Experts say hospitals must plan for providing care after an attack

Cybersecurity and patient safety

Experts offer advice for hospitals on protecting systems and patients

Tips and tough love

Criminals know smaller systems are vulnerable to cyberattacks

Targeting small hospitals

With some prodding from the federal government, hospitals are starting to pay more attention to their environmental impact.

The healthcare industry accounts for about 8.5% of America’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to 

More than 60 hospitals and healthcare groups

 have signed a pledge to reach President Biden’s goal for healthcare organizations to cut emissions by 50% by 2030.

CommonSpirit Health has a long connection with sustainability, said Shelly L. Schlenker, the system’s executive vice president and chief advocacy officer. The organization’s roots trace to its founding by Catholic nuns and sisters. “They believe taking care of Mother Earth is as important as caring for patients,” Schlenker said.

Hospitals praise Inflation Reduction Act for climate change, health provisions

Schlenker talked with other healthcare leaders about 

the need for hospitals to focus more on sustainability

 during a panel at the American Hospital Association Leadership Summit in July.

 after the panel to discuss how hospitals can do their part in addressing climate change. (The story continues below the video.)

For those hospitals just beginning efforts on sustainability, Schlenker said, “You start by figuring out the why for your organization.”

“Since all healthcare systems in the U.S. account for about 8% to 9% of the total greenhouse gas emissions, that’s part of the why. But it’s also about your patients,” Schlenker said. “We started with the framework that climate action is inextricably tied to health equity, because the people who are most impacted are the poor, and the vulnerable and people of color, and then it just came naturally out of our desire to advance healthcare overall.”

Why hospitals should emulate Coca-Cola in sustainability reporting

Those looking to convince their hospitals to engage in efforts to reduce their environmental impact are going to have to make the business case to their hospital leadership and boards. 

Schlenker noted that CommonSpirit began purchasing LED bulbs, which are more expensive than ordinary lightbulbs. But they use much less energy and the health system ended up saving millions of dollars in energy costs, she said.

Regardless of the environmental initiative, Schlenker said, “In every instance, you can make the business case.”

“The business case is really about two things,” Schlenker said. “It’s about patient outcomes, but it’s also about saving money. In the initial years, there are a bunch of things you can do that actually reduce your expenses. So you get some of those wins under your belt for reducing expenses, and then people get the energy and buy-in for some of the bigger and more challenging endeavors.”

As health systems focus on their own sustainability initiatives, they also face the thorny challenge of coaxing their suppliers and vendors to adopt more environmentally friendly practices.

Schlenker suggested working with suppliers to educate them and begin providing standards they should meet. Eventually, hospitals and health systems need to put those standards in contracts, she said.

Sustainability efforts can’t be done in a vacuum. They have to be done as part of a hospital system’s strategic plan, she said. CommonSpirit doesn’t have a separate budget to deal with climate change, she said, but all new projects must address how they are going to meet environmental standards.

CommonSpirit is striving to make progress without the use of carbon offset credits, where companies can purchase credits to finance efforts to reduce emission elsewhere. The health system is focused on reducing its own environmental impact.

“We’ve committed as an organization to not using offsets,” Schlenker said during the panel. “We don’t have that kind of money, so we’re doing the hard work.”

She also stressed the importance of engaging employees who are interested in sustainability efforts. At CommonSpirit, each hospital has a “green team.” All of the members are volunteers.

The green teams meet monthly and talk about progress on sustainability efforts. CommonSpirit allows them to meet as part of their regular schedule, she said.

Hospitals should work with their local communities and understand environmental efforts probably won’t entail one-size-fits-all solutions, Schlenker stressed. For systems owning hospitals across the country, some institutions confront the threat of flooding, while others face greater dangers from wildfires or extreme heat waves.

Even as the Biden administration is pushing hospitals to reduce their emissions and pollutants, others are placing 

growing pressure on health systems to do better

. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., sent a 

 to hospital systems earlier this year asking them what they are doing to reduce emissions.

