HIMSS21 Interviews: Lightbeam's Jerry Shultz on Enabling a Sustainable Path to Value-Based Care

02/25/22 • 14 min

The path to implementing value-based care in the U.S. healthcare system has been fraught with challenges and peril. There’s quite a bit of momentum when it comes to maintaining the current model, as well as the financial incentives already in place. As COVID drags on, hospital systems are facing staffing shortages, physician burnout and a slew of financial setbacks.

It’s no surprise that switching to a VBC model has often taken a backseat as a priority, as providers around the country focus on putting out the immediate fires and making sure they can stay afloat. But as always, there is potential to grow and change. Health IT vendors are developing solutions that can assist providers with data collection and management, patient monitoring, and more, with the goal of enabling a shift away from the volume model.

Aiming to eliminate “alert fatigue” and aid in physicians being able to care for more patients at once, without spending a disproportionate amount of time fiddling with an EHR or platform, organizations like Lightbeam Health Solutions are setting the stage for a transition to value-based care.

We sat down with Lightbeam Health’s President, Jerry Shultz, at HIMSS ’21 to discuss this issue, how providers can both save money and better serve their patients, the future of value-based care, and more.

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Platform Thinking for Healthcare: A Discussion with Vince Kuraitis and Randy Williams

In recent years we have seen a great deal of speculation about how the big tech players such as Amazon, Google, Apple and Microsoft would bring their platform business models to healthcare and disrupt business as usual. This has proven to be a more difficult hill to climb than expected, but the platform business model goes well beyond the platform natives in big tech. In a podcast with Vince Kuraitis and Randy Williams, we explored the nature of platform business models, how they differ from traditional business models and how they may impact the future of healthcare.

Traditional business models create products and services through production side integration that are delivered in a linear value creation process. Value capture is through optimization of production and the focus is on owning the supply chain. Gatekeepers are common and consumers experience friction when trying to access services. Rapid Covid tests are a great example in healthcare because they are developed manufactured and distributed by producers while consumers must go through gatekeepers to access.

Platform business models unlock new sources of value both on the creation side of the transaction, but also on the consumption side. Their function is to facilitate matches and consummate exchanges of goods/ services, thereby creating value for all parties. Platforms are usually less constrained by owned inventory. Often by using data and digital tools, platforms improve customer experience by increasing access to products, matching preferences, increasing convenience, and eliminating gatekeepers.

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Time to Move Beyond 'Sick Care' to True Health Care

It takes all types, especially to throw a mammoth conference like HIMSS. Payers, providers, investors and solutions vendors all gather together in their tens of thousands under one roof to discuss the future of technology in healthcare. From all over the world, the experts in the field travel to learn, give presentations, network with their peers, and attempt to divine the future of the market.

But one group is usually underrepresented: educators. Injecting new blood and fresh ideas into healthcare tech will be an important component of revitalizing our battered healthcare system. Yet professors and universities in the sorely needed tech education sector were few and far between at the conference this year.

To be sure, medical and nursing schools occupied a solid place in the conference agenda. Provider systems nationwide are in the midst of a nerve-wracked hand-wringing session when it comes to the looming staffing crisis, which is already bad and getting worse. However, if someone wants to work in healthcare without being a doctor or a nurse, the options are less clear.

We were able to sit down with Dr. Gabriela Wilson, Professor and Co-Director at the Multi-Interprofessional Center for Health Informatics, UT-Arlington, to discuss these issues and more. She brings decades of experience in biochemistry, biotechnology, molecular biology and informatics to the table, along with a wider global perspective on healthcare in America.

ChilCast: Healthcare Tech Talks - HIMSS21 Interviews: Lightbeam's Jerry Shultz on Enabling a Sustainable Path to Value-Based Care

Transcript

Jerry Shulz: [00:00:00] These are preventable, avoidable things that happen, catching a breast cancer at stage one or zero, helping people understand the importance of being screened helps drive down costs and helps improve people's lives.

John Moore III: [00:00:22] Today, I am sitting with Jerry Shulz, president of Lightbeam Health. So could you tell me a little bit about what you do with Lightbeam and what you focus on at the company?

Jer