Follow The Brand Podcast with Host Grant McGaugh

Code Red: The Digital Revolution Reshaping America's Health with Tom Leary & Grant McGaugh

• Grant McGaugh CEO 5 STAR BDM • Season 6 • Episode 39

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Unlock the secrets of healthcare's digital transformation with Tom Leary, the driving force behind HIMSS' government relations. Together, we explore the sweeping changes brought by healthcare information technology, from the dusty paper records of yesteryear to today’s cutting-edge AI and telehealth innovations. You'll discover how these advancements have not only redefined the patient-provider relationship but also improved the accessibility and affordability of care, as well as how ongoing advocacy efforts continue to mold the future of healthcare.

Our conversation sheds light on the journey of healthcare technology legislation in the U.S., celebrating the triumphs like the Meaningful Use Program, which boosted the adoption of electronic health records. The episode underscores the significance of cybersecurity initiatives through the Critical Infrastructure Security Act, and the paramount importance of sustaining telehealth provisions post-pandemic. We dive into the critical advocacy required to maintain these gains, ensuring that digital health solutions remain a staple in patient care.

Join us as we navigate the intricate realm of healthcare technology policy and the role of artificial intelligence. Insights from the HIMSS AI forum in Boston reveal the balancing act between technological innovation and regulatory frameworks. We tackle the persistent challenges of healthcare’s administrative processes, emphasizing the need for streamlined systems that can alleviate the burden of repetitive tasks and enhance the overall patient experience. With Tom's expertise, we chart a course towards a more efficient, accessible, and patient-focused healthcare future.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Follow The Brand! We hope you enjoyed learning about the latest marketing trends and strategies in Personal Branding, Business and Career Development, Financial Empowerment, Technology Innovation, and Executive Presence. To keep up with the latest insights and updates from us, be sure to follow us at 5starbdm.com. See you next time on Follow The Brand!

Speaker 1:

Welcome to another episode of Follow the Brand. I am your host, grant McGaugh, ceo of 5 Star BDM, a 5 Star personal branding and business development company. I want to take you on a journey that takes another deep dive into the world of personal branding and business development using compelling personal story, business conversations and tips. Development using compelling personal story, business conversations and tips to improve your personal brand. By listening to the Follow the Brand podcast series, you will be able to differentiate yourself from the competition and allow you to build trust with prospective clients and employers. You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Make it one that will set you apart, build trust and reflect who you are. Developing your five-star personal brand is a great way to demonstrate your skills and knowledge. If you have any questions from me or my guests, please email me. At grantmcgaw, spelled M-C-G-A-U-G-H at 5starbdm B for brand, d for development, m for masterscom. Now let's begin with our next five-star episode on Follow the Brand. Welcome to the Follow the Brand podcast. I am Brent McGaugh, ceo of Five Star BDM, where we help you build a five-star brand. People will follow and today we are diving deep into the world of healthcare technology and policy, and I couldn't be more excited about our next guest. We are joined by Tom Leary, the Senior Vice President and Head of Government Relations for HIMSS. Now, if you're not familiar with HIMSS, you're about to learn why they're such a crucial player in shaping the future of healthcare IT. Tom brings over two decades of experience in advocating for better health information technology policy. He's been at the forefront of major legislative changes that have revolutionized how we interact with our healthcare providers and how our health data is met. In this episode, we're going to explore the evolution of healthcare information technology, from the days of paper records to the era of AI and telehealth. We will discuss the challenges and opportunities in healthcare policy and how organizations like HIMSS are working to improve patient care through technology. So, whether you are a healthcare professional, a tech enthusiast or simply someone who cares about the future of healthcare, this conversation is going to give you valuable insights into the policies and innovations shaping our healthcare system. So let's get started on the Follow Brand Podcast, where we are building a five-star brand that you can follow.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Follow Brand Podcast. This is Grant McGaugh, and this might be the first time I have gone to the nation's capital and going to have an actual government conversation around health care, around information technology and my favorite favorite organization, the HIMSS organization. If you're not familiar with HIMSS, that's the Health Information Management System Society. Yes, I said all that in one word. Do you believe that? So HIMSS has been around for a number of years and they've been doing some very great things. I've got Tom Leary with us today. He heads up the government division for HIMSS. I wanted to have a candid conversation with him about a lot of the health policies that are going on, what drives him for the last 20 plus years and the message he wants to give today. So, tom, would you like to introduce yourself?

