The #HCBiz Show!

How much money would your business lose every second your database is down? How long would it take to get it back up and running? Would you be able to answer these questions on your own? Probably not. That's why Jeff Garbus started Soaring Eagle Database Consulting. In this episode, Jeff takes us on a fast-paced journey through the ultimate data management insurance process and shares some of the most common issues CIOs get blind-sided by. Don't lose focus and get your pens out because you will be talking about this with your team first thing tomorrow.

This episode was recorded at the Health IT Expo. You can find more of our coverage of the conference here.

0:33 "I'm a database geek." - Intro to performance, tuning and scalability.

2:33 CIO’s call me and say, "Give me a check-up!"

3:10 What you don’t know about your data can hurt you! Top 2 things CIOs need to be thinking about right now, so it doesn't burn you in the future. Is your data retrievable? Data corruption used to be a bug or a bad entry but now it’s a hardware error and needs to be cleaned sooner than later.

5:09 Have your team build tools to find corruption in the database. Do it before you age out your backups. How much data are you prepared to lose is the answer to how often you should do a maintenance check.

7:35 Test your backups! Tell your team you lost a file and see what happens. If they can’t do it, it’s a problem. How to automate this process.

8:57 What to do if your data system just failed.

9:36 All about disaster recovery. How long does it take to restore a database? Is it time to get faster hardware? What's the business impact of being down?

10:47 Make sure application servers have backups too. They must be able to be brought back from off site. Here is your insurance plan.

12:00 The percentage of companies that close after a data failure is 65%!

12:20 Moving to the cloud only gives you data infrastructure. It provides no index rebuilds, no data management. What do you do without just shifting the problem downstream?

14:00 24/7 operational support can stop your DBAs from getting overwhelmed and reduce turnover.

17:00 How he wrote 20 books in 30 years! Details about his latest book Mining New Gold: Managing Your Business Data

Jeff Garbus is the Co-Founder and CEO of Soaring Eagle Database Consulting. Jeff is responsible for the technical direction, vision, image, and long-term growth of the company.

Thirty-plus years ago when Jeff consulted around the country on complex database problems, he observed a need for software to track his client’s database performance from anywhere in the world. Thus, Soaring Eagle was born.

Since then, Jeff has grown Soaring Eagle Database Consulting into a multi-million dollar firm. An expert in MS SQL Servers and SAP ASE (formerly Sybase) SQL Servers, Jeff has written 20 books to date on these subjects in order to help businesses overcome their database issues.

Jeff holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. When he’s not consulting on IT issues, Jeff enjoys playing poker and tennis, traveling with his wife, and spending time with his kids and grandkids.

SQL Server blog: http://mssqlperformance.blogspot.com/

Webinar rebroadcasts: http://www.youtube.com/user/soaringeagledba

As a leader, you expect long hours at the office. They’re a hazard of the job. You are all too familiar with with the apologetic phone calls with the kids, telling sweet little Suzy you’ll be at her next dance recital, or promising Billy you’ll make his next soccer game.

Thirty years ago, our founder, Jeff Garbus, was a senior database consultant traveling the country helping exciting companies and interesting people solve their most complex database issues. He loved that the work he did allowed his clients to stop making those dreaded phone calls on account of database problems. What he didn’t love, was making the same phone calls himself.

One day it dawned on him. If he could develop software to track his client’s database performance from anywhere in the world, he could keep doin...

Patient Centricity is a buzzword that’s easy to throw around, but difficult to realize. The notion itself is straightforward... build your product or service around the patient who it is intended to help. Talk with them. Incorporate their input. Understand their needs, desires, and goals. It’s so straight-forward that today’s guest tells us this is no “ah-ha” moment for healthcare, but more of an “ah-duh”.

Why do other industries do this organically, while healthcare talks about it as some enlightened idea? It’s because our healthcare system is dis-intermediated to the point where the patient no longer looks like the customer. And unfortunately, there is no business case for “doing the right thing” in healthcare. Even though our intentions are good, our end-game involves much more than an outstanding patient experience with the best possible outcome. Consequently, our thinking gets cloudy and our efforts get diluted.

Today we talk with Matthew Zachary, founder and CEO of Offscrip Media, about the shortcomings of healthcare’s so-called “Patient Centricity” movement. Matthew shares what he’s learned first-hand as a cancer patient and survivor, and through his advocacy work at Stupid Cancer, the nonprofit responsible for igniting a global movement advocating for AYA (adolescent young adult) cancer programs and support.

