Valerie Moring, BSRT (CV), CPHIMS, joined Edafio Technology Partners as the cybersecurity and healthcare team lead in 2017 to support professionals with navigating cybersecurity consulting, healthcare delivery, policy improvement, and quality payment programs for all payers. Above all, her passion is to bring quality-based, metric-driven, patient-centric, secure, and affordable healthcare to the region.
With 70% of Edafio’s client base in healthcare, Moring’s background in quality programs, HIPAA consulting, training, as well as advising and educating on healthcare information technology, further grounds Edafio in its work to enable physicians, medical professionals, and care teams to transform healthcare delivery from within the medical system.
A resident of Arkansas, Moring has nearly 20 years of healthcare and cybersecurity experience, with the last ten of those years in managerial roles leading the corporate cybersecurity and healthcare consulting teams. Moring manages the expanding portfolio of healthcare and cybersecurity services from security risk assessments, information security program management to regulatory compliance consulting, innovative quality payment programs, and chart reviews. She dedicates her expertise with the Edafio operational leadership team in various continuous cybersecurity risk assessments, compliance consulting, improved reporting, and privacy/security policy reviews and procedures.
Beyond her leadership and consulting duties at Edafio, Moring serves on the Advisory Board for UCA’s Computer Science Program, as well as coordinates the company cycling and walking groups to promote health and wellness for its associates.
Most recently, Moring was Supervisor for Health IT with Arkansas Foundation for Medical Care since 2010, where she spearheaded partnerships that supported healthcare transformation and compliance throughout the region.
Moring earned a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Radiologic Technology/Science Radiography from the University of Conway, Conway, AR. She received her certification in Healthcare Information and Management Systems in 2016 and earned additional certification in the cardiovascular specialty through the American Registry of Radiologic Technologists in 1996.
In her spare time, she enjoys running, cycling, hiking, and supporting her local church and community alongside her husband David, especially being the number one fan for her two daughters Mackenzie and Macy that are cheerleaders and track athletes.
Name: Valerie Moring
Company: Edafio Technology Partners
URL: https://edafio.com/
Title: Healthcare/Cybersecurity Lead
Transcript of the Conversation
Jordan Smith:
Hey everyone! Welcome to the iProv made Podcast where we help you build a more profitable practice. I am Jordan Smith and as always I’ve got RJ Martino with me.
What’s up RJ?
RJ Martino:
Hey Jordan! How are you? I am excited about today. What a wonderful healthcare consultant and we go about an inch deep but she could go in a mile deep with her knowledge. What I’m most excited about is she provides the pricing on what it costs to get started on something like this. Consultants out there that really tried to you know you can’t as a consultant you don’t want to just tell him the price cuz nobody likes the price immediately. You gotta get into what the value is and then tell the price. So listening to this podcast, you’re gonna hear the value but you’re also going to hear some pricing on what it takes to gain consultant.
Jordan Smith:
Absolutely. And some of the things that we talked about to if you guys are listened to a few of these, you’re going to hear the same things but there’s a reason why and it’s because they work and she talks a lot about vision, alignment, strategy. But like RJ said, this could be a four hour series easily. So, without further ado let’s hop into it. Today our special guest is Valerie Moring with Edafio.
She’s the cybersecurity and healthcare lead for a group called Edafio. And if we got listeners out there and you guys have not heard about Edafio, ah one, go look them up now and two, they are about to blow up in our opinion with all the different things we’re doing. So we’re privileged to have Valerie here today.
Hey Valerie!
Valerie Moring:
Hey RJ! So great to be with you and Jordan today. I appreciate you guys having me on to visit with you guys.
Jordan Smith:
Yeah, we appreciate it too.
RJ Martino:
You know Valerie the first thing we like to do because we’re trying to just pound it into people’s head is talk about the framework in which we diagnose problem and then we’re gonna put you in the position of where we think you fall into it and ask you little bit more about you but you know we’ve got kind of this eight baby step process where the first thing we’re doing is we meet with physicians or healthcare leaders and we listen to the symptoms of their problems.