Even hospital boards and investors are asking hospital leaders what they are doing on sustainability. “If your CFO hasn’t spoken to you about this, they will,” Simrit Sandhu, Vizient’s executive vice president for strategic transformation and clinical supply solutions, said at the AHA panel.

During the panel, Schlenker said health leaders should act with urgency and come up with some voluntary goals before government mandates are imposed. “If we don’t do it together, the government is going to do it to us,” she said.

Speaking after the panel, Schlenker said the pressure on hospitals to do better for the environment comes from many different areas.

“Your bond-rating agencies are looking at what you’re doing in this space, or those investing in you,” she said. “It’s regulators, it’s legislators. But most importantly, it’s really been our employees and our doctors who really want to see us leaning in on it. Do no harm. We start with our 156,000 associates and we look at how we can really advance this across our platform.”

Articles

She outlines some steps for hospitals on reducing harms to the environment, making the business case, and the growing pressure to do better.

Hospitals and sustainability: CommonSpirit Health’s Shelly Schlenker says ‘it’s about your patients’

Hospitals with a higher concentration of Black patients get lower payments for caring for patients.

 examining reimbursement rates of hospitals. It’s significant because a relatively small number of hospitals care for a substantial portion of Black Americans.

The differences in funding could be contributing to disparities in health outcomes, the authors wrote in the study.

“These ongoing funding disparities reinforce inequities in resources inherited from the past, and may undermine the quality of care at Black-serving hospitals,” the authors stated. “Black-serving hospitals score lower on some quality indicators, have lower nurse staffing ratios, and often lack important services.”

Bryan Stevenson says ‘health equity is really health justice’

The authors say the heart of the disparities point to structural racism, which is actually reflected in the title of the study (“Hospitals That Serve Many Black Patients Have Lower Revenues and Profits: Structural Racism in Hospital Financing”).

“Our findings do not speak to the intentions of present-day policy and health care leaders,” the authors wrote. “However, we find evidence of disparate impact, indicating that the current system of hospital financing is a form of structural racism.”

Researchers examined 574 “Black-serving” hospitals and 5,166 other hospitals. In the 574 Black-serving hospitals, an average of 43.7% of Medicare inpatients were Black. At the other hospitals, 5.2% of those Medicare patients were identified as Black. The study examined Medicare participating hospitals between 2016 and 2018.

Black, Latinx patients had greater delays in cancer care in the pandemic

The study found that Black-serving hospitals have smaller profits or surpluses than hospitals with a smaller number of Black patients, but the differences are not as dramatic. Black-serving hospitals appear to have “have a leaner cost structure,” the authors wrote.

The reimbursements for patient care per day were 21.6% lower at Black-serving hospitals, the study found. Black-serving hospitals were reimbursed an average of $1,736 per day, while other hospitals received $2,213 per day. The study included payments by insurers and patients in tallying reimbursements.

“Hospital financing effectively assigns a lower dollar value to the care of Black patients,” the authors wrote.

Many health systems say equity is a top priority, but not many are budgeting for it

To bring parity in reimbursement levels, America’s Black-serving hospitals would have had to receive $14 billion in additional payments in 2018, or about $26 million per Black-serving hospital.

To address the disparities in both financing and patient care, the authors also called for greater investment in hospitals serving a large percentage of Black patients.

“Health financing reforms should assure that hospital payment reflects patients’ care needs rather than their race, and repair the damage of past policies by preferentially directing new capital funds to resource-starved facilities that have long served Black communities,” the authors wrote.

Rural hospital closures more likely to affect Black, Hispanic residents

Black-serving hospitals face greater financial pressures, which have caused some to close their doors. The authors noted the closure of Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia, where more than half the patients were Black. The hospital closed in 2019, and it is sorely missed by residents in the community, particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, 

The authors were Gracie Himmelstein of the University of California Los Angeles; Joniqua Ceasar of The Johns Hopkins Hospital; and Kathryn Himmelstein of Massachusetts General Hospital.

Researchers found a significant difference in financing for Black-serving hospitals. A small portion of America’s hospitals care for a large number of the nation’s Black patients.

