Cleveland, OH – Axuall, the industry leader in clinical workforce intelligence, is excited to announce the addition of Zach Phillips as its Chief Growth Officer. As Axuall aims to set new benchmarks for excellence in healthcare technology, Phillips will work to not only strengthen the company’s client relationships but also continue to position Axuall as a leader in advancing technology solutions that streamline healthcare operations and facilitate data-driven decisions.
Prior to this position, Phillips served as Senior Vice President of Growth at CipherHealth. He also held key roles at PadInMotion and Huron Consulting Group, bringing a wealth of experience driving growth and innovation in the healthcare technology sector.
“I am thrilled to join Axuall and contribute to its groundbreaking efforts in transforming healthcare through innovative technology solutions,” said Phillips. “Axuall has established itself as a leader in workforce intelligence solutions, enhancing operational efficiency and clinician satisfaction. I look forward to leveraging our strengths to drive even greater growth, expand our reach, and deliver impactful solutions that address the evolving demands of healthcare organizations nationwide.”
Phillips received his MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and noted he’s eager to tap into his industry experience to achieve Axuall’s growth goals.
“Axuall remains dedicated to shaping the future of healthcare technology, setting higher standards for industry performance and client success, and adding Zach Phillips to our team only bolsters our ability to achieve our organization’s goals,” said Axuall founder and CEO Charlie Lougheed.
About Axuall
Built with leading healthcare systems, Axuall is a workforce intelligence company powered by a national real-time practitioner data network. The technology enables healthcare systems, staffing firms, telehealth, and health plans to dramatically reduce onboarding and enrollment time while providing robust data insights for network planning, analytics, and reporting. To learn more, visit www.axuall.com or follow Axuall on LinkedIn.
Every day, millions of healthcare professionals come to the aid of Americans. It’s what they do. It’s their job. But right now, those healthcare workers are in need of help. Workforce shortages are expected to grow over the next decade, leading to increased clinician burnout. Hospital systems already know this. But it’s an easier problem to identify than to address. A physician shortage of upwards of 140,000 is predicted by 2036. A recent report from the U.S. Chamber notes that by 2030, we can expect 42 of the 50 states to have a nursing shortage. Upwards of 70% of doctors in their 40s plan to retire early, in their 50s or early 60s. And, as Baby Boomers age and unhealthy lifestyles persist, demands on our healthcare system will increase. While we look for more long-lasting solutions to this workforce problem, health systems must look for immediate answers.
One way to bolster a healthcare workforce is with locum tenens or travel clinicians. It’s an essential method for filling healthcare supply and demand gaps. Locums grew in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic and continue to be a popular option for clinicians due to the pay and flexibility these positions can offer. But, with growing workforce concerns, the process of placing locums must be expedited. Fortunately, this is achievable.
Connected Networks And Automation Mean Faster Credentialing, Less Burden For Clinicians And Staff, And Improved Access To Care For Patients
Speed and efficiency are crucial in deploying locum tenens physicians. Each day a critical role or shift goes unfilled, existing staff must either stretch beyond capacity or, worse yet, be unable to treat a patient.
Due to the complexity of locums’ backgrounds, their onboarding process can be cumbersome, repetitive, and arduous, mainly due to the credentialing and privileging requirements needed for each new position. Clinicians often have to repeatedly enter the same information into different forms, which is time-consuming for those with full-time positions.. Healthcare must advance to align with modern technological standards. It’s time for healthcare to catch up to modern technology. We don’t apply for car insurance and bank loans by entering everything about our past into forms; instead, those forms are auto-populated by existing information collected from online sources to ease the burden of a busy consumer and reduce errors and omissions. Our nation’s healthcare workers deserve the same convenience, and the credentialing staff that supports them need better data to do their jobs efficiently.
While locums can be a more expensive option than a permanent hire, in the long run, a clinician vacancy is far more costly for health systems compared to a temporary one. According to a Merritt Hawkins report, a physician generates over $9,000 in daily revenue for a healthcare system. With health systems facing closure and continuing to make difficult financial decisions every day, fast-tracking a locum to the bedside is financially advantageous for a healthy system in need.
Technology exists to auto-populate a clinician’s information from thousands of data sources, slashing the paperwork and credentialing time in half. A speedier process that requires less paperwork reduces administrative burdens and leaves clinicians with more time to spend with patients. In order to truly impact this growing shortage, these age-old, manual processes need to be streamlined across the healthcare industry – from health systems to staffing agencies. The work done by LocumTenens.com and Axuall is one example of where technology and process re-engineering improved efficiency and clinician satisfaction by over 50%.
Clinician Phenotype
A phenotype is a medical term that defines a set of observable characteristics of an individual resulting from the interaction of it with the environment. Beyond adoption of solutions to increase onboarding speed, the aggregation of clinician data, and the development of clinician phenotypes can do more to empower and inform healthcare organizations. Clinician data allows for better matching. Insights into a clinician’s specialties, work history, and patient care patterns provide a more comprehensive view of a candidate for a role.. Health systems can use this data to deploy locum tenens clinicians based on their specific needs, and locum tenens agencies can, in turn, use this data to ensure a rich, relevant clinician candidate pool.
Think of it in terms of any major league sport: when a team scouts and then drafts a new player. They are selected based on all available data regarding their skills, performance, and position. You don’t see baseball teams signing pitchers from one team to play first base on another. A clinician’s phenotype provides information and insight for organizations to plan, recruit, and quickly deploy the best players for their care teams.
