<v Jordan Cooper>We're here today with Abu Bakar at Summit health. He's a chief chief information and digital officer at Summit Health. As context, not long after City, MD hired Abu in 2019, global private equity firm Warburg Pincus invested in City, MD, which merged with Summit Health, creating a healthcare provider with 6400 employees and nearly 200 locations in New York and New Jersey.</v>

<v Jordan Cooper>Ohh would you like to correct that?</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Can you just can you go? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of lot of Corrections here. Where do you reading all of this from?</v>

<v Jordan Cooper>Well, I'll just continue. So for the benefit of our listeners and then we can correct in a moment at Summit, Abu has been mentoring and managing 200 staff and a $75 million budget. And as an aside, recently Walgreen's backed village MD announced its plans to buy summit health in a $9 billion deal more in that later during the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization became the leading testing provider in New York City. Abu you led the charge develop web and mobile applications to support no touch check in and the patient portal that permitted city.</v>

<v Jordan Cooper>You need to support twice as much online traffic. The first question I'd like to pose to you Abu, would you please tell our listeners about your experience creating a digital front door for summit health with your mobile app and how you've been using that platform to engage over 30,000 daily active users, effectively replacing your EHR portal, at least for those users with your app.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Yeah, I mean we we launched our first digital app last year in, in June and I think we are, we were pleased with the performance we had about in about 16 months. We have almost million downloads for a about 700,000 active patients using it. We have we average about 8 to 15,000 daily active users on it. It is probably one of the the first step for us to get into the digital front door. It allows you to allows the patients to be able to self-serve.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Their information may be able to look up their results or pay their bills and do a virtual appointment schedule. Appointments, all that stuff. So I think this is a this is a great first step. Obviously, we're looking forward to enhance it. Then you even make it even bigger and better as we know you, our patient volumes have grown significantly. We saw 7,000,000 patients last year alone. So I think we have our capacity to expand. This is probably enormous and then we're gonna continue to do that and we're gonna continue to use that for not just for urgent care, but also for multi specialty.</v>

<v Jordan Cooper>What were some of the challenges of setting up this digital front door? Once you decide you know you have a huge influx of volume with the COVID testing that was unexpected and you have to find a way to cope with that crisis as all of your colleagues who are now listening to this episode also had to deal with you decided. All right, we got to go full in with this digital front door. Now what?</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Yeah, I think the the biggest, the biggest challenge obviously with any of these technology related project is is to how do we make sure that it it is easy and the experience of the patient is as seamless as possible. We don't want to create a tools and technology for the sake of creating technology. We want to add the value and add the convenience for them. So we spend a lot of time trying to figure out if we can do this, how will that help the patient experience. And I think the idea is to give them the experience in their hands and the tools where they can do the stuff they on their own on their own.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Time with their own place on their own device and the way they we wanted to. So I think people are expecting and questions are expecting that's to be delivered to them rather than they just have to call the call centers in this. Our volumes are so high that we needed a better tool which could be self-serving. So just to give you an idea of when we did millions of COVID test and a lot of millions of rapid coward tests which leads to results in about 15 minutes, we were able to deliver that they come in.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Walk in, get the test done in 20 minutes in the app. They will have the results. They don't have to wait in the cleaning. They don't have to wait for the e-mail to come in and about 20 minutes. We deliver those results back to the to the patient so they feel that they, they will always they don't have to wait for a day to get the results back. They don't have to go somewhere. They don't have to call somebody. I think this is the. This is the new way of delivering care. And I think everybody understands that Healthcare is something that somewhere that we have always lacked a little bit on a confession experience. I think we are making.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Huge steps forward, leaping forward to it, and this is COVID has accelerated a lot of this digital stuff. I think it is paying a huge, huge dividends for us.</v>

<v Jordan Cooper>So Abu, since we do have a very technical audience, your peers listening to this episode, I'd like to ask you to delve deeper into what technically was required and what organizationally and operationally was required.</v>

