Healthcare Rethink - Episode 114
In a live podcast from a HIMSS 2025, Jonathan Wiik, the VP of Health Insights at FinThrive, converses with Jill Brewer, the Market Insights Lead at HIMSS, about critical research findings they developed together. The discussion covers a range of topics from cybersecurity and data management to patient experience in healthcare.
Episode Transcript
Jonathan Wiik:
Hi, I am Jonathan Wiik, the VP of Health Insights at FinThrive, and I'm with Jill Brewer from HIMSS. She's the market insights lead. We partnered together on a couple reports just a few months ago, and we're going to talk to you today live from HIMSS, doing a podcast about those results.
Jill, how the heck are you?
Jill Brewer:
I'm good. Thanks for having me.
Jonathan Wiik:
Thanks for coming. You're a busy lady here at HIMSS. How's HIMSS going?
Jill Brewer:
Really well so far.
Jonathan Wiik:
Good. It's day, what, one or two? Some call this day two, I think it's day one.
Jill Brewer:
Day one for me, yeah.
Jonathan Wiik:
Is it? Me too. I got in late last night. I went to the keynote this morning, which was excellent. Were you there?
Jill Brewer:
I was there for part of it.
Jonathan Wiik:
Yeah, what'd you see that you liked?
Jill Brewer:
Well, I always love to hear from Hal-
Jonathan Wiik:
Yeah, yeah.
Jill Brewer:
... you know, because he's our guy.
Jonathan Wiik:
Yeah, he did great.
Jill Brewer:
Yeah.
Jonathan Wiik:
Yeah.
Jill Brewer:
So it's always just interesting to hear the latest insights in the industry and especially because I'm someone in insights and I really appreciate all that information. And just hearing from people who are in these hospitals and healthcare organizations and what their thoughts are, the thought leadership, I love that.
Jonathan Wiik:
Yeah. I was fascinated, because I come from the hospital space and worked in a hospital, that that hospital that's reached stage seven is completely and totally autonomous. The docs just cruise around and they're just saying what they need to happen and there's things listening and documenting and ordering. That's how it should be right?
Jill Brewer:
Right.
Jonathan Wiik:
With tech, and that's what HIMSS is for. That was just really cool.
Jill Brewer:
Right, and it's kind of crazy to think about.
Jonathan Wiik:
Yeah.
Jill Brewer:
Because if you go to the doctor's office, probably, or you have to visit a hospital, not many are like that.
Jonathan Wiik:
Yeah.
Jill Brewer:
So just to think about that seems really cool. It'll be interesting to see how healthcare evolves there more and more.
Jonathan Wiik:
Yeah, cool. Well, we did these research studies. I'm going to go to my notes so I don't mess it up here. But one surrounded RCM tech focus on cybersecurity and then the other one really talked about more of AI and those types of things. We had some questions. So let's talk about the first one. They ranked key priorities and they put data management as number one. Why is data management, there's obvious reasons, but why in your mind was that at the top of that rank?
Jill Brewer:
We consistently see data security and management as a top objective across all of our research.
Jonathan Wiik:
Yeah.
Jill Brewer:
Especially when you think about interoperability and digital health transformation, it shows up as the number one objective really into reaching those goals.
Jonathan Wiik:
Yeah, totally.
Jill Brewer:
It also ends up being the number one challenge that they have because obviously it's a foundational issue.
Jonathan Wiik:
Right.
Jill Brewer:
What we see with interoperability, for instance, is when we've asked them about that in other research, the number one challenge is privacy and data security.
Jonathan Wiik:
Yeah.
Jill Brewer:
The number two challenge is a lack of data standardization and data fragmentation.
Jonathan Wiik:
Okay.
Jill Brewer:
The reason why I bring up interoperability and digital health transformation is because that's where healthcare is going and these big objectives to getting there. It shows up in their top objectives all over the place.
Jonathan Wiik:
Yeah. Patient experience, not surprised, that was number two. It's funny, I see that one, it's kind of whatever the crisis du jour kind of bastardizes that one, for lack of a better word.
Jill Brewer:
Right.
Jonathan Wiik:
So you'll see patient experience. It's important, yeah, we got to do it, but if we got to hit margins or we've got cybersecurity preparedness or we've got growth, sometimes that patient experience one will go down or subordinate a little bit. It was two. I'm very pleased when I see that, that means it's there. It's been one, sometimes two, but what are your thoughts on patient experience and why does it move around and why was it two this time?
Jill Brewer:
Well, we do see in a lot of research that it shows up as number two.
Jonathan Wiik:
Yeah.
Jill Brewer:
When we've done some research on digital health transformation, the number one objective is cybersecurity. Then the number two is patient experience.
Jonathan Wiik:
Yeah.
Jill Brewer:
My opinion on that, and the reason why we kind of see it keep popping up that way is because you have to start at the foundation first.