Hospitals with more Black patients get paid less, reflecting ‘structural racism’: Study

Maternal mortality during hospitalization and pregnancy complications rose during the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study has found.

, found “small but significant increases” in pregnancy-related complications and maternal death.

“The increase in maternal death during delivery hospitalization and pregnancy-related complications during the pandemic is alarming,” the researchers wrote.

Researchers examined more than 1.6 million pregnant patients across 463 hospitals in the United States (​​849 544 before COVID-19 and 805 324 during the pandemic). They compared outcomes during the pandemic and the 14 months before the arrival of COVID-19.

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, there were increased odds of maternal death during delivery hospitalization, cardiovascular disorders, and obstetric hemorrhage,” the authors wrote. “Further efforts are needed to ensure risks potentially associated with the COVID-19 pandemic do not persist beyond the current state of the pandemic.”

Before the pandemic, the maternal mortality rate during delivery hospitalization was 5.17 per 100 000 pregnant patients. During the pandemic, the maternal mortality rate rose to 8.69 per 100,000 pregnant patients.

Black, Latinx patients faced greater delays in cancer care during the pandemic

During the pandemic 16.6% of patients had a pregnancy-related hypertensive disorder, up from 15.3% before the pandemic. Also, 5.5% of patients experienced a hemorrhage during the pandemic, compared to 5.1% of patients before the coronavirus arrived.

The study found a 5% drop in births during the pandemic. The average gestational age at births remained consistent before and during the pandemic: 38.3 weeks. The rates of fetal deaths and stillbirths remained fairly stable (0.9% of all births), the study found.

The rates of preterm birth remained essentially the same before and during the pandemic, as did the mode of delivery.

“Taken together, our study raises concerns that the COVID-19 pandemic may have negatively affected obstetric care and pregnancy-related outcomes,” the authors wrote.

Pregnant women with disabilities face higher risk of health issues

The authors note COVID-19 during pregnancy is associated with a higher risk of death, but only a small number of pregnant patients in the study (318) were diagnosed with COVID-19.

However, the researchers said their analysis supports previous studies that have found the COVID-19 pandemic affected the care of those who are pregnant.

“While hospital-based obstetric care remained an essential service during the COVID-19 pandemic, outpatient prenatal care experienced substantial disruptions, and much routine care was done virtually,” the researchers wrote. “It is possible that these disruptions and limitations in monitoring with telehealth may have contributed to the slight worsening of pregnancy-related complications.”

The study found higher rates of hypertensive disorder among Black patients before the pandemic and during the pandemic. While the researchers noted the higher rates of hypertension among Black patients is “concerning,” they noted that preexisting inequities in outcomes among Black patients did not worsen. Generally, there was not a significant difference in outcomes among other racial or ethnic groups.

Researchers found that people of color “were more likely to experience disrespectful care and perceived discrimination.” Those experiences are tied to postpartum stress, the study noted.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services plans to identify 

 as part of the federal government’s efforts to reduce maternal mortality. In the fall of 2023, the CMS plans to post the results of those hospitals earning the “birthing friendly” designation for the first time.

The authors of the study include Rose Molina of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston; Thomas Tsai, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston; and Dannie Dai, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, along with other researchers.

Researchers found increased odds of death during hospitalization, cardiovascular problems and obstetric hemorrhage. 

‘Alarming’ rise in maternal deaths, pregnancy complications in COVID-19 pandemic

Patrick Yam is the CEO and cofounder of Somnology

Mark Goettling is the cofounder of BodiMetrics

Smart wearable devices are having a moment, with demand 

Sleep, too, is also having a moment, with major sports celebrities like LeBron James starring in podcasts and TV segments espousing the merits of clocking in a full night of z’s.

With both trends converging, it’s no wonder the market for wearable smart rings embedded with sleep trackers has soared. According to the latest estimates, the wearable sleep trackers market is projected to reach 

, at a compound annual growth rate of 7.6% between 2021 to 2026.

