Business Solutions: Smooth Operations and Smoother Care
Download MP3Well, hi, everyone. Welcome to the MGMA Business Solutions Podcast. I'm Daniel Williams, senior editor at MGMA. And today, we're discussing a really interesting topic. I wanna get to the bottom of smoother operations and smoother care.
Daniel Williams:So to elaborate on that topic, joining us today are two people from NetSuite. We've got Kate Daniels, senior director of franchises, associations, and buying groups. I wanna ask Kate what that is exactly. And we've got Hiram Gray, solution consulting manager also at NetSuite. So, Kate, Hiram, welcome to the show.
Hyrum Gray:Thank you.
Kate Daniels:Thank you. Lovely to be here.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. It's great having y'all. So we talked about this offline. Kate, I'm gonna start with you. Both of y'all have very interesting backgrounds.
Daniel Williams:But for the sake of focusing on the topic, we'll limit some of the background, but I would love to hear this. So, Kate, let's begin with you. Just tell us a little bit about your health care journey, what got you to NetSuite, and anything else you might wanna share.
Kate Daniels:Sure. Lovely. Yeah. Today, I lead a program at Oracle NetSuite Suite called FAB, and that stands for franchises, associations, and buying groups. And it's predicated on the notion that we trust our friends and our peers and our colleagues far more readily than we do strangers.
Kate Daniels:I think that's kind of a human thing. But I started my career twenty years ago in 2005 in a rural health center in South Africa. So while much of what I say today will be sort of driven by and informed by my early exposure to health care and to a dearth of of medical systems and back end systems to support health care delivery. I'll certainly lean on Hiram for more of the the technical backing.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. Perfect. And that's one of the things when, you know, we go to LinkedIn now and learn about people and going, Wow, Kate has this amazing background in South Africa and all these other things she's been doing, but thank you for sharing that. Hyrum, wanted to hear from you as well. Tell us a little bit about your background and what brought you here.
Hyrum Gray:Yeah, my background started out in corporate accounting. I graduated in accounting and then went into the corporate accounting field, and I worked in that for quite a few years. And then after that, I actually left the accounting world and went into the entrepreneurship world, I ran an e commerce business with my wife for five years. And that was incredibly fun seeing all different facets of business, and then we sold that business, and then I came here to NetSuite back in 2020. And when I came here to NetSuite, the healthcare industry was really in high demand, especially for NetSuite, as it has remained to this day.
Hyrum Gray:And so I started out in healthcare when I came here to NetSuite, focused on that industry, and been in that ever since. So very happy to be Yeah.
Daniel Williams:And so I want to give a little background for our audience to, I mean, Oracle obviously is one of the biggest companies in the world, but Oracle NetSuite, Let's talk about that, Kate. I'll start with you. Just tell us a little bit about how that Oracle NetSuite interacts or helps medical practices and the work that they do.
Kate Daniels:Yeah. Well, NetSuite has long time for quite a long time been the preferred cloud based enterprise resource planning or ERP solution for the health care industry. This is because we marry quite nicely with health record systems. We can ensure HIPAA compliance and HIPAA adherence, which is critical to anybody kind of controlling the continuum of care. But, you know, one of the reasons we're here is we have a strong relationship with the Medical Group Management Association.
Kate Daniels:And since fomenting that relationship about a year and a half ago, they have quickly risen to be one of the largest and most notable relationships we have under this association's program, and that's driven by the members. Members are adopting NetSuite en masse because NetSuite's the way to scale your health care operation. We're finding that members are maximizing the integrations that we offer with hundreds of different sort of gap filling SaaS products. And we find that, you know, members are delighted to have an option available to them that that kind of takes them out of the world of never ending spreadsheets and kind of analog, slow, cumbersome systems. So, yeah, this relationship has been one that's not only allowed us to kind of feature what we do for the healthcare industry, but to deepen our relationship with a community of highly self referential healthcare providers.
Daniel Williams:Okay. Thanks for that. Hyram, anything you wanna add to that discussion?
Hyrum Gray:Yeah. Mean, NetSuite, just like Kate said, it is a full business suite, and it really has a tremendous amount of different capabilities, but it can do so much more. And specifically in the healthcare space, historically, healthcare companies, they separate the operations and the accounting into two siloed different places. NetSuite can really join that. And so one thing that NetSuite really does well is it takes data from the EMR, the patient billing platform, and can bring it into NetSuite, and it can bring it in with so much rich data.