When locum tenens placement agencies work closely with health systems, they can respond more quickly, accurately anticipate demand, and ensure staffing solutions align with the health systems’ goals. In other words, every player gets placed in the best position. This collaborative approach is crucial for creating a more resilient healthcare workforce that can adapt to changing needs and challenges. Healthcare already uses patient big data to analyze and predict patterns; it’s time to do the same with clinician data.
Conclusion
Looking ahead, the role of technology in healthcare staffing will continue to evolve. As healthcare facilities face increasing cost pressures, particularly around labor, there is a growing need for innovative solutions to maximize the efficiency of their workforce, both with employed staff and with locum tenens clinicians. Data is king. Any way data can create cost savings, fuel more informed decisions, and deliver a better working experience for clinicians and better patient care must be considered. Locum tenens may be a temporary solution for some health systems, but it’s a workforce solution that’s been around for decades. When coupled with the industry-wide adoption of innovative solutions, leveraging clinician big data the healthcare ecosystem can improve speed and effectiveness in clinician deployment and take the critical steps forward in proactively addressing clinician shortages.
Big data and workforce intelligence are transforming the healthcare industry and doing so just in time for an unprecedented shortage of healthcare workforce. Some predictions anticipate a physician shortage of upwards of 140,000 by 2036 and many states are already experiencing a nursing shortage. Technology can streamline the healthcare industry to make a clinician’s job far more efficient. Charlie Lougheed, the CEO of workforce intelligence company Axuall, explains how healthcare is changing. Listen Now!
Healthcare is humans. A hospital is merely a building without physicians, nurses, cleaning teams, food service workers, volunteers, and everyone else who serves the patients inside. This industry of people makes up almost 20% of the United States economy, so when there is a people problem with healthcare, there is also an economic problem within the country. And all signs are pointing to the current workforce shortages becoming more problematic over the next decade. Some predictions anticipate a physician shortage of upwards of 140,000 by 2036. Meanwhile, a recent report from the US Chamber notes that by 2030, we can expect 42 of the 50 states to have a nursing shortage, a challenge many states are already experiencing. There’s no on-off switch to fix this problem, no way to simply create more clinicians. Solving this problem will require a multi-pronged approach that includes recruitment, technology, and help from lawmakers.
Legislation
Congress isn’t blind to the grim predictions. Senator Tim Kaine recently introduced a bill called the “Welcome Back to the Health Care Workforce Act.” The proposed legislation aims to create easier pathways to employment for the approximately 270,000 immigrants in the United States with health-related degrees who are unemployed or underemployed. It’s a bold move, knowing that any legislation that touches on immigration is sure to be a lightning rod for debate. But we are in an all-hands-on-deck situation, and any pathway to alleviate the pressures our health systems are experiencing must be given serious and thoughtful consideration.
To further clear this path, continued efforts should be made to alleviate the financial burden and prohibitive costs associated with healthcare-related education expenses. The costs range between $35-65K to receive a BSN in the U.S., while the costs associated with earning the initials “M.D.” soar above $220,000. As a country, if we’re willing to pay for the college education of those who serve in the military, we should equally commit ourselves to further developing grants and scholarships and explore legislative paths to fund the education of the people on the front lines of our emergency rooms, pediatrician offices, and nursing homes – regardless of their country of origin.
Recruitment
We can’t legislate our way out of the problem. Better, more impactful recruitment practices are absolutely essential. And I’m not talking about more LinkedIn messages from headhunters. We need a complete re-do to the approach. Think of the armed services. Remember those “Be all you can be” and “The few, the proud, the Marines” commercials? They were often shown at a welcoming career fair booth, where uniformed military members handed out glossy brochures and told stories of heroism. These tactics motivated young men and women to serve, and that framework is one that should be considered in healthcare. The U.S. healthcare system must find ways to excite young minds in high school and demonstrate opportunities that are both rewarding and attainable.
Workforce environment
Healthcare workers — from ER doctors to food service employees — have numerous competitive career opportunities. Whether it’s a competing health system or the Amazon warehouse the next town over, hospitals must prioritize a safe, supportive working environment to retain staff combating burnout at an alarming rate.
As a society, we pin increased rates of burnout and clinician attrition to the pandemic, but the reality is that Covid-19 only exacerbated long-standing underlying causes. To address these issues, health systems must develop and implement policies, programs, and solutions that not only address and help prevent burnout but also educate staff to identify warning signs of burnout among their peers.
Health systems should seek counsel from clinicians and build out perks accordingly. While encouraging paid leave, sick leave, and family leave, flexible and autonomous scheduling, and zero-tolerance policies to combat racism and discrimination sounds great in theory, these initiatives only attract and retain staff when implemented heartfeltly across the organization.
Additionally, these critical team members must have a seat at the table when discussing new policies and processes long before implementation. Whether it’s implementing a peer-to-peer mental health support group or introducing a new technology designed to streamline administrative workflows, clinician buy-in is no longer a nice to have.
Tech
Artificial intelligence is the fix for seemingly everything, but it will also play a role in addressing workforce shortages. By no means am I making any suggestions that AI will take the role of clinicians or the supporting healthcare staff. Where this high-powered computing will be most effective is crunching vast amounts of data to allow for better human decision-making. There are petabytes of data in healthcare, a chunk of which focuses on providers alone. Artificial intelligence can decipher trends and provide recommendations for health system executives to best use their workforce, even with shortages.