And so, some of the symptoms in our world or your world might be, I think that I need to take cybersecurity more seriously. And that’s just a symptom you know, maybe it’s my people keep talking about weak passwords. Those are symptoms to a deeper problem. And so, first step is digging into symptoms and listening to them and hearing what the real issue is. Second thing we say is as a healthcare leader you’ve got to become accountable to fix the problem. We have lots of physicians especially who just want to throw money at problems and think that it’ll fix it. And often, it takes them really getting involved in and fully understanding the issue before it gets taken care of. The third thing we do is we kind of triage and look to see do you have a vision of what the future looks like. What does success look like for you? Do you have a corporate culture in your mind?
Then we look at do you have a strategy for achieving that. And that’s where groups like you often come in, as they say, I want this future and then they hire experts and they say help me build a strategy and tactics like how do we actually get this done because I’m not smart enough to know how to do it. I just know the future. The seventh step is alignment and how we make sure we hold our vendors and even our own employees accountable for the strategy and tactics. That is: how do we check progress, how do we make sure we’re meeting timelines, goals and staying on budget. And then eighth, finally we say engage your team.
So that’s kind of our framework on how we think about delivering a good healthcare practice result. I think, it starts with an organization like you guys whenever we talk technology on building a strategy. But why don’t you tell us a little bit of introduction about you, your business, you’re in an elevator pitch if you will.
Valerie Moring:
Sure, absolutely. And I think you have been reading my notes. So, it’s interesting that you know, like my notes and the different books that I’ve been reading myself personally, align with a lot of things you just said. So that’s fascinating. So I was wondering if you’d like maybe tapped into my notes somewhere.
RJ Martino:
Oh yeah, I hired a group called Edafio. They are cyber, they’re experts in hacking.
Jordan Smith:
Yeah.
Valerie Moring:
You hired a certified ethical hacker. That’s great!
Yes. So, just a little bit of information brief information about Edafio technology partners for those of you guys out there that haven’t heard of us. You know, we’ve been around Central Arkansas area since 1999. We actually are based primarily in Little Rock but we also have offices in Conway and in Rogers as well. And, we our mission is really and our vision is to grow outside of Arkansas and grow in and quickly into different parts of the region.
We were born out of this need where some local companies and JPMS Cox, a local company here accounting firm, you know, local IT companies could not meet the needs of their business specifically, and so, here we go Edafio was born. We were so successful at that time for providing results for JPMS Cox that it, JPMS Cox that it quickly developed into full-service IT provider type services. So, at that time though, it was more break fix, you know helpdesk type operations, really just maintaining day to day operations of businesses in the area.
Fast forward to now where if you have visited our website or been able to go out there and see that we have a lot of different services now; healthcare consulting, a cyber security practice, a cloud practice. We have project managers now. So really just full sets of teams that really are doing a lot of the things that RJ mentioned, you know in the intro. To work together and for us to be working together to the same mission and vision of our company and and to adhere to our core values. So, we really exist to help build at a very simple level, to help build and protect our client’s businesses through information technology, multi-cloud and cybersecurity services.
And so, we really do want to meet businesses and our clients where they are and help them, you know, plan for their future look and strategic needs, not only in an IT area but specifically some of things we’ll dig in today on will be some of the revenue opportunities that we know that we’ve seen with our years of experience, over 50 years on our healthcare consulting side, for the three of our healthcare consultants. That we know they’re leaving money on the table based off of you know the data we are gathering and working with with our clients on.
Jordan Smith:
Yeah. No, absolutely. And you know like RJ said, I think with the broad things that you guys are doing to help out patients, I feel like you guys really hit every kind of single stage that they talked about. So, speaking of that for listeners out there, tell us a little bit about who are your most successful clients. Well, you know, what do they look like before, what do they look like after you guys, how do you guys help them navigate some of those issues that they have, they bring to you guys.
Valerie Moring:
Sure, yes. So, some of the things that our most successful clients are doing right now versus those that are not as successful is really routine meetings with us. And so, what we see is, it’s the same thing on the technology side or the revenue side, where is if you’re not really engaged at the right level, so the physician levels, they and sometimes of course, the physicians, you know, they handoff different tasks as everyone knows. So, you know, majority of the time, we are meeting with those office managers or really whoever is responsible for particular service offerings that we are working with on them for at that time.