Hyrum Gray:One example of that is bringing revenue data, and you can bring it in in a segmented way into NetSuite. And when I say segmented, I mean that you can bring it in with which location it happened at, which department, which provider or physician, which pay type, which insurance carrier. On top of that, it can bring in inventory data, so what was used during the patient visit, what was used when it left the central supply warehouse. On top of that, it can bring in statistical information. So how many patient visits happened, how many referrals, how many child versus adult visits.
Hyrum Gray:So just a lot of rich data that nets we can marry between the operations and the finance side.
Daniel Williams:Okay, thank you. Kate, I'll turn back to you. So one of the things we want to get to the bottom of is really marrying these medical practice with the technology that's available to them. When I was doing research and looked at y'all's backgrounds, one of the things I saw that manual processes like budgeting and reporting are still common in healthcare. I know.
Daniel Williams:Your eyes and your reactions show everything here. So let's talk about the outdated methods that may be there, how they create barriers, and how we can bring those practices to utilize the tools that are available to them out there.
Kate Daniels:Yeah. Well, I will draw a bit on some of my early experience, which is why my eyes lit up in such a way. I mean, you know, when I first started my career, which was back in 02/2005, I went to work for a a privately held but PEPFAR funded clinic. So PEPFAR was the president's emergency plan for AIDS relief initiated by George w Bush, and this was to address, you know, serious HIV infection and tuberculosis infection largely in emerging and frontier economies. So working in a private clinic that was receiving all of this support around antiretrovirals was a really good way to expose oneself not only to global health care and public health care issues, but also to the the systems and support that that undergird all of that, service delivery.
Kate Daniels:And I was shocked being a person originally from Northern California whose mother was a certified Microsoft trainer. Mhmm. So it was it was imparted on me early how important it is to be conversant with Excel and Access and other types of of systems like that, but I was shocked by the dearth of strong back end systems in this clinical setting. In fact, you know, managing a a pretty large rollout of ARVs at the time, this was, again, back in 02/2005, we were managing that on a massive Excel spreadsheet. Wow.
Kate Daniels:Which today, I mean, you know, I think we can all agree that would be irresponsible and perhaps a bit risky way to manage confidential patient information. Mhmm. And I don't think any of us would dream of it. But, you know, I think that the origin stories for a lot of the ways we think about data and patient care today matter. So I think the extent to which you want to protect and steward patient information and the the patient continuing of care is inextricably linked to your the systems and the tools you have to back up those those processes.
Daniel Williams:Okay.
Kate Daniels:So, yeah, I'll I'll hand it to Hiram to talk a little bit about exactly how NetSuite integrates with some of the systems we see most commonly, but I think the two are the continuum of care and the systems you use to administer that care are are cannot be divorced from one another.
Daniel Williams:Right, right. Thank you for sharing that. So, Hyrum, I'll tweak it just a little bit. So when you're looking at the medical practices, what are some of the measurables? What are some of the KPIs that you're looking at to see how a medical practice's back office systems are holding them back?
Hyrum Gray:Yeah, so medical practices, clinics, hospitals, FQHCs, they really want to be able to plan and forecast based off of headcount, based off how many visits they're getting, based off of the inventory that they need to have on hand. And all these different systems are often siloed. And so NetSuite can really bring that into one unified system, particularly with planning, budgeting, forecasting. And if you know that you need to start hiring more people, well, are you gonna plan for that? How are you gonna budget that?
Hyrum Gray:NetSuite has a tool called NetSuite Planning and Budgeting. Every company out there, every organization, planning, budgeting is important to them. With MGMA, I know that they work a lot with nonprofit healthcare organizations. Nonprofits, they're typically federally funded or funded by the state, and they need to manage their funds extremely well with a lot of care and a lot of thought in that, and NetSuite can streamline that process, getting the data from one side to the other in real time and allowing them to have that visibility across it.
Daniel Williams:Okay. Thanks for that. Kate, I want to talk about automation and using a unified platform, because a lot of times, and I know I am guilty of this right now, I've got some platforms I do some of my work on, and then I'm over here, and then I'm over there, and I know that there are some that can integrate. But let's talk about using that unified platform, how it can help workflows, reduce bottlenecks, really make things work the most efficiently.