<v Jordan Cooper>In your game plan to lead to the point where patients could get those results in the app in 20 minutes.</v>

<v Jordan Cooper>Ohh is there. I mean is that what you're using the integration engine where they're challenges with with merging different data from different sources? What? What exactly did you? I think many different CIOs can say. Yes, we want to improve patient experience. We wanna be very seamless.</v>

<v Jordan Cooper>How do you?</v>

<v Jordan Cooper>Get what are some of the challenges you had to overcome and and what was your path forward to get to a point where you could get that desired outcome?</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Yeah. I mean, I think I say that all the time in my career to say we work very happy work.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Very hard to make it look easy, and that's the mantra that we have to do so people don't. I mean, in order to deliver what we have to deliver, there is a lot of stuff that has to happen in behind the scenes. We have to be able to have the infrastructure in place to handle this volume. We have to have the data available from disparate systems to be able to deliver this. And we use obviously we have our EMR systems is Athena and then our core integration and data clinical data hub is intersystems.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>We use those technology to connect and be able to process these things in real time and be able to available whether it's propagate to their call centers or propagate to our apps. So this is this is the massive effort behind the scenes, but it looks so simple from the front end to say I can go in and open an app and I see the result. But yes, there is a lot of complexity that happens behind the scenes. There's a lot of data aggregations. There's a lot of patients matching that has to happen to make sure that the character results are going to the correct patients. So we have the employee master Patient index which we use in systems.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Right. We have a lot of data aggregation that happens. We have a lot of interfaces that runs from different systems to make this happen and then obviously all of all has to be done in a in almost real time to deliver the experience that we need. So yes, there's a lot of complexity behind, but we don't want to talk about the complexity. We wanna make it easy sound so easy for everyone.</v>

<v Jordan Cooper>So let's talk about mergers and acquisitions and that's what's on many people's minds these days. I'd like to ask you first about the past, about some its acquisition of City MD with the infusion of private equity funds and how that affected the data landscape in your ambulatory care setting. After that, I'd like to ask you to talk about how that process has differed so far with your experience with village MD. But first, a few years ago.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Few years ago, three years ago, just a little bit of a correction that.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Warburg.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Umm, there's a private equity owner, but they invested in City MD first they took that George take and then they invested in summit medical groups and we merged and that became summit help. So it was a merger between City MD and summit owned by Warburg, both the companies three years ago we did this merger obviously with any any mergers.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Yeah, of this size, which almost like an equal size mergers, there's a lot that goes into it. There's a technology piece to it, but there's even bigger and better thing to do. First is the people side of things. So we always have to look and see how we align the leadership, how do we align the people and then how do we align the systems and in and the tools and processes with it. We did the same thing as we do. We have a playbook now that we do how we do these merges because we constantly acquiring new practices. We have done those.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Quite a bit. Uh, small, medium and large.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>And we.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>You have a process that we put in place to say once we get through the initial planning phase to how we gonna integrate the people leadership in the teams, that's the first thing and then after that we put together the full road map to how these systems and dispositions work. To say you pick a list of everything that that is available in both in both companies and what works well for each company and then we decide and compare and then we make a decision where we need to integrate or whether we need to.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Dispose one over the other or do we need to leave it alone? Leave it out on its own because there is always.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Merits and pros and cons for each one of them, and then we need to make those decisions based on the business, business outcomes and business strategy and obviously keeping the patients in the center of all of this is like how would that help integrate the companies together. So we have gone through this, we have now.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>We are about a 13,000 people strong company growing and obviously we're gonna continue to do not just by mergers and acquisition, but just organic growth by opening a lot of different hubs and centers and ancillaries and labs and everything else. So we own a constant constant warpath to grow.</v>

