In this episode, we will answer the following questions:

01:40 how technologies influence healthcare projects

04:31 the most significant challenges healthcare organizations face now

09:17 the problem of education: how to make physicians use new technologies

12:29 the holistic value of using new technologies in the healthcare field

14:01 solving the problem of more volume of medical information

18:18 telemedicine as a key to the future

22:24 essential features of telemedicine solutions 

25:49 technology road map: the main obstacle of the clinics to have it, the way of developing

32:21 classification of challenges in healthcare organizations

37:04 why the EMRs are not used properly

39:22 investments in the healthcare field

48:18 Custom VS Shelf solutions

53:29 AI/ML as one of the technology trends in the next 3-5 years 

01:02:57 Rapid Fire Round (3 questions)

 

Links:
Rodney D. Reider's email: rodneydreider@gmail.com
Rodney D. Reider's LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rodneydreider
Rodney D. Reider's website: https://www.rodneyreider.com/
The book "Grabbing the Next Rung: The Heart of Leadership" by Rodney D. Reider on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Grabbing-Next-Rung-Heart-Leadership-ebook/dp/B09C6HZ4ZX

 

Listen to the episode on iTunes, SoundCloud, Spotify, YouTube, Google Podcasts and let us know what you think on the topic.

Ivan Dunskiy: Hello everyone. And welcome to another episode of the HealthTech Beat podcast. The mission of our podcast is to show the real-life challenges of implementing technology in healthcare. And the podcast is sponsored by Demigos, a company that develops IT solutions for healthcare startups and companies.

And you can check more on demigos.com. My name is Ivan Dunskiy, and I'm joined today by an honored guest Rodney Reider, a managing partner at Intelligence Strategy Group. For more than 25 years, Rodney has been involved in the healthcare industry, serving as President and CEO. Now Rodney serves as a consultant providing strategic guidance to diverse healthcare organizations that identify, accelerate and deploy advanced technologies and medical device products to improve patient care and operational efficiency.

And in addition, his experience provides specialization work for financial and operational performance improvement services in the healthcare industry, such as mergers and acquisitions, coaching management transitions, and financial revenue enhancements operations. Dr. Ryder writes numerous articles on innovation and leadership and authored a book titled: "Grabbing the Next Rung: The Heart of Leadership." Rodney, thank you for joining. How are you today? 

Rodney Reider: Thank you, Ivan. Better than ever. Thanks for asking. Thank you for the opportunity. This is kind of exciting. I was looking forward to speaking with you and your audience. So I appreciate this very much. 

[01:40] how technologies influence healthcare projects

Ivan Dunskiy: Could you please tell us about your current project? What are you currently working on? 

Rodney Reider: I'm going to do quite a few things. I have had a chance in the last couple of weeks, actually the last couple of months. Last night, I spoke to a chief nursing officer, one of the best in the nation, about the steps you take on strategy for ERs for flow across the organization. They're running into some of the issues with the high volume and some of it being COVID, but mostly it's just regular business. Earlier in the day, I talked to somebody about the strategy of growing the business. We went through all the different pieces to set up our structure and grow the business itself.

I've been dealing with a lot of startups lately. Many startups that are just incredibly passionate and knowledgeable about specific portions of the business would be helpful to hospitals and health care organizations across the country and the world. And some of them are fascinating, a range of things, efficiency, operations strategy, and then the growth side. 

Ivan Dunskiy: So did I get it right that you work more with this kind of technology solutions startups rather than with providers? 

Rodney Reider: I've been doing it all. It just depends on the flow. Being a hospital's CEO for all these years and health system, which included clinics and long-term care and home health and all that piece, I've seen where all these different portions may fit in from the AI side or the technology side. And I think this is the best time to be working in healthcare because of what technology is doing.

It's changing the world, and it's helping those that are making decisions within the provider side, but also within the payer side to have some avenues that never had before to provide better care or better access for the patients or even better monitoring or all the things you can think of that we could walk through.

And I'm sure we're going to get to, but it's a great time to be in healthcare. The hard thing is that administrators or people that are making the decisions are which ones; there's so much good stuff. Some they're aware of, and some are not. So in terms of the technology people, how do you better educate those who are making decisions?

And that seems to be where I'm coming in a lot lately is helping them to decide to work for some large venture capital firms. And they brought me in. I met with one time, one week, 18 different companies. And those 18 companies I spoke with, I was discerning the capabilities and impact they could impact healthcare because of venture capitalists trying to decide which ones they should invest in.

So now with 18. Did follow up with five that same week and then really recommended three that they should invest in. Cause I thought that would make the biggest difference. So, exciting times, great times changing the world, but technology is the place to be. 

[04:31] the most significant challenges healthcare organizations face now

Ivan Dunskiy: Right. And what kind of maybe if you can classify the biggest challenges that you see that healthcare organizations face right now?

Rodney Reider: There are a number of them. I mean, you have the usuals. You've always got financial challenges. You've got the staffing challenges. You've got different things that have been evolving through the COVID situation. But I think most of the systems that worked that stuff out and have incident command and oversight walked through that.

And it's coming in because of COVID. So other things are going on. But the advancement on the virtual visits has gone well, and that's been a piece people had to ramp upon, which is good right now.

There are lots of good things. But the originally one of the systems I was running, about 3,500 visits a year on, on virtual visits. And then suddenly, once we started going through the pandemic side, we're doing 35,000 a month. It ramped up a short amount. Part of it, people that want to sit home that other people needed care, figure out ways to do it.

And so getting reimbursed for it too was an additional incentive for us in our physicians. The challenge now is how do you advance on that? How do you continue to improve? I'll give you a quick example, your ER gets backed up and the fact that that's already full, your ICU is already packed.

How do you help that efficiency? There's a tool we can bring in which I think there are some great tools to help us with that efficiency, both for staffing and the ability to get the patients where they need to be. I've seen some cool stuff that looks at coming in the ER, the predictive analytics health until they're admitted.

And then I've looked at some information or capabilities from some of the companies I've spoken with that can do that same thing: AI, machine learning, and predictive analytics for the floor. For when they should be discharged, some things that we're not always aware of that can be a real supplement to care, which is: Hey, within five hours with what the patients receive in terms of medication, there could be a drug interaction, be aware of that, maybe intervene sooner. So they don't go through something that will be worse for them. All that stuff helps. So if you think about the flow in a hospital, those are always issues that occur for a hospital itself. Then you've got a broader level, and you say: Alright, the patients been seen in the clinic.

How do we ensure that information gets to the people caring for them in the hospital or vice versa, that patient is discharged? How do they ensure that the clinic, that physician providing oversight, has that information? So we've been able to move a lot in the EHR world, but we're still not taking all that data and using that data to make the best decisions that we could yet.

