Associate Editor for Medical Economics, Physicians Practice

Keith A. Reynolds

Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), says that the COVID-19 pandemic must change the way the healthcare industry addresses burnout.

Fauci was taking part in a question-and-answer session during the opening plenary of the American College of Physicians (ACP) Internal Medicine Meeting 2021 along with Gregory Kane, MD, treasurer of ACP; and Darilyn Moyer, MD, executive vice president and CEO of ACP.

He said the pandemic has created a grueling situation for healthcare professionals unlike any seen before.

“This is an experience the likes of which no other generation of physicians and health care providers, nurses and others involved in the health care system (has been through), and never had the opportunity to go through; thank goodness,” he said. “So we have to be very creative in figuring out ways how we address this unprecedented experience that our healthcare providers have been through.”

When asked whether COVID-19 could be eradicated globally, Fauci seemed more confident that it will be eradicated in some countries and controlled in others, but the process will take years and vaccinating a large portion of the world’s population.

“We're going to be continually threatened by variants that will come from other countries, which tells us the obvious solution to that is to make sure that we get the entire world vaccinated against (COVID-19),” Fauci said. “Until we do that, I don't think we're going to eliminate this infection. I think it'll be there at a low level; we'll be protected. We may need to get boosted every once in a while, to keep the level of protection up. But we have to look at it as a global problem, otherwise, we're never going to truly eliminate it.”

Fauci said that early in the pandemic the U.S.’s response was hamstrung by the dismantling of the local health infrastructure, failure to mobilize the private sector early for diagnostics, and the rapidly evolving situation with little transparency from China. The transmission method of the virus also caught the world by surprise.

“We've never had any pathogen of any note of seriousness in which … 50 and 60 percent of the transmissions occur from a person who never will get symptomatic, or who was in the pre-symptomatic stage,” he said. “That broke all the paradigms of infectious disease because, prior to that, transmissions were always a little bit asymptomatic but dominated by the symptomatic person.”

As for the U.S.’s successes in responding to the pandemic, Fauci highlighted the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed which invested billions in vaccine development and pre-purchase as well as the Biden administration’s rollout of the vaccines.

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The NIAID head said the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the impact of professional dissatisfaction and fatigue.

Fauci: COVID-19 burnout unprecedented

PatientPing, a care coordination data and software company, has been acquired by Appriss Health, a cloud-based care coordination software and analytics company, with backing from Clearlakes and Insight Partners.

, the transaction will enable the combined companies to deliver more effectively on their shared mission of enabling various stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem to utilize software and analytics solutions to facilitate better care for patients across the physical and behavioral health continuum. Together, the software improves patient outcomes, and lowers the total cost of care. The combination will result in more effective collaboration among healthcare professionals on shared patients across their entire spectrum of needs, creating the largest and most diverse care collaboration network in the country, connecting close to one million healthcare professionals across all 50 states at virtually all care settings including primary and specialty care, emergency departments, inpatient facilities, skilled nursing facilities, post-acute facilities, behavioral health treatment centers, pharmacies, home health agencies and state health agencies.

“Appriss Health already provides its technology, data and analytics to improve how care is provided in over a billion patient encounters each year. We are excited to be able to immediately serve this broader community of healthcare professionals with unique insights, and real-time clinical decision support,” said Rob Cohen, Appriss Health President. “Care team members will now be able to come together on a common platform and positively impact the patient’s whole care experience, both physically and behaviorally. Everyone recognizes the impact of behavioral health issues on a person’s physical and mental well-being, and we are proud to be tackling one of the biggest issues facing the nation.”

According to the release, PatientPing CEO Jay Desai said, “This combination is transformational for patient care. PatientPing’s mission since its founding has been to connect providers to seamlessly coordinate and significantly improve patient outcomes while lowering the cost of care. Our combined networks will connect providers across all care settings so they can work together better to improve clinical episodes and care transitions for the millions of patients that interact with the nations’ healthcare providers.”

“At Appriss, we intentionally focus on making sure that our technology solutions promote social good,” Appriss Inc. CEO, Krishnan Sastry, says in the release. “Appriss has a 25-year track record of looking for ways technology can address major problems that affect our society. Delivering technology that improves how patients receive care is one of our largest focus areas. In healthcare, the ultimate goal is to be able to put the patient as the central point of focus, understand their physical ailments, lifestyle issues, behavioral health issues and any social determinants that impede progress towards better health. When multiple healthcare professionals, across multiple care-settings are able to leverage technology and data to provide patient-centered care, outcomes improve, and costs come down. We’re proud to combine the efforts of our Appriss Health team with those of PatientPing to improve how we deliver care in America.”