<v Jordan Cooper>I think many uh CIO's in our audience may be interested in hearing what's actually been going on in your mind as you're determining which programs to integrate, which dispose of and which to leave alone. Can you give us insight into your thought processes?</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Yeah, I think these are these are these are very detailed sessions that happens at the at the teams level. We try not to make a judgmental decision to say we acquired you. So we would use the system over the other. It's just more of a merit based. We compare the features, we compare the impact, we compare the scope, we compare the the effectivity of what those tools are and sometimes we end up using the tools and the processes from the from the.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Acquired company. Sometimes we use it from an acquiring company, so it's not, it's not a black and white. We came in. We did this because we acquired you. We're gonna use everything that we have. We compare those solutions and then we make the decisions and then we create the road map and usually takes for a larger acquisition. It could take from 12 to 18 months for a smaller ones. It takes from three to six months.</v>

<v Jordan Cooper>So how is the process of merging summit and city ID City, MD been different from what you expect to process? Maybe like with village MD?</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Village, MD. Is again, we're not closed or we're not. We're just announce the signing of the deal. So it is not much we can talk about, William, MD at this point because we just announced.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>That the they have decided to come to.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>To sign the contract at this point, we haven't even closed the deal, so I don't know if there's much to say about that. As far as City MD, and we went to the same process, you know, go look at which ERP systems are better, which EMR systems are better for us in the future, how is this one will grow. And then we made those decisions.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Two working with a lot of partnerships with clinical and operational leadership. So obviously they are key stakeholders for all of this and collectively we make those decisions. And then obviously we as an IT do what we do best is execute and plan and roll out and adapt and do all the change management for it. But the clinical and operational leaderships are the key stakeholders before we make those decisions.</v>

<v Jordan Cooper>Should Abu you do have an interesting background and I think many listening may not be aware of where you've been before, you're at City MD, you're in retail, largely at Liz Claiborne Vineyard Vines Barneys of New York and Chobani Yogurt Company. Essentially, I mentioned this because there's been a lot of forays of retail chains into healthcare. You have Amazon, Walmart with village MD, Best Buy health. We've had previous episodes on Healthy Data podcast about this very topic.</v>

