From Burden to Bandwidth: Reducing Administrative Work in Healthcare
Download MP3Well, hi, everyone. I'm Daniel Williams, senior editor at MGMA and host of the MGMA Insights Podcast. We're really excited about this particular episode. We've got one of our closing keynote speakers with us today for the MGMA Annual Conference. Our guest today is Ranga Bodla.
Daniel Williams:He is vice president of field and industry marketing at Oracle NetSuite. Now a reminder about the conference. It is September 27 through the thirtieth this year, and it's gonna be in San Antonio. And we're celebrating MGMA's one hundredth anniversary, so we are super excited about that. Ronga will be speaking Tuesday, September 29 from 3PM to 04:30PM Central Time.
Daniel Williams:That is part of the package. He may not speak the whole hour and a half. I don't want to get him excited here as we go live here in a minute, but his speech will be within that time frame, and we are so excited for that. You can go ahead and mark those calendars Tuesday, September 29. Without further ado, Ronga, I just want to welcome you to the podcast.
Ranga Bodla:Thank you, Daniel, for having me on the podcast, and I'm excited to be coming to San Antonio for this conference. Actually went to college down in San Antonio, so it's a very familiar town to me, and always enjoy spending time in Texas, and then in particular, San Antonio is one of my favorite places when it comes to Texas.
Daniel Williams:That is so cool. I was looking you up, and I didn't even look where you went to college, so I didn't realize that was sort of a second home to you in a way, so that is really cool. We're going to get more information about the session in a moment, and we'll talk a little bit about your co presenter as well, but I just wanted you to give us a little bit of background. When I was looking up your background, you've got twenty years in the software world across product and go to market objectives there. When you look at healthcare right now, what jumps out to you about what the leaders are dealing with?
Ranga Bodla:Yeah, I've gotten, you know, I've had the pleasure, Daniel, of getting to work across a lot of different industries in my role within NetSuite, but also in other roles. I've gotten across a number of different industries. Healthcare is a fascinating industry, and I think it's one of the industries that we're seeing tremendous growth in. We're seeing, there's just huge amounts of opportunity in that space. When I talk to healthcare leaders right now, they're under tremendous pressure.
Ranga Bodla:They're trying to improve patient care. All of us wanna be healthier, but they've also got the workforce shortages. There's rising costs. There's increasing administrative complexity, and what we hear consistently is that clinicians and staff are overwhelmed by clicks, by information that's fragmented, the need to move between multiple systems, honestly, just to do their job. And so, when we think about technology, when I hear from them, what I hear is they want technology that simplifies their work, reduces that administrative burden, and ultimately gives them time back so they can spend it with patients instead of with systems.
Ranga Bodla:Every doctor I know, every nurse I know, every, when I talk to people in the healthcare space, they don't wanna spend time with computers. They wanna spend time with their patients, and that's what, when you look at where a lot of healthcare systems are, organizations are today, there's a lot of disconnect in the operational and financial systems, and they really just want that real time view of the business, and that depends on openness, and we, within Oracle and Oracle NetSuite, we have a unique advantage, because our database provides a lot of that data. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure provides that secure, scalable foundation, and then that common technology foundation connects Oracle Health, NetSuite, which is where I'm from, and then all of our enterprise application, to really focus on how do you ensure that artificial intelligence has the data, the context, and the workflows needed to deliver that meaningful value, and I think that's what I'm really excited about, because we're at that opportunity now where there's the nexus of all those elements together.
Daniel Williams:That is just the topic right now. Everybody I talk to in healthcare, everybody, it doesn't matter if they're a physician, a practice administrator, a nurse, they're talking about that intersection of technology and the administrative burden that the current situation is causing everyone. I love that you brought up that the impact, unfortunately, is with the patients. It is limiting the time that clinicians and administrators can spend that really valuable time with patients. Instead, they're having that administrative overload.
