintenance of information.
2. Record keeping — digital records will expedite audits and internal process reviews reducing amount of resources needed.
3. Patient communication — the ability to automatically push information such as exam results or immunization records to a patient’s email inbox or portal streamlines the communication with the patient and eliminates the need for phones calls or mailing expenses.

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

There are two key elements for digital transformation in healthcare to be really successful as a collective system:

1) Data sharing — there needs to be a new and bolder view of data privacy. Much of the redundancy of forms, papers and information within the system will continue unless data privacy is reformed. As a patient I should own my data and should be able to share the same data with different providers.

Such regulation is a barrier.

2) Mindset shift that technology is more than just “automation” — today much of the need for documentation is proof that healthcare workers have completed steps so liability/insurance concerns are covered. Digital tools are simply used as automation of the same Old processes. Instead, digital transformation should aspire to create a “personalized healthcare experience.” That would be a true transformation. The design should be around the patient, and should not be driven by liability concerns.

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?

Virtual visits are a terrific improvement, however, there is still much progress to be made so that the quality of the connection with doctors, including punctuality, can be improved. As a mother of a special needs child, virtual visits make my life so much easier to the point that I refuse to go back. Unfortunately, many doctors are not yet comfortable with virtual visits and, due to liability issues, they are still requiring an in-person visit for medical prescriptions.

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

1. Patient Experience Design- it is all about getting to know the patient well and being able to anticipate their needs. For example — Doctors should have enough time to review a patient’s file and history before seeing the patient.
2. Simplification of regulations — there is overregulation which creates bureaucracy and barriers to speeding up progress. For example — as a patient I should be able to own my medical history and be able to share it with any medical professional I want and not needing to complete the exact same forms every time I go and visit a new doctor.
3. Application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to anticipate patient needs — digital intelligence should be leveraged to predict patient’s needs. For example: Amazon does a great job reminding you to order new over-the- counter medications or dietary supplements based on the date you purchased it before. It’s great! The healthcare system should do the same…. By looking at age, prior visits, past and current medications, etc. Looking at the whole person and not just one part of it.
4. Enhance Virtual Visits — Digital transformation should be leveraged to bring virtual visits to the next level. Scope should be expanded and technology enhanced so visits can be completed for all preventative exams, leaving the in-person appointments to when a person really needs it. For example, use Augmented Reality (AR) for wellness visits.
5. Get rid of paper forms! — move all records to digital form to speed up the transferability of information, including transferability between institutions. There has been some progress here but only within the same corporations or affiliations. The principle should be expanded to ANY healthcare organization, it should be treated as a system. For example: insurance companies have access to our insurance information, so no matter which company you are talking to they can all access your insurance records.

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.

The individualization of patient treatment by creating a Healthcare Score, (the equivalent to FICO score).

The healthcare system today treats everyone the same with rules that address the minority of cases, but adds complexity and paperwork for the majority of patients. Today the individualization comes from the type of health insurance a patient has, and not from knowing the patient’s history and track record.

A Healthcare Score would enable managing risk at a patient level and not in bulk, expediting the experience for those with a high score and motivating those with a low score to increase it.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Connect with me via LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/cecilia-laube

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.