Yet there is also a growing disconnect between the sleep data generated by these devices and our ability to make a measurable difference in resolving sleep problems that affect an estimated 

What we need is not only better ways to manage sleep data, but also a more comprehensive system for managing our health.

Generating quality sleep data expands access to diagnosis

Over the last two years, technologists have made strides in improving the accuracy of wearables that can detect meaningful sleep patterns and concerns. Solutions on the market today can detect sleep patterns that compare favorably with an in-person sleep study and continuously monitor and record blood oxygen levels—something not typical for at-home wearables—which leads to more accurate readings.

This is incredible progress, considering that sleep disorders contribute to chronic conditions such as heart disease and hypertension and can worsen diseases such as diabetes. 

 revealed that just one bad night of sleep—defined as less than 6 consecutive hours of z’s—increased feelings of anger, nervousness, loneliness and frustration.

The significance is also manifold because wearables have the potential to reduce the barriers to accessing sleep disorders in a sleep lab—of which there are many.

 have indicated that black patients and patients with darker skin tones are at a higher risk for hypoxemia and subsequent negative health impacts due to less accurate pulse oximeter measurements compared to white patients. In recent years, there have been 

 in oximeters and wearables to close that health disparity gap and deliver accurate diagnosis to all patients, regardless of their skin tone.

More broadly, most consumers are reluctant to make an appointment with their doctors to address sleep disorders because they are aware of the huge time commitment involved if they need to undergo an in-person sleep study. 

Sleep studies require at least 12 hours of time away from the home—not including time spent traveling—and are also intrusive and uncomfortable. (Not to mention, the wait time for scheduling a consultation with a sleep specialist could take months.) Plus, obtaining data from a single night of sleep in a sleep center is insufficient because it doesn’t account for variances in individual sleep patterns.

Also, the sleep study itself doesn’t actually

 the patient. It’s true that if a patient is diagnosed with sleep apnea, most health plans will cover the fitting, training and use of CPAP devices. 

But it’s not standard practice to check in with patients to ensure they’re continuing to use the device. Those suffering from sleep problems in conjunction with other disorders, such as PTSD, are left to their own devices to figure out how to supplement care.

Having clinically validated solutions that can distill and contextualize data into meaningful and actionable insights for the consumer to act upon is a gamechanger.

Yet it is only a gamechanger if we act. As most disorders are complex in nature and co-occur with physical and mental issues such as stress, PTSD, lung disease or MS, we need to consider treatments in a broader context. All of these conditions impact an individual’s quality of life and cannot be treated by simply prescribing a CPAP device.

A more holistic approach would address sleep while addressing other concerns. This might include, for example, the use of medical-grade sleep-tracking smart rings to collect data on a nightly basis, and then transmit it to a remote sleep lab for analysis by a clinical specialist. Using a rich data set, such as 10 to 14 consecutive nights of data, can help specialists isolate individual behaviors, like waking up two to three times per night, that requires attention.

If this comprehensive approach is used along with telehealth to facilitate interactions between individuals and sleep specialists, patients will regularly interact with the professionals who can offer more specific solutions and supplemental care, such as seeing a behavioral health therapist or lifestyle modification.

Elevating sleep, improving quality of life

The sleep crisis in America won’t be solved by handing out lavender satchels or fitting everyone in America with a CPAP device. To truly address sleep health, we need to reframe our mindset around sleep as a key contributor to overall health management.

As more consumers adopt wearable technology, health leaders should seize this moment as an opportunity for engaging them in improving their sleep health. By easing the barriers to sleep health awareness, diagnosis of disorders and treatments, health leaders will ensure that more Americans will have the access to resources they need to sleep soundly long into the future.

Wearable sleep trackers, when used correctly and consistently, have vast potential to enable individuals to measure the quality of their sleep. But that’s just the beginning.

Why improving sleep quality requires better data — and better follow up

Travis Capers has been hired to fill a new role in Vanderbilt Health.

Capers has been selected as the first president of Vanderbilt Regional Community Hospitals. He assumes his new role on Monday, Aug. 15. Capers will lead the community-based hospitals within Vanderbilt Health, the system said in a news release.