Useful tech goes beyond AI. There are forms of workforce intelligence that can simplify inefficiencies, like identifying and prioritizing hiring needs across a health system based on trending patient data. Or credentialing clinicians, a painfully slow process, taking weeks to months to complete. Introducing digital solutions to what is often done via fax machine will get more clinicians, whether in permanent roles or locums, to the patient’s bedside faster.
Conclusion
The workforce of the largest industry in the largest economy is drowning. It needs a lifeline. It needs 10 lifelines. Demand for care is rising, and the current amount of clinicians will not satisfy that demand. There will be burnout. Some of the best, most compassionate people will be pushed to the brink and find other work. Healthcare will need a plan and help to keep this workforce afloat. It will need creative and nonpartisan solutions. And while it’s easy to focus on the money of this $4.5 trillion industry, it’s the quality of care that is at risk. To take care of our collective well-being in the future, we need to take care of our current clinical workforce now.
Collaboration to reduce hospital hiring time for temporary physician and advanced practice professionals
CLEVELAND, April 16, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) –– Axuall, the industry leader in clinical workforce intelligence, and LocumTenens.com, experts in flexible, hybrid and contingent staffing for the healthcare industry, today announced that LocumTenens.com’s digital credentialing will run through Axuall’s Workforce Intelligence Network and Clinician Wallet. The transition to Axuall will enable LocumTenens.com to automate clinician data for credentialing with increased speed and precision, while also alleviating information gaps and manual administrative work for its physicians and advanced practice providers, enhancing overall clinician satisfaction and reducing credentialing time.
According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, there could be a shortage of as many as 122,000 physicians by 2032. This partnership provides immediate solutions to help address healthcare’s workforce shortage challenges by reducing credentialing time by up to 70 percent.
“LocumTenen.com’s mission is to ensure patients have access to quality care when and where they need it. Leveraging Axuall technology to accelerate clinician credentialing is another way we are supporting this focus and commitment,” said Susanne Hodges, SVP of information services at LocumTenens.com.
Axuall’s Clinician Wallet doesn’t just save time for hospitals and health systems, it also improves their relationships with the clinicians they hire. In fact, the user rating for the clinician experience is 9 out of 10.
“Harnessing workforce intelligence to reduce unnecessary friction in the clinician supply chain is a core tenet of our mission,” stated Charlie Lougheed, the founder and CEO of Axuall. “We’re honored to work alongside LocumTenens.com to help close the gap between patient needs and the healthcare workers that meet them.”
Axuall’s solution provides a continuous flow of data from nearly 7,000 sources, providing accurate, real-time data about clinician populations and empowering firms to make more efficient and informed decisions.
About LocumTenens.com
LocumTenens.com specializes in optimizing healthcare staffing strategies with flexible, hybrid and temporary placement of physicians, advanced practice providers, and psychologists through both onsite and telehealth services. As operators of the locum tenens industry’s most-visited job board, LocumTenens.com connects healthcare organizations with medical professionals to ensure patients have access to quality care. Founded in 1995, LocumTenens.com is a leader in the healthcare staffing industry and an employer of choice, placing clinicians who deliver care to more than seven million patients in over 4,000 healthcare facilities in the U.S. Headquartered in Atlanta, LocumTenens.com is a Jackson Healthcare® company. Learn more at www.LocumTenens.com.
About Axuall
Built with leading healthcare systems, Axuall is a workforce intelligence company powered by a national real-time practitioner data network. The technology enables healthcare systems, staffing firms, telehealth, and health plans to dramatically reduce onboarding and enrollment time while providing robust data insights for network planning, analytics, and reporting. To learn more, visit www.axuall.com or follow Axuall on LinkedIn.
Better Implementation of Artificial Intelligence to Address Large-Scale Issues: AI in healthcare doesn’t have to be confined to treatment. With all the data within healthcare, it can assist with wide-ranging areas, including workforce planning, recruiting, onboarding, and retention. Optimizing the healthcare supply chain has the potential to cut costs and enhance care.
Charlie Lougheed is the CEO and co-founder of Axuall, a workforce intelligence company built on a national real-time Clinician Data Network that enables healthcare organizations to create more efficient care networks while reducing onboarding time by over 70 percent.
Charlie co-founded and co-funded Explorys, now IBM Watson Health, in 2009 as a spin-off from Cleveland Clinic. Explorys became the leader in healthcare big data and value-based-care analytics, spanning hundreds of thousands of healthcare providers and over 60 million patients across the United States. Having amassed the World’s largest clinical data set, Explorys went on to serve the payer, life sciences, and pharmaceutical sectors by providing real-world evidence and insight for product planning, research, health economic outcomes research, and safety.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into our interview, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I was this quirky, entrepreneurial teenager from the start. I realized early on that traditional employment paths were not for me, so I established my own companies. Every company I have created has centered around “big data,” even before the term became mainstream.
For every company I co-founded, Everstream, Explorys, or Axuall, the focus was on innovative solutions and maximizing the use of data. I was lucky enough that a skilled team came with each of these companies. We recognized the power of data to disrupt and bring clarity to dynamic environments like healthcare.