The things that say, Here's an indicator, how do we compile that data? And say, When you have these types of components in care, here's what you should be doing in terms of the kind of care. So you could be looking at the data that we have and saying, what else could we do with that? And I don't think we're taking advantage of all that with combined EMRs.

So, you asked me what kind of problems, but we could provide many additional solutions that we're not really into yet. And that's where I think technology is providing such great things. And I'll give you a couple more examples. The AI side. That's going on for imaging and saying here are some predicted pieces you could look at that even screen out.

So, for breast cancer, 6% of women have dense breasts. Here's a way of using a machine that says, all right, so we're not going to have the false positives. We don't have to do as many biopsies. Therefore, the technology can be provided that the patient has as an answer sooner from the caregiver, from the physician, but they don't go through unnecessary procedures. And what else? This is less costly.

So it being cheaper provides a win for everybody all-around better care, lower cost. And right care, right place, right time. So the technology pieces that we need to be putting in. And so I say that as a positive because those are issues, but how can we do it better? Where can we step in to improve the care?

Where can we improve the access of the patient gets in sooner? And the fact that you can have a patient discharged maybe a week or using some monitoring equipment that keeps. The care team involved and perhaps even the family members involved all spreads out the care outside of the walls of a clinic or hospital.

And I think that's what technology is doing so well. But we can continue to improve, and we need to make sure that the providers are aware of all of it. And that's one of the pieces that I think the more difficult. 

[09:17] the problem of education: how to make physicians use new technologies

Ivan Dunskiy: And you mentioned a very important topic about education. How do you see this problem could be solved that paper charts are used in some places and that's very hard to adopt the technology.

So technology is advanced, but some people, physicians, and clinicians don't want to use it. Like how do you see that could be solved? 

Rodney Reider: I've gone through that a number of times and a number of organizations and, I've done implementation both on the clinic side of an EHR, electronic health record or electronic medical record thing with hospitals, taking out all these disparate systems that maybe don't speak as well together and putting in one overall.

So you have that interoperability. Initially, it's a tough sell because everybody's pretty comfortable with what they are using. If you have paper, where it's at, it's not difficult. You pull up the chart, you can read it, or you don't have to spend so much time typing in the chart. And we've got almost all complete electronic records in the US. I've seen that that is not the case in other countries I've been to. But in the US, the doctors now complained that they're made into scribes. They sit in front of the computer so much of the time typing. And so, how do we not only convince them or share with them that the benefit is to them and the patient and the rest of the health care continuum.

But also there are times being used wisely. So how do we make it, so it's more efficient? Can we use voice more than we're doing in terms of typing? And that seems to be the dragon, and some of these other systems continue to advance in using voice commands and such voice scribes. 

We need to continue to improve that. So they see the advantage. So what's in it for them. That's the key, right? Why would you want to go from paper through technological advancements? There are a lot of reasons. These are for you to get information. Later on, you can pull up a chart from anywhere in the world.

You're on vacation. You have to look up something rather than calling and trying to track down the chart. More than one person can be on the chart at the same time. So you can have different conversations across the various caregivers. A couple of different physicians can pull it up and look at it simultaneously information from that chart.

It's the best way to go. And then it's a compilation of all that information over the care of that person's lifetime. Frankly, they come in the ER, they've had open-heart surgery, they've gone to the clinic, and now you can have a better picture of the individual, make better decisions, provide better care. And that I think that's the way to go.

And then that's that mining of that data I mentioned earlier, to take that data from this person over here and this person over here. It's all confidential, but saying, what's the best outcomes when this person shows up with this kind of symptom, we've compiled all the data. And that recommendation is blank because that's always the best outcome instead of a lot. It's good cause you have the art of medicine, but if you can have the data or the analytics to support that, or even supplement or perhaps change people's minds, this is a better way for care.

That's where we can mine that data to make better decisions. You only get that through having that data compiled someplace, and that's where the electronic portions come in to do what's right for the patient and the community. 

[12:29] the holistic value of using new technologies in the healthcare field

Ivan Dunskiy: So you can make the sale to clinicians if you show the value. And what is the holistic value of using the technology? Maybe not right now. Yes. You need to enter the data, but then this data will give you this value. 

Rodney Reider: I'll just give you a practical point as well. In the health system, when I was running a hospital in California, one of the patients went to Florida for vacation and ran into an issue. And because we could, then I had to prove it.

That's why it came up, but it was shared that patients get better care in Florida because they had full information about the care they'd received while living in California. If otherwise, it's the physician only seeing what they know at the time and what the patient can remember to tell the physician. And I've worked in ERs and all that kind of stuff and ORs myself, ERs in terms of helping as different levels, but you'll have people come in, and it's nobody's fault, but they may be taking a lot of different meds, and they'll be asked, so what are you take you?

I take the blue pill on Mondays and that pink pill on Tuesdays, but what does that mean? So how do we help that information make sure that the patient is getting the best care they can because everybody has the ideal information to know what that patient is already taking medication-wise. Then all the different pieces that make up that person as a specific individual, we want the care to be individualized for that patient's needs. The more information you have, the better decisions you can make.

[14:01] solving the problem of more volume of medical information

Ivan Dunskiy: Could you share a little more about this case and how this organization handles more volume? What is the solution to this problem? Because I think that that is also a big problem throughout the country and different health care organizations.

Rodney Reider: That's a common thing. I was helping one area to look at it from abroad. So you got a lot of people showing up in the ER. I'll take the more significant strategy piece to start with. And you're saying: we have a lot of volumes. And you need to do structure on our ER to make it bigger.

But maybe many of those patients coming into the emergency room or emergency department themselves could be getting care someplace else. Is there something we can do to intervene sooner? So we look at that data and say there's a way to help support them through having people that can reach out. 

We had one market I was at. We had many people coming in because they had a problem managing their diabetes issues and other healthcare issues that they didn't need to be coming to the ER. So we said, let's put a clinic out in that area and take care of these people in that area rather than having them drive for an hour.

That's a little more expensive way, but it's less expensive than building a bunch of the rooms on the ER, plus the family and the patient don't have to drive. Right? You don't have the issues with an hour. They're also not taking up a spot in the ER, where you could have a higher level of care need.

Somebody has a car accident, and you have somebody with something that could have been taken care of someplace else. And you can't get that patient in as quickly as you'd like. That's one issue. Sometimes need is to build more urgent care because they're lower-level patients coming into the ED (Emergency Department).

One place I helped build several urgent care based on, it's called hot-spotting, where some of the areas that you see, these people come in from, they can deal with the care. So both intervening with some people that maybe we put people in to do calls and check on the patients once they'd been in.