Capers has served as president of SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital, a 500-bed hospital in St. Louis, for six years.

“Vanderbilt Health is a world-renowned academic health system delivering exceptional care to patients and improving the future of health care,” Capers said in a statement. “I am excited and humbled to be joining the team as we enhance the health of the communities we’re so blessed to serve.”

Capers will oversee these Vanderbilt community hospitals:

Vanderbilt Bedford Hospital in Shelbyville, Tennessee

Vanderbilt Tullahoma Harton Hospital in Tullahoma, Tennessee

Vanderbilt Wilson County Hospital in Lebanon, Tennessee

Capers will also represent Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s interest in joint operations of Tennova Healthcare – Clarksville in Clarksville, Tennessee. Vanderbilt has a 20% ownership stake in the facility, while Community Health Systems owns 80%.

He brings years of experience in key leadership roles. Earlier, Capers was CEO of Ochsner Medical Center West Bank Region from 2011-2016. In Nashville, he was chief operating officer of HCA TriStar Division Southern Hills Medical Center from 2003-2011.

Capers will report to C. Wright Pinson, deputy CEO and chief health system officer at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Pinson said the leadership team is confident he will be a great fit with the organization.

“Travis has the skills, drive and experience to take on this responsibility,” Pinson said in a statement.

UVA Health names first chief of human resources

UVA Health has named Karmen Fittes as the inaugural chief of UVA Health Human Resources.

In this new role, Fittes will oversee human resources for UVA Health’s various entities. She will join UVA Health on Sept. 1.

Fittes comes to UVA from the University of California, Davis, where she has served as executive director of talent and rewards for the university and its health system since 2016.

UVA Health said Fittes will work to recruit and retain team members to the system.

“I am excited to join UVA in support of the all-important vision to be the nation’s leading public academic health system and best place to work,” Fittes said in a statement.

“I look forward to working with health system leadership, the human resources team and everyone at this leading institution to support workplaces where employees want to work, want to stay, and want to contribute,” she added. “A highly diverse and highly engaged talented workforce is foundational to achieving our objectives.”

Fittes possesses more than a quarter-century of human resources experience, including more than 20 years in the healthcare industry. Before joining UC Davis, she served from 2013 to 2016 as director of organizational effectiveness for Alberta Health Services in Canada.

John Kosky, UVA vice president & chief human resources officer, said Fittes will be a welcome addition to the system.

“She has the right mix of skills, experience, and background to support our team members with opportunities to grow, develop and succeed, as well as to recruit more people to join our mission of transforming health and inspiring hope for everyone,” Kosky said in a statement.

Stephanie D. Conners has been named the next chief executive officer and president of BayCare Health System in Florida.

BayCare is largest not-for-profit health care provider in west-central Florida and one of the region’s largest employers.

Conners, 50, is succeeding Tommy Inzina, BayCare’s current CEO and president, who plans to retire by the end of the year. Conners, who will join BayCare in October, will be the fourth CEO of the 25-year-old organization.

She’s the executive vice president and chief operating officer for Jefferson Health, the health care system based in Philadelphia.

“I am humbled and honored to lead such a remarkable organization,” Conners said in a statement. “Its legacy of compassionate care is palpable, and I look forward to helping ensure its future success. It is my personal mission to make a difference in the lives of others.”

She has served as Jefferson’s chief operating officer since 2018, but she has spent nearly three decades in the healthcare industry.

In 2002, Conners took her first senior leadership role with Tenet Healthcare as chief nursing officer for Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia, a post she held for a decade. She later served as senior vice president for operations and system chief nursing officer for Robert Wood Johnson University and Bristol-Myers Squibb Children’s hospitals in New Jersey. She also served as chief operating officer and chief nursing officer for Cooper University Health Care in New Jersey.

Rick Colón, chairman of BayCare’s board of trustees, called Conners “an engaging and compassionate leader who will lead BayCare into its next era of serving the community’s health, our team members and our medical community.”

OSF HealthCare names CEO of central region

Bob Anderson has been named chief executive officer of OSF HealthCare’s central region.