The genesis of our current company, Axuall, stemmed from sharing my gratitude to the healthcare executives who supported my previous ventures. While expressing my thanks, conversations naturally focused on the challenges of keeping those executives awake at night. Most focused on the workforce: shortages, high turnover, elevated costs, and burnout. Recognizing the workforce as the most crucial supply chain in healthcare, we realized the immense opportunity to leverage big data to create meaningful impact. The goal became clear: make a difference by helping healthcare systems effectively manage and understand their workforce.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
Starting a company begins with the audacious goal of positively impacting the world. Initially, it can seem somewhat unrealistic, but deep down, you believe in the significance of your actions. Challenges arise as every startup journey unfolds, such as tight finances, creative problem-solving, and growing competition. The initial grand vision is momentarily overshadowed by the day-to-day struggle to keep the business afloat.
Amid these trials, surrounding yourself with a supportive team becomes crucial. People who constantly remind you of the initial vision to help overcome the hurdles.
One of my most thrilling moments was in my previous company, Explorys. Major players in the tech and health industries started recognizing our efforts. So much so that IBM acquired the company in 2015; it wasn’t just a morale boost but a realization that every small step, stumble, and achievement was worth it. The experience underscored the importance of staying true to the vision, navigating through the day-to-day challenges, and trusting that the sum of all our efforts will eventually become fruitful.
Can you share a story about your funniest mistake when first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I wouldn’t call it a mistake, but some people get a kick out of Axuall’s original location. It wasn’t out of a garage or a fancy corporate office but an old converted barge creating a floating office space on Lake Erie. We weren’t braving the high seas, but it was a fun start for Axuall. There is a lesson from everything. It may not have been a traditional office, but it was filled with love, and every time we boarded it, we were reminded how special it was to start this way. Today, we’re in a much larger office across the street from Cleveland’s sporting venues, trading the sounds of seagulls for the cheers of sports fans. Go, Guardians!
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Don’t get caught up in the thick of thin things. Just take care of your customers.”
That’s what my father, Chuck Lougheed, would tell me. While innovation often thrives on paying attention to the nuances, it’s equally crucial to remind ourselves of the bigger picture. This lesson has been relevant in my life as a constant reminder to check myself, maintain perspective, and align my efforts with the broader goals that matter to the people we love and serve.
How would you define an “excellent healthcare provider”?
An excellent healthcare provider organization effectively delivers both quality and cost-effective healthcare. Both aspects are imperative, not only for the patients but also for the individual clinicians themselves. These organizations provide the same emphasis and care toward their physicians as their patients. And clinicians that are taken care of do well by their patients.
What are your favorite books, podcasts, or resources that inspire you to be a better healthcare leader? Can you explain why you like them?
Given my dyslexia, reading books can be a challenge. I listen to more books than I read. One I keep coming back to is “Emotional Intelligence.”
When I reflect on whether I am leading with intelligence, I’m reminded that people can forgive you when you make a mistake if you display a certain level of emotional intelligence. That forgiveness becomes much more difficult when you are not emotionally connected with your team.
Emotional intelligence goes beyond being perpetually composed. It means acknowledging and expressing your emotions appropriately and knowing how others receive them. Whether it’s excitement, frustration, or any other emotion, it’s about understanding how these emotions impact others and moderating them accordingly.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
It’s a constant project for us at Axuall. We’re working to revolutionize clinical workforce intelligence. It leverages verified, real-time clinician data for planning, recruiting, onboarding, and optimization. It has the power to help address so many of our health system’s most significant problems, like workforce shortages and clinician burnout.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the main focus of our interview. According to this study cited by Newsweek, the US healthcare system is ranked as the worst among high income nations. This seems shocking. Can you share with us 3–5 reasons why you think the US is ranked so poorly?
If the US had a perfect health system, Axuall wouldn’t be needed. But we don’t, so we do exist. And while there are faults in the health system, there is greatness, too, and plenty of greatness has yet to be tapped into. Here are what I believe are the three most pressing issues in healthcare:
Workforce Challenges: Over the past decade, burnout among clinicians has been on the rise. Workplace safety, career satisfaction, and decisions about career paths have become more challenging for clinicians. The sacrifices demanded and the stress healthcare workers experience make it essential to address these challenges.
Costs: The exorbitant expenses associated with healthcare in the U.S. are problematic, especially when accessing care. Healthcare costs are a leading cause of bankruptcy for people in this country. Administrative support, waste, abuse, and fraud contribute to a considerable portion of every healthcare dollar spent, making it an area where improvements are crucial. Let’s put the dollars where they count.
Food: People need help with access to affordable, healthy food. Diabetic rates, obesity, and cancer rates are on the rise, reflecting the impact of dietary habits. The interplay between the healthcare system and the challenges the food system poses is complex. This aspect, often overlooked, requires attention and solutions to create a healthier population that will lead to an improved health system.
As a “healthcare insider”, if you had the power to make a change, can you share 5 changes that need to be made to improve the overall US healthcare system?
Utilizing Big Data for Workforce Optimization: The vast amount of data available in healthcare can be leveraged to understand and optimize the healthcare workforce. By analyzing this data at a large-scale level, health systems can identify patterns, trends, and areas for improvement in workforce allocation and care delivery. For example, big data and predictive models can reveal that certain regions have a shortage of primary care physicians while others have an excess. This information can guide targeted recruitment and digital health initiatives, thus improving access to care.
Better Implementation of Artificial Intelligence to Address Large-Scale Issues: AI in healthcare doesn’t have to be confined to treatment. With all the data within healthcare, it can assist with wide-ranging areas, including workforce planning, recruiting, onboarding, and retention. Optimizing the healthcare supply chain has the potential to cut costs and enhance care.