Speaker 2:

Well, good morning Grant, or hello Grant, and hello everybody out there. I'm Tom Leary. I'm Senior Vice President and Head of Government Relations for HIMSS Been with the organization for just over 21 years. It's hard to believe. When I started, himss was on one side of my futon and my two-year-old was on the other, and now my two-year-old is a college graduate and he's getting his master's degree in economics with a concentration in health care. So I think some of the hymns while he was playing with his cars some of the hymns speak snuck into his brain and into his vocabulary. I'm excited to be here today and looking forward to our conversation.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely Now. You're going to meet with us by the time this airs. Everybody will be tuning in, but we'll be at the South Florida Integrate Conference in Fort Wando. There's a lot of people there. There's CIOs and CEOs, a lot of keynote speakers, but we're going to have conversations around advocacy and government. This health care policy is big and there's a lot of concern about how this is going to change what has changed. It's big and there's a lot of concern about how this is going to change what has changed. I want to ask you, from your lens and we just talked about your tenure what changes have you seen happen and what are the things that you feel that will be most impactful in the years to come?

Speaker 2:

Sure, we started out 20-plus years ago talking about the idea of information sharing and I think we've as much as we struggle with.

Speaker 2:

Are we successful or not? Think about how often a patient here in the United States in particular, can utilize their phone to have an interaction with their provider. They can receive information on test results within minutes of having the test, they can reorder prescriptions and they can get e-prescriptions from their provider to their pharmacy without having to deal with the trail of paper. All of that is just the surface of the incredible change that has occurred. The access to care that has just exploded and, quite frankly, the combination here in the US in particular, the combination of health IT solutions being put in place and improvements from the Affordable Care Act, have improved access to care and really helped to control some of the health care costs, because patients are being seen on a not an emergency room basis but on a more of a prevention. So all of that fitting together and health IT is absolutely the foundation from which the extra, the other policies, have been able to stack onto, and that not cost savings, necessarily, but cost avoidance and cost containment really.

Speaker 1:

This is important knowledge and I want to ask, from the hymns perspective, your perspective, your experience and getting legislation or seeing legislation passed at the government level, what kind of advocacy have you been a part of in, in what we have today's government and you just talked about some of the different innovations that we could do now to make it quicker, faster, better for people to access care. What have you done? Have you seen, like you know what this is, something that comes uh fostered and got it got into policy and now it's law, sure, so?

Speaker 2:

uh, we and our members worked very closely. You know, when I started there were two pieces of legislation around health IT and it was associated with patient engagement and electronic prescribing. The following year there were nine pieces of legislation and then close to 100. So the buzz around advocacy and the use of technology to get us ready for 21st century care in the early 2000s has really been great success. What was known as the Meaningful Use Program. We went from 7% to 15% of doctors' offices having, or eligible providers' offices having, some form of EHR or other digital healthcare solution to well into the 90s. Now we went from somewhere between 15% and 30% of hospitals having some form of digital health care solution to well over 95 percent.

Speaker 2:

So the passage of that legislation is frustrating, as it's been for Americans to go through it and the health care system is. You know, often it gets very frustrated when you bring up the term meaningful use, when you look at what we've been able to do and how from a technology perspective, how we've been able to respond to things like the pandemic and the absolute, sudden increase in telehealth services, the increase in access to care and just digital engagement between providers and patients and just digital engagement between providers and patients and having the debate now around. You know, should a digital encounter be reimbursed the same as in person? None of those things are possible without actually getting the technology in place and getting everyone used to the idea of the improvements in care that can occur and getting everyone used to the idea of the improvements in care that can occur.

Speaker 2:

One other really big solution that we were absolutely advocated for and were part of was what's known as the Critical Infrastructure Security Act from a few years ago, and healthcare had gone from number three on the most attacked by the cyber bad actors to number one on the FBI's list in the around 2014, 2015.