So they might prioritize different things you know, for April, for example, telemedicine right now, we are prioritizing that in a lot of our client’s sites and so we may be working with multiple teams or multiple people at our clients sites. It could be care managers, it could be even another IT company, it could be an IT person that they have full time on site, there to make sure they’re implementing telemedicine in a way that is going to keep that patient information private. And then on the backside of that, if they are to get audited from a payer, from Medicare, Medicaid or you know any of the private payers, then, they are documenting everything that they need to document, to actually bill for the level of service that they are able to do. So, really the routine meetings with us, working directly with either the executive teams or clinic administrators. Again, that looks kind of different for every client that we have and who we’re actually working directly with. But, the routine meetings are super important and making…
RJ Martino:
I think it’s funny. It’s so important but yet, often we don’t think about that. We talk about this cadence, that has to be built overtime and you know the first meeting is fun. The second meeting, you are starting to get the rhythm, the third but you’ve got to get this cadence, it’s a lot like kind getting into the roll of writing or getting the roll getting anything else done. But it’s interesting you talk about how important meetings are. And you know, physicians or leaders think they don’t want meetings but at the same time, a lot of times those meetings are this just the pulse on how things are going and without it they feel disconnected. They often feel like it’s not going well when everybody else is saying this is going great. They just don’t feel like it’s really going really well. So, that’s a very interesting thought.
Valerie Moring:
Yes, and with our services and our team of healthcare consultants and our cybersecurity consulting arm as well, but since I am the team lead for both of the healthcare and cybersecurity team, you know, we have a very structured way in which we provide our consulting in our services. And so, those routine meetings at least on our end are of course you know mandatory that we’re doing that.
And then follow up from our side: Notes. So, here’s the notes, here’s what we discussed on the meeting, here’s what we worked on, here’s the action items, here’s what Valerie is going to take home and here’s what Valerie needs to do in order to bring to the client you know, the next thing that we need to knock off our list, right.
So, really looking at quarterly goals and objectives for the business. And, here’s what I am gonna do before we meet again in two weeks and here’s what I need you to do or here’s what I need you to ask your care managers to do. I maybe need to ask your frontdesk to do this. Or, we’ve identified this quality measure report over here, that you know, we may not have our billing staff marking these charts appropriately in that electronic medical record. Let us figure out how to help you with that.
So, we’re taking those notes down and we’re holding ourselves accountable again as their trusted advisors as part of their team at the practice to say, hey, we are going to come in, we are going to work alongside you to figure out how to make this work. Whether we are talking about quality metrics or compliance or policy & procedure pieces as it relates to HIPPO or other regulations that these businesses are concerned about. Then that’s where we feel like we provide a lot of value to our clients.
So, you know the ones that aren’t successful, we see are the ones that we have a more difficult time making, you know, there are frustrated because they don’t see the level of improvements either in their revenue or their quality measures, are some of those businesses that have no strategy or no vision or a plan as it relates to increased revenue, right.
Jordan Smith:
Yeah. What I was going to say, what I love about that we talk about alignment all the time, so even those metrics that you talk about help align the practice’s goal in general. You know and make sure that whenever you come in there for the next meeting, all of you guys are speaking the same language. And that specific provider and that specific practice also has buy-in from all of their staff, right.
RJ Martino:
Hey Valerie! Let me ask you a question because you know obviously our majority of our audience are owners of these practices or leaders. Some of these leaders though are marketers and they are listening to us rather and so you know, when you talk technology, a lot of them even some of our physicians just think guys just handle it. I love the good notes. I love that but just handle that. The things that really piqued their interest typically and piqued my interest are when you say things like you are leaving money on the table and revenue is not growing like. Those are like tickler words for any owner who says, yeah well, tell me about that. Often people think of the cost of technology just as an expense below the item. Talk about how you can actually help on the revenue side.
Jordan Smith:
Yeah. That’s a great question because you know, we know that we’ve got some listeners out there that are saying I love the sound of this. But guess what, I’m busy and I’m still not making money. And, you’re gonna put another meeting on my plate. So Valerie, talk to that guy.
Valerie Moring:
Yes, absolutely. So, one of the things, since I’ve been in this field now for I’ve been in this IT field and before that I was a clinical. So, I worked in cardiac catheterization lab. I have a background in radiologic technology. But for 10 ten years now, I’ve been in this healthcare IT space. And, so one of the challenges that I’ve seen working for some non-profits and that would only be siloed and available to talk about you know Medicare and how they reimburse for something or Medicaid and how they reimburse for something based on you know, a contract that might have been assigned to.
