HealthBI President Scott McFarland thinks smaller companies are more likely to upend healthcare. Here's Why

In this special Speaker Series, Becker's Healthcare caught up with Scott McFarland, president of HealthBI, a software company that markets a care coordination and care management platform for population health management.

Mr. McFarland will speak on a panel during the Becker's Hospital Review 4th Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle Conference on " The Most Important Issues Facing the Payor and Provider Relationship," at 9:45 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 20. Learn more about the event and register to attend in Chicago.

Question: How does your organization gain physician buy-in when it is implementing a new technology or solution?

Scott McFarland: That's exactly what our health plan customers, who deploy our CareEmpower solution for use by their provider networks, ask us. And really, the answer is pretty simple — we're giving physicians what they've said for years is holding them back from practicing true value-based care, and that's timely information about their patients. So knowing they are going to finally have access to say, an admission, discharge or transfer alert of a patient in the hospital, or a list of patients who are due for a screening, or a flag about a patient that was triggered by a social determinants of health assessment captures their interest very quickly. Of course, providers have heard it all before, and they are rightfully wary about committing to something that might fail to deliver. So, what seals the deal is when they see how we go beyond technology and really take this journey with them to value-based care. We help them turn those timely insights into actionable care plans. We help them document that they're meeting performance targets. Most physicians understand that healthcare is moving toward a risk or value-based model, and they see that we're offering them an entire provider enablement strategy to get there.

Q: What is the most exciting thing happening in health IT right now?

SF: To me, it's pretty exciting that the technology, people and processes are coming together now to help physicians practice what we've been talking about for years: the move from a fee-for-service model to a value-based care model. And I think it's really exciting that this momentum is being driven by smaller healthcare companies that live, sleep and breathe value-based care versus some of the big companies that are trying to break into healthcare solely because they see there is money to be made there. I don't think their heart is in it like we smaller, more nimble companies that are truly hungry to upend an overly expensive and outdated healthcare model.

Q: What's one conviction in healthcare that needs to be challenged?

SF: That we can't scale targeted, personalized, proactive healthcare for complex populations, especially in Medicaid. We absolutely can, and we're doing it here at HealthBI.

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