So they didn't come back for continual repeat visits. We also decided to put some urgent care in these areas to say this is an area that is a need. And then an additional piece that once you get in the operational side and these patients are coming into your hospital, how do you make sure that they're seen efficiently, obviously high quality, safe, all this type of thing? And then get to the unit that they need to, or on a very reasonable basis.

How do you turn over the rooms fast enough on the floor? I want to pull that patient up sooner rather than ER, having to push them up saying: We need a bed, let's go. So you help the connection from the ER and the units themselves. So the team says: We need to support the ER and bring that patient up to free them up, to see the next patient rather than a patient staying down in the ER for 15 or 20 hours.

It's an efficiency issue. I also mentioned earlier about the predictive side, if you can look at that. It's the strangest thing in hospitals, but you'll see it with other industries as well, but there becomes a pattern. Certain days of the week it's busier, certain times of days. So how do you look at that trend? And staff appropriately for that to make sure that patients are getting seen at the right time, the right place in the appropriate manner, and the floors taking it. I'm kind of giving the broad level. Still, I got involved in details in terms of the staffing, the capabilities, which rooms were open, what technology we had, what's the indicators, victim technology.

And sometimes, the ER is just waiting on lab results or something like that. So how do we improve all the support around that? Maybe we moved the imaging services down into the ER, rather than having them transported from the ER, over on the other side of the hospital to get their imaging service portion, CT exam, etc.

Let's put a CT, let's put MRI in the ER and have it be used there. So that's a turnover thing. You're talking turnover a lot, which is the efficiency side, but it's a support mechanism. How do I support the caregivers so that they're getting the tools they need to provide them care at the time. And so that's the analysis that I've done is gone through each area and said: Here's what we need to do to support them, to get the actual patient where they need to be as quickly as possible.

And that helps the efficiency of the ER. 

[18:18] telemedicine as a key to the future

Ivan Dunskiy: And what about telemedicine? Is it instrumental also to solve this issue? 

Rodney Reider: Thanks for bringing that up. So I alluded to that earlier, but if you think about the hospital walls or the clinic walls, the four walls, how do you extend the patient's care outside of those walls?

I always work with the team and talk about putting the patient in the center and building their infrastructure. That changes your whole focus of how you look at that patient, what the needs are, not just when they show up in the ER, it's not just when they show up on their floor, or a direct admit, it's saying, what do they need, where they are now?

And how can we reach them? Telemetry has been vital. And one of the places that I was the CEO for what we did was as a team we looked at all right, what would be the greatest need? We've got a level one trauma center, and all these things that in the US mean that it's the highest level of care.

So your highest levels are shipped in by ambulance, but by helicopter; it's where you have your neurosurgeons on call 24/7. You have a trauma team that lives in the hospital every day. And that's not only surgeons but a whole team that are on call staying in the hospital. You go through each specialty. They're all available, and it costs a lot of money to keep them available.

But it's the right thing to do because you're doing that higher level of care. You have all that piece, but then you have some that are: Hey, they had an emergency and a hip fracture. Do they need to come back to the hospital for that follow-up visit? Cause it may have come in by helicopter.

No, not necessarily. They can do their followers by telemetry. How do we set it up so they can get that follow-up visit? How do you take that higher level of care expertise, all those neurosurgeons, cardiac surgeons, and other people? And take that and say, how do I spread that around the rest of the nation? You do it through telemetry because now you have the tool to bring that expertise. They come into a hospital, maybe not as high acuity capable. And so you can take that expertise at the high-level care hospital. And now you have it available at that lower level of care hospital.

You can take that expertise, spread it around, and that's telemetry providers find so much of that. That has been great care for people in remote communities and communities that don't have that kind of expertise or cannot afford to bring that type of specialty.

That's a great question. It's key for the future. A lot of companies are good at that. And we were doing it on our own, and we ended up hiring one of the systems oversaw in Idaho and Oregon, a couple of states, pretty remote. Same as when I was in Wisconsin. I don't know if this matters to say the states, but these are our rural states and many areas.

And so they would have a long way to drive, tractor accident and those types of things. Now you have that telemetry to expertise that you can move on or a person in an area that maybe had an emergency at a place that has that same capability. So you set up that capability, which is the other side of the telemetry, right?

The technology so that they can be seen. It's worthwhile one more piece on that. I've seen a company out of Israel. I was working with that took the treatment team and provided it to the home after a procedure. And that way, maybe you have an elderly parent or something. The family member can hear everything the patient has heard in the hospital or the clinic. And so the treatment team gets on video and says, regulate, we're going to meet every hour, it's a checkup, and you'll have a nurse there interacting with the staff regularly.

Ivan Dunskiy: Checking visits, something like that?

Rodney Reider: Yes, that's helped a lot. So some clinics have a lot of physicians, a lot of advanced practitioners, they're seeing patients. And when they have a lot, they're not as busy. And it happened that often, but that's where you put in your virtual visits so we can fit in different times.

It keeps them, so they're able to see patients throughout the day, and sometimes that some clinics like that a lot because there's no downtime in terms of patients being seen or physicians or advanced practitioners being able to see patients. 

[22:24] essential features of telemedicine solutions 

Ivan Dunskiy: And I'm a little bit more on this topic. What are essential features or what telemedicine solutions should have to be accepted by the clinical hospital? 

Rodney Reider: That's a great question. If I get back up on that, what is helpful and we don't have enough of those is a technology roadmap, and providers, I think, need more help with that roadmap so they can plan for that. And that's what telemedicine, rather than us reacting, would be part of the plan and continue to upgrade over the years because the upgrade portion is important. So it's the accessibility so the patient can have easy in their area to be seen. And so we, for example, connect with our hospitals, that's pretty easy because the technology is available, but maybe they're even further from a smaller hospital in their area.

There's a clinic you set up for that telemetry piece. They can do the follow-up visits rather than drive a hundred miles to check up when they have had knee surgery or something. Well, the remote areas. But the important thing for the telemetry is that it's trusted capable at all times, right?

Cause sometimes we would get on, and it wasn't working. All that stuff and nobody over there, the hospital wasn't capable of fixing it, or the clinic was a deficit. You always want to say affordable, but technology has continued to advance. How do we upgrade it? Providers can take advantage of those upgrades' capability and keep them informed.

And how do we plan for that? Because you have to put in your budget, hospitals or health systems are notorious for slow decision-making. A lot of it is a consensus, and you got to get a lot of buy-in from people, but at the same time, because you have different specialists, different points of view, which is why I always come back to say: You put the patient is center.