Anderson is the president of OSF HealthCare Saint Francis Medical Center, a position he will continue to hold until a replacement is hired. He will begin his new role on Sept. 1.

Anderson replaces Mike Cruz as CEO of the central region. Cruz was recently named chief operating officer of the 15-hospital system based in Illinois. The system’s central region includes OSF Saint Francis, OSF Children’s Hospital of Illinois in the Peoria area, OSF Aviation, and the surrounding Peoria area.

Anderson began his career at OSF HealthCare in 1981 as a medical technologist in the laboratory services department.

He went on to serve as senior vice president and chief operating officer at OSF Saint Francis before becoming the hospital’s president in 2017.

As president, Anderson has led a number of efforts to improve healthcare, including the OSF HealthCare Cancer Institute, which is slated to open on the OSF Saint Francis campus in 2024.

OSF HealthCare is owned and operated by The Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis, based in Peoria, Illinois. The system employs more than 24,000 workers, dubbed “mission partners,” at 150 locations.

Meenesh Bhimani has been named the new chief operating officer of El Camino Health in California.

Bhimani began in his new role Aug. 8. He’ll oversee inpatient areas, nursing, the patient experience and all other support services, the organization said.

“I am proud to join an organization with a deeply rooted culture of innovation and safety as well as a commitment to raising the bar in delivering patient care,” Bhimani said in a statement. “These are areas I am passionate about, and I look forward to serving El Camino Health as COO.”

Before joining El Camino Health, Dr. Bhimani served as hospital executive at O’Connor Hospital in San Jose, Calif.. He was also president of Emergency Physicians Associates.

Bhimani is board certified in emergency medicine and was a physician at Kaiser Permanente Greater Southern Alameda County, Washington Hospital, and St. Louise Regional Hospital.

Dan Woods, chief executive officer of El Camino Health, called Bhimani “a great fit for the enterprise.”

“I believe Meenesh’s track record of leadership as both a hospital and physician executive as well as his insight as an emergency medicine physician with more than 20 years of experience will be a valuable addition to our leadership team,” Woods said in a statement.

El Camino operates two nonprofit hospitals in Los Gatos and Mountain View, and primary care, specialty care, and urgent care services throughout Santa Clara County.

UVA Health hires its first chief of human resources, BayCare Health System selects a CEO, and other leaders take new posts.


MED MOVES: Vanderbilt Health names president to lead 3 hospitals, and more

It doesn’t take long for Joshua Titus to get to the obvious question when talking about Gozio Health.

Is it necessary to have an app that helps patients get to the hospital?

Titus, the CEO of Gozio Health, says his company’s technology helps patients get to the hospital and much more. The Atlanta-based company partners with hospitals and health systems on patient engagement solutions.

Gozio helps patients get to the hospital and the specific floor and department they need, which can be daunting for patients or family members visiting a large, sprawling hospital. Gozio also helps patients navigate their way to the parking lot and even the nearest vending machines. Beyond navigation, Gozio enables patients to schedule appointments and pay bills.

The future of healthcare ‘is about the consumer’

, Titus talked about Gozio and its potential to help health systems connect with patients. (The story continues below the video.)

Titus said the system’s wayfinding component came out of his earlier experience working with smartphones and silicon chips. “I knew the greasy underbelly of smartphones and the sensors that went into them,” he said.

“The idea of these hospitals that have grown organically over time, they’re these huge labyrinths,” Titus said. “You’re stressed when you’re there, your normal 150 IQ is running at about 75, because you’re stressed about some clinical outcome. Can I somehow help you navigate the system? Using the sensors on a smartphone that I had access to and understanding of, can I bring those to bear on the problem? It turns out that we could.”

Titus said that was the genesis of Gozio, but it was only the beginning.

“We’re going to help people on a rather rough day, getting people through these big hospitals. And what we realized, once we had people engaging on mobile, there’s so much more that we can do on mobile as we do in all other walks of life and experiences, where mobile is our problem-solving companion, essentially,” he said.