The reason Edafio is different is because we have been very passionate, me and the other healthcare consultants to come in and say, how can we help, you know, our our partner practices see the overlap and see the money that they’re leaving on the table based on some of the new value based care models for all payers.
So, we’re not just gonna come in here, you know at Edafio as a model and talk to them about well, here’s what you need to do because guess what, you’re in the Medicare Shared Savings program or really you’re just trying to crank out you know, 15 more visits in your day because you know, you’re getting squeezed on ,you know, this fee for service model and we’ve all got to move to value based now and we’re phasing that in and we get that. But, how do you show the overlap? How do you maximize your electronic health record?
And so, what we came up with is what’s called Edafio’s Multi-year Quality Strategy Document. And so, paired with our consulting, we utilize a multi-year quality strategy planning with the document that really, we work with the right person at the office. We and it’s a little tedious and so, it is a little time consuming in the beginning, is anything this is very valuable is, to log into those payer portals, have them log into those payer portals, pull information that we need to know. Okay, you know, where are the care gaps that they are not closing? Where are the quality measures? For example, if they’re in the Patient Center Medical Home Model and they have to report these particular metrics for this program, you know, how are we doing on those? Are we coding our visits and we are we really letting our payers know, this is a huge issue, how sick our patients are. Because patients right now and a lot of physicians and a lot of them do understand this now because there are a lot of really innovative models. But, it really takes everyone at the clinic with this team- based care model understanding that coding that to the level of specificity of how sick our patients are so important because that’s how much our payers or insurance companies are going to give us to manage the care of our patients.
So, that’s what this multi-year quality strategy document does, is we really take, you know, numbers attributed numbers of patients based on their top payer models, to say, okay, you have, let’s just, you know, take for example, you have a thousand Medicare patients and two thousand Blue Cross patients and a thousand Medicaid patients. So, we’re gonna and those are your top three payers. We’re gonna work with you to identify those and see, you know, what programs we may not even be participating in that we haven’t reached out to see, how we can add, you know, that money back into the practice. So, closing care gaps all those things.
RJ Martino:
Yeah. And you know, if people have heard of Edafio, you think of it as a technology company. And, this seems like so much more than technology. You’ve got training team, coordination project management. So you can see, Edafio has to have lots of experts to do something like that.
Valerie Moring:
Right, right. And my specific team, you know, I’m the team lead of the healthcare and the cybersecurity practice and so we have eight cybersecurity consultants on our team. And, including myself, three healthcare consultants. And so, it’s interesting because with compliance and risk and a lot of other things that are going on, I’ve actually got one of my healthcare consultants that can work kind of both sides of that fence. And so, because a lot of these things do go together, if you think about HIPAA compliance, security awareness programs, you know, you have to do HIPAA annual training if you’re covered into your business associates. And, in this HIPAA world and so we really we feel like we bring a lot of value to the table there as well because you know, we are working together. This is a dynamic team that’s educating each other even along as we go. That has deep experience and expertise and multiple layers of things that businesses are concerned about today.
Jordan Smith:
Well, I would agree with you. So, for those for those folks out there that are listening again, you know, I hear it sounds like a lot of setup but the payoff is huge. How involved are the doctors usually in this process? Or if they’re thinking about this, is this something they more need to make sure they need to get their practice manager on board? How how involved are the doctors in this?
Valerie Moring:
It really does depends, RJ, on you know, the particular client. We’ve got some of our clients, the doctors are very involved in. We see some that are working with, you know, Accountable Care Organization and working with different, you know, Medicare Shared Savings program or even local ACOs. And, they are very involved right.
And then, we see others that really just want that office managers to handle it. But, you know, come to them with any issues, right. So, they do have the volume. They are interested in the change but they don’t want to be in every meeting. So, one of the areas that are one of the services that we offer as far as chart reviews, are very beneficial to make sure that again, they’re coding those office visits at the levels that are appropriate and they have that documentation to prove that. They are not over or under coding because we all know, the electronic medical records will upcode if you’re not careful.