That takes out a lot of the egos because now you're building infrastructure around them. But at the same time, you've got that need in this other community. How do you continue to provide that need with these upgrades? That's affordable that everybody wants to use that they trust. And the fact is that it offers a good view too because some of the ones we had, it was older at the time, but now I know it's more advanced, but it was, can we see the patient fully? How do we make sure that we're getting the right metrics on them? The heartbeat, all that basic stuff, but even more advanced than that, a lot of follow-up visits have occurred for during this time, the virtual visits side with orthopedic things.

How do you have an orthopedist on the other side like us right now, making sure the full range of motion is there. So you do it at the rehab place. Well, they didn't redo that appointment today. How do we make sure we set up a telemetry system capable of giving that kind of information they need. 

Ivan Dunskiy: And maybe interoperability so that the data can be shared with, for example, the EHR system. 

Rodney Reider: That's a key. I mean, I'm assuming now in every case that we have interoperability, that has to be the case. It needs to be all shared. Everybody needs to have access to the systems that need to speak. Your question earlier about the downside of not having that with even paper charts, how does the other person know what's going on if they're not there at that time? And so the interoperability offers that option greatly, and all that data, being in there it's necessary. Exactly right. 

[25:49] technology road map: the main obstacle of the clinics to have it, the way of developing

Ivan Dunskiy: You mentioned an interesting point. What do you think are the main obstacles for clinics and hospitals to have this technology roadmap? Because I believe that decision-makers understand the importance of having that, especially now.

And what is the main roadblock you see? 

Rodney Reider: Do you think they do understand the necessity of that? I'm not sure all of them do. When you think about it, see how he's looking at so many different things. 

Ivan Dunskiy: At least there is a lot of noise about that in the media. About technology in healthcare. 

Rodney Reider: And it's a necessary piece. There's a lot of noise about it, from virtual reality to look at AI and machine learning. Everybody throws that out in our discussions. Still, I think we need to be better educated by experts in the technology world about what that means and which ones to help us decide the priorities.

You have your IT people in hospitals or health systems, they're accredited very well, but there's no way they can keep up on everything. And there are such differences as running an EMR making sure it functions every day, and you've got the information versus what's happening in the virtual reality world, or even AI or nanotechnology.

Those are things that we're not always aware of. So you think about it, you're sitting at a desk and making decisions on staffing and finance. You're trying to look for investment for a year from now. Whether you build a new wing of the hospital, you have these different items. 

Who's helping me decide where I should spend my money and its benefit in the technology world? I don't know. I'm asking different people, but it's only when I can fit it in time-wise. Suppose you have a corporate depending on a corporate. In that case, a technology roadmap should be discussed every year with experts in the technology world of all the new happenings because it's impossible to keep up with everything.

And it's impossible to buy everything too. Cause it can look great now, but it will not be as good the next year. Because something else comes out, that planning phase is significant where you can meet the need, and maybe the technology changes each year slightly, but you've got it three years from now.

By the time it comes, you've got the latest, that's the best. And I think that the need is in continual education. I like to have it in my meetings, a little portion of it at the bottom, each time to talk about innovation, and innovation for me falls within this arena. The equipment, new imaging with AI, that does some of this predictive analytics side to the ER, but also apps, things that go around with the patients, being able to have access to us or make the booking by their apple watch or their iPhone, it's necessary. And we need to be continually informed on what that means.  

Ivan Dunskiy: What do you think is the best setup in terms of the teams? Who should develop this roadmap? Should that be like a dedicated person from the IT department? Or maybe decision-makers who are clinicians? What do you think of this?

Rodney Reider: That's a good question. Usually, an information technology reports up to the CFO. So that's part of what you do. You're trying to look at investment, but you're not living the world of what all the clinical needs might be. You're looking at the revenue cycle, and there are a lot of advancements in technology that it's helping a lot. It's smart people. It's hard to be aware of everything. So if you were to look at who should, it shouldn't be just one person. It should be a couple of people responsible for it. You should have an innovation department looking at these things constantly to improve. You should also have some of your team members looking at, now, give you a brief description.

What usually happens is that somebody from radiology says we need this new equipment. They come to the CEO or the management, and the radiologists come to the CEO. And pretty soon, that becomes a priority. But if you're looking at it, and I'll bring it back to the roadmap, you're looking at what you need to advance overall.

You need that input from many areas, so why not have those people be part of a team, looking at technology, providing you with that update regularly, and having a meet. And that based on specialty, why not things meet periodically throughout the year, quarterly, perhaps, and talk about new technology.

At the end of the year, you ranked those levels of importance because everybody's been hearing about all of them throughout the year. And then I did this in one place. It worked pretty well. There's a categorization for all the different technology. And then you had the battle cause people still have their particular interests. It is a heated discussion to say here's overall our priorities, and those overall priorities are not in the rest of the capital.

We're not talking about building or buying new beds. We're talking about just the technology side and what that means. Then you take that, and you begin to plan out for the next couple of years using somebody like the technology experts that you can bring in from the outside even, and say: Here's what you should be looking at over the next three to five years.

That's three to five years, and then I include all those people talked about and their specialty expertise. But now you have an outside resource looking at them as well. You begin to plan them out, and then you can do the financial side. But it's not competing with beds and all those things.

It's straight technology advancement and straight innovation. I think that works best. 

Ivan Dunskiy: I think that's a great solution not to have a dedicated department because that would increase costs, but rather to have some committee where you have a responsible person who shares other responsibilities in their organization, and then different experts join this committee and decide on the innovation.

Rodney Reider: Thank you. And actually, they're educating each other on what's good in their department too. So sometimes we'd go: Hey, there's some sharing of ideas that maybe we could go into something together. Or perhaps yours is more important, so I'll let you do it this year.

And then, you'll help me next year with these types of things. And it builds the team culture through to make decisions overall. But that education, I call it the cross-fertilization of ideas, really helps out the rest of the team because you're hearing from everyone versus just their silo. I don't mean that negative because they have incredible expertise. We put a patient center and a build in this space, the technology around, where would we most benefit the patient? We talk about it as an overall organization, which builds a momentum culture behind working together and best decision-making for technology.

[32:21] classification of challenges in healthcare organizations

Ivan Dunskiy: I asked about your opinion on what do you think are the biggest challenges in general that healthcare organizations have, but can you classify somehow? I understand that different organizations have different issues, but maybe you can classify healthcare organizations' issues with technology specifically? 

Rodney Reider: Any certain areas or just overall?

Ivan Dunskiy: Just overall, that reflects on the business operations. And that is the most concerning for management and patients. 