Empowering Clinicians with Data: It’s essential to collect and analyze healthcare data and ensure clinicians can access this information. After all, it’s their data, and they can provide valuable insights and feedback based on their experiences. A system where clinicians have real-time access to patient outcomes data, enabling them to tailor treatments and interventions based on the latest evidence and best practices. This empowerment fosters a culture of continuous improvement and patient-centered care.
Improving the Clinician Experience: Healthcare is a people business. And we need to take care of the people who care for patients. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, by 2034, a physician shortage of 124,000 is expected. Health systems must find ways to alleviate burnout from their clinicians. Making healthcare a fulfilling and rewarding career is crucial for the well-being of healthcare professionals and the overall quality of care.
Right-sizing Healthcare Delivery: The delivery of healthcare services should be tailored to the specific needs and preferences of patients, taking into account factors such as location, convenience, and cost-effectiveness. This involves reevaluating traditional care delivery models and embracing innovative approaches prioritizing accessibility and efficiency. For example, consider the recent shift towards ambulatory and retail healthcare settings. By decentralizing care and bringing services closer to patients’ communities, we can reduce barriers to access and improve overall health outcomes.
What concrete steps would have to be done to actually manifest these changes? What can a) individuals, b) corporations, c) communities and d) leaders do to help?
The implementation of clinician data. I believe it’s truly vital to make significant changes across all aspects of healthcare. In the 2010s, we experienced a breakthrough in patient data. In the 2020s, we need to see that same breakthrough for clinician data. It will and is already improving the lives of clinicians, health systems, and the patients for whom they provide care.
The COVID-19 pandemic has put intense pressure on the American healthcare system, leaving some hospital systems at a complete loss as to how to handle this crisis. Can you share with us examples of where we’ve seen the U.S. healthcare system struggle? How do you think we can correct these issues moving forward?
COVID-19 was an eye-opening experience for the US healthcare system. We saw the immense strain the healthcare workforce was under during the pandemic. We see the remnants of that strain today with workforce shortages and burnout, not to mention changing attitudes and engagement profiles among the workforce. There is no light switch that a health executive can flip to eliminate these issues. It will require access to various data sets and take time, creativity, and hard work from people across the healthcare industry to address these issues.
How do you think we can address the problem of physician shortages?
More healthcare decision-makers must find ways to harness the data around them. Recruitment alone can’t alleviate the workforce shortages plaguing the healthcare system. While it is undoubtedly a piece of the long-term solution, health systems need help now.
In the immediate, optimizing processes such as onboarding, credentialing, and enrollment ensures more clinicians are working and treating patients instead of waiting for an email to verify information that’s already been confirmed half a dozen times before. Looking into the future, the potential uses for clinician data are endless. It provides insights for network planning, analytics, and reporting, dramatically reducing the time to activate healthcare workers while providing the tools to anticipate industry trends and fill clinician gaps before the next pandemic.
How do you think we can address the issue of physician diversity?
Big Data can play a pivotal role in how healthcare organizations understand a more complete picture of their workforce. Leaders must understand the practice phenotype of their clinicians as well as the medical phenotypes of their patients. Both must go beyond the basics of demographics, specialty, and license, where care matches can also be made based on procedural and experiential factors.
How do you think we can address the issue of physician and nurse burnout?
Health systems must use all the information that they already possess as a tool to help address burnout. Several factors contributing to clinician burnout stem from workforce shortages, workplace safety, and scheduling. Streamlining onboarding processes can expedite the deployment of additional clinician resources, while optimized staffing can address workload and workflow issues contributing to overwhelming schedules and workplace safety. To truly tackle the multifaceted challenge that is burnout, health system leaders must pair innovative technology and available data with a supportive work environment that prioritizes the well-being of their clinical staff.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
We need to be better at having a civil dialogue with one another. We’ve become a polarized society, even beyond politics. And frankly, collectively, we’ve become unhappier because of it — with shouting overshadowing listening. Growing up in an immigrant household, I was encouraged to embrace the melting pot of different nationalities and ideas. A healthy amount of openness, respect for others, care, understanding, empathy, and compromise could return us to a more civil discourse and a happier future.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
The best place to see our latest updates is by checking out Axuall’s website and our Linkedin page.
Thank you so much for these insights! This was very inspirational and we wish you continued success in your great work.
CLEVELAND, April 02, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) –– Axuall, the leader in healthcare workforce intelligence and Hartford HealthCare, Connecticut’s most comprehensive healthcare network, announced today that Axuall was selected to support Hartford HealthCare’s plan to bolster its workforce and reduce caregiver burnout. Axuall’s solution enables newly hired clinicians to be onboarded up to 15 days faster, allowing them to see patients sooner, and eliminate burdens for current Hartford HealthCare clinicians.
This partnership goes beyond the speed of onboarding. By harnessing big data and analytics (from nearly 7,000 data sources), Hartford HealthCare will create a vastly improved experience for its 6,000 clinicians by optimizing its care network, while increasing the amount of time for clinicians to treat patients. Hartford Healthcare will now be able to study clinician populations inside and outside its network, identify gaps and surpluses, and match and recruit talent.