Patient centricity is table-stakes at this point, but you’ve got to be coming at it from the correct frame of mind. This interview will help you to think about it in a whole new way.

Matthew Zachary

Ten years after surviving brain cancer at age 21, concert pianist and composer Matthew Zachary created the first health podcast, founded Stupid Cancer, the nonprofit responsible for igniting a global movement advocating for AYA (adolescent young adult) cancer programs and support that brought dignity in the face of health adversity.

After stepping down as Stupid Cancer’s CEO in 2019, Matthew continues his legacy of building community, galvanizing the patient voice, and blowing up the status quo with OffScrip Media, the first digital health podcast network focused on patient advocacy, education, and empowerment.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewzachary/

Twitter: http://twitter.com/matthewzachary

Facebook: http://facebook.com/matthewzachary

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thematthewzachary

OffScrip Media

Today’s healthcare conversations are too polite. OffScrip Media’s here to fix that.

Created by Matthew Zachary, a 25-year brain cancer survivor, and the Founder of Stupid Cancer, OffScrip Media is the first podcasting network at the intersection of patient advocacy, education, and digital health. Our mission is to build community, end isolation, amplify voice, and improve quality of life for patients and caregivers.

Company: https://offscrip.com/

Links and Resources

• Episode #114: Who’s Got the Patient’s Back? with Patient Advocate Grace Cordovano
• Episode #93: Building a Social Network for Patients and Caregivers w/ Brian Loew of Inspire
• The Mighty: a digital health community created to empower and connect people facing health challenges and disabilities.

The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media.

Public health vs. the economy is a dangerously false dichotomy. We can protect our people AND get back to work if we accept reality and embrace science. You already know you should wear a mask, wash your hands, and practice social distancing. As we begin to go back to work and spend time with our extended families and friends, Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) tools present an additional layer of protection that could allow us to do so more responsibly, safely, and productively.

Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) tools, like pulse oximeters, blood pressure cuffs, Bluetooth thermometers, and others often used in chronic disease management programs, can help you baseline your vitals, offer peace of mind, and alert you at the earliest possible moment when there might be a problem.

NOTE: We recorded this episode on June 15, 2020, right before the recent spike in COVID-19 cases in many states across the U.S. Things look quite different today, but these ideas and tools still apply. Be responsible. Wear a mask. Take care of yourself and your family. And in general, do your part to safely reopen our economy.

Watch this episode on Youtube: https://youtu.be/__iorUxYvPM

We'll be doing more video in the coming months. Get subscribed now so you never miss one.

You’ll Learn

• Inexpensive tools that you can use at home to keep your family safe
• The importance of baselining your vitals and monitoring for relative changes
• What employers can do to keep their employees safe, and make them feel safe
• Questions employees should be asking their employers before going back to work
• How to do many medical tests in your home
• The difference between telemedicine and tele–diagnostics
• How to use the data you collect and how to share it with your doctor
• How IoT manufacturers can get involved in healthcare right now
• Opportunities for software vendors to support remote monitoring
• How to assess the market and identify your opportunity

Resources

• A Patient’s Home Resource Kit for COVID-19 by Robert Havasy, MS, Managing Director, Personal Connected Health Alliance, HIMSS
• Episode #119: The State of Remote Patient Monitoring with Sam Liu of VivaLnk
• Episode #3: Why Hand Hygiene Matters – Tamás Haidegger
• #HCBiz Blab Series #25: What’s Next for Chronic Care Management

Sponsor

This episode is sponsored by Formstack.

Formstack is a workplace productivity platform that simplifies healthcare data processes. Healthcare teams can transform piles of paperwork into automated workflows that are easy to administer and 100% HIPAA compliant. From appointment scheduling to insurance verification, Formstack makes it easy to breeze through administrative tasks, reduce security risks, and improve patient care and satisfaction. Learn more and try Formstack here.

The COVID-19 crisis and the resulting lock-downs across the world forced many organizations to go virtual in an instant. Some of them had sound Business Continuity (BC) and Disaster Recovery (DR) plans in place. And while they were still interrupted, they were able to move quickly and keep their people working. Others were caught off-guard and are now scrambling to make it all work.

In an industry like healthcare with reams of sensitive data and the regulations that go with it, this breakneck pace creates a ton of risk for organizations going remote. And the risks are exacerbated when they can’t provision hardware for everyone and they let their staff connect via their own devices.