“To take that and solve problems in healthcare is what we’ve dedicated ourselves to since then,” Titus said.

Health systems plan for digital transformation, but must pick up the pace

American Hospital Association Leadership Summit

 last month, Titus said the company is showing it can help health systems improve their patient engagement.

“I think what we’re doing that is unique is that we are taking the experiences and human nature that happens in all other walks of life outside healthcare… and we’re bringing that into a system that is probably a decade behind,” Titus said.

Gozio Health is partnering with more than 30 health systems, and around 200 hospitals, on their patient engagement platforms. The company is working with 

, Grady Health System, Baptist Health in Jacksonville, University Health in San Antonio, Yale New Haven Health and others.

UNC Health partnered with Gozio’s wayfinding service and WELL Health’s patient communication platform and reported a 443% increase in downloads and digital interactions.

Titus said Gozio's wayfinding device to help patients avoid getting lost actually only represents a portion of the company’s platform.

“The rest of it is, once I have those mobile eyeballs, once I have someone engaged with my hospital system’s mobile application, what are the other pieces that I want?

“There’s virtual care, maybe it’s access to care in terms of quick care, and urgent care, maybe the ED I need to visit,” Titus said. “Schedule some time on my doctor’s calendar. Find the right doctor for me: ear nose and throat that speaks Spanish and availability tomorrow near my house. This helps me connect with care that way.”

Gozio’s platform can also help patients access their electronic medical records and pay bills.

“All those other pieces that by themselves wouldn’t be compelling enough to engage me, when you combine them together in the whole, the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts,” Titus said. “And that is what we’ve learned in mobile engagement in healthcare.”

It’s the combination of features and services on the platform that drive engagement, such as hand-holding a patient trying to navigate the maze that is the hospital to scheduling follow-up appointments, he said. “The sticky features cause me to return again,” Titus said.

Titus said a key early lesson in Gozio’s growth is that there’s not any one singular feature that is going to drive consumers to use the app. However, Titus said the goal is to provide enough “key components that you hit a tipping point.”

“The app stores are strung with the skeletons of attempts to get people to engage on mobile devices,” Titus said. “One thing that Gozio has learned how to do is how to get not thousands but tens of thousands of people to engage on a mobile device daily with hospital systems.”

Titus said he is enthusiastic about Gozio’s prospects for the future. 

"The utility of it is the fact that people actually use it," Titus said. "To do that you have to deliver value to the patient or the visitor, that makes their life better in some way. Once you do that, then you’re in good shape. We struggled to do it for years and I think we cracked the secret code here at Gozio to get people to engage."

Before co-founding Gozio, Titus spent 12 years at the computing company NVIDIA. He also worked with Dell Computers, Ross Technology and Xpeed.

Gozio is based in Atlanta, with offices in “a cool part of town,” Titus said, but many of Gozio’s employees work remotely. “We view that as a way to attract and retain talent,” he said.

As Gozio grows, Titus said he aims to keep the company’s unique culture.

Citing one of Gozio’s prime features of its technology, Titus says he wants to grow while continuing “to build a team that doesn’t lose its way.”

The company’s technology helps patients navigate sprawling hospitals, along with scheduling and billing. CEO Joshua Titus says Gozio’s platform helps hospitals see higher patient engagement.

Gozio Health looks to help hospitals move in the right direction

President Biden’s administration is hearing more calls to continue the COVID-19 public health emergency beyond October.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services extended the public health emergency by 90 days last month, meaning it would expire in the middle of October without an extension. Healthcare organizations are anxious because U.S. Health Secretary Xavier Becerra has said he would give health organizations 60 days notice before ending the public health emergency.

As the calendar draws closer to that point, healthcare organizations have said they want the emergency extended, because the designation provides hospitals and health systems important tools to fight COVID-19. The designation includes waivers that have expanded 

 programs, hospital bed flexibility and other measures.

The Medical Group Management Association wrote a 

The group joins hospitals in asking the Biden administration to continue the designation beyond October. At the same time, the CDC is easing some of its guidance.