“We are proud to partner with Axuall and differentiate ourselves within the healthcare community through provider-centric process automation in credentialing, privileging and enrollment,” said Stephanie Calcasola, MSN, RN-BC, Chief Quality Officer at Hartford HealthCare. “This perfectly aligns with our commitment to excellence, safety, clinician well-being, and innovation, allowing us to deliver world-class care at the most affordable cost.”
Axuall provides the health system’s clinicians with tools to manage their career information through streamlined data input and intelligent, automated form capture, streamlining credentialing and re-credentialing processes and providing them with a faster path to patient care.
“Hartford HealthCare’s strategic embrace of workforce intelligence technology reflects a commitment to staying ahead in the ever-evolving landscape of healthcare,” shared Charlie Lougheed, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Axuall. “Our shared vision for the future of healthcare is what unites us as partners, and we couldn’t be more proud of this collaboration to redefine the future of healthcare workforce management with Hartford HealthCare.”
Beyond directly improving processes for clinicians, this partnership saves health systems administrative costs and accelerates revenue. Other health systems already connected to Axuall’s Workforce Intelligence Network have experienced significant cost savings and efficiency gains while providing insights into their clinician populations for planning, engagement, recruitment, and onboarding.
About Axuall
Built with leading healthcare systems, Axuall is a workforce intelligence company powered by a national real-time practitioner data network. The technology enables healthcare systems, staffing firms, telehealth, and health plans to dramatically reduce onboarding and enrollment time while also providing unique, powerful data insights for network planning, analytics, and reporting. To learn more, visitwww.axuall.com.
About Hartford Healthcare
With 41,000 colleagues, Hartford HealthCare’s unified culture enhances access, affordability, equity and excellence. Its care-delivery system — with more than 500 locations serving 185 towns and cities — includes two tertiary-level teaching hospitals, an acute-care community teaching hospital, an acute-care hospital and trauma center, three community hospitals, a behavioral health network, a multispecialty physician group, a clinical care organization, a regional home care system, an array of senior care services, a mobile neighborhood health program and a comprehensive physical therapy and rehabilitation network.
The future of healthcare innovation over the next decade will be shaped by insights from clinician big data and AI, otherwise known as workforce intelligence. While clinical discovery is often the first thing that comes to mind, workforce data and the intelligence derived from it represent a lesser-known but equally important place in the future of medicine.
How we shape healthcare’s workforce, peer networks, and processes comes down to how we use data to surface meaningful information. Leaders must leverage data inside and outside their organizations for healthcare systems to thrive, let alone survive in an arena of extreme supply and demand limitations among doctors, advanced practice providers, allied health professionals, and nurses.
Workforce Shortages Are the New Normal
According to the U.S. Census Bureau projections, by 2030, every Baby Boomer will be 65 or older, meaning that one out of every five U.S. citizens will be of retirement age, increasing the use of healthcare services nationwide. Meanwhile, the Association of American Medical Colleges warns that the U.S. could face a shortage of up to 124,000 physicians by 2034, with more than two of five of today’s active physicians aging over 65 years in the same period. Exacerbating this problem is the growing nurse shortage that threatens access to care for millions of Americans.
Typically, when healthcare and big data are mentioned in the same sentence, it’s in reference to patient data. When attempting to maximize the patient experience, patient data is a logical first step in addressing the needs of patients. However, the use of patient data, AI, and automated treatment remains a controversial subject. On the other hand, clinician data entails fewer roadblocks, holding the key to the discovery of more efficient workforce models to address the existential challenges of workforce shortages, burnout, and attrition.
Healthcare’s Money Ball Moment
In 2003, Billy Beane, Oakland Athletics general manager, greatly enhanced his strategy for selecting players to create a winning baseball team by altering how he perceived available data. That “Moneyball” strategy could be healthcare’s home run. Data is available, and health systems must change their perception of it to provide the best outcomes for patients and clinical workforces alike.
Beane was successful because he and his team amassed a massive amount of data, analyzed it, and paid attention to the trends. They operated in a place of scarcity and discovered how to build a great team with minimal resources. The U.S. healthcare system’s issues, like workforce shortages and unmanageable workloads, deserve a fresh approach with a similar strategy.
Clinician Big Data Helps Clinicians and the Organizations They Work For
Clinician big data applies millions of data points to construct a mosaic of the clinical workforce. Much like a phenotype, this data tells a detailed story of a clinician’s career history, including education, training, licensures, employers, facility affiliations, procedural experience, and the patient population traits they have served, benefiting the clinician and organization they work with.
So, how can big data play a role in addressing healthcare workforce issues?
Optimizing the Workforce You Have: Healthcare organizations, particularly those that operate across many service lines, license types, locations, and treatment modalities, struggle to keep track of the ever-changing dynamics of their workforce. Leveraging data to align supply and demand in their communities is crucial for efficiently distributing limited resources, preventing over-utilization and burnout, and managing attrition. As the executive director of strategy development for the Mayo Clinic recently stated in a podcast, “We won’t be able to recruit our way out of a workforce shortage.”
Recruiting a Smart Way: When recruiting is the last option, applying workforce analytics to understand the gaps and specific clinician profiles needed to fill them is vital to an efficient growth strategy. Even better, organizations that recruit candidates they know to match those profiles significantly improve their ability to build well-aligned care teams for their patients.
Reducing Onboarding Time and Cost: Collecting information and forms from clinicians and the primary sources who must verify their credentials is a slow, painful, and expensive process, costing healthcare organizations thousands of dollars a day in lost productivity, according to a study conducted by The Health Management Academy. Using big data and intelligent form automation reduces delays in credentialing and enrollment.