Rodney Reider: There are several areas. I have so many going through my mind that I'm just trying to prioritize. I'll go back to the ideal use of the EMR/EHR, which is most important. And then the decision-making from the EHR. I say that is a problem not because people look at it as a problem, as much as we don't gain the benefit from it.

So that would be a priority the hospitals have for utilizing, or health systems have for utilizing the care for the patients. If we had better help or improve to help on the efficiency, the efficiency side would know where we should be changing things. I think it would be freedom within structure innovation within the routine.

That routine of work you do every day, we're always looking at how we can take technology to improve it. So I would go back to the physician piece. Here's the physician. That's your highest level of licensing for care. And you're sitting at a computer and having to input the data from his visit or the fact that he just saw a patient type thing.

How could we prove that time spent by him? That information gets into the EHR without him having to type it. He'd do it by voice, and all those things go through. I'm not sure if I've answered your question directly, but we have the stuff, and we think, how can we improve on it? So I was constantly thinking about what I could do to improve their lives.

So the doctor gets in, and the nurse that gets in on it, and they're doing a dictation. It's typing in the information on that patient. How could we improve that time spent on that? Could we monitor that patient, some of the things going on the automated?

It's going right into the EHR rather than what we're doing now. Could there be a meeting with a patient, and rather than having to pull the computer type while they're talking, could it be just that the voice commands, the voice interaction is taking dictation. How do we improve on those types of things?

Most of our issues occurred in care in the handoff. There's a drop of information, a drop of communications, that communication in the handoff. And that gap says, what can I do to improve that gap? Using the technology. The technological portion could solve many problems for us within the hospital.

If you go to the OR, we always want to see how we can improve, and 3d printing has been outstanding because it's changed the cost. I watched the case where a neurosurgeon did brain surgery, took out part of the skull, and was able to do 3d printing right there and then put a replacement.

And in the past, they still had to go through the other things that were covered temporarily. But in the past, they would have had the patient, three days a week hospital covered with different kinds of things. Now they can do this 3d printing and temporarily take care of things. Those advancements are helping, but is there something else we could still be doing along the lines and in an operating room that advances that care.

We could do many things that we want to do that would continue to improve. If there are some immediate things that you would say are a problem, the information still coming from our clinics to our hospitals comes up a lot in terms of the patient's information arriving in time. Many citizens had advanced, but not all of them advanced yet.

Some are slowing down their implementation because of COVID or costs. And so those that don't have the same system for the clinics and the hospital don't talk. And so you're back to that same issue. In some cities, you have a number of hospitals and clinics owned by different people. And so a patient coming from one clinic doesn't talk about computer systems.

We had universal interoperability where all the systems would be ideal. Were there still issues that come up. The same goes in for the discharge. They come to the ER, and they go back to the clinic. The physician is like: wait, I don't have any information, or your systems don't talk, or we didn't get it to your end time.

But usually, it's the systems that don't talk because now it's all in the system if you're connected. 

[37:04] why the EMRs are not used properly

Ivan Dunskiy: And what is the biggest problem you see with EMRs? Why are they not properly used? 

Rodney Reider: We often have burdensome manual labor for input.

Ivan Dunskiy: Clinicians just want to do it, right?

Rodney Reider: I wouldn't say they don't want to, but they know they have to. And is it the best use of their time? That's one piece. The other piece around the EHR is that we're not taking full advantage of its capabilities. And it has a lot of things that it can do, and they weren't taken advantage of.

I would say that because it's a time issue, the people who use it step in, use it, and use it for what they need to. And until somebody else says, did you know, you can do it like this versus like that. They're not always aware. There have been advances since they first learned, there's been, this there's been that. Just like any software, right?

How do we get to keep people informed of what's necessary? So the problem becomes the full capability usage of the EHR, and it's a technology by educating the people. And how do we educate them? Maybe we do seven to eight-minute little snippets of information instead of saying, let's have a full-blown class and pull everybody in.

They can just pull upon them. We've been doing that more and more, but we're still not saying: Hey, here's a way to advance. We do our continuing education for our clinical staff, and we can talk to non-clinical staff as well, but do we always include advancing the capability of their use of EHR, things like that.

We usually don't. It's becoming aware of other things, compliance and care different levels type thing, but not necessarily advancing. So that's why I brought up the technology roadmap as an item, but it's thinking of the CEOs or different levels of executive leadership or at any level. How do we stay up on everything?

We need help to know the priority and capabilities of what we have. And we have a lot of different specialties and many different areas, but how does it flow across? We need somebody to help with that sometimes because that capability might be there, and we're not always aware of all those different types of things. Capability knowledge needs to be enhanced. 

[39:22] investments in the healthcare field

Ivan Dunskiy: Do you see that healthcare companies are willing to invest more in technology than in previous years? 

Rodney Reider: I do. And I see it from all angles. I've been working a lot with the health systems and hospitals and some clinics, but the discussions always come like, what else can we do.

And they've been continuing to increase their amount. We used to compare ourselves with banking and shoot percentage how much they spent on technology versus us. And there's just a great deal more. I remember exactly like they were 15%, and we were two or three. So we're getting up there and more and more now to make these advances.

And you can see how the banking system world has been so much better. Right. From ATMs many years ago, they went to, we were still doing the paper. 

Ivan Dunskiy: These are actual numbers, right? 2 versus 15. 

Rodney Reider: Yes. To the point where we've been continuing to increase, but is it enough? Is it fast enough? We still do a lot of physical things.

Virtual visits have increased lately, but we could do more. And I think we should. And that technology is available too. I say that from the point of view of both working with the private equity guys, but also from the point of view of all the venture capital startups, some incredible technology that if you have the hospital money, you'd say: I should invest in these guys because that's going to help me out on blank efficiency in my clinic, the access for the patient, better quality, safer, all those types of things.

But they're not always aware. So how do we make them aware of what's the education piece? 

Ivan Dunskiy: I need to ask a question. When do you advise providers on implementing technology, what is the usual approach to measuring return on investments?

Rodney Reider: That's a great question. Sometimes that's tough. So there are the pillars when we talk about healthcare. It's patient satisfaction, physician or employee engagement. You've got your pillar for the patient safety quality of care. It's got a number of these pillars. You need to talk to them about impacting them within these pillars. 

Ivan Dunskiy: You mean vendors. Do you need to ask vendors what the prediction is? How can you provide the numbers of these pillars?

Rodney Reider: The vendor needs to go in knowing they need to speak, hitting these different pillars. Each system has it framed a little bit different way. We have it growth is another pillar. We've got these pillars, and you say, all right, so if I'm going into Zelis, I want to say within these pillars, and then within these pillars, that's where you say the improvement.

