Hector Rodriguez, National Director, HLS Industry Technology Unit, Microsoft U.S. Public Sector Health & Life Sciences
1. Healthcare industry undergoing a Tsunami of changes, how does a payer keep up with all the changes? What are the top issues keeping payer CEOs up at night?
Hector Rodriguez: First, health plans need to stop seeing their members as “people who pay premiums and submit claims”. We are health and wellness consumers and we want to have enriching experiences that are integrated into our personal work and life styles, available on our devices, in our homes, and our communities. In order to keep up health plans must become part of this “flow”, they must inject themselves into the member’s personal experiences, and develop new services and solutions that directly impact the member’s health and wellness. I’d say that the velocity of change that has suddenly hit the industry coupled with the need to drive new revenue services and business models is “keeping CEOs up at night”. Many plans just can’t keep up, their IT and business infrastructures are just not that agile and flexible yet.
2. As healthcare moves towards a retail model, what are the top strategies you see in the market place to drive consumerism? How do you see Microsoft playing a key role in helping these changes realize?
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Hector Rodriguez: It’s all about providing an integrated and continuous experience. In order to do this health plans must get better at integrating the variety of data that healthcare consumers create throughout their normal day. They must use that data to better predict behaviors and provide insightful guidance and targeted services and solutions to the individual member. Technologies, such as Microsoft’s devices, cloud, and data analytics services, will enable this to happen at scale, to perform in real-time and to be cost effective. Tapping into the “Internet of Your Things” will be key for health plans to activate and engage the healthcare consumer.
3. In the recent past we have seen significant consolidation and M&A activity in the Payer industry, do you see the trend continuing? How will the small regional payer compete with the large national payers in the future?
Hector Rodriguez: The trend will continue as the industry overall transforms but we’re also seeing more collaboration between the plans, providers, and life sciences organizations. We’re also seeing collaboration or joint partnerships with retail and financial organizations. And one of the areas that is really exciting is the collaboration we’re seeing with innovation centers and technology companies. The smaller plans can stay competitive by being that “local community plan” who knows that local community extremely well. They’ll have to offer plans and services that are tailored to that audience but at the same time they’ll have to reduce costs and scale their resources with up to date technology. Offering local services at higher prices isn’t going to work.
4. IT is playing a key role in driving change in the Industry. How can organizations drive higher IT and business alignment in a dynamic business environment driven by health reform? Is Microsoft focusing to bring product and/ or services to help the industry cope up with the changes due to reform?
Hector Rodriguez: The healthcare industry, and particularly plans, must embrace hybrid cloud computing as a platform to enable a highly agile and flexible technology infrastructure that is truly a business service. Health Plans must adopt an overall collaborative and integrated process of innovation to drive new services and business models across the organization while maintaining their current core services. The idea that IT is a cost center and their job is to “keep the lights on” has to be completely demolished. IT needs to be seen as an equal partner in transforming the health plan. Microsoft’s platform is uniquely positioned to enable the hybrid cloud computing environment as an “intelligent infrastructure” for health IT. This enables Health IT organizations to leverage public cloud services on their terms while supporting a highly virtualized private cloud architecture that can scale and flex as the business demands. The overall effect is the ability to reduce costs, launch new services and business models faster, and to enable a more engaging experience for the healthcare consumer.
5. It’s a talent war out there in the Healthcare and Health IT industry, how should Payers manage talent acquisition and leadership development?
Hector Rodriguez: The transformation of the healthcare industry is exciting and scary. While it can be fraught with challenges it also brings opportunity to innovate and drive “new designs” that will truly deliver better patient experiences, improved outcomes, and affordable healthcare. This passion has to be ignited and sustained in the people who work in this industry now and the new “recruits”. New leaders must be developed understanding that this is “why we do what we do” and those goals have to be their passion every day. These new leaders must be enabled to flourish in the transformed world. They cannot be saddled with solving healthcare challenges that are 30+ years old.
6. We see Payers have been early adopters of the outsourcing model with local and global vendors. What is your advice to Health Plan IT Executives on IT sourcing strategies?
Hector Rodriguez: The hybrid cloud (or outsourcing model) is the end state. New IT designs must consider the ability to have a combination of on-prem and cloud (or outsourced) services. Health Plan IT executives must develop a plan that drives low and medium business value services to the cloud quickly. Email, device management, archival and storage, and even analytics are great examples of IT services that can be very expensive and resource intensive. These services can be outsourced and integrated to provide a highly secure and better experience at reduced costs and with expanded capabilities.