Improving Access to Care: Optimizing the workforce means optimizing patient access to care. When clinicians are used more efficiently in roles aligned with their work history and career goals, patients receive elevated care, bettering their experiences. Proper workforce utilization also allows health systems to hire strategically – in an anticipatory manner based on healthcare trends. Access to clinician data enables health systems to staff appropriately before the increase in demand, which means shorter wait times for patients. This capability ensures health systems executives can retain patients while positively engaging clinicians.
In closing
In reimagining the landscape of healthcare’s potential, the focus must shift from merely accumulating data to actively leveraging it –– especially in the realm of clinician data. The staggering volume of underutilized data is key to resolving today’s critical healthcare issues. Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics may still be waiting for their championship, but that season changed more than just one team –– it revolutionized a sport. Healthcare stands at a similar precipice, ready to transform its approach by embracing clinician big data.
The crux lies in recognizing the multidimensional nature of clinician data beyond traditional qualifications. By dissecting work histories, individual experiences, and aspirations, healthcare systems can weave together a comprehensive tapestry of their workforce. Embracing this holistic view empowers decision-makers to implement micro-credentialing strategies, optimize workforce management through data-informed decisions, and proactively align clinicians with roles that match their expertise and ambitions. This strategic use of clinician data ensures more efficient patient care. It primes healthcare systems to expertly navigate workforce shortages, fostering a symbiotic relationship between patient access, clinician satisfaction, and operational excellence. As the horizon of healthcare expands, the careful application of clinician data becomes apparent –– not just as an opportunity but as an imperative pillar for the future of a resilient, patient-centric healthcare ecosystem.
About Charlie Lougheed
Charlie Lougheed is the CEO and co-founder of Axuall, a workforce intelligence company built on a national real-time Clinician Data Network that enables healthcare organizations to create more efficient care networks while reducing onboarding time by over 70 percent.
Lougheed co-founded and co-funded Explorys, now IBM Watson Health, in 2009 as a spin-off from Cleveland Clinic. Explorys became the leader in healthcare big data and value-based-care analytics, spanning hundreds of thousands of healthcare providers and over 60 million patients across the United States. Having amassed the World’s largest clinical data set, Explorys went on to serve the payer, life sciences, and pharmaceutical sectors by providing real-world evidence and insight for product planning, research, health economic outcomes research, and safety.
As the prospects of healthcare workforce shortages loom large, organizations will increasingly use big data to combat burnout and improve human resource initiatives.
It’s easy to see the future when you can appreciate what’s happened in the past. In healthcare, looking at the transformation of patient data makes it clear what needs to happen and what will happen in the future with clinician data.
Traditionally, data and analytics have been an area where healthcare has played catch-up with other industries. It wasn’t until about a decade ago that patient “big data” came onto the forefront, ushering in new ways to identify correlations, manage populations and measure outcomes. We’re now entering a new era of healthcare analytics in which clinician big data joins industry efforts to address some of the most significant healthcare challenges, like workforce shortages and clinician burnout.
Workforce shortages
When you think of supply chain management in healthcare, most people think about personal protective equipment and prescription drugs. However, the fact is that this pales in comparison to the growing supply chain problems in the healthcare workforce. The Association of American Medical Colleges estimates a workforce shortage of 124,000 physicians by 2031. There’s expected to be an even more significant shortage among nurses; the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics estimates a shortage of 200,000 nurses by the same year.
Addressing this workforce supply chain problem is critical for the well-being of our health systems, but even more so for patients receiving and paying for care. There is no choice but to address this issue. In 2024, we’ll see a concerted effort to appropriately access and use extensive, up-to-date clinician data as a building block for creative solutions to tackle this problem.
Burnout
Unmanageable workloads because of staffing shortages among physicians, advanced practice providers, nurses, technicians, allied health and home aides significantly contribute to rising burnout rates. A recent Medscape survey found that more than half of physicians experience burnout. While these daily demands continue to compound, medical professionals face a problematic decade ahead as our population of individuals 65 and older surpasses 56 million, lifespans increase and chronic conditions continue to rise.
While no one has a crystal ball, the status quo is unsustainable. We’ll start to see clinician big data used more to help solve some of healthcare’s most pressing issues. Utilizing clinician data, like patient data in the past decade, will give health systems the tools to understand why clinicians feel burnout. More importantly, it will determine what strategies will create a work environment best suited for healthcare workers.
How will clinician big data solve these problems? It can’t do it by data alone. Big data by itself is “big noise” if not properly curated. But in the upcoming year, this data, combined with artificial intelligence that can analyze and predict, will be incorporated more by health systems. Major problems like workforce shortages and burnout that seem unfixable will become attainable problems to solve, albeit incrementally at first. Clinician big data does that in the following ways.
Provide the tools for pinpoint recruiting. Clinician big data makes understanding hiring needs before a staffing shortage becomes a reality. When a health system can visualize real-time workforce trends and gaps, it can analyze and adapt accordingly — for example, by hiring a specialist based on the trending patient encounters, clinician practice patterns and provider referrals in the surrounding area. This insight enables health systems to anticipate and meet patient demands and ensure appropriate physician workloads.