We improve patient safety by 20% because we've avoided this many people falling out of bed. We have a billion interventions for a patient at risk of falling for the alarm that could go off. We have something that we've shown in another hospital. We've saved this many lives or this many outcomes. So you tie it in these types of things. Let me give a quick example. 

Hospitals, for example, if a patient comes in, seen depending on the category, but they come back within 30 days through our ER, we don't get paid for them. And so there's an incentive. To make sure that they get the best care, they don't have to come back for another visit within at least 30 days. If a vendor goes in and says, 'I can help you with this issue.' 'And how can you help?' 'I can tell you usually it's a 15% of people come back. (I'm just making up numbers now.) 50% will have come back for an additional visit.

You don't get paid for. I'll get it down to 3%.' 'Really? That's great. How do you do that?' Tell them how you do it. Then my next question is always: 'still, where have you done that before?' I need to be able to say how much money I saved so you can go through each category, and they say: all right, for my physician engagement, I increased the physician engagement ever since I've worked with, but 25%, how'd you do that? I didn't. While making sure they always were able to do voice with their EHR. I'm being dramatic here. 'That makes sense. That would help a lot, probably more than 20%, right. By 50%, it would improve our scores. Who have you done it with?

So you have to be able to back it up with something. That becomes an issue for startups. Same with the technology on the care side, you think about it, all right, I will provide this. Let's go back to the one I gave about breast cancer. I'm going to be able to give you a tool. It's going to cost you $5 million.

And that $5 million tool is going to save 60% of the women from having to have a biopsy because that's the ratio of false positives. That's great. That's just better care. How much does that add up to? And that one I could check pretty easily, but I'm going to check with the vendor. He or she is telling me what makes sense. And then the next step is who have you done that with? So all these areas of I said about: quality, safety, the fact that you've got patient engagement, physician engagement, and patient satisfaction, all those things, any category you take for a vendor.

Tell me, how are you going to do it? How much are you going to save me or increase my scores positively? And then who you've done it with? And that helps. In a startup, those are difficult. I haven't done it with anybody. So now you're in like: let me be a pilot for you, and I'll show you so, right.

And then give you some equity in my company to be the pilot. And then we can go out together and sell it. When he just comes in, I would have him tell me all the great qualities of their product, which sounds great. We're back to just like selling the EHR to a physician in practice.

Ivan Dunskiy: We work with different startups, and then we see that sometimes it's a challenge that founders create a solution, but then you need to talk in the same language with decision-makers on the provider side. So that's what you need to understand about these pillars and how you explain your value to them.

Rodney Reider: You said it right on the nose. That's what I've been called in to do a lot on my consulting. Who would you like to talk to? Who's the decision-maker. Cause they've been already calling and talking to people, and then nothing happens. And then the next piece is that I share with the kind of talk the language, you got to understand, but how could they, they haven't lived there.

It takes a lot of years to explain. I had a long discussion with somebody yesterday, an hour and 39 minutes. And here I am explaining about, based on the questions, it was a lot around COVID, but other issues we're talking about hospitals, and it had a patient in and it was, I was being interviewed. And I'm walking through all this stuff.

And then the question was like, wait, so. How does that work? So I'm living it, talking about it. It's like any industry you know your stuff, and you're talking in the right way now. They didn't have any idea where I was coming from on. For example, you've got two governing structures in a hospital. You've got the CEO and all that he does and that team, or she does, but you also have a medical staff that has to be in charge of their own.

They place their own because you don't want a business person entering in the clinical side saying, do more of these. So they provide their structure. That's why you have a medical staff president. You have all of the structure of department heads. But if you don't live there, people don't know, like I can't get ahold of a physician, what area you're at, or the discussion used to be for me, you need to fire that position.

He didn't do anything. She didn't do anything. I said, well, the physician works for you. It doesn't work for me. You've gone and saw him in the clinic. So you need, but I'll help enter in because I didn't employ him. Hospitals and health systems in America have employed those physicians, but it depends.

But if you don't know, how do you know? So long-winded statements to support what you're saying. You have to know the language, but it's kind of hard to know the language. What I've been able to help, a lot of companies do that. And actually, it's fun because you don't realize like, I know this.

Then let me, I can help this company, these are good people, they're doing great things. That's why I say that I offer this piece. The startups are so fun to work with. They're so passionate. They're so driven in a positive sense because they're saving the world with what they've created. Building on what you said. And they have so much knowledge.

I mean, the depth of their knowledge is incredible. But what they don't know can hinder them in terms of getting into these different systems. What I keep thinking too is, gosh, I wish I had more people in the hospitals or in my clinics that had that same kind of passion and drive. We could conquer the world and solve every problem.

I mentioned innovation within the routine. There would be nothing terrible innovation. That would be so awesome. So there's a balance there. I love their passion.

[48:18] Custom VS Shelf solutions

Ivan Dunskiy: What do you think about custom solutions, accustomed technology solutions for healthcare providers? So companies built their stuff before, but now there are many shelf solutions. Do you see a need and the value of building your own stuff using your internal software team or external? What do you think about that? 

Rodney Reider: That's a great question too. It's kind of evolved over the years. I would share this piece. So when you asked about early on about the paper chart. Bringing in electronic medical records, we have had to go to the lowest common denominator in many respects because you had to have all the system specialties talk. Right? Did your lab, you had your imaging, you had all the data from the or the cases.

The existing systems were so specialized for those departments. They were incredible. They gave them everything they needed. They'd been specializing, customizing them over the years for, for laboratory, for example. Suddenly now, you're bringing in this larger system. It doesn't do this. It doesn't do that kind of thing.

And it was unfortunate, but that's the only way you could get in one system that covers all the hospitals, the interoperability piece because before, a lot of them didn't talk, we're going back a little way. Now they all talk continue to improve. The customization is wonderful. It's necessary because they shouldn't be able to get that customization and that customization should benefit the rest of the organization as well, or at least not harm it.

The information the rest of the organization needs as that patient works through the different sections of the hospital or back to the clinic. That customization is incredible to help those people in those departments with what they need. It doesn't often advance or quickly enough. And that customized solution is often discussed.

And yet the worry is what that impact is on the other hospitals. And you have larger systems that say, well, what's customized at this place for laboratories. And in California, we now want to be customized in Michigan because they look at different things. And so now you think about the resources to do the customization for 200 hospitals across the country that becomes unwieldy or overly expensive.

So that customization that we would like isn't always possible. But if we could do more customization, that's ideal. And if we could do it, that it's more affordable. And if somebody from the outside had that option and we trusted him to bring him in and help, customization occurred.