7. There is a lot of buzz on social media in other industries, What is your view of social media and its adoption in the payer industry?
Hector Rodriguez: Social media is a healthcare consumer activation and engagement channel that may be a preferred form of engagement and communication for some consumers and not others. Social media cannot and should not be ignored but health plans must implement a multi-channel communication and engagement infrastructure that delivers information to consumers based on their preferences. This includes social media as one of those channels but equal consideration should be given to other channels such as personal and wearable devices, web services, portals, and even traditional forms of communication that are still preferred by senior members.
8. Healthcare exchanges are going to drive significant consumer centricity in healthcare, what role do you see technology specially Microsoft playing in this transformation?
Hector Rodriguez: Technology, and particularly the “Internet of Your Things” coupled with cloud based communication and collaboration services such as Microsoft’s Office 365, Lync, and Yammer for social networking will be key components of the services that exchanges can offer the healthcare consumer. The consumer experience on the exchange has to evolve to meet the consumer on any device, anywhere, and at any time. These technologies must also be integrated to enable a data driven process that provides an end-to-end experience that gets the consumer quickly from being a shopper to an installed member.
9. The amount of data collected seems to be exponentially increasing year over year, what do you see as the future of business analytics in the payer industry?
Hector Rodriguez: Business analytics will become more real-time and more predictive in all healthcare business and care delivery processes. This will drive better decisions based on better data reaching the right people at the right time. Care and wellness will become more personalized for each member. As predictive models are added this will help members “see where they’re going” versus where they have been.
10. What are the top technology trends to watch out for in the Payer IT industry for 2014-15?
Hector Rodriguez: I believe that the adoption of the hybrid cloud, mobile devices, and the “Internet of Your Things” will continue to flourish. We’ll see less reliance (and therefore less expense) on new data centers. Cloud based communication and collaboration platforms such as Office 365, Lync, and Yammer will enable health plan and provider collaboration that is truly geared towards providing better patient care and improving outcomes. This will also enable new services such as Tele-health/Telemedicine to become a valued component of care management and delivery.
11. What are the top challenges Health Plan executives have to prepare for in 2014-15?
Hector Rodriguez: Staying relevant to the healthcare consumers while managing costs and meeting increased regulatory requirements and challenges. Healthcare consumers have an increasing myriad of choices and retaining those consumers as your members must become an area of focus.
12. What kind of services is Microsoft offering to the Payer Industry? Can you share a success story in a few sentences?
Hector Rodriguez: Microsoft’s advantage is that it has a lot of products and sometimes choosing where to start isn’t as obvious as with single product vendors. But our hybrid cloud services have really stood out over the last few years. A great example is Microsoft’s Office 365 service. It’s covered by a HIPAA BAA and health plans, such as Wellpoint, have leveraged the service to quickly integrate their newly acquired business into their communication and collaboration infrastructure. They also provide their employees with the most modern email capabilities and increased mailbox size. Simple but effective.
13. Any closing thoughts you would like to share with our subscribers on How Microsoft’s strategies for healthcare will help this industry change the way businesses are being executed and managed today?
Hector Rodriguez: In this new world of health and health IT organizations must learn how to “Fail fast so that they can succeed faster”. By partnering with your vendors, leveraging a highly secure and compliant cloud, integrating data and people, etc. organizations can now develop, incubate, and launch new ideas, new “born in the cloud” strategies and services, new business models that are getting to market faster and showing an immediate impact. Use IT to your benefit and as a true business enabling service.
About Hector Rodriguez
Mr. Rodriguez joined Microsoft in 2004 and is currently the Director for the Microsoft U.S. Public Sector Health and Life Sciences Industry Technology Unit where he works with Microsoft’s health and life sciences customers, partners, product groups, and field resources to understand the Healthcare industry’s current challenges and to formulate end-to-end solution scenarios to address those challenges. Mr. Rodriguez has been instrumental in architecting and deploying Microsoft’s Connected Health Framework CHF) while also leading efforts around multi-channel consumer communication and engagement and care collaboration, HIPAA compliance, ICD-10 strategy, and multi-language health literacy.