<v Jordan Cooper>I wonder what your experience has been transitioning from retail into healthcare and perhaps more of more interest to our listeners is kind of coming full circle with potentially this deal with Walmart Village MD acquiring it and you're kind of going back into retail while remaining in healthcare. Can you talk to our listeners about the nuances and the differences motivations and what you kind of your expectations are moving forward?</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Yeah, just another correction. It's not Walmart, it's Walgreens. So.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Ohh Walgreens obviously have a major stake in the village MD and the MD and summit health is the one that we are in the middle of the transaction right now.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Transition from retail to healthcare. You know, I spent 16 years in retail, done a lot of work in retail. We're able to do some some major high impact work and after 16 years my I decided that I wanted to move out of retail and do something different and that's where I joined Chobani, which is a great brand, great product, something that it was very, very interesting at that point in the night, decided after spending few years that's that's not what I want to spend the rest of my career because.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Manufacturing is not something that I was particularly obviously very interesting and exciting to do. The all these production work and client and all this stuff. But that's not something that I was very particularly passionate about, but in healthcare opportunity came in, they were looking for somebody from a non healthcare background but with the retail and I think that works perfectly fit into what I do is I spent a lot of time working in the retail and understand how.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>The.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>How do we how do we deal with building loyalties? How do you bring building, creating experiences? How do I build using technology to drive patient satisfaction or customer satisfaction? So I've learned a lot of that work in the past. And then how do you actually take these things into multimodal deliveries like in retail 20 years ago, nobody thought we would be able to sell this stuff like a fashion stuff online. But you know what? Everybody selling everything online and still working.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Who would have thought we will sell large appliances and and fashion products and all that stuff, but it's all happening. You and Healthcare is not any different from that side. Plus there's some special neurons as to healthcare. Obviously there's a lot more concern, a lot more.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Attention has to be done on the privacy issues and plus you're dealing with people's health, so there's obviously hiding concerns there. But at the end of the day, you still looking for somebody, a patient who is in need of our services, wants to come to your, to your clinic or center and wants to be treated the way that it should be treated. And there wants to be taken care of by the right physicians and be able to follow through and make sure that they feel good about coming to this because they're, they need something that we can deliver to them. So I think.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>From a from a customer slash patient journey site it is similar and it is something that I always say healthcare has been a was it? It is still a little lagging behind the other industries when it comes to retail or financial. What Healthcare is doing today is what some of these other industries were doing 1520 years ago. I mean you used to go to the teller and I use the app for it. I think 15 years ago you were always no app in the financial services. Now you have.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>And apps you don't have to go to deposit a check. So I think this is where Healthcare is. When I made the decision and intentional decision that I want to spend the next 10 years in rehab, care is.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>I truly believe the next decade is gonna be the true health care delivery transformation, and I truly believe in that because I think the reason why it's gonna it's gonna happen first is.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>The patients are going to demand it and it's gonna get used to it. This is what happened in the other. And the student's gonna happen here. It's gonna be a matter of who who wins that.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Who wins that competition to say who's delivering the best care? Who's delivering the best experience? Care is always gonna be the most important thing. And then then the experience will come right after it. Technology 1520 years ago was different than what it is today. So healthcare has a huge advantage to leapfrog it because the things that you were you were thinking and you thought you will be able to do in other industries 20 years ago where not possible or what not scalable and now are in the reach or in the you can do that.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Using technology, so I think you're in a better spot because you're coming from behind. You can leave frog it, so technology will help you take this even more further ahead than other industries. A lot of different UI stuff and all the stuff. This was 20 years ago. There was still in infancy. Now it's much more mature than proving that it works. So I think there's a lot of opportunity for healthcare to change the delivery for the better at the end of the day, it's one patient at a time. You have to take care of the patient's. That's the center of everything. But everything around it.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Has to be better. Has to move better. You cannot just walk into a clinic and have to fill out these paper forms and fill it out again next time when you come in and then come back and I don't know what I'm paying for it. All that experience, please.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Wald chance form in the next 10 years.</v>

<v Jordan Cooper>So Abu, we are approaching the end of this podcast episode and we've been speaking about patient centricity, consumerism, catering to a seamless patient experience and kind of bringing the patient centered journey almost as a customer centric journey from retail into healthcare. Last question as as we wrap up this episode, I think many of our listeners may be wondering how they can replicate your success. What would you say to them?</v>

<v Abu Bakar>I think you there's again, if you're talking about more about a healthcare specific.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>I strongly encourage everyone with being in the industry who's been doing this thing. You have a tremendous advantage of knowing what the health care is, but then you also have this disadvantage to think this is the only way to do it. Think outside the box thing you know, challenge yourself, challenge everyone else around you. Obviously not impacting the kid, not impacting the privacy and compliance rules, but there's a lot you can do to change. So think outside the box a little bit.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Traditional way of delivering care.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>May not be what it will be in the next 5 to 10 years and you gotta get in front of it. You don't want to be there with toys or S of the world in the retail and you don't want to be the ones that are fall behind. The reason I'll give you a quick example. City MD is a 10 year old company. He has 164 urgent care centers now.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>They are in the prime spot in the most dense.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Population market in the country, New York City, we saw almost 7,000,000 patients there are in the city where were there they were in different health systems. They were going everywhere else. We give them the patients what they wanted a quick.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Convenient, fast access to A to walk in centers so they can take care of what they need to do rather than going and waiting for their appointment. So making going to the ER for stuff that they don't need to go for the we just give them the opportunity to do something, offer them something different and everybody just gravitate and moved into it. So you gotta find your differentiator, you gotta find your niche. Challenge yourself the way that you have done it in the past may not be the way you want to do it in the future.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>And always take care of the patients first.</v>

<v Jordan Cooper>Thank you. This has been Abu Bakar, the chief information and digital officer at Summit Health. Abu, thank you very much for joining us today.</v>

<v Abu Bakar>Thank you.</v>