Inflation, Mobile Health's Impact on the Health Care Industry

Keith Algozzine, founder and chief executive officer of UCM Digital Health, discusses how inflation is impacting the health care industry, areas of top concern, and how mobile health plays into the future of health care. 

Read the full transcript:

Welcome back to Pop Health Perspectives, a conversation with a population health learning network where we combine expert commentary and exclusive insight into key issues on population health management and more. In this episode, Keith Algozzine discusses inflation’s impact on the health care industry including areas of top concern.

My name's Keith Algozzine I'm the CEO and co-founder of UCM Digital Health, and our company is really a... It's a combination of digital health platform and a true, mission driven provider medical practice, combining the innovation that can occur from really mission driven clinicians who team up with building great technology to scale to create this digitally integrated whole person health that is like a nirvana that you're shooting for. And we play a very important role in that. Nobody can do that all by themselves, but we're very happy to play a very important piece, really focused around the patient.

Can you discuss the ways inflation is impacting the healthcare industry? What are some areas of top concern?

That is a good question. So, a lot of people miss this, because inflation in health care happens differently than it happens in other industries, but it still happens, and it happens big time. Because health care is largely a service industry, it happens at the people level. Doctors, hospital nurses cost more, ancillary staff costs more, all the players within a health care ecosystem that is necessary to deliver health care in the US is largely driven by people. And those people get affected by inflation first, and then that causes rising wages, and then that makes it weigh into the health care system.

It can be a little bit delayed from that manner, but it's dramatically impactful. The other way that makes it sometimes seem that it isn't hitting is because the timing is different. Health care is a B2B industry, and then C is last, which in this case is the consumer or patient. Some of these contracts define the pricing of health care between the big entities like health systems and providers and health plans and insurance companies and drug manufacturers and all of those things. Some of the times you don't see the impact of inflation right away because there's some price control based on the contracts that are in place. But you have that building up of pricing pressure, and then wham, it hits at 1, 2, or 3 year intervals.

So health care is going to be dramatically affected by inflation, it already is, but you're only seeing the tip of the iceberg, it's only going to get worse. What am I scared about? I'm afraid how that impacts patients. And the way it's going to impact patients more than anything else is access, because as cost rises access is going to decrease. Sometimes it will decrease because a patient can't afford care in certain health plan models.

Sometimes it'll decrease in sneaky ways, like, well the patient isn't paying for this because it's government paid for, or employer or sponsor paid for, or somebody else is paying for it. But, they've driven down the cost. They had to effectively drive down the cost, and therefore the providers of care respond to that by cutting down services.

Some access would be decreased from pure pricing patients out of certain things, and some will be, again, that B2B2C market that happens in health care will cause the supply side, which is what we're on, to actually have to tighten the reigns in order to negotiate contracts the way the health care system is paid, and that will result in less access. This is actually really serious on patients at the bottom.

Mobile health integrated solutions have become a larger part of healthcare as a result of the pandemic, what does this mean for the concierge health industry?

Interesting. So just a little background on us. UCM Digital Health does stand for United Concierge Medicine, but we are not what people think of when they think of concierge medicine. Most concierge medicine is, let me increase the price a little bit, but because of that I'm going to give a smaller group of people better access, better quality, and a more personalized health care service.

We were actually built around the opposite which say, I think everybody deserves that concierge level of access, quality, and compassion. The only way to do that is to leverage technology and scale and innovation. So we have that concierge in our name, but really have nothing to do with the concierge industry. My guess is the concierge industry probably remains insulated to a large degree to this, because it's always been this very barrow niche of people who want to pay for a little bit of extra TLC.

But, I will tell you, I do think models that take scaling seriously, meaning how do we do what we do bigger and better, and scale it in a way that can reduce cost in a market like this, are going to be big winners. Mobile health, whether it be full mobile, meaning it's a digital experience like this, or whether it's just mobile health being integrated into the fabric of everyday care, meaning you might be in surgery today and tomorrow you might come home, use a little digital health. Then you might be in the office again next week if needed, but then instead of being in the office 3 more times, it's all digital health.

It could all be integrated, for example. I think mobile health will play a huge role in what patients will perceive as concierge. Meaning, wow, this was more accessible, more affordable, it's predictable, it was compassionate, it was personalized. When you leverage technology, I think we can give everyone a concierge level of service if we keep in mind that it's not for elite, it should be for me and you and everybody else who needs care. They should all feel that concierge experience.