Daniel Williams:So we are thrilled that you are going to be one of two closing keynote speakers at our annual conference. Your co presenter is Seema Verma, might be a name familiar to many of our MGMA listeners. Seema leads Oracle Health and Life Sciences. The session that y'all are going to be presenting on is called From Burden to Bandwidth. Talk about that relationship.
Daniel Williams:I mean, how did y'all decide on that y'all were going to be the speakers, and on this particular topic, and what are you gonna be digging into there?
Ranga Bodla:We talk about healthcare organizations today. They're under pressure to do more with less, and they have to navigate doing more with less while navigating all the elements I just talked about, workforce challenges, cost, etcetera. So, Seema and I are coming at those challenges from very different perspectives. I couldn't be more excited to be speaking with her. She is like, I mean, she's here, I'm here.
Ranga Bodla:It's a different bar, to be clear. So I'm super excited to be sharing the stage with her, but we're coming from very different perspectives, but we're ultimately coming to the same goal. How do we reduce the burden across the healthcare enterprise? Because that burden is what prevents those healthcare professionals from being focused on patient care and delivering to what they care about. And so, Seema, she's gonna focus on clinical experience, excuse me, and how technology can improve care delivery.
Ranga Bodla:For my side, I'm gonna really focus on the operational side of the business, how the connected systems and AI can simplify the work across finance, HR, supply chain, operations. And then together, we're really gonna explore how, if we can reduce administrative complexity, it ultimately will help create more capacity and allow clinicians and staff to focus on the work that matters most, and that's really when we get into that notion of from burden to bandwidth.
Daniel Williams:Okay. I wanted to ask you about that. I love the alliteration, burden to bandwidth. What does that look like in practice? When we're talking bandwidth, is it freeing up time?
Daniel Williams:Is it that simple, or what are we doing here?
Ranga Bodla:Yeah, absolutely. It's about reducing that administrative burden that gets in the way of delivering care. Too many clinicians and staff are overwhelmed by these clicks and disconnected systems and manual processes, and AI has an opportunity to help simplify the work and automate some of those routine tasks, surface the right information, and frankly, reduce the need to move between multiple application. And technology becomes that natural extension of how people already work. One of the examples, and I'm excited about this example, but there's an MGMA customer, or sorry, an MGMA member, I guess it's customer and a member, but they're also a NetSuite customer, and it's the Norley Hospital District, which is a nonprofit community based healthcare system in New Mexico, And I love the quote that they have about what they've been able to do with NetSuite, and the quote they give specifically is, With NetSuite, their team can do twice the amount of work with less effort on their part.
Ranga Bodla:And that really right there speaks to what I want, which is ultimately that with these systems, with the technology, that they can do more work with less effort, because it can't just be Do more with less. There's only so much you can do, and so if they get more with less work, that's really about reducing burden and increasing bandwidth.
Daniel Williams:Where are you seeing AI really make an impact right now? We hear AI. I think, at this point, all of us are interacting with AI in one form or another daily, So where are you seeing it in those practices, in those health systems make a difference?
Ranga Bodla:Probably the biggest thing is there's a lot of repetitive work, and that slows organizations down, and so we're seeing finance teams, they're using AI to automate reconciliations, to streamline the reporting, improve some of the forecasting, and also, frankly, to surface some of those exceptions so that they don't have to spend hours searching through reports. In healthcare, Oracle Health, they're using AI to reduce documentation and administrative work, so the clinicians themselves can actually spend more time with patients. So for us, we look at it and say, Whether it's finance, operations, or the exam room, the common thread is the same. How can AI help people spend less time managing process and more time making decisions, which ultimately benefits patients? Yeah.
Daniel Williams:Every time there's a new platform at MGMA, and I'm guessing with lots of other organizations as well, the people go, Oh my gosh, I have to learn one more thing, even though it could be something that's just incredibly valuable, how do you integrate AI, an AI platform or system, without getting that just, Not one more. I can't do one more thing. How do you get that buy in, then where does it go from there?
Ranga Bodla:That's a really fantastic comment, Daniel, because I think this really is an important comment. People don't want yet another application to manage. It's like us on our phones. It's like, Oh, great. I gotta download another app.