Speaker 2:

The inclusion of healthcare at the 11th hour in the Critical Infrastructure Security Act, and then subsequently Sections 405C and D, began the start of the collaboration between government and the healthcare community on sharing what's happening in near real time so that healthcare providers can be better prepared to do risk assessment and mitigation, because, let's face it, healthcare is still in the top five of most cyber-attacked sector, if that's a term, and we have to work together Without IMSS's foresight and being able to say to Congress and to our members of the other parts of the community that we're talking about that legislation without us saying health care needs to be included. We'd still be on the outside looking in to say we plant acorns and we grow oaks. It might take a little while, but the impact that our membership has on advocating for change positive change in healthcare, particularly here in the US, is very much seen if you take a step back and look at how efficient, more efficient healthcare is now than just a few years ago, and safe, quite frankly.

Speaker 1:

That's important Safety, the risk. We're operating on a digital plane more and more and we can see how that because of that, that healthcare from a patient experience perspective has gotten better. As you look at it at a wider lens and I like how you put it like that I want to ask you this because you see the healthcare system as it is in the US, I want to know from your perspective if there was one thing that you could just change. You would just get passed and it was just now law. What would that be and why?

Speaker 2:

We've been working since the day I walked in the door. On patient identification Having national strategy on patient identification can improve patient safety and improve interoperability and information sharing across systems. We have members of Congress that believe that it's a slippery slope to government control of your health care data. That's really thinking from the late 1990s and we're in this prohibition on the creation of a national strategy and it's just hindered what I would call the last few steps of making sure that interoperability and information sharing is really successful. So if we could take that off the table, we could turn our attention to the really important issues around artificial intelligence in healthcare, cybersecurity in healthcare, workforce development in healthcare. But we're hindered by that last mile of being able to properly identify the right individual for both a patient safety and information sharing perspectives.

Speaker 1:

So that's the game. I know you're in the sports, I'm in the sports. You have to understand the playing field and what it takes to win. I want to pick on the persona of my audience right now. So, as the HEMS body, as people who run healthcare systems that are involved in information technologies, they hear this and they're like, wow, that's the stumbling block that prevents us from scoring and moving the ball forward. We've got to get this done. How can we help you advocate on the steps of Congress for this kind of legislative change? What do you need to win?

Speaker 2:

From an advocacy perspective, many voices helps make positive change. So I said patient identification. Just as immediate is the issue of telehealth, and we have telehealth provisions that were put in place as part of the response to the pandemic. The United States had a great foundation of IT in both doctors' offices and in hospitals and clinics that had come along as part of the Meaningful Use Program. You overlay the ability to turn on telehealth within days or to ramp up telehealth so that it went from 5% of care to 85% of care being delivered through telehealth and remote patient monitoring services. That has been in place throughout the pandemic, post-pandemic, and runs out on December 31st. So a perfect example of advocacy that's important right now is December 31st of this year.

Speaker 2:

Legislation gets shut off and CMS has to go back to March 12th 2020 in their policies. Where Hawaii, alaska and some other remote areas in the United States have access to reimbursement for telehealth and remote patient monitoring and most everyone else, it gets shut off. That's unfathomable. What the impact will be? Decrease in access to care, the decrease in efficiencies. The four years of learning that we've done would go and be put on the shelf. What we need is many voices saying to Congress we can't go back to March 12, 2020. We need to keep moving forward and so having many voices say to Congress we need the legislation passed, we need the provisions in the right legislation passed, this year before Thanksgiving, quite frankly, but most definitely before December 31st, and it's that kind of action.

Speaker 1:

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Speaker 2:

Many, many voices saying we can't go back to a more a narrow focus on care delivery.

Speaker 1:

I love that and that's a call to action for all of us. The HAMS organization is 100,000 plus, so there's a lot of voices right there, but we need more than that to get this done. Help us understand your process. I mean, you say HAM, that's an organization right, it's an organization of health IT individuals. However you're advocating, you're working from a government perspective to affect healthcare policy. Walk us through your process of how you get that into the hands of lawmakers for it to become law.

