A Year Later: Revisiting Ochsner Health's Award-Winning Patient Access Innovation with Sean Nguyen
Download MP3Well, hi, everyone. I'm Daniel Williams, senior editor at MGMA and host of the MGMA Podcast Network. We're back with another episode, and we are back with a repeat guest. We're joined today by Sean Nguyen of Ochsner Health. And you may remember Sean from last year.
Daniel Williams:He was our Hardwick Innovation Award winner, and he put into place some really cool things at Ochsner. And we're checking back to see, kinda measure things, look back at things, see how things are going. Also wanted to say Sean's gonna be sharing more at MGMA's annual conference. The annual conference is September twenty seventh through the thirtieth in San Antonio. Sean's session, Blowing Up the reinventing access and redesigning care.
Daniel Williams:He's gonna be speaking Tuesday, September 29, 01:30 central time. So I'll share that information again in our episode show notes. But now let's bring Sean onto the show. Sean, good to see you again.
Sean Nyugen:Nice seeing you too, Daniel.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. We, had a chance to chat earlier this week just to kinda coordinate everything we're gonna be talking about because we've got so much to chat about. That Harwick Innovation Award, let's look back how things play out since we talked a year ago.
Sean Nyugen:Yeah. Things have played out extremely well. First off, thank you so much for having me come back. I you would've been bored seeing me. No.
Sean Nyugen:That podcast probably only got maybe two hits, but hey, happy to always come back and support any way I can. Got it. The award, we've gotten about a year and a half, close to two years, under our belt with the SpineCare initiative that we've done, and it's been going extremely well. We're getting patients in in a very timely fashion. We've gotten more data in as it relates to patient satisfaction and our Net Promoter Score as well, and clinicians are very happy that things seems to be going extremely smooth.
Sean Nyugen:Now we're always looking forward in terms of how do we increase our quality scores and really get patients through our process and through our health system as best as we can. So it's been going well. The session this year, you kind of alluded to our conference in San Antonio coming up, we're not only bringing that framework to our session, but applying our framework into other areas, and so you've kind of talked about that. I'm excited about applying this framework into other areas and other disease states or other areas of healthcare as well.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. So let's set the stage for people who didn't hear last year's episode. What was the innovation? What'd you put into place? Now you're in that measuring phase.
Daniel Williams:You're seeing how it's working. But what was the innovation?
Sean Nyugen:The idea was that in large health systems, integrated health cares, there's so many different doors that patients enter as it relates to back pain or spine care related issues. When we think of back pain, some people might think physical therapy, some people might think pain management, some people might think automatically like surgical options, and so there's multiple ways to enter large health systems or different specialists that really treat for back pain, and so we wanted to come back to patients or come back to the drawing board to figure out for our patients how do we coordinate this care? How do we collaborate to make it so seamless for our patients that regardless of how you enter into a large health system or how you get to care, you're getting timely care, appropriate care, no matter where you're entering within the system, and so that was the premise of how we approach spine care for right care, right place, right time, but then I think when we took it a step further, how can we apply that to many disease states like hypertension, like diabetes, like sickle cell anemia as well? And so, yeah, it's been great.
Sean Nyugen:That framework, again, when we last spoke about this, was very much in the infancy of its implementation, but even then we were seeing positive results as well.
Daniel Williams:Okay. A year or so, a year even more into it, what has surprised you? What has gotten you excited that, Yeah, we did the right thing here? What's anything you want to share with us about the results?
Sean Nyugen:I think the biggest thing, outside of all the numbers of truly getting patients in and making sure that we're coordinating the care appropriately, what I love most is seeing how collaborative all of our clinicians are. Oftentimes in such large health systems or even private practice groups, we tend to stick to our own specialty or our own focus areas, but to be able to truly collaborate, to see the messaging that goes back and forth, to see the conversations, the organic conversations build from these types of collaborations is phenomenal. I love how much our Advanced Spine Care team has really collaborated with our physical therapists, our interventional pain teams, our physical medicine rehab teams as well, to just be able to seamlessly, regardless if they are ten minutes away from each other or hours away from each other, they really truly can just collaborate with one another, see an e consult to one another, or even just pick up the phone and talk to one another, and just be able to coordinate that care for that patient to make it so seamless. I think we've built an infrastructure to promote more connectivity and more support, especially in a day and age where we have more connection at each other's fingertips but less of that collaboration.
Sean Nyugen:It's strange to me, but to be able to build that now and to be able to implement that, I think that's my biggest takeaway, is how do we use technology in a very much more intentional way.