Now, what IT guys will tell you within the system itself. Now, when we do a massive upgrade, it's messed up. Because now the customization is lost, or you can't do it because of customization here and not there. So that becomes the issue with a lot of these things because I would always say yes to everything, and I would take all of the pilots for all the IT stuff and anything else I can come up with, what could we do better. We would do this customization piece out there. And then, then, and telemedicine was one of those. We were balanced, and they decided to do, we're going to do it for the whole company, even though we were the pilot. We're taking it off the shelf, and now everybody got it, but the capabilities were much less for us because we hadn't had a customized and everybody's like, wait a second.

We chose a system that is not as good as what we had. Why do we do that? So then, all right. Let me explain. We got to do it across the company. We'll eventually do those upgrades, but it will be a while now. So, we've got to do it as a system. I just buy one thing, you got to buy it for everybody type thing.

So there's that, that's the balance. I hope I'm not elaborating too much, but that's what we're going through in our decision-making. I would say yes to every customization, but I have to consider all these other factors and make sense. And I hate it too because I want to improve my site or my two states or my three states, but I'm part of a larger company.

So I have to do the right thing for the overall company. If our vendors can help us make those determinations that improve everybody, then we're good. And this is what I tell startups sometimes too. Take the smaller systems, the one or two smaller systems; you're going to have to deal with that larger decision-making. You can get in the door prove yourself.

And now when you come back and have the discussion, you're saying when they ask my types ask, so who'll be done it for, and then you now have an answer versus trying to do a large system. 

Ivan Dunskiy: We've shortened a life cycle and implementation. 

Rodney Reider: People can decide there: it's often the bigger systems? Yes. So we're going to talk to this person pretty soon. We're talking a couple of years. Right. And that doesn't drive vendors crazy, but it drives me crazy too. People like me get like, I wish we could just get this. We know it's going to help, but we've got to work through the system, even though we're trying to figure out ways. 

Ivan Dunskiy: So we're coming to the end of an interview. 

Rodney Reider: Already? This is so fun. Ivan. I don't want to stop. Let's go. 

[53:29] AI/ML as one of the technology trends in the next 3-5 years

Ivan Dunskiy: We can. But because we are running out of time, the last question. What technology trends do you see for the next 3-5 years in healthcare? 

Rodney Reider: I've been thinking about that a lot. If I took the broader view, I would say, the AI and machine learning, all the predictive analytics stuff, I'm involved in a number of discussions on nanotechnology. So it depends on which industry you're talking about, cancer or those types of things. I wrote out a bunch of them cause I was like, there's so many that I've been looking at, or talking to different people about maximizing the EHR courses is a biggie.

A lot of it depends on too about who's going to pay us for it. Government drives a lot of that because they pay a lot of the bills. So will they pay for it? So that helps some of that. The digitization of everything that we're talking about will continue to advance. But when we speak about those pillars and repeat access, there's a number of tools coming out of access. I've seen that that is helping out. 

Ivan Dunskiy: You mean access for rural areas?

Rodney Reider: Yes. The access to the larger care, the higher level of care. The ability to do the monitoring things. I've seen it where people have been discharged from the ER and some of the monitoring tools we didn't have before.

So I would say the clinic without walls. We keep talking about the hospital at home, I don't know if you talk about so much there, but in the US, you talk about it a lot. We lower costs with your family. That will continue to advance. There's risk involved in that. I think that the virtual side will continue the training that's going on for physicians with virtual reality is advancing a great deal.

And I think that's helping a lot, not just physicians, but advanced caregivers are doing a lot of virtual training that will continue, I think, for people to specialize even more. Well, when we talk about some of those things, that patient willingness, I think it's not so much on the training that way. Depending on the generation, there are certain levels of what they're accepting to the type of monitoring, or even in terms of the virtual visits advanced for everybody, but certain things people feel like they should still be touched and felt with, and meet with a physician or a nurse up close. There was another thing that I came up with it. The robotics. That's going to continue to improve too. I see that is a lot coming up, and that's the robotics for surgical side and other care, but also for the exoskeletons and some of those types of things you're seeing more and more advancement now, that's exciting.

I already brought the nanotechnology, but the specificity for each patient continues to advance. And I think that that is the way we should go and we will. Personalization. Yes. I think that's key. And that's the more the care side, but there will continue to be advancements in the revenue cycle, for example.

The payments side that the companies have come out that are so advanced in that now that even allow for different levels, it's more US-based. Still, they're going through some ways to help the systems themselves, to healthcare systems go through that process of those more accurate and all those types of things, but also the fact that the patient can set up different structures for how they pay in all, as opposed to what existed in the past.

Anyways, on the business side, there's a lot of advancement there going on as well. That's why I say it's the best time to be in healthcare ever for any aspect from the business side to the care side, and we're continuing to advance. And if I get off for this too, it depends on leadership, and I'll go just a sec to my book, but it's not for that purpose.

Other than trying to mention it in there. The leadership determines what that culture is like every time you speak or go on a floor or, I'm talking about rounding. If you send an email, all that communicates the priorities, that physician of that CEO to the physicians, to your team, and that sets the culture about the advancement of technology.

So leading a buy-in of the CEO or executive team, that's technology or understands the importance of technology. And you can do that by educating them to your vendors' audience, and educating them, but also, set out, maybe it's not a formal roadmap, and here are things you should be looking at for the future.

Kind of your question to me, there's so much like which one should I focus on? What are your issues? But knowing that healthcare landscape helps you already know what some of the issues are and help support them because they have a lot of issues. So help me, help me, help them prioritize. But the leadership sets the tone.

They're one set direction. The other one's providing the inspiration, right? They're the source of energy and inspiration. The other ones are Building on the culture from the past but changing for the future. So you're taking the best from the past and looking out for the future of how you can build on that. That technology can help because if you're thinking innovation and what you need to do to advance, it's an exciting time versus the drudgery of routine, innovation within the routine.

The whole thing about the overall, the structure. If you have freedom within structure and innovation within the routine, I think you can change the world at any level. Still, that CEO, that leadership sets the tone because if I'm just showing up at admitting every day and I'm taking, or if I'm thinking, how can I improve this?

How can I have this information from the patient before they arrive? So when they arrive, I'm just saying, is this you, thank you. Let's take you down for your laptops, right. That changes the world. So we can do that. We do that technology, but we also do that based on leadership setting the tone. So I bring that up as really important.

Ivan Dunskiy: And that is what you outlined in your book, how to set up this culture what management wants? 

Rodney Reider: That's a portion of my book. My book was set up to help aspiring leaders who want to go into leadership and remind those in leadership roles what's important and what to focus on and kind of the environment you're operating within.

I made a comment about working through the system to get approval. What are some people who want to support you? And some people don't want to support you. How do you get through those different pieces and get more people to support you? And maybe you can help isolate those that that don't want to. I covered that in my book.