Speaker 2:

Sure we have. First, it starts with our executive leadership team, our CEO, hal Wolf, and working with the board of directors, identifying not only topics here in the US but what we like to call borderless topics. That are because HIMSS is a global organization. We pay close attention to many topics that are impacting IT professionals, healthcare delivery professionals and, quite frankly, patients as consumers across the globe, whether it's cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, interoperability, ehrs all of those topics are really borderless. So what we start with is guidance from the board of directors on which topics to really focus on or and we make recommendations on what we're based on what we're seeing. We work very closely with the members of our public policy committee, which are, who are self-nominated individuals from across the HIMSS membership. In fact, we just closed the committee application process just on Wednesday night, so we'll see new members coming on board in January. But the idea is we've got individuals representing the HIMSS organization. It's a mixture of individuals representing the HIMSS organization. It's a mixture of you know, regionally based, you know job type, you know gender. We try to be as reflective of the HIMSS organization as possible. They make recommendations into us on what topics to tackle. The chapter advocacy task force, which is at least one member of each chapter across the 56 chapters and hymns, plus the communities that are out there. They all provide input on what the topics could be and should be. And then, quite frankly, we've got a group of subject matters experts here on the staff. So identifying the topics and then putting together both hard copy believe it or not, lots of members of Congress still like to have something in their hand or electronic means of telling the story telling the recommendations of change that needs to, recommendations of change that need to occur and then working with the HIMSS organization as well as partners that have like-minded need for an interest in that change, working to educate members and their staff and then hopefully working with them to make sure that the idea gets turned into legislation. The legislation gets passed by both the House and Senate in the US and signed by the president.

Speaker 2:

And then we, of course, we anxiously await the regulations that come out of most often out of HHS and then HIMSS, and our membership provides comment on those draft regulations. Notice of proposed rulemaking comes out fairly often ONC, now ASTP, the Assistant Secretary for Technology. They put out a series of draft regulations over the course of time. We comment on them saying this is what the impact of your draft regulation will be on a practical basis. Try to educate them.

Speaker 2:

We don't often say it's a terrible idea. We try to take their idea and build on it and make it stronger, make it more efficient and more effective for our membership, and then, when the regulation comes out, we educate the membership on all right. This is what it says, this is what you're going to need to do and this is what our recommendations are for how you meet the expectations of the regulation. And, quite frankly, while that's all happening, we're also having a dialogue about all right. What else needs to be changed? Does it need to be legislative change or regulatory change? So we're working both with the agencies and with Congress to continue process improvement and legislative and regulatory improvement. So it's a lot of words to say working closely together IM staff, our board of directors, our public policy committee of volunteer members and our members and our chapter advocates and our membership across the spectrum getting together, identifying the right topics and the right change and then working with government to make that change.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for clarifying the process and the framework of how things get done. Now here's the big curiosity that I have Now. We've got on our hands right now the elephant in the road artificial intelligence and it's taking the world by storm. A lot of people are very familiar with genital AI. Ai itself has been around for a long time, but now you're starting to see a lot of different use cases in healthcare delivery that hasn't been done before. This is moving at lightning speed. How does something as big as AI, which has been the most adopted technology in human history, now, when you come to a process that you just described, are we moving too slow? Are we moving too fast? Because obviously a lot of time technology comes out and then government has to then react it over time to get the right policies in place. That's kind of normal. But is this speed to market going to hinder or help, or how do you see this playing out from an AI?

Speaker 2:

perspective. Sure, we just had a great forum up in Boston, the HIMSS AI forum. In fact, there's quite a bit of information on our redesigned website. We put in a plug for our website to redesign. There's quite a bit of information that's come out of that forum that's now populating the website, but the idea of artificial intelligence HIMSS has had a section on AI and machine learning in our public policy principles since about 2018.

Speaker 2:

Ai and machine learning predates all of that. Some people point out that the first real AI was some say the 70s, some say the 80s. It's been embedded in healthcare. It's this sudden change that occurred in March of the early part of 2023, where the incredible advancement in AI has and the power of it being able to help benefit both provider burden decision, quicker decision-making and more efficient delivery of care, taking some of the more mundane steps off of a provider's plate and allowing them to use their skills and their education on the more complex parts of interacting with the patient to solve their healthcare issues. That's really the power and the benefit of it, what we're anticipating and what our new AI principles that actually were released as part of the AI forum a few weeks ago. We really updated them because of the rapid change that's occurring and the need for a learned intermediary You'll continually hear that as part of him's conversation quite frankly, across the community, risk assessments and making sure that, as AI learns, as the machine learns and it makes adjustments, that there is a learned human, learned intermediary, a human in place making sure and reviewing what changes to the algorithms might be occurring. It's that kind of issues that we're expecting need to be addressed by government.