Ranga Bodla:Right. The best AI is embedded directly into the applications and the workflows that people already use every day. If AI works properly, it should feel like a natural extension of how you're already working. It allows you to get to your end goal faster, easier, and frankly, that's one of our strengths. That's really where we look at AI, we're thinking about how do we embed it across Oracle Health, how are we embedding it in NetSuite, all the enterprise applications so that it's layered onto these disconnected, rather than layering onto disconnected systems, we wanna embed it in there, because those applications will share that connected technology foundation, and AI will then have the context to automate the work, surface those insights, and ultimately to help people make better decisions.
Ranga Bodla:So that's really, I think that's what we're most excited about, is how do we get it into the workflows that people are already doing rather than, Oh, great, yet another thing.
Daniel Williams:What are you hearing then from leaders who continue to basically just put their foot down, and then they are a bit hesitant, or there is something that's just holding them back? What can you share with them? What can you help them understand to get them to that place of acceptance? This is going to make all your teams connected, you more connected with patients, etcetera. How do you get that point across?
Ranga Bodla:Well, I don't wanna give away too much for our conversation at MGM, but I do think it comes down to real life examples, where people actually deriving value. We're seeing this with Oracle Health, where there's a huge amount of potential around documentation. We've heard consistently from clinicians that documentation and administrative work in navigating those multiple systems takes time away from patient care. So that's an example where the Oracle Health Clinical AI agent is embedded directly into the clinician's workflow, so they can use that ambient listening and AI to help automate documentation, relevant clinician information. But again, where we're really leaning into, we're trying to derive how we can build it into the workflow rather than becoming yet another thing.
Ranga Bodla:We wanna take AI and fit it naturally into existing workflows, and then reduce the administrative burden rather than adding to it.
Daniel Williams:Okay. Now, I completely understand you not wanting to give too much away for the keynote talk, so what you can do, you are a San Antonio insider that I just learned about a few minutes ago. What can you share with our listeners? We're gonna have a couple of thousand people there in San Antonio. Where should they go?
Daniel Williams:What should they partake in while they're in that wonderful city?
Ranga Bodla:I mean, the thing about San Antonio, and most people don't necessarily realize that till they actually go to San Antonio, but San Antonio is probably one of the biggest small towns in America. It's over a million people, But when you go to San Antonio, you don't feel like, you're like, Wait a second. This is like one of the largest cities in the country. There's so much to do between going to the Alamo, going downtown and going to the Riverwalk, the markets, the downtown, are fantastic, and of course, you can't beat the food. I mean, so much good food in San Antonio, so many great places to go.
Ranga Bodla:So all of those are things I will be taking advantage of. I'm gonna see some old friends. I'm gonna definitely take advantage of everything that San Antonio has to offer, but it's a really fun city. You get to do a lot there. There's a lot of places, there's a lot of fun things to go see.
Ranga Bodla:So I highly encourage you to try that. And one that was getting built when I was in college, but now is like a big thing, the The quarry is this like, they took a quarry, and they built in this fantastic set of shopping and food and everything, and it used to be a rock quarry. Was a waste of space, and now it's amazing, so.
Daniel Williams:We're so excited about it. Well, Ranga, I just wanna thank you for giving us the time today, and I cannot wait to meet you there in San Antonio and hear your talk with SEMA.
Ranga Bodla:I'm excited to be there. I encourage you, if you're there, we're looking forward to having you there, to hosting NetSuite and MGMA. It's a great partnership, and we could not be more excited to be there.
Daniel Williams:All right. So everybody listening, I wanna get this information right for you. The MGMA Annual Conference, September twenty seventh through the thirtieth in San Antonio. Ronga's gonna be speaking along with SEMA on Tuesday, September 29. They're gonna be part of a program at three to 04:30PM central time.
Daniel Williams:So until then, cannot wait to meet y'all there. And thank you all for being MGMA Podcast listeners.