Daniel Williams:Okay. Well, a two part question One, what was the light bulb moment that went off for you to see the landscape where this could be potentially implemented? Why weren't health systems doing this previously?
Sean Nyugen:For me, the light bulb moment was, I don't know, when we were trying to figure out how to communicate it to large audiences or even different audiences, whether that was clinicians to patients from a patient education perspective to even our team members or an executive, through those avenues of trying to storyboard how to communicate this, I was thinking to myself, This really could be applied to a skin rash. Do you go to urgent care? Do you go to a dermatologist? Do you go back to your primary care? Do you go to an allergist?
Sean Nyugen:Who do you go to? Really, there's no wrong answer. All those different individuals, different clinicians, different providers are able to treat the exact same thing, and how do you coordinate that? How do you get the right care for those types of things? So through the storyboarding process of talking through those things, that was definitely my light bulb moment.
Sean Nyugen:We really could apply this framework into other areas as well. So that was probably the most exciting part for me, trying to see scale this into other areas.
Daniel Williams:Right. Has all the technological advancements that have been coming about, has that helped the case, or is it strictly having a process and a pathway of who's going to be talking to whom here? How much is it technology, and how much is it just better communication?
Sean Nyugen:I think it's fiftyfifty. I think there's so much advancements and innovations that's impacting healthcare and all other industries as well. We've seen a rise of AI agents and different technologies that are really coming into the market. You've asked previously, Why weren't we doing this before? I think some of it is just not understanding truly the advancements of the technology, not truly understanding the capacity or the potential of some of these technologies, but also just finding the right technology for the right thing as well, because there's so many, we can call them disruptors, into the market, into our healthcare market.
Sean Nyugen:We are trying to find the right thing or the right solutions for the right situations. It's not a magic bullet or it's not a simple solution that crosscuts so many different things, but oftentimes it's also partnering with these disruptors or these innovation companies that are able to solve some of the problems that we have. I think oftentimes we think of singular problems in a very siloed situation, but not looking at the bigger picture of how all of these can truly interconnect, and is that one company that solves that problem, or is that one solution that crosscuts multiple problems at the same time? Going back to the spine care problem that we applied and then the framework that we're trying to apply into other areas, I think what we're doing is networking with, in this case it was Epic, that built some of the platforms or decision trees that we're navigating, but we're also collaborating with other AI agents and other companies that can, again, maybe not fix the front door or pose solutions into the front door, but more so the back end about how do we support our clinicians to reduce administrative burdens and reduce some of the things that our day to day team members are working on as well, because it's hard whenever, again, we're trying to be very patient focused and still be able to do the work on the back end to be able to support patients that are sending messages, sending phone calls, calling us, and still needing that care outside of the day to day clinic work or hospital work as well.
Daniel Williams:Okay. Now let's go to your session at Annual Conference. I love titles that really grab you. Going to talk about titles more in a little bit, but Blowing Up the Reinventing Access and Redesigning Care, tell us about that. You've got some co presenters as well, correct?
Sean Nyugen:I do. None of this I ever did in a vacuum. None of this I ever could have done alone. I'm bringing my physician partner, Doctor. Gurgis, my colleague Rebecca Courtney, who's our vice president of therapy as well, and we're trying to bring others.
Sean Nyugen:We're trying to work through our schedules, but definitely I think of Todd Mule and Amy Schoff, who I could not have done any of this with, and our executive sponsor, Dawn Peavey, well, and so great colleagues and great forward thinking leaders within the healthcare industry, and so when I was thinking of creative ways of how to catch people's attention, and we're thinking of all the multi front doors of healthcare, of large health systems, whether it's private practice, whether it's rural health, there's so many front doors into healthcare, yes, some of those doors we absolutely need, but some of those doors are also antiquated or have not kept up with the times, and so again, it's an access point, but maybe we need to just update our doors to more of a sliding door or an automatic arm door that is ADA appropriate, and so let's just blow it up and figure it out. How do we do this again and do it right for our patients that are coming in through the front doors? Again, is it all those doors? There's so many ways into getting into healthcare and getting into the right care for our right patients as well, so I thought that was exciting.
Sean Nyugen:Again, you've heard from me multiple times on how we approach the work, but goodness, my colleagues are so amazing in the diverse schools of thoughts. To hear from them, it's gonna be super exciting and probably more of a treat to our audiences and our different colleagues across healthcare to hear from them than it is to hear from me. I think their perspectives are so unique, and again, could not have done any of this work without them.
