Tech, Text & the Future of Patient Experience in FQHC Altura Centers for Health

Hey, it’s Jessica DaMassa, with WTF Health, what’s the future of health? I’m talking to the who’s who of Health Tech and Healthcare Innovation, and I’m doing it right now at Altura’s customer event, Heartbeat. So I’m digging in deep on what’s going on with the patient experience and what’s changing, and how technology is influencing all this stuff, and so here to help me figure all this out if Arnie Reynoso. He is the Chief Information officer at Altura Centers for Health. Hi, hello, how are you doing?

Good how are you doing?

All right so for those who aren’t familiar with Altura Centers for Health, you guys are a federally qualified health clinic, and so you guys treat a very different population, and so we’ll dig in on that in a second. But also you have a kind of unique background for somebody who is the Chief Information Officer at a Health Organization, so let’s talk a little bit about where you came from. I understand you worked in a defense company, and you know how that’s influenced your view of technology in healthcare.

Yeah that’s correct, I’m a computer engineer by trade, I so worked at various Imaging medical and both commercial companies, and actually also defense so that brings a different perspective and I felt like medical was lacking that development or that technology focus, and that’s kind of where I decided to move forward with.

Okay so how do you feel like that’s going now? Well I mean I was a bit surprised at how behind in technology it was, but as we all know the pandemic actually expedited technology quite rapidly to the point that we were deploying things, at lib at that point because, we just needed to feel like we had to catch up quickly. So it’s a bit about that experience, from like the Chief Information officer point of view.

You’re throwing out technology I mean typically you guys are safe, steadfast, steady, when it comes to implementation and testing things so they don’t fail. You don’t have time for that in Covid. So how did that go for you? Well it didn’t, I mean we we failed on a lot of projects just because we were rolling them out, we do serve a particular demographic, as you mentioned being a Federally Qualified Health Center, so you know just getting them on board with technology sometimes is difficult, so we tried to sort of pivot as needed when we saw that. The technology we were rolling out wasn’t working out for them. Let’s dig into that because I think this is a great example of patient experience, and I know there’s a lot of questions about engaging an audience that is traditionally underserved. They may have cultural differences, socioeconomic differences, that are maybe are not catered to.

So talk a little bit about the engagement issues. What can we learn from the engagement issues you did have rolling out this new technology? What were some of the issues? Were they the things that we typically think they are, or what kind of surprised you?

The issues primarily is that they seem to be very text based. They like to receive information asynchronously, and they assume that all the information we’re giving out to them, is already at our disposal. So they don’t actually care whether or not it’s private or secure, they just want to be able to get that information to them and so we we’re trying to figure out where to draw the ‘Fine Line’ regarding their privacy concerns. Also regulations as far as sharing information, but what our patients really want is their information – regardless of how they get it.

All right, so how are you solving for that right now? Give us some insight. You’re doing to do that because I mean like you just said it is a delicate balance like you want to meet these patients where they’re at and they’re demanding. But at the same time, you’ve got to adhere to regulations. You’ve got to make sure that if they’re not going to worry about the privacy and security of the environment of where their conversations are taking place with clinicians, you’ve got to worry about it. So how are you thinking about this? Like, let us in on some of the strategy? Well, I mean, when we are looking at vendors, we’re looking at vendors that actually allow us to sort of have some level of protection I guess, whether it’s, you know, two factor authentication or, or something that allows them to at least validate that they it is them on their end. These patients typically have multi generational families as far as that’s concerned. So they deal with lots of individuals in single family. And so it’s making sure that the technology or at least the information we’re sending here, is directed to the particular person we want because we don’t want to inadvertently you know, send some information and someone look at it and be surprised or shocked. No, that’s okay. that’s an excellent point. So it’s a you’ve got multiple people you know, getting text messages like kind of like a proxy right, but you want to make sure that they know specifically which patient is. You been talked about in those messages, that’s correct. Okay, so no that’s really interesting, you know, and I’m curious, I love this idea of this asynchronous, you know, contact, say a little bit more about that, you know, I mean, how important is, you know, being able to communicate asynchronously? With that particular demographic that you guys serve, I mean, say a little bit about that. I mean, what have you learned about their lives like in terms of, you know, when it’s convenient to receive, you know, care or when it’s convenient for them to talk about it, right? I mean, these are patients that we serve typically have, you know, multiple jobs, and so they can’t sit around waiting for someone to pick up on our end. So, actually, being able to text us and being able to schedule an appointment or just ask a question asynchronously actually helps them because you know, they’re running around you know, between jobs, and so the only time they might have is when they’re traveling to one job another. And then for not answering their phone call, you know, how do they get ahold of us? So texting actually becomes sort of the the primary mode of communication between us and the patient. And you guys actually implemented a call to text program is that right? That’s correct. With Artera we actually implemented and the ability for us to actually transfer the call from our call center to our texting platform seamlessly. Oh, that’s awesome that is really cool, because they mean that that gives them an option then right to know that somebody’s going to be getting in touch with them. All right, let’s talk about the future. All right, let’s talk about what’s next. So everyone is talking about generative AI, everyone is talking all these things. We started this conversation off, talking about your background and how you felt like tech was way behind in the medical and healthcare industry. Where do you feel like you knows something like that, like generative AI is gonna is that is it realistic to think that this is something that’s going to be integrated soon? You guys are doing a lot with tech. Right now it looks it tends to be remote patient monitoring right we want to close those care gaps. And the only way we could do it is to involve them somehow. Though AI is actually sort of a portion of this, because what we’re looking for is, you know, a platform that’s able to communicate, be more personable, you know, not just robotic. so if we have, you know, technology out there that would help us sort of get to that point, I think we would engage our patients more we’d be able to you know, meet those measures for better quality. All right, I have one last question for you. So I have a big audience of healthcare. There are tech startups out there who I’m sure pitch you all the time on things. You know, what can they say to you that would actually really make your life easier in terms of getting to a yes to implement their solution, especially with the type of population that you serve. For me, actually. Given the fact that, you know, integration to our entire technical software stack is important, I would say, having an application interface, basically a way for us to sort of talk seamlessly. There are a lot of vendors out there that are very good at what they do, but there’s not a single vendor that can do everything for you. So we’re just looking for integration, you know, the better, the better. They are to integrate or at least have the flexibility of being able to integrate to other systems. That’s key for us. That you guys can quarterback the whole thing. That’s correct. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for stopping by giving me your insight. I mean, it’s really interesting to hear a chief information officer from FQHC. See, it talks to me about what’s going on in technology. I really think that’s interesting in terms of the patient experience. so thank you so much. ​​All right. Well, I’m Jessica DeMoss. And to catch more interviews with the who’s who of health tech and healthcare innovation they’re changing the way that we do health care