Ensure high clinician engagement and satisfaction with streamlined onboarding processes. In a world where Internet advertisements seem to already know what you’re thinking, there’s no reason that clinician credentialing, a requirement to keep patients safe, takes weeks or months to complete and often delays clinicians from doing what they’re trained to do, treat patients. Health systems will tap into existing data sources to improve and speed up onboarding processes to hire quickly and efficiently based on priority needs and patient demands.
Future-proof our most valuable healthcare resource: clinicians. Health systems can use real-time clinician big data, not anecdotes, to inventory clinicians across demographics, license types, service lines, facilities, markets, procedures, practice affinity and patient populations to mirror location-specific supply and demand.
In light of the stakes, there has never been a greater need to apply data to address these challenges in the U.S. healthcare workforce, like shortages and burnout. However, until recently, the data relative to a practitioner’s credentials, skills, capabilities, utilization factors, stress level and placement potential is scattered across hundreds of sources and often out-of-date and incomplete.
This makes it difficult for healthcare leaders to meet credentialing and privileging regulations, quickly deploy appropriate resources, and optimize their workforce. In 2024, health systems will begin to optimize and utilize clinician data at scale to address the biggest challenge facing healthcare today – the supply and demand gap.
Charlie Lougheed is the CEO and co-founder of Axuall.
Frist Cressey Ventures is among the nation’s leading venture capital firms in healthcare, joining a large group of healthcare investors and organizations supporting Axuall.
CLEVELAND, August 2, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Axuall has announced the addition of Frist Cressey Ventures to its investor family with a Series B-1 investment following the company’s Series B funding in May 2023. Axuall has raised over $41 million from a combination of more than two dozen leading healthcare organizations to address the growing need to leverage big data to solve the pressing problems of process inefficiencies, workforce shortages, and onboarding delays. Axuall’s offerings optimize clinician experience while improving patient care access and financial strength.
The collaboration between Axuall and Frist Cressey Ventures represents a significant step forward in driving healthcare innovation. Frist Cressey Ventures, a leading healthcare venture capital firm providing strategic support in the key areas that help businesses thrive, innovate, and deliver on their promise to affect systemic change, brings extensive provider and payor perspective and a deep commitment to advancing transformative solutions. Their partnership with Axuall reinforces the power of data and automation to reshape healthcare delivery and workforce management.
“We are thrilled to partner with Axuall, an organization that is revolutionizing workforce optimization in healthcare through data-driven solutions,” shares Senator Bill Frist, M.D., co-founder and partner of Frist Cressey Ventures. “Axuall’s commitment to driving efficiency and cost-effectiveness aligns perfectly with our mission of transforming healthcare to improve lives. We believe this investment will contribute to Axuall’s continued growth and create a lasting impact in the industry by unlocking the power of data to enhance the clinical workforce.”
Axuall’s Workforce Intelligence Network enables healthcare organizations to plug into a vast array of clinician data from nearly 7,000 data sources and directly from physicians, advanced practice providers, and nurses via an integrated digital credential wallet with integrated smart applications. Connecting to the systems, vendors, and processes that these organizations already use today, the technology has resulted in significant cost savings and efficiency gains at leading healthcare organizations across the country while providing insights into their clinician populations for planning, recruiting, and placement.
MedStar Health’s Institute for Innovation, along with system clinical and operational partners, began work with Axuall in 2021 as a customer and development partner, recently expanding its equity investment this year. As part of its innovation transformation initiatives across its 10 hospitals and more than 300 care locations, MedStar Health has integrated Axuall’s technology into its next-generation clinician credentialing, onboarding, and engagement process. Their work together has already yielded an initial 21-day reduction or roughly a third of processing time while reporting a clinician satisfaction score of 9 out of 10. Integrated with MedStar Health’s provider management application, which is HealthStream’s CredentialStream application, the Axuall Network and Digital Credential Wallet streamline the inflow of data to shorten clinician deployment times to help meet patient needs in the communities they serve.
“Axuall has been an integral innovation partner during our credentialing transformation journey,” said Bill Sheahan, Chief Innovation Officer at MedStar Health and Executive Director of the MedStar Institute for Innovation. “Recognizing that positive change is sparked by combining exceptional technology, people, and processes, fostering a culture of innovation has been a core component of our commitment to our patients and clinicians who care for them. We are excited by the results we’ve seen and look forward to further leveraging data and automation to drive future efficiencies.”
“Data innovation is the catalyst for much-needed workforce optimization in healthcare, and we are proud of what we’ve built with MedStar Health and the many innovative healthcare organizations we’ve worked with since our inception,” stated Charlie Lougheed, co-founder, and CEO of Axuall. “Moreover, we are delighted to partner with Frist Cressey Ventures, a firm so dedicated to advancements in healthcare. Their insights, influence, and connections in the provider and payor space will be instrumental as we expand into new sectors and product lines.”
About Axuall:
Built with leading healthcare systems, Axuall is a workforce intelligence company powered by a national real-time practitioner data network. The technology enables healthcare systems, staffing firms, telehealth, and health plans to dramatically reduce onboarding and enrollment time while providing robust data insights for network planning, analytics, and reporting. To learn more, visit axuall.com or follow Axuall on LinkedIn.
About Frist Cressey Ventures:
The Frist Cressey Ventures’ mission is simple: to transform healthcare to improve lives. We invest in technology and service businesses with viable solutions that improve quality of care, system integration, patient outcomes, and population health and well-being.
We focus our time and attention on three key areas: recruiting top talent, connecting partnerships with our deep industry network, and executing our partnerships’ plans to improve healthcare.