I always set up as a leader of a book club. It's what I called it. And my executive team would be, let's say required, but encouraged to read a book. 

Ivan Dunskiy: Highly encouraged.

Rodney Reider: I would have him read the book. And in healthcare, you kind of just read your things. If you read it all, you read your articles, and they don't have much time. But there's a whole world out there doing incredible advanced things. Other industries are doing incredible things. And we're not always aware of that stuff.

So I would assign books. I always said that everybody's going to get to choose a book, but it never happened. I always chose all the books, but I always thought, well, someday I will, but this is what's important. So let's read this month, and then we'd go outside to have a discussion.

And I might buy him adult beverages, right. So we talk. And that top, we would discuss what we learned from the book that we could apply to our industry. So we'd read about Amazon. We read about, whatever the case would be, what can we do here to apply?

And it may be some great discussions that I say, let's take three things back to do it. That thing grew, I'd have my executive leadership team. I soon had physicians coming and 30 people in this discussion. It's really fun. So when I wrote my book, here's what I'm bringing it back to. When I wrote my book, I thought I wanted to make it easy chapters and tell a lot of stories.

And I want to have questions in the back to facilitate these discussions, to help new leaders or even be mentored by more experienced leaders, to the new leaders, or even training for those new leaders as part of, Hey, you need to pay attention to this. Here's what a leader is being watched at regularly when they interact with staff.

Here's what you need to think about when you say something, here's the tone you set when you come on and get onto the floor. I have a number of chapters, and each chapter is a rung on the ladder climbing up to a better leader. And that's kind of the heart of leadership. It was fun to write too.

I hadn't written a book before. I've written a lot of articles, and it's kind of fun to talk about. So thank you for allowing me to talk about the piece. 

Ivan Dunskiy: It's a never-ending ladder.

Rodney Reider: Yes, that's true because no matter where you are, you want to get better and climb up to the next level. Most people do, or a lot of people do. And so, what do you need to be thinking of? So, if I pull this out right now and say which chapter with the best, I'd say they're all really important, but there's a place for notes even in the back.

But I think I have to go back and look down. I think I have eight chapters. And I do a little putting it together. And I have a bunch of quotes from the great leaders of the past. Churchill or mother Teresa, people that set an example. And I have a section too, of really what I say. And I mentioned a couple of those, but keep her the cultural source of energy, encouragement, and inspiration.

The CEO also has to be a reminder of reality. You can't always be. It's so great out there you say, no, this is the reality of what we have. We only have so much money, or we're going to have a tough time this next year. So let's plan for it now. Can't you be all talking? It's so great all the time.

I have a bunch of different. Even Machiavelli and Helen Keller, I have quotes from them. Let me say the chapters. Each chapter is one of the rungs. So I have eight runs that you climb up. So maybe the next book will be rung 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. I don't, we'll see. We'll do a book together, Ivan, we should do that.

[01:02:57] Rapid Fire Round (3 questions)

Ivan Dunskiy: We can discuss that. Thank you. So I want to end the interview with a light exercise called Rapid Fire Round. I will ask you several personal questions, and you come up with the answers whatever you like. Do you have a hobby? 

Rodney Reider: I have a hobby, a couple. I read a lot. I consider that a hobby.

I like to travel as a hobby, and I do Western martial arts. And so that's Fiore, or in German, it's textbook. So you have the Eastern martial arts, or Western martial art, which is a blast and didn't continue as well, as the Eastern martial arts, but it's there, and you even fight with the sword and staff. That’s cool, so I should show you my swords.

Ivan Dunskiy: And what is the location that impressed you the most? 

Rodney Reider: I love Salzburg, Austria, Vienna, Prague. I like St. Petersburg. I was probably keeping places. Salzburg in Indiana, top Prague, and St. Petersburg are both nice cities. Great culture, great opera.

That's another hobby. I'm a nerd for opera, like opera a lot. And I have a daughter that dances ballet, and she was dancing in St. Petersburg for the last couple of years. So I know her score over there this year and watch her dance and all that stuff with the opera. It is awesome too. 

And now I have not been to Ukraine. I plan on going there. I tried to get in, but some of the issues came up with what was going on. Especially now. I was in Belarus, Minsk. And that's a nice city, wonderful people. It is a nice opera there too.

And nice ballet. It was good. And from there, I was going to Ukraine, and I couldn't get in, the walls came up and all that kind of stuff. But I'm planning on going there. 

Ivan Dunskiy: And what is the piece of advice you would give to your 20-year-old self? 

Rodney Reider: You said Rapid round here. I gave a long answer. I'm sorry.

Patient. I was always really assertive. I try not to use the word aggressive but assertive. I want it to be a CEO soon. I thought I could do this and move up, and I probably should have been more patient. Still, probably it's something I should work on. I want to improve things soon.

Let's go. We don't have much time. Or even in meetings. Let's talk about this. So we talk, discuss, then I'll say, are the shoot holes in it, shoot holes in it, once we made a decision to make sure we made the right decision, all right, let's go. And sometimes people still aren't there.

And so, I need to be more patient to let them catch up. 

Ivan Dunskiy: To be on the same page to move on. I think that's a perfect way to end today's interview. I enjoyed the conversation. Thank you, Rodney, for your insights on implementing technology in healthcare organizations. I like the pillar piece about how startups should think about implementing their solutions in healthcare organizations. So I think that that is very helpful, from the person with your experience and background. Before we finish, what is the best way to get in touch with you? So people may want to have a consultation or buy a book.

Rodney Reider: Amazon has a book, but I have a website, it's https://www.rodneyreider.com/. And so I have articles. I just wrote another one on innovation leadership. I think innovation. I have another one coming up next week on leadership cause I was overseas. And so I talked about the view from overseas.

So the website and my email are rodneydreider@gmail.com. That's an excellent way to meet you. And the book is on the Amazon. Or you can buy it from my website either way. But you've been great, Ivan. Thank you. Great questions, great interview. You're very kind. So I appreciate having a chance to partner with you on this.

And I'm grateful side. I look forward to continuing the relationship in the future. So anything I did to help you please, or any of, obviously your audience, but anything I can do to help you. I don't know who you'd like on your podcast, but I like to introduce you to other people if you want or other portions of what you want to interview. Happy to help.

Who is behind the HealthTech Beat podcast

We are a team of IT professionals who like sharing technical knowledge with healthcare industry people.

At Demigos, we generate ideas on how to improve product performance, design, and positioning based on our experience building complex health tech solutions.

Check our blog with articles on the related topics, and our cases in healthtech. Also, connect the podcast host and the CEO of Demigos Ivan Dunskiy on Linkedin.