Thank you so much. How do you think mobile health plays into the future role of health care?

I think the pandemic really caused, almost an unnatural spike in mobile health and digital health that made people realize the potential. But, then the bullet popped, and it came down pretty quickly. Now, it's bigger than it was before the pandemic, but nowhere near what it was in its peak. I think that did a very important thing. It made people realize the art of the possible, and actually the probable. Because if it's possible standard levels of health care could be brushed under the rug.

But I think they now know, this is no longer possible, it's probable. It's just a matter of when, not if. What you see now is exciting for the patient, like I mentioned, instead of digital health living in these silos of innovation that happen. Sometimes that's good, sometimes it's bad because it actually segregates and fragments care.

I think many people before the pandemic, they couldn't necessarily see the forest through the trees, because all they saw was these trees which seemed like these one off, separate, segregated, sometimes very impactful and cool. But, having it all fit together.

I think now post pandemic, what we are witnessing is the very early stages, where people are realizing, okay, digital health, mobile health, whatever term you want to use, telehealth, it has to be integrated into the complete fabric of care. If it's really going to be impactful from a value standpoint from the people who pay for care, or provide care, and obviously for the people who receive care, it's got to feel like care.

I always give the example, how do you know technology's good? Well, you know technology's good is when you don't even call your iPhone technology anymore, right? What it is, it's amazing technology, but it's so good, it feels like, this is just what I do.

So that's where digital health is going. Now, it's very early in those stages, it is nowhere near where it's going to be in 5 years from now. But you can see people have connected the dots. Now it's no longer about maybe, kind of, or I get it, but it's so far away, I don't have to deal with it. No, you've got to figure this out because patients are becoming consumers more and more, and if you don't figure it out as a health care organization or a provider of care, a payer of care, then patients are going to go elsewhere.

Health care is still a business, nobody wants to lose their business, and their patients are their business.

Is there anything else you would like to add to the conversation today?

Two things that I always try to make sure I get people to understand when I’m talking, that I think are really seismic. One is, because of that health care industry being a B2B industry first and a business to consumer industry second, what we've seen over the years are these top down solutions that are built around those pillars of providers, payers and pharma, and all these big pillars. Then we figure out how the finances of the system could work, and then we trickle it down and see if it'll work for the patient, or try to make it fit for the patient.

But by the time you've passed through all that stuff, it often doesn't. What we strongly believe at UCM is we built the bottom-up solutions. So just focus on the patient, even if it might not make sense for the top B2B industry. If you focus on the patient, you're ultimately going to provide the right solutions that provide the right value.

Then you force it from the bottom up. You force the top when you win the patient to listen to you and create new and better models. But you have to force it, it means you've got deliver for the patient. So I think bottoms up solutions are the future, even though it can be scary because you may not understand how it fits in to the big B2B2B industry. And then the second thing I think that is really important is one that I think will truly get back to your first problem that you mentioned, which is inflation. This isn't going away any time soon. I think the move is toward value-based care.

If you're purely stuck in the old model of the more volume I get, the more I get paid, the greater service that I provide, regardless of the value, the more I get paid. Then this problem's really going to escalate for everybody in the industry, right, both the big B2B players and the patients. But, if we start to really harness the value based models where, okay, let's all get on the same page, provide value to the patient, and reduce the cost of care while increasing access and quality. Now we can put business models together that do scale, we can put business models together that do align, the people and the health care system. Let's bring it back to the patient, and let's focus on value over volume. I think those are the 2 big points.

Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Pop Health Perspectives. For similar contact, or to join our mailing list, visit populationhealthnet.com.

About Keith:
Keith Algozzine is co-founder and CEO of UCM Digital Health. A board-certified Physician Assistant, he was formerly the Chief PA of Emergency Medicine for St. Mary’s Hospital in Troy, NY, where he witnessed firsthand the challenges of the modern health care system. Keith was also part of the national ER startup management team for Pegasus Emergency Medicine. He represents UCM Digital Health on the American Telemedicine Association Accreditation Advisory Board and serves as an advisor to the Clinical Practice Guidelines Committees dealing with telemedicine considerations for urgent and emergency care.