Making the Financial Case for Digital Health Innovation

In the latest episode of Bridging the Gap—an interview series featuring leading minds in healthcare innovation—NeuroFlow CEO Chris Molaro spoke with Amber Fencl. Amber is a digital health executive who has led innovation within top healthcare systems, driving revenue-generating solutions that improve patient experience, provider efficiency, and clinical outcomes. Previously, she was the Chief Digital Health Officer at Novant Health, an integrated health system serving patients in North Carolina.

Amber and Chris explored how to embrace innovation within health systems, and specifically how to make the financial case for technology investment amid tightening budgets. Listen and watch the full interview below and read on for top sound bites.

On how to move healthcare innovation forward in health systems:

Amber: If I look back on the various innovations we’ve done, I would say the hardest part is the business justification to get the capital. It’s no surprise to folks that the people administering the care in our health system, they’re struggling. Many are struggling from an economic and financial standpoint. Health systems are hemorrhaging money. Getting the capital and building the business case is really hard. Going through the process to get the approval is really painful.

How do you do it better? You have to have strong alliances with your clinical partners. We have to understand that as laypeople, we may have ideas that make sense, but when you’re sitting down talking to your primary care leaders, they know what is going to work and what’s not going to work. You have to have those clinical leaders next to you early on. They will help identify where the quality will be positively impacted.

On the need to embrace value-based arrangements to drive new revenue:

If you’re still living in a world that’s fee-for-service, you have to find a way that your operational finance team can get behind putting total ROI as both fee-for-service and value-based care because that is where the dollars are. We know that there are organizations that do total value-based arrangements, completely at-risk models. Those arrangements and those organizations have found the value, and we know we need to move there.