Jonathan Wiik:
Yep.
Jill Brewer:
What we found when we were talking about interoperability is that investing in robust security was the most important action when it comes to reaching their interoperability goal. Same with digital health transformation. What does security get us? Well, it gets us better interoperability. What does better interoperability in digital health get us? Better patient care delivery-
Jonathan Wiik:
Totally.
Jill Brewer:
... and therefore better patient experience.
Jonathan Wiik:
Totally.
Jill Brewer:
I see them as going hand in hand.
Jonathan Wiik:
Yeah.
Jill Brewer:
Because I feel like it's focusing on that foundation first and then moving into, well, what's the whole purpose?
Jonathan Wiik:
Right.
Jill Brewer:
Because at its core healthcare, the whole purpose is getting care to those who need it.
Jonathan Wiik:
Totally. It's a garbage in, garbage out principle, I think too.
Jill Brewer:
Yeah.
Jonathan Wiik:
If you have a poor foundation, kind of like what God said. "Build your foundation on rock, not sand."
Jill Brewer:
Right.
Jonathan Wiik:
If you don't have a solid foundation of data, it's very hard to deliver good outcomes or good experiences to your patient population. It can really start to detriment what's happening with the outcomes.
Labor came up as a number three, but if you interviewed the department heads, that was their number one.
Jill Brewer:
Yes.
Jonathan Wiik:
Walk me through that. What was that about?
Jill Brewer:
I feel like it comes down to a matter of their roles and functions because when you've got a C-suite executive leader, they're going to be more focused on those kind of overarching objectives. Patient experience being one. Whereas your department heads are going to be closer to that day-to-day and they're going to be thinking about what's plaguing their teams. You might get into labor and managing staffing shortages.
Jonathan Wiik:
For sure.
Jill Brewer:
It's not that the executives don't know that it's a problem, it's just what the focus is. Really when you think about it, managing those staffing shortages rolls up into some of these bigger objectives. We see a lot of times a little bit of a disconnect there, but really it's just based on what they're focused on in their roles. When you have department heads, when you've got your managers and directors, they're a lot more focused on that day-to-day and what they're seeing in their teams.
Jonathan Wiik:
Yeah, I think that goes in hand in hand. It's almost like dominoes, right?
Jill Brewer:
Yeah.
Jonathan Wiik:
You have to have good data to provide a good patient experience. Then you have to have the teams there to execute on both-
Jill Brewer:
Yes.
Jonathan Wiik:
... if I'm saying that the right way.
Jill Brewer:
Yep.
Jonathan Wiik:
That actually makes a lot of sense.
Well, let's talk about everybody's favorite, the C word, cyber.
Jill Brewer:
That's right.
Jonathan Wiik:
I love this term resilience that you're seeing in the market now. We looked at this research performed last November. We looked at claims eligibility, different parts of revenue cycle. They came up with claims eligibility, patient collections were areas of focus and they wanted to see different investment capabilities based off the size. We dropped a press release yesterday that looked at that for HIMSS, that talked through how smaller orgs may have different priorities similar to kind of what your role is in the organization. Is there ability there or is it a capital expense constraint? Or what are your thoughts on just small versus large?
Jill Brewer:
What we find most often is it's a problem with resources, mostly budget, but that also trickles down into staffing.
Jonathan Wiik:
For sure.
Jill Brewer:
Because if they have less budget, then they also have less ability to hire the staff they need with the right skillset to manage it. They're always trying to do more with less.
Jonathan Wiik:
Yeah.
Jill Brewer:
The larger organizations are more likely to have the resources available to invest in various technologies and the staff to be able to handle them. That's why we kind of see that. The interesting thing is, while larger organizations were able more to invest or more likely to invest in backups for claims management, smaller organizations we found in the research are more likely to be testing backups regularly and also implementing multi-factor authentication.
Jonathan Wiik:
MFA stuff, yeah. Sure.
Jill Brewer:
What we also see is that larger organizations are more likely to have a proactive stance towards resiliency, and smaller organizations are more likely to be reactive because they just have less to spend on that. I feel like these measures of testing backups and MFA, it's their way of being able to do some proactive measures and defense, whereas they may not have the budget to be able to do some of those more robust technologies.
Jonathan Wiik:
Yeah, I agree with that. I was out in Idaho yesterday and I was talking to a CFO. I gave a talk on just my book and RCMTAM and what we're doing for AI and what types of things. He was rolling his eyes during a lot of the talk. I said, "I noticed that you're not receiving a lot of this message."
He goes, "We don't have any money. We would love to invest in a lot of these things, but it's very difficult for us to find the amount of capital that we're spending on labor and other things."
I said, "Well, even cybersecurity?"
He's like, "Well, no. There's a minimum kind of base that you have to have." Investing in MFA, for example, like you said or having downtime procedures, which may impact your capacity or throughput or your yield.
