TDP 114: Northwell Health's CMIO, Dr. Sophia Saleem: Personalized Interventions to Tackle Provider Burnout, Shifting Healthcare Focus From Transactions to Patient Access & Engagement, and Turning Skeptics Into Teachers

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On this episode of "The Digital Patient" podcast, hosts Alan Sardana & Dr. Joshua Liu speak with Dr. Sophia Saleem, Chief Medical Information Officer of Ambulatory Services at Northwell Health, about "Personalized Interventions to Tackle Provider Burnout, Shifting Healthcare Focus From Transactions to Patient Access & Engagement, Turning Skeptics Into Teachers and more..." Click the play button to listen or read the show notes below.
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Audio:

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Video:

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Guest(s):

• Dr. Sophia Saleem, Chief Medical Information Officer, Ambulatory Services at Northwell Health
• Dr. Joshua Liu (@joshuapliu), Co-founder & CEO at SeamlessMD

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‍Episode 114 - Show Notes:

[00:01:00] Why Dr. Saleem got into healthcare, coming from a family of healthcare professionals, she felt it was a natural fit and a great place to build a career and help people;

[00:01:39] How Dr. Saleem became interested in ophthalmology, initially expected to go into internal medicine or cardiology, but through school involvement and mentorship, she discovered ophthalmology to be a great fit;

[00:02:00] How Dr. Saleem got involved in the telemedicine movement out of a desire to work remotely as was available for radiology;

[00:03:34] Current state of teleophthalmology;

[00:06:00] How the first use of teleophthalmology at Northwell Health helped identify a patient with diabetic retinopathy who didn't know they had diabetes;

[00:06:59] How computer vision AI has been applied to ocular images for the past five or six years, and how the first AI algorithm received FDA approval and was embedded in a camera, allowing for quick identification of referable or non-referable diabetic retinopathy;

[00:08:32] How Dr. Saleem’s interest in informatics began during her residency, when she found billing and coding fascinating, and developed a passion for studying process and the movement of information;

[00:11:00] How Dr. Saleem feels being an informaticist is a natural fit for her personality, as she has always been interested in workflow and the movement of information;

[00:15:00] Dr. Saleem draws an analogy between the adoption of AI and electronic medical records (EMRs), highlighting the need for a maturation curve and understanding of the technology's value proposition;

[00:16:00] Dr. Saleem emphasizes the multifaceted nature of provider burnout and the importance of recognizing individual differences in what drives burnout, and the need for personalized intervention;

[00:17:00] Dr. Saleem discusses the significance of stratifying and understanding providers individually in order to create targeted plans for addressing burnout, rather than adopting a one-size-fits-all approach;

[00:19:32] The challenge of knowing what questions to ask in order to better target interventions and support for providers;

[00:20:00] How Dr. Saleem is thinking about the importance of understanding what drives providers to come to work and how to support them in different seasons of their lives;

[00:23:00] Why training and provider education in digital transformation is critical, and how it is paramount for the sustained integration of new digital solutions into clinical workflow;

[00:24:00] How targeting specific clinician populations when rolling out new digitally transformed workflows, rather than sending a mass emails to all users is an easy win;

[00:25:00] How enlisting providers to record specialty-specific training fosters a peer-to-peer learning approach;

[00:27:13] How to identify the champions or influencers to use for your training videos for a particular department by taking notice of who is complaining the most — as they are engaged and want to improve;

[00:27:42] How Dr. Saleem gets invited to urology retreats, where she is often roasted for an hour about their EHR pain points, needs, and goals;

[00:28:32] How Dr. Saleem creates camaraderie and ensures that the tools provided make sense for the health system;

[00:30:00] Why Dr. Saleem believes the shift from transactional healthcare to a focus on patient access and engagement, with emphasis on privacy and patient preference, is the future;

[00:36:00] How patients have unique needs, and require personalized solutions as opposed to a one-size-fits-all model, and how the hospital at home is just another care setting that requires a deep understanding of where it fits into the overall care arc and engagement model for the patient and system;

[00:37:27] How to handle the deluge of data in healthcare;

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‍Fast 5 Lightning Round:

1. What is your favorite book or book you've gifted the most?
   "The 7 Habits" by Stephen Covey
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2. Who is a person, dead or alive, you'd love to meet?
   Ruth Bader Ginsburg
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3. Would you rather have super strength, super speed, or the ability to read minds?
   Super speed or the ability to fly
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4. What is something in healthcare you believe that others might find insane?
   How much data we have and how little we use of it
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5. If you could travel back in time to any event or moment, what would it be and why?
   Bringing my newborn child home for the first time