TDP 82: Intermountain Healthcare's Mona Baset: Building a Team of Automation Designers, Creating Digital Coworkers & Using Automation to Improve Empathy

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On this episode of "The Digital Patient" podcast, hosts Alan Sardana & Dr. Joshua Liu speak with Mona Baset, Vice President, Digital Services at Intermountain Healthcare, about "Building a Team of Automation Designers, Creating Digital Coworkers & Using Automation to Improve Empathy". 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):

• Mona Baset, Vice President, Digital Services at Intermountain Healthcare
• Dr. Joshua Liu (@joshuapliu), Co-founder & CEO at SeamlessMD

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‍Episode 82 - Show Notes:

[00:00] Introducing Mona Baset, Vice President, Digital Services at Intermountain Healthcare;

[2:18] Why Ms. Baset planned to be a lawyer as it was a career that combined her passion for writing, reading and persuasion, and how her plans changed when she discovered she could have a more direct impact on business and people through marketing;

[4:00] Why Ms. Baset persevered in her marketing career due to her love of storytelling and creating messages that resonate with people, and how this passion ultimately led her to the technology side where she could leverage technology to engage and encourage people to take action;

[5:00] Why Ms. Baset got into healthcare after a ten year career with Bank of America as she wanted to impact the community more broadly in a positive way and knew that healthcare was one of – if not the most – direct and intimate industry;

[6:30] The similarities Ms. Baset sees with digital transformation between the financial services industry and healthcare; specifically the focus on consumerism and enabling consumers to have more control over their experience, as well as the differences working for a not-for-profit system;

[9:48] How coming from a marketing background has helped Ms. Baset lead digital transformation in healthcare as the focus on consumerism and the ability to use statistics, data and stories to convince stakeholders why an initiative is important, is marketing 101;

[12:00] How Ms. Baset works closely with various committees to help prioritize initiatives that solve the biggest needs for the organization such as access and omni-channel transformation;

[14:00] Why Ms. Baset believes technology is a strategic asset to support the broader organization objectives as opposed to a fun and shiny object;

[15:03] Why Ms. Baset is proud of her team for their creativity, courage, and curiosity, as they work hard despite a range of unknowns that comes with technology and digital transformation, and why it’s important to have a solid business case behind every decision;

[17:12] Why Ms. Baset is an advocate for design-thinking – a human-centered approach to creative problem solving – that involves working with Intermountain Healthcare’s various patient & family advisory councils to bounce ideas and prototypes off of and to establish a deeper understanding of their motivations;

[21:20] How Ms. Baset built a team of “automation designers” – people who sit deep within the organization and identify processes to automate – effectively creating “digital coworkers” through automated solutions that are low-risk but impactful for the organization;

[24:00] How Ms. Baset is working closely with the clinical teams at Intermountain to determine the next steps for these Digital Coworkers including providing virtual therapeutics for patients; care that does not require 1 to 1 interaction;

[28:00] How use of virtual care actually diminished following the pandemic – from roughly 15% of all services being delivered virtually to 5% – and why Ms. Baset believes virtual could ramp up again with better communication around the benefits of virtual care;

[32:00] Why Ms. Baset believes Digital Care is of paramount importance in tackling both consumer access challenges and for the “silver tsunami” that is on the horizon where 1 to 1 care may be impossible;

[34:00] Why Ms. Baset believes part of “being human” in healthcare means understanding what people want to see and do while giving them options to interact with their care in the manner of their choosing;

[37:00] Why Ms. Baset believes some of the current technologies used in healthcare negatively impact the consumer experience, explaining how she once shadowed a phone operator who was so busy trying to navigate their internal systems that they missed hearing a patient explain why they needed to reschedule their appointment because their grandson had been killed;

[41:15] Why Ms. Baset is most excited about automation today as it’s a segment of technology that makes everyone more productive, more empathetic, and less burnt out;

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Fast 5 / Lightning Round:

1. What is your favorite book or book you’ve gifted the most?
   “Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity” by Kim Scott

2. Who is a person–dead or alive–you'd love to meet?
   “Tom Morello, the guitarist of Rage Against The Machine.”
   

2. Would you rather have Super strength, super speed, or the ability to read people’s minds?
   “Super speed!”
   

4. What is something in healthcare you believe that others might find insane?
   “We still use pagers!”
   

5. COVID-19 lockdown related – what is 1 hobby or activity you’ve gotten into since the pandemic?
   “I really wanted to snowboard… But because the season ended abruptly, I got an electric longboard and learned how to longboard!”