Daniel Williams:What's something then that an attendee can expect to learn from that session? What are they going to hear y'all talk about, and what's a major takeaway they can walk out of there from?
Sean Nyugen:Even while before I received the award, while I was there last year receiving the award, everybody was asking, it was like, What did you talk about? What did you end up doing? I was like, Oh, refer to the podcast, was the first thing I said, and then the second thing, was just like, Yeah, absolutely can follow-up and go through it more, and I've had a lot of people reach out. It's like, Hey, is this proprietary information? I said, Absolutely not.
Sean Nyugen:Let's talk about it, and so what people can expect from the session is us kind of going through what we did, but then what were some of the theoretics behind it. So then after kind of going through our case study of what we did, taking the elements of what developed that framework, and then the last part of the session is going to be like, how can you apply this to your other areas, whether you're a large health system, whether you're a private practice, whether you're in a rural setting? How can you apply this framework into other case studies that are more relevant to yourself as well? I think that's super important to make it as cookie cutter as possible, but still it's like a gumbo. It's going to be uniquely different for each people and each practice, and so you can add your own flavors to it and make it worthwhile for yourself.
Daniel Williams:Okay. We were talking earlier Now this week, we were talking about technology. Let's talk about AI specifically. What is Ochsner doing? You were talking about doing different ways to access those front doors and looking at the different doors that are available for patient access, what role is AI playing in making this a reality for the patients at Ochsner?
Sean Nyugen:If we learn anything about patients, it's ever evolving. Things are constantly changing, and in a world that is so consumer driven where everything is instant, I know people that automatically, sure, it's probably quicker and easier to just get in your car, run to the corner store and pick something up, but I'm already on Amazon. I'll just wait two more days because it's gonna be delivered to my front door. In a world that's ever evolving and things are just at people's fingertips, I think some of the ways that Ochsner is applying AI or AI driven technologies and services into our call centers, into our access points, into our decision trees, I think of those areas where it's very patient driven or patient forward that AI is definitely supporting some of our work. On the back end of the house, things that support our teams, things that support our clinicians, We've definitely adopted ambient listening into other areas as well, where we can support less documentation for our clinicians and more of that face to face time with our clinicians and our patients to be able to just really focus on the patient.
Sean Nyugen:Then, again, through the documentation work, are we burdening our clinicians with just either making sure that they've crossed their Ts and dot our Is? It's less so a requirement on us, as it is a requirement from our payers, our insurance partners as well, making sure that we have every single document and every single note appropriately done, and so partnering with AI team members that review payer policies and making sure that those previous service requirements are all in the patient's notes and the patient's charts to make sure that they're getting authorization and things are areas that we're applying AI agents into as well. Again, finding the right partner into those things to make sure that the patient's information, first and foremost, remains safe and safeguarded, making sure that we're doing things intentionally, and making sure that we're being smart with our time and our resources as well. People that truly we can partner with, and it's just not another bot at the end of the day to create more chaos into the work that we do.
Daniel Williams:What's a favorite AI platform or tool that you use on a day to day basis, and what are you Ochsner using it
Sean Nyugen:just approved recently for all of our leaders and our team members on a co pilot, again, wanting to make sure that we are safeguarding our information as best as we can, and so we had to choose a partner that will seize the same importance of safeguarding information, and so recently we've gone live with Copilot for our teams, and although personally I use ChatGPT, Claude, OpenAI, all these other areas, to be able to use Copilot within my day to day work that scans, reviews my emails, has all my notes are in OneNote already, and we're utilizing Teams and transcription services, and so when I talk to Copilot the way to work or in between meetings, like, Hey, and I'm getting older, mind you, you might not see it, but I dye my hair because I'm not keeping up with all the grays. I don't remember everything, and oftentimes we're pivoting between meetings so quickly that, Okay, copilot, remind me what are the top three things that I need to discuss with Doctor. So and so or with the executive leader, or, Hey, can you pull all my notes from this particular project and summarize for me what are the top three takeaways from that meeting, and to be able to prepare for this meeting, Hey, I'm walking into a big presentation and can you storyboard with me what are the key takeaways and the conversation points that we need to hone in on?
Sean Nyugen:Copilot, it's actually only been a few months now. I promise you, I'm using Copilot every single day, if not multiple times a day, either reviewing my emails, looking at even how my tone is, my tone to certain emails, to certain audience members as well, and so for me, I want to remain collaborative and light, not adding some humor into my emails as well, and Co Pilot validates whether or not that's still happening. Of course, I can reach out to those audience members and get that feedback as well, but Co Pilot validates some of that as well.