On this episode, we talk with Jonathan Lieberman, CEO and Co-Founder at itopia. He tells us how virtual desktops can be deployed quickly and securely in the cloud, allowing your staff to access critical data and systems from anywhere on any device.

This approach has obvious benefits when you’re faced with the type of crisis we’re in right now, but it goes way beyond that. We’re really talking about sound Business Continuity (BC) and Disaster Recovery (DR) strategies. If you, as Jonathan puts it, “treat every employee like a remote worker”, then you’ll be ready for whatever comes next.

We cover a lot of strategy, along with the tactics to execute. Key topics include:

• What’s special about remote workers and remote work environments
• On-boarding and decommissioning users in a virtual environment.
• Policies and procedures to ensure security, especially when employees are using their own devices
• Special considerations for remote access to HIPAA-protected information
• Rapidly re-deploying remote desktops infected by ransomware
• Why all of this is really Business Continuity (BC) and Disaster Recovery (DR) planning
• Why you should continue to treat every employee like a remote employee even after the crisis
• Why there’s no way to create a secure desktop in a physical environment
• What we can learn from the COVID-19 crisis about our ability to innovate quickly.
• Why we should never go back to doing things exactly the way we did before.

Full show notes and links: https://thehcbiz.com/remote-work-environments-and-business-continuity/

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This episode is sponsored by Formstack.

Formstack is a workplace productivity platform that simplifies healthcare data processes. Healthcare teams can transform piles of paperwork into automated workflows that are easy to administer and 100% HIPAA compliant. From appointment scheduling to insurance verification, Formstack makes it easy to breeze through administrative tasks, reduce security risks, and improve patient care and satisfaction. Learn more and try Formstack here.

Health Systems are being asked to make changes in 2 months that would have otherwise taken years. As some business lines come screeching to a halt, others have sped to a breakneck pace. Prioritizing problems to solve and finding novel solutions have never been more essential. Here today to teach us how innovation is done at Geisinger Health is Karen Murphy. Enjoy!

We define innovation at Geisinger as a fundamentally different approach to solving a problem that has quantifiable outcomes. So we only work on problems.

• Pathway from nursing to government to innovation at Geisinger
• The Solution-Oriented vs The Strategy-Oriented Innovation Team
• What prioritization mistakes are hospitals and public health officials making during COVID-19?
• Innovations in behavioral health and mental health for the healthcare workforce.
• What have your frontline workers learned that can inform community reopening strategies?
• How hospitals are tracking and factoring the quality of social distancing into their metrics.
• Contact Tracing Technology and Techniques
• Building your own Post-COVID Plan: What did you stop that you shouldn’t restart? What did you start that you should continue? And scenario planning.

Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer, Founding Director, Steele Institute for Health Innovation, Geisinger

Dr. Murphy has worked to improve and transform healthcare delivery throughout her career in both the public and private sectors. Before joining Geisinger, she served as Pennsylvania’s secretary of health addressing the most significant health issues facing the state, including the opioid epidemic. Prior to her role as secretary, Dr. Murphy served as director of the State Innovation Models Initiative at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services leading a $990 million CMS investment designed to accelerate health care innovation across the United States. She previously served as president and chief executive officer of the Moses Taylor Health Care System in Scranton, and as founder and chief executive officer of Physicians Health Alliance, Inc., an integrated medical group practice within Moses Taylor. Dr. Murphy earned her doctor of philosophy in business administration from the Temple University Fox School of Business. She holds a master’s of business administration from Marywood University, a bachelor of science in liberal arts from the University of Scranton, and a diploma in nursing from the Scranton State Hospital School of Nursing. An author and national speaker on health policy and innovation, Dr. Murphy also serves as a clinical faculty member at Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine.

The healthcare industry across the country needs real solutions that drive transformation. Here at Geisinger, the Steele Institute for Health Innovation has forged a dynamic healthcare solutions team, headed by leaders across our enterprise, that is rapidly developing innovative solutions to change healthcare.

What drives us? An unshakable commitment to deliver better care to our patients, our members, our students, our Geisinger family and our communities.

Our purpose is simple, but powerful – to lead the nation in building solutions that improve:

• Health
• Patient experience
• Care delivery
• Affordability

Geisinger Website

Steele Institute for Health Innovation

STAT Op-ed on Contact Tracing by Karen Murphy

The Geisinger Chapter of Reframing Healthcare by Zeev Neuwirth

Episode 126: Opportunity Zones w/ John Gorman