Kate Daniels:Yeah. I think you're best positioned asking Hiram that question. Honestly, you know, I think Hiram can speak to some of our specific integrations for healthcare, as well as the workflows we've seen most successful for some of our healthcare customers.
Hyrum Gray:Yeah, mean streamlining processes and having things in real time and automating your processes is key. I'll give you one example. I recently worked with an organization, they had four different teams doing the procure to pay process. The procure to pay process is how do you request supplies, how do you buy those supplies, how do you put them into inventory, and how do you pay for those supplies? This organization had four different teams doing that on four different systems.
Hyrum Gray:A lot of it was just manual. So for example, the people that needed the materials, the supplies, they were emailing, they were handwriting, they were calling the purchasing team saying, We need these supplies. The purchasing team would get that, and then they would make the order, the order would arrive at the warehouse, the inventory team would receive that into inventory, they would get the bill of lading, they would scan that in, send it over to the accounts payable team, the fourth team in this process, and they would pay the bill. These were all siloed, they couldn't view what the other team was doing. NetSuite, that is standard functionality.
Hyrum Gray:You can automate that process. You can have somebody electronically going in, making a request for supplies, they can electronically receive those supplies, you can have an approval process around it. So it really makes everyone in the organization more efficient, and this drives to better care in the end.
Daniel Williams:Yeah, I really appreciate that. So I'm gonna shift gears just a little bit, Kate, and ask you a question about change management. So full disclosure, MGMA, we're coming up on our one hundredth anniversary or our one hundredth year. It'll be in 2026, so we're really excited about that. But to do that, we're going through some change management.
Daniel Williams:And as you know, there can be friction, there can be resistance, there can be like just like what's going on. So when we talk about change management, what strategies can help ensure or at least help grease the wheel, so to speak, that staff buys into it? Because we get really comfortable in what we're doing, and then even though this might be better, this change, it's still change, and so it's uncomfortable initially.
Kate Daniels:Oh, yeah. I mean, this is, I think, the most important component of any digital transformation journey that any health center, health clinic, hospital will undertake. I think sometimes and and it's led by people in our position. We we lead with the technology Mhmm. As if the technology is going to solve all your problems, and it won't.
Kate Daniels:I our technology is great as is many other pieces that we work with, but I think the the key is if you lead with the tech, you'll get the most important components wrong, which is the people and the processes. So any change management journey begins with ensuring you've got the right people on board, and you've got the right people bought in to the change you're initiating. People have to feel like this thing that will be shifting is going to improve their jobs, the output of what they're doing, and potentially their impact. At the end of the day, we all wanna feel like we are impactful in our work. We wanna feel like we're making a difference and that we are being as efficient and as as strong a steward of resources as possible.
Kate Daniels:And so ensuring that you're gathering and generating buy in and momentum from the people who will be affected is the first step. And then you have to design and put in place the processes that will support those people. Only then in a tertiary fashion do you talk about the technology. It it should be the last part of an otherwise pretty broad and thoughtful change management process. And I think when we do talk to customers who stumbled during their implementation or whose expectations were not managed carefully, it's generally around these issues, didn't have the right people bought in from the beginning, or we didn't have the right processes to support the the wide scale adoption of this new technology.
Kate Daniels:So I think if we are driven by this kind of people process then technology in that order
Daniel Williams:Mhmm.
Kate Daniels:Mindset, we will position our our customers to succeed.
Daniel Williams:Hiram, I'll turn it to you, and maybe we take a step even deeper if you wanna give an example or what it looks like in health care, but we're talking about almost a math equation. People, processes, technology, success at the end of that. But walk us through that. What's going on, and where are those friction points? How do we get around those?
Hyrum Gray:Yeah, so when you are trying to implement new software, new technology inside of your clinic, your practice, I think there are two main things that can really help organizations, and two things that maybe they do incorrectly when they're trying to change. One is the implementation process. A lot of people are so anxious, they're so excited to get onto a new system that they rush that implementation process. I think that they need to slow down, take it easy, take the time to really implement the software, and do it right the first time, that will be the foundation. Hopefully, it's the foundation that lasts a decade plus that you're using that software, so don't rush that process.