Daniel Williams:Okay. When I'm reading one of your witty emails you send to me, is it you or is it Co pilot? Is it co pilot? Not me. I thought
Sean Nyugen:it was you. It's still me. You'll know if it's not me, I think. I think you'll know when those grammatical errors are no longer there, then it's definitely co pilot. That's My grammatical errors and my 's are definitely still in there, or my LOL definitely That's it.
Sean Nyugen:Is
Daniel Williams:helping Oh, that's good. So let's shift gears a little bit. We'll stay with the annual conference, but you had some really interesting news you shared with me earlier this week that I wasn't aware of. MGMA this year rolled out for the first time ever a planning committee made up of MGMA members, and You told me that you were on the planning committee. You had been sent out to San Antonio to check out the site and to review sessions and everything.
Daniel Williams:Tell us about first, congratulations. Secondly, tell us about that experience.
Sean Nyugen:I had the honor and the privilege to be asked to come and serve on the annual planning committee and to sit shoulder to shoulder in the rooms with other leaders and other MGMA members across the nation was truly a humbling experience, so first off, thank you so much to the board of directors to MGMA for that opportunity, but absolutely, it's an honor to give back or to be able to play a part in such a large platform like this as well. Through those two, three days that we were there, we were able to peel back the onion, see how the sausage was made in this instance, and truly it takes a village to put on such a production of something at the platform, the level of that annual conference is, and so to see all the different sessions that people submit their abstracts for those presentations, to see what goes into the layout even of the space to walk from the hotels, the multiple hotels, to the conference center to make sure that it's the right vibe, that it's safe, that it's an experience for all the members and attendees, not just the attendees, but also for the vendors and the exhibitors that will be in the Solution Center as well.
Sean Nyugen:Walk through all that, to make sure that we are holding true to our customers in this sense, the attendees, the exhibitors, even the team members that are behind the scenes, we want to make sure that we got it right, and I want to say we did. That was the whole ultimate goal, was we're doing this as intentionally as possible for everybody. Hats off to Craig, to you, to the entire planning committee, to Amelia, to Akash, the entire team at MGMA. Thank you so much for that investment in bringing back a committee of members, build with both members and team members at MGMA to be able to do that. Even now, we are still meeting behind the scenes, monthly, weekly, still exchanging texts often, and talking through, again, what are we doing to do right by members at MGMA across the nation as well?
Sean Nyugen:It's been fun. I think it's been truly humbling to see this process behind the scenes.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. It's so cool you were sharing some of that information with me earlier this week as we were talking. Am truly I've told our meetings and events team, I mean, come in and do I might speak or I might do some other things at a show, but the planning that goes into it, it is hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of ideas being decided upon, being made, having the flow right. As you were talking, what's the distance from this space where people are going to be to this space? And is that conducive to all the attendees or even any of them?
Daniel Williams:You gotta take heat into consideration. You've gotta take so many things into consideration and have that flow go just the right way. I'll tell you, Sean, I learned this at a show, not here, but at another company where I worked, we put on an annual show. You can do so many things right, but you better not run out of coffee. Because if you run out of coffee, you are in so much trouble.
Sean Nyugen:Yes. That was also important. Like, Where's the coffee stations? Where are the hydro stations at? Everything, absolutely.
Sean Nyugen:You're absolutely right. I remember Nifty on the MGMA Board of Directors as We walked into one of the rooms and it's nothing but windows, and it's thinking to ourselves, Okay, what sessions or what activities could we put into this room that elevates the space and harnesses the space to make the attendees feel like, Okay, this is bright ideas, bright collaboration, bright networking. Okay, let's put more of our networking sessions into this particular room. Or this particular room, it's like, okay, is more classroom style. This could be more of an education, more focused on certain topics and things, and so putting more intention into not only the content, but also the space as well, how we approach those things.
Sean Nyugen:Again, kudos to the entire MGMA team. Probably could have figured that out on their own, but to hear it reinforced by the members and the committee members, I think validated some of the work that they're doing behind the scenes, that Emilia is doing behind the scenes as well. Again, appreciate that. Appreciate that MGMA is moving in that direction and really continuing to support members in different ways as well.
Daniel Williams:That's right. So thank you for that. I'll pass that along to Amelia and the team. Final question. You and I talked about this, and we always like to end the podcast with getting outside of the work.