Speaker 2:

You look at the Biden administration. They established an AI executive order. It's the elevation of ONC to the assistant secretary for technology, with the chief AI officer, chief health AI officer, being part of that team. All of that is pointing to the need for collaboration between community industry and government to make sure that, whatever is passed whether it's regulatory change there's an AI framework supposedly coming out of ASTP, onc before the end of the year or most definitely before the end of the Biden administration on January 20th of 2025, there will be a draft framework coming out.

Speaker 2:

Making sure that that is workable and paying close attention to what Congress should be passing to take action so that it impacts Americans in a way that we're not just relying on the AI Act from, say, from the European Union, for example, where multinational corporations build their solutions to meet the AI requirements of the European Union and then everybody else has to purchase their products. Based on that. If the United States really wants to lead on AI and healthcare, that we need AI legislation that is across all sectors to actually be passed next year. We'll be pushing very hard for that. Point to our new principles, our updated principles, for everyone to take a look on the website.

Speaker 1:

I love that Great, great intelligence, great current information that we can then take and dig into and see how we can make this a meaningful impact. There's a lot of anxiety out there around AI, the human, the AI, the human track. We can see the good of it and then see the bad of it. We definitely need that government or wherever it may be, some policy to help protect people in a certain way that they're not harmed by how this tech is going to grow and be impactful to everybody that's interacting with, not even just healthcare, but a lot of other things as well, because it is the giant that's taking place today. Now you're going to be coming down to South Florida and by the time everybody listens to this, you'll be in South Florida. People want to know like. You're going to sit down now with Senator Harreld, senator Rodriguez and Lisa Rollins. You're going to be talking about advocacy at the HEMS Integrated Conference in South Florida. This is a chapter event. Why did you choose to come and what are you hoping to convey to the?

Speaker 2:

audience. It's really all of these topics that we've been talking about. The more voices that are involved, the more both educating legislators and executive branch folks. But, quite frankly, the more diverse thought that we get from the membership in providing input into the HIMSS team, the more we can be proactive in our policy engagement. Quite frankly, the pandemic there were certain things that had to occur and then, post-pandemic, there was a lot of virtual engagement with government. They want to make sure that this next leap in healthcare they get it right and it only comes from hearing from the diverse voices of the HIMSS membership that you know if you think about the average, you know HIMSS membership that, if you think about the average HIMSS member, it's hard to describe because they're clinicians, they're IT professionals, they come from large, small facilities, they're consultants, they're big companies, small companies, right, but they all have a perspective. And so, coming into South Florida, really the important thing for me is getting out and hearing from people. What are the struggles, what are the opportunities and how do we impact policy to reduce the burden, improve the efficiency and really underscore the benefits of digital health transformation that we all want to see?

Speaker 2:

I just will say that my son, who I referenced at the beginning of the podcast, when he was two, things were a big struggle and when he was nine he was diagnosed with a bifid uvula and it's just the thing that hangs in the back of your throat is split and it was at birth, but they didn't find it until he was a little bit older. But in order to get the proper engagement with his providers, the pediatrician sent us across the street so it's a four-lane road. He sent us across the street to the street, so it's a four lane road. Sent us across the street to see to the hospital. The hospital sent us to a clinic which was in the same facility, but all of the information had to go paper by paper by paper and then finally the final results from the specialty clinic was mailed to my house two miles away and I had to drive to this office another five miles away to fax it back to the pediatrician.

Speaker 2:

That same nine-year-old now is a 23-year-old and his interactions with his provider are telehealth-based on his phone, just all very much. The patient is more in control. They have access to the tools that we're all looking to make more efficient and more available to more people Extension of telehealth, extension of broadband to the most remote parts of this country. Using innovations around AI to make it easier for providers to provide the right amount of care to address some of the provider shortages. All of those things can be part of the digital health transformation if we all work together, and that's why I'm coming to South Florida.

Speaker 1:

Man, I couldn't have said it better. I like how you just detail the journey of how it used to be. You know this paper-centric. There's so many distractions, so much that has gone on. You go from one department to another and no one. You get refilled all these forms over and over again and it becomes more of a burden to get care just in the administrative part of it. We could take that off the table. I know that's still happening in other parts of the country. People are like you know what? I'm still having that type of experience. No-transcript.