Digital Transformation in Healthcare: Mark Clermont Of Cecelia Health On How Medical Practices Can Use Digital Transformation To Provide Better Care

Keep your goals in mind. Change should be driven by a clear, identifiable need backed by research. Will your patients download yet another app to help them manage their blood glucose levels? If not, then you shouldn’t invest in a digital-only solution.

As part of our series about “Medical Practices Can Use Digital Transformation To Provide Better Care”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Mark Clermont, Chief Executive Officer at Cecelia Health.

Mark has nearly 30 years of experience in building and scaling successful healthcare businesses and tech companies, with expertise across population health, value-based care, clinical decision support, and digital therapeutics. He is a visionary leader that transformed digital care delivery at Lumeon and guided Wolters Kluwer/UpToDate to become a global leader in point-of-care clinical decision support. His current role at Cecelia Health is aligned with his belief that technology has the potential to improve the healthcare experience for patients, providers, and health systems.

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 have a deep-seated mission to serve others. My younger years were spent on a naval base where my father was a surgeon — who was also the oldest of four kids and put himself through medical school after becoming the man of the house at the age of 13. My mother’s job was infinitely harder — she raised 10 children and, along the way, supported over 100 foster children, including some with physical and behavioral health needs who didn’t have prior access to care. Having the opportunity to learn from them and gain such perspective during my formative years is surely one of the reasons I was drawn to a career in healthcare.

While no one else in my family of scientists, physicians, and artists had ventured into the corporate world, I caught the business bug in my teens. As I reflect now, I see that it comes from a desire to learn how to take things apart and put them back together, but better. I remember one particular bike that had a hub in the wheel with three gears, and I was determined to understand how it worked. Springs and metal pieces were flying all over the place as I took it apart. Quickly realizing I had no idea how to put it back together, I begged my mother for weeks to take me to the library so I could find a book on bike repair. And eventually, I figured it out — of course, there were many disassembled bikes that were never put back together, but that’s part of the learning process.

Originally, I went into engineering and business and quickly realized business was a passion. I focused on building a career in large companies learning to drive scale, which is what I did in roles at Lumeon, UpToDate, which was acquired by Wolters Kluwer, and now at Cecelia Health.

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

Cecelia Health had a tremendous year of growth in 2021, including the launch of a national diabetes and mental health specialty telemedicine practice that expanded remote clinical telehealth solutions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The organization has been a pioneer in delivering virtual care since 2009, and I joined at a pivotal time for expansion to build on that legacy. What started as a desire to help people living with diabetes get personalized support, education, and guidance has become a passion for developing new ways to approach and improve the patient experience. In 18 months, we’ve expanded into new market segments and across new channels. Looking ahead, I see Cecelia Health playing an important role in the modernization of healthcare delivery. What’s exciting to me is that the best is yet to come.

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?

It’s never funny when someone gets fired (or in this case, almost fired), but I can recall a mistake in my 20s that taught me a valuable lesson. In a classic case of taking on too much and not asking for help, I nearly missed a critical Federal deadline that would have created a lot of embarrassment for me, my boss, and the company, but also would have impacted our customer. It was my own arrogance at the time that prevented me from seeking help — instead, I kept trying to swim upstream believing I could outswim the current. It taught me the value of making connections and reaching out to others to achieve better results… in addition to a deserved ego check.

In fact, I’ve had a lot of ego checks in my early career (and still do occasionally!) which caused me to realize a decision tree that has become a useful tool and a foundation for successful leadership. People tend to make decisions based on pleasure which can morph into pride, then comes protecting that decision to drive profit. Here, profit can be monetary or non-monetary — signaling value, happiness, or legacy. If you make decisions in the reverse order, you can be a captain of enterprise. Growing a company contributes to an economy in a big way.

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?

Natural curiosity. It may have started with bike gears, but it has propelled me to build and scale businesses. In the early days numbers helped me get there, then process mapping, which combined with human insights and interaction has been a recipe for success. My desire to simplify the complex has been a differentiator for me throughout my entire career, and one that drove my success at UpToDate, a company widely credited with defining clinical decision support.

Supportive. In terms of leadership, being a guide is important. My job is to serve others — the company, the people I work with, the patients we support, the customers we partner with — and it all comes through sharing knowledge and experiences I’ve had.

Respectful. If you want to get anywhere in business, you need to appreciate the people you interact with day in and day out, and not forget them. When I started my career, I didn’t know anyone who could help me land an internship or introduce me to a mentor. I had to work hard to make connections and maintain relationships. Making connections is also the essence of what we do at Cecelia Health. We respect that each person has unique needs, so our caring clinicians build trusting relationships that motivate people to make lasting behavior change.