Daniel Williams:We're talking here because we both have roles in healthcare or healthcare adjacent in my case, but we have lives outside of it. And you've talked about how important it is to have a passion, a hobby, interest, anything outside of work as well to kind of make you a whole person. Probably many people have seen severance where you're outside person and you're innie and you're outie, but we're fully formed people here.
Sean Nyugen:So
Daniel Williams:for you, what is one of those key interests? I'll give you a hint, it might have something to do with superheroes, but tell us something about that interest and why you think it's so important to have those passions and interests outside of work.
Sean Nyugen:In our last podcast, you noticed that I was wearing a different pin or I wear sometimes with my blazers or my jackets, I'll wear a different pin. Today, I left the blazer at home because I was feeling a little bit more comfortable, but I love, love, love different superhero movies and cartoons and comics and things, and so for me to be able to The work that we do, whether or not it's adjacent or I, I don't think you're adjacent. You are absolutely very integral to the work that we do because you're acknowledging and spotlighting the stories that our caregivers, our providers, our leaders are doing on a daily basis. So first of thank you for the work that you do as well. The work that we all do, it's absolutely a calling into healthcare.
Sean Nyugen:There's so much compassion fatigue that we all experience in different ways or different levels as well, and so oftentimes the way that I approach that is just a little bit of escapism, and even if it's going to the movies for a couple hours and disconnecting, turning off my phone, forcing myself to turn off the phone, just to be able to be in the moment and watch a movie or read a comic or experience some of that is my way to disconnect and be a whole person as well, or even if it's enjoying that with my nieces and nephews and being able to disconnect and playing with their toys to be able to do superheroes or learning the newest Disney princess, whoever she may be. That's the way that I remind myself I am still a whole person and not just a healthcare leader or a provider supporting our clinicians as well. That's important to me, and absolutely, I don't see the MCU stopping, pushing out any movies anytime soon, but DC, Marvel, all the gamuts, they're still pushing out movies and content, and so I think I am absolutely one of their number one people that is paying for those new subscriptions and making sure I'm feeding the industry in that aspect as well, so that's how I disconnect and still be able to come to work with joy and still be able to come to work and feel glass full and glass fully filled from that perspective.
Daniel Williams:That is so cool, Sean. I love talking with you. I can tell the passion when you do talk about superheroes. I know we talked a lot about the X Men. You were telling me about their series on Disney plus, and, I'm gonna put that in the show notes for people as well.
Daniel Williams:We've got, the new Spider Man movie coming out around the corner, and then the Avengers are coming back, later this year as well. I think it right at, right around the holidays. So we'll have something for a lot of different people there. So I asked you this earlier this week if you had a favorite X man or X person, and you you paused and it's like you weren't able to quite formulate an answer. But is there one that emerges from all the rest?
Daniel Williams:I'll tell you, Wolverine's my guy. Yeah. You know, my daughter, I took her to all the Wolverine movies in addition to the X Men movies, so I don't know where you sit with that.
Sean Nyugen:I don't, and you know, just like how we have different sides of our lives and different sides of our work as well, it varies. Someday I'm definitely the cyclops coming in and trying to take lead of the team. Other days I'm the nurturer or the storm that really just making sure that everything in the background, our environment, is supporting our different team members. We're oftentimes on the Professor X sitting in the background trying to just coach up the team, but still be able to think through different scenarios. Or sometimes I'm just the wild child, the jubilee, and just throwing fireworks in the background and just saying, Hey, I'm here for the ride, dropping comedic relief wherever I go.
Daniel Williams:That is awesome. That is so awesome. Well, you bring a lot of joy to me every time I get to talk to you. So, I can't wait to hang out with you in San Antonio. Good luck until then with all the work that you're doing there, and thank you for joining us again.
Sean Nyugen:Thank you, Daniel, and I look forward to seeing all of our MGMA members and our colleagues across the nation, including all of our exhibitors attending as well, hearing all the different solutions that people are able to bring or different ways that we truly can just help more patients and help our clinicians support seeing more patients as well, and doing it right, doing it with intention. Super excited to see everybody in San Antonio, super excited to see you again, and the entire MGMA team.
Daniel Williams:Awesome. Alright, everybody. That's gonna do it for this show. I do wanna put it in there again. MGMA annual conference, September twenty seventh through the thirtieth in San Antonio.
Daniel Williams:Sean and his team are gonna be presenting Blowing Up the Front Door, Reinventing Access and Redesigning Care, Tuesday, September 29, 01:30PM central time. Thank you all for being MGMA Podcasts and hope to see y'all in San Antonio.