Hyrum Gray:The second thing that I would say that they need to do is adoption management. So getting their team to buy in to this new software. And the great thing about NetSuite is that can start immediately during the implementation, so before you go live. You don't want people learning the software when it's live. You want them to learn the software before you're fully implemented.
Hyrum Gray:You want them to be practicing, training, getting comfortable and familiar inside of that system. So the two things, don't rush the implementation and get your people practicing and learning it immediately before it goes live.
Daniel Williams:Okay. So I'll give you all kind of a blank canvas then for a final question. Hyram, I'll stay with you, and then we'll go to Kate for this. You kind of gave a really good piece of advice for healthcare leaders knowing, you know, when they need to modernize their operations but aren't really sure where to start. So you can continue in that mode, or if there's something else you'd want to share with these MGMA healthcare leaders, they're looking at technology, they see a lot of options out there, they see the challenges they have.
Daniel Williams:Where do they start? What's something that they can look into where they can get some wins and they can move forward with their organization?
Hyrum Gray:Yeah, so the first thing that I would tell them to do is to go down to the operations people, the people that are actually performing the transactions inside of their current system today. Ask them what their bottlenecks, what their challenges are. Oftentimes, leaders, they can maybe feel like we're going to save money by staying on this outdated, very cheap, inexpensive system. So one recommendation is go talk to your people, see what challenges they're having, and then make the jump to a new system. The new system is, of course, probably going to be more expensive upfront, but in the long run, it's going to really save them money.
Hyrum Gray:There's a great quote by Abraham Lincoln about chopping down a tree. He says, If you give me six hours to chop down a tree, I'll spend the first four hours sharpening the axe. So you're not going to save time by using a dull axe. Spend the money, get the sharp axe, and it's going to pay off in the long run.
Daniel Williams:Love that. Kate, I'll give you the same question, and you can take it in whatever direction you want, but we've got these medical practice leaders, they have a lot of complex challenges technologically, staffing wise, everything else they're dealing with. So where would you advise them to really begin? What are those first steps they need to do to really, if they want to, they know they need to modernize their practice, but are kind of that paralysis by analysis just stuck there right now?
Kate Daniels:I'd love to kind of highlight and piggyback off of Hyrum's idea. I really appreciate you starting with that, Hyrum, because I think so often big decisions, especially expensive ERP transitions, are made in rooms that don't involve the people who are everyday implementers or or patient facing. And I think asking those questions of the people who are patient facing and who are going to be most directed directly affected by changes is a great place to start. Right? Get buy in.
Kate Daniels:Again, ask all of the the the the ranks and the the levels of people most affected by these changes. The other thing I think is important is, you know, your community of health care providers and practitioners is a really rich resource of recommendations and ideas. A lot of the MGMA members have been exposing themselves to NetSuite as well as other systems and made the choice to adopt NetSuite. And they're now going through implementation. They're going live.
Kate Daniels:And they they are a rich repository of experiential information, words to the wise, tips and tricks, things they wish they'd asked earlier on, things they wish they'd done earlier on. So I think ask your community, lean on the leaders also of MGMA who have been, for us, incredible partners, not only in the conversation around digital transformation, but in the broader conversation around how to serve their members well. So I know they have a vested interest in ensuring there's good connections made between members and that the information shared is of true value. So, yeah, start with the the folks who are most directly affected and and are faced with patients every day, and lean on your community of peers and colleagues.
Daniel Williams:Alright. Well, Kate, Hyrum, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate y'all being here, and I should have mentioned it previously, but they're in studio with us here. So it's great to have you all in here.
Hyrum Gray:Yeah. It's great to be here. It's been a pleasure.
Kate Daniels:It's delightful to finally have the three d experience, I find. So much of our lives are, you know, Hollywood squares on a screen, and there's nothing quite like being in person. So
Daniel Williams:thank you. Yeah. We we all live in the, Greater Denver area, but came from all all parts of it to get here today. It was really neat meeting up with y'all. So with that said, everybody, that's gonna do it for this episode of the MGMA Business Solutions Podcast.
Daniel Williams:I do wanna say if you've got questions, thoughts, wanna do more research on what Hiram and Kate were talking about today, go over to netsuite.com. I'm gonna provide a direct link in the episode show notes so you can find exactly what you need there. So until then, thank you all for being MGMA podcast listeners.