The combined Appriss Health and PatientPing platform serves the largest integrated delivery systems in the U.S., including 2,500 hospitals, 7,500 post-acute facilities, 25,000 pharmacies including every national pharmacy chain and 43 state governments. Without comprehensive data and the right tools in the clinical workflow, caregivers struggle to formulate cohesive treatment plans, leading to disjointed and inefficient care that ultimately impacts the patient experience and health outcomes. In many cases, effectiveness suffers, and costs increase. While many providers and payers are actively implementing coordinated care models, to fully realize the benefits, they need software solutions with insights based on comprehensive data sets to communicate across a large network of caregivers. Appriss Health and PatientPing’s combined software and analytics solutions will provide access to high-integrity clinical information and applications that are both accurate and enhance care offerings, according to the release.

The care coordination data and software company PatientPing has been acquired by Appriss Health backed by Clearlake Capital and Insight Partners.

PatientPing acquired by Appriss Health

Nuance Communications has announced the acquisition of the mobile artificial intelligence company Saykara, Inc., which has developed artificial intelligence (AI) technology to assist physicians and other clinicians with documentation challenges.

, the acquisition continues Nuance’s expansion of market and technical leadership in conversational artificial intelligence (AI) and ambient clinical intelligence (ACI) in an effort to reduce clinician burnout, enhance patient experiences, and improve the financial integrity of the health system overall.

"The complementary technology built by the Saykara team aligns strongly with our technology portfolio and growth strategy as well as the needs of our clients," Joe Petro, executive vice president and chief technology officer of Nuance, says in the release. "This acquisition welcomes some familiar and highly respected technology leaders whom I am excited to have join our research and development team, which consists of the best and brightest minds in applying AI and machine learning to healthcare. With a shared vision, we will continue our aggressive focus on innovation, growth, and on delivering industry-leading AI-powered solutions that meaningfully address the compelling business problems that our healthcare clients and their clinicians face every day."

Founded in 2015 by serial entrepreneur Harjinder Sandhu, who previously served as an executive in Nuance’s research and development division. The company’s team of leading engineers, machine learning experts, and experienced technology executive will join Nuance’s development team, the release says.

"I welcome the opportunity to rejoin the market leader in conversational AI and ambient clinical intelligence, and the impressive Nuance research and development team – especially at this important juncture in the development and adoption of these AI-powered healthcare innovations," Sandhu says in the release. "We are very familiar with Nuance's advanced technology, domain expertise, and world-class technical team and share the company's mission to make what matters to alleviate the clinical documentation burden on clinicians around the world."

The acquisition of the artificial intelligence company is part of Nuance’s expansion in the field.

Nuance Communications acquires Saykara

If the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic has taught the healthcare industry anything, the greatest of these lessons is likely to be that leadership needs to be agile in decision making and keyed into the what their team thinks and need.

In the first general session of the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) Medical Practice Excellence Convention 2020 organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich spoke about how a physician leader with self-awareness can help their team to thrive no matter the circumstances.

Her definition of self-awareness is built on two forms of self-knowledge: one’s understanding of who they are internally and how well one understands how others see them. Both are needed for one to be self-aware.

Protecting your investment in staff resources

Eurich says that she learned over 15 years of coaching CEOs and C-level executives that those leaders who are willing to take a hard look in the mirror and question their assumptions about themselves are always more successful even if they didn’t start out self-aware.

According to her research, self-aware people are:

She says that when it comes to healthcare, self-aware leaders tend to:

And organizations they are a part of deliver higher quality care and have higher patient satisfaction

“What I would encourage you to think about, when you think about this topic from now on, is (self-awareness) is not nice to have, it is a business imperative,” Eurich says.

When seeking to cultivate self-awareness, Eurich says it is good to start with a self-assessment and for people to think about what kind of leader they are. She recommended one should grade one’s self on what kind of leader they are, what kind of friend they are, what kind of a driver they are.

She says that research shows that most people believe that they are above average at all things, which bears little relationship to where they actually stand.

Eurich says one of the biggest barriers to self-awareness is that many people believe they already are self-aware.

“The more we think we are already self-aware, the less self-aware we tend to become,” she says.

To combat this, Eurich suggests something she calls the humility challenge which entails finding one chance to spotlight one’s own imperfections or challenges.

“The micro opportunities to show humility, as many of them as you can do on an ongoing basis really results not only in you being self-aware, but in your team being more effective and engaged,” she says.

When leading a medical practice, especially during the pandemic, Eurich says that external self-awareness, or understanding the way others see you, is slightly more important than internal self-awareness.

To foster this, she recommends getting feedback from a wide variety of team members because most people cannot see the areas in which their awareness falls short. She says it’s safe for most leaders to automatically assume they need to improve their external self-awareness.

In order to avoid unintentional, or well-intentioned, false feedback, Eurich recommends building a small group of people who have one’s best interest at heart and have the courage to tell one the truth especially when it is hard to hear.

Going further than building one’s personal self-awareness, Eurich also recommends building a self-aware team by fostering the same form of honest communication one seeks from their feedback group within the team.

While working on self-awareness can be difficult, Eurich says that it is important to still focus on it despite what all is going on in the world.

“Self-awareness isn’t about these bolts of extreme insight,” she says. “It’s about daily, small, incremental baby steps to get there.”

By building external and group self-awareness, a physician leader can better adapt to the quickly changing healthcare landscape