Consolidate with Care: Panda Health CEO Ryan Bengtson on Rationalizing Tech Without Losing Clinical Trust

Two main trends. First, health systems are trying more than ever to fully leverage the capabilities of their EHRs. There has always been a sliding scale between how much organizations rely on point solutions for certain applications when they want more and better functionality or a differentiated patient experience, versus how much they want to rely on an EHR to help keep costs down and reduce integration complexity. Today, as the EHRs continue to build out new features and margin pressures are mounting, they are leaning more heavily on their EHRs.

Second, leading organizations are being much more deliberate in evaluating their current solutions, particularly as they come up for renewal. All solution providers are rapidly expanding their capabilities and simultaneously there is increasing M&A activity amongst solution providers. Over time that results in health systems with significant redundancies. Proactively identifying those overlaps enables the health system to extend the use of certain products while unsetting others without losing any core functionality, which ultimately saves money and reduces technical complexity.

I believe there are a few relatively straightforward procurement strategies that allow an organization to manage technical debt while still pursuing innovative solutions. First, emphasize the use of interoperability standards (HL7, FHIR, etc.) to avoid custom integrations. Second, focus on SaaS and modular platforms to avoid on-premise solutions and the need for modifying your core infrastructure. Third, where possible, leverage pilots and proof-of-concept periods so you can fail fast before committing to a broader rollout.

I think the key to managing the shift to value is remaining agile, so emphasizing interoperability standards and focusing on modularity. The bigger shift, though, will be organizing the architecture around business capabilities rather than individual departments. In value-based care you need to manage longitudinal care rather than episodic, and to do so effectively requires the ability to visualize and measure across the full patient journey and not in individual data silos.

The main change that I’ve seen among Panda’s health system members is that this piece has moved to the front of the evaluation cycle, and many are using external security rating companies as part of the process. Until relatively recently, cybersecurity and data governance were not adequately assessed until late in the evaluation process after the buyers had already looked at features and functionality, completed demos and reference checks, and narrowed the field down to a few finalists. Now, this is a primary screening criterion, and if solution providers cannot clearly demonstrate their ability to meet the health systems requirements, they never make it out of the starting gate.

It is inevitable, and even the most seasoned change agents still don’t like it when they are forced to change. I don’t actually see anything particularly new here, but rather making sure you adhere to what has consistently been proven to work… extensive clinician involvement in the decision and selection process, widespread internal marketing and communication around the rationale for, and the benefits of, the decision that was made, and leveraging well-respected clinical ‘champions’ to advocate for the change and help bring their colleagues along.

That’s a challenging question, as the priorities may be substantially different across various health systems. In general, CIOs should prioritize metrics that balance strategic value, risk, cost, and clinical impact. The cost savings and ROI are likely to be top of mind given the current economic environment. Still that might also include security risk scores, interoperability, and support for innovation like AI or virtual care. Systems with high value, low risk, and future readiness should be retained, while redundant, underused, or unsecure tools should be consolidated or phased out. Yet, all of that is also dependent on workflow integrations and end-user adoption to ensure the health system is actually realizing the value of these solutions.