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

I’m energized by the foundational shift that we are experiencing in healthcare that is being accelerated through data and technology. It will be disruptive to how patients will experience healthcare — but in such an incredibly positive way. What I get excited about is how Cecelia Health is plugging into and enabling this new layer of interconnectedness that is happening quietly behind the scenes. Brought on by the 21st Century Cures Act, this evolution is all for the patient’s benefit to drive a better healthcareUX (or user experience). While any change related to healthcare traditionally moves slower than we would like, 10 years from now, how we experience healthcare will be vastly different from today.

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?

Personalized experiences and recommendations are expected, from what you watch to what you order for dinner. Why should that be any different for healthcare? People are engaging with their healthcare more than ever before, and digital health was the spark. Think about the Apple Watch and all that health data at your fingertips. What medical practices need is a clear goal. Digital transformation is a how, not a why.

My recommendation is for practices to consider what they are trying to DO for patients — is it increase access to care; reach patients in between office visits for follow-up; create a more personalized patient experience using clinical data; improve outcomes? Once you know where you want to go, it’s much easier to decide how to get there.

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

Patients are saying “don’t lose me” within a system that is rapidly changing around them, from how they access care to how that care is delivered. In an already complex healthcare environment, this change causes greater confusion which can prevent people from interacting with the care they need to live happier, healthier lives. Integrating virtual-first care not only enables us to have encounters with patients so they don’t feel lost, but also gives us opportunities to practice situational awareness to understand when a patient is at risk. I recently authored a piece about how we can leverage digital transformation to move away from our traditional, siloed approach and the role virtual-first organizations will play in this evolution.

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

Aside from known resource limitations, many practices have a mentality of “we must build it” and think digital transformation requires a wholesale change to the current approach. What I am advocating is incremental change, or tactical things that can be done to help improve the patient experience and solve a specific goal. For example, when a PCP office makes outbound calls for appointment reminders that show up as spam, it can be as simple as updating telecomm services. That’s a simple manifestation of digital transformation at work.

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.

Solutions like remote patient monitoring, telemedicine appointments, and access to virtual clinical support are increasingly important to the modern healthcare toolkit for better care. For example, virtual clinical support can fill the gaps between doctor visits while providing necessary training and guidance on care plans, therapies, and devices. Patients benefit from remote care, and we have myriad success stories that highlight how a dedicated clinician that cares can make a difference in someone’s life and on their health outcomes.

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?

I can give you three examples of what we’re doing at Cecelia Health to improve the patient experience. First, we proactively outreach to and onboard participants using a strategic approach that doesn’t require a separate app download or lengthy intake survey. This means we can work seamlessly with organizations of all types from health plans and state-run organizations to pharma companies and clinical trials. By creating customized enrollment pages, we can easily collect the required information for eligibility then schedule welcome calls so our team of experts can do a live assessment to uncover barriers, SDOH factors, and other challenges that are prohibiting proper self-management.

Cecelia Health’s mission is to create an empowering virtual healthcare experience and transform the lives of people with chronic conditions through trusting relationships. We are staffed with credentialed clinicians and specialty providers licensed in 50 states who leverage technology to connect with people based on their preference (phone, video, email, text) and when they need it. We’re a virtual-first company that designs programs to foster human-to-human interaction — it’s how we’re able to see outcomes like reduced ER visits and inpatient hospital admissions, improved medication adherence, and increases in prescription fills. Participants know they have an ally in their corner, there’s accountability and true relationship-building that digital-only solutions cannot offer.

One of the promises of virtual care is increased access and improved health equity. For rural areas and underserved populations who may have limited broadband access, this can be a hurdle. That’s why we’re currently piloting a clinical study with UBMD Pediatrics (with a grant to UBMD from the Helmsley Foundation) to bring remote clinical access to a rural community — complete with cellular-enabled tablets for patients.

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

1. Embrace virtual-first care to fill current gaps. These organizations will be the keystone for a novel approach that meets the needs of all stakeholders in the modernization of healthcare.
2. Achieve transformation through incremental change. Small changes over time will go a long way to improve the patient experience and empower more people to play an active role in their health management.
3. Keep your goals in mind. Change should be driven by a clear, identifiable need backed by research. Will your patients download yet another app to help them manage their blood glucose levels? If not, then you shouldn’t invest in a digital-only solution.
4. Be open to life sciences. Pharma-sponsored patient support programs can open possibilities for reaching more patients, connecting them to much-needed resources, and encouraging them to engage with their healthcare provider in meaningful ways.
5. Invest in data infrastructure. With TEFCA and FHIR, we are embarking on a journey to true patient centricity powered by data — practices that have access to and share encounter data will lead the way.

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 am inspired by all the patient stories I hear about how our Cecelia Health clinicians change lives. Yes, we have metrics to prove ROI and improved outcomes, but the real magic of what we do is building relationships. In this digital enlightenment, I don’t want us to lose sight of that important aspect of care. We can impact the most people by amplifying human-to-human engagement through technology to deliver personalized interactions that address unique barriers to medication, device, and care plan adherence.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

You can find me on LinkedIn. To get the latest updates and insights from Cecelia Health, visit our Twitter or LinkedIn pages.

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