But he said, "The bright shiny object kind of big duplicity across the whole clinical and financial tech stack, it's not possible in a rural hospital. It's just not so we've got to pick our spots." He picked claims. He said, "We have to have that. We've got to be able to send claims out the door. We learned that through change."
Are you seeing that with other people in HIMSS? They're picking their spots or are they trying to figure out what they can do and what they can't and getting it to when they have the priority list out there or ...
Jill Brewer:
Yes, we are.
Jonathan Wiik:
Okay.
Jill Brewer:
Because when you talk to a room full of people, I was just doing that this morning. I asked, "Hey, what are barriers to implementing various technologies?"
Everybody in the room shouted out, "Money."
Jonathan Wiik:
Money. Loud and clear.
Jill Brewer:
Yeah, and so when you talk to them about this, what we find is that they're like, "Hey, we've got to find where our risks are, where our weaknesses are, and then what makes the most sense to plug. What's good enough to plug in? How can we do that with the most cost-efficient way and with a vendor that will bring us the least risk and be collaborative?" Those are all areas, so we do see that pick and choose based on what they have available to them.
Jonathan Wiik:
Yeah, it's amazing to me the amount of different areas that have things.
We talked about this term preparedness too, so it dovetails nicely into what we're there. I'm just going to go there. Do you think hospitals are prepared, the ones you're talking to, or are they prepared as they can be? What is their cyber strategy that you're seeing?
Jill Brewer:
Not as prepared as they probably could be.
Jonathan Wiik:
Okay.
Jill Brewer:
We've done some other research on cybersecurity.
Jonathan Wiik:
Yeah, yeah.
Jill Brewer:
We asked, "Hey, how confident are you in your organization's cyber defense strategy?"
Jonathan Wiik:
Yeah.
Jill Brewer:
A great majority, were somewhat confident, very few, small handful, like, "Hey, we're highly confident." The reality is that's probably a little too cocky because of the rapidly evolving threat landscape.
Jonathan Wiik:
Yeah.
Jill Brewer:
But when you talk about preparedness, what we see pop up in, you know, the weakest links, we ask them, What are the weakest links to your defense strategy?"
Jonathan Wiik:
Right.
Jill Brewer:
Two of the top three were disaster recovery and business continuity plans.
Jonathan Wiik:
Okay, wow.
Jill Brewer:
As well as third party vendor risk.
Jonathan Wiik:
Okay.
Jill Brewer:
That goes nicely into kind of what they're trying to do more with less. "Can we find the right people to work with that will be cost-effective, that will help us get the plans that we need?" Having that collaborative relationship with vendors, that are security-minded and that are willing to collaborate with them and work hand in hand, maybe somebody like FinThrive-
Jonathan Wiik:
Right.
Jill Brewer:
... is really important to people-
Jonathan Wiik:
Good.
Jill Brewer:
... and lends to them feeling more prepared.
Jonathan Wiik:
Yeah, I think that's a great point that you said about understanding those levels. We see a lot of DR stuff, disaster recovery. Absolutely see a lot of the turnaround time to recovery, how long, how much cash do we have on hand? How long can it be before we're going to have a financial impact without having that solution up? In the conversations we're having with our healthcare and hospital partners, we're trying to meet them where they are. "Look, let's just do this. Let's do your professionals first." Or, "Let's just do acute and then maybe we'll roll the other ones up," putting standby solutions in place where they can really move along.
I think that's it for as far as the other things. But what's on your list this week? What are you doing that's fun? Are you doing anything outside of HIMSS or are you pretty busy here? Are you going to go to bed or ...
Jill Brewer:
I know, go get some sleep. Well, I do have plans to go to Hell's Kitchen.
Jonathan Wiik:
Yay. I'm so jealous.
Jill Brewer:
Because I'm a big Gordon Ramsay fan. I'm a big Gordon Ramsay fan. I watch that show and so while I'm here I've got got to take advantage.
Jonathan Wiik:
Nice. Did you have to make reservations or was it-
Jill Brewer:
Yes.
Jonathan Wiik:
Oh, okay.
Jill Brewer:
Yeah.
Jonathan Wiik:
Wow.
Jill Brewer:
He made it so that it makes it feel like you're kind of on the show, watching the show, so I'm excited for that.
Jonathan Wiik:
Oh, I'm super jealous.
Well, Jill, it was an absolute pleasure. I appreciate your insights and enjoy HIMSS and thanks for partnering us with us on that research study. It was great.
Jill Brewer:
Yeah, thank you.
Jonathan Wiik:
Yep.
Jill Brewer:
It's been great.
Jonathan Wiik:
Thank you.
Jonathan Wiik here. I am the VP of Health Insights and I'm very happy to have Jill Brewer from HIMSS talking about research. Thank you so much.