So, when we do those chart reviews and that particular type of service, we do like to have in the clients, have found immediate value and having, you know, our consultants that does the chart reviews, Laurie Brockington, have those one-on-one meetings with those providers. So, whether it’s a mid-level or you know an MD, her really talking to them and explaining, you know, kind of what that looks like and having some teaching and coaching opportunities, very valuable for that service for sure.
RJ Martino:
You know, I think a lot of our listeners are listening. And, they hear what you’re saying and they understand, hey, there’s some money I’m leaving on the table but in their head maybe, it’s insignificant cuz i’m only a single provider. So, they might be able to make me more money or a little bit of money.
Valerie, I think this is amazing stuff and I think our audience knows exactly what you’re talking about. Everybody knows, there’s probably some inefficiencies. They probably know that their team might be billing some of this incorrectly and maybe leaving money on the table.
Sometimes you think, you know what, our practice is so small, the dollars saved or dollar earned, it’s insignificant. It’s so de minimis that, you know, it’s probably not worth the investment. Do you have a type of customer that and I could be wrong correct me if I’m wrong but do you have an ideal customer? Do you have a type of customer that you enjoy working with or you know you provide tons of value for?
Valerie Moring:
Absolutely, we do have an ideal customer. We have a couple of ideal customers if you think about it from the larger Edafio set, right.
So, really Edafio as a whole ideal client would be someone that is really consuming all of our services and we’re at the seat, right, as trusted advisor. But for some of those smaller practices that are only one to two doctors practices. And, I work with several of those right now and, you know, at a reduced number of hours per month. So, that its for its affordable for them. But, they are really it’s the mindset right. So, they are ready and willing to maximize their revenue opportunity and reduce risk to the organization. So, they are really ready to take on those particular things and ready to just to give us a little bit of time to help educate them. And again, just gather data so that we can show them, you know, here’s here’s some of the new payer models, here’s here’s what Medicaid is offering right now and here’s what we need to make sure you know, that we are showing the payer, the value of healthcare that we’re providing. Because we know by working with these healthcare providers for all these years that they really do want to, you know, take care of their patients, do what’s best for them.
We’re seeing that payout right now, with everything that there our healthcare heroes are doing to take care of the patients right now. And so, you know, what we want to do is make sure that we provide very valuable things to give them that time in their practice. And so, we’re able to do that, you know, no matter what the size is, right. We would like to, of course, we see some opportunities with even some of the Accountable Care Organizations that are prevalent in the state that we think they would be able to maximize their shared savings and those particular programs by having a little bit more boots on the ground if you will.
So, you know, really those routine meetings at the individual you know ACO level, all of the members of the ACO and those practices sometimes, they don’t really know what they need to do to be successful, to keep patients out of the emergency room, you know, to really implement a good care management practice and and train care managers and do that in their specific EHRs. It’s something that’s a very valuable service and we do this over and over with different EHRs. So, we have a lot of different experience between the three of us with different electronic medical records, with different practice management systems and we can help them, you know, roll those types of programs out quicker, so that they can get paid quicker.
Jordan Smith:
Well and it sounds like from y’all’s perspective, there’s almost not a part of the business that you guys are not integrating with, correct?
Valerie Moring:
Yes, that is correct. Edafio as a whole, we really do, kind of going back to our core values, I know, I didn’t talk about those today in the beginning but, you know, we really, this is something that I look for when I hire. Anyone that’s gonna work on my team and and it’s something I’ve been passionate about, since I’ve been in healthcare in general. And so, that aligned up and when the opportunity was presented to be- to me to work at Edafio, I was very drawn to the core value. So, we’re committed to our clients success. When we are working with a client, we are like an employee of their business. And so, we’re very interested in making them successful because their success is in turn our success.
Jordan Smith:
Yeah, absolutely. I love that. So, for the listeners out there, if they’re looking at options for some of the stuff that you talked about, what are kind of some best practices they should look for like really really tactical and you know really specifically kind of.
What questions should they be asking their providers if they’ve already got a group that does this? What are some real-life kind of things, little tidbits of information that you could give out there to providers and say, hey, here’s some, here’s just some good starting points if you’re thinking about engaging in a type of service like ours or all the stuff you talked about. Here’s some of the things that I would, here’s some best practices to kind of think about or start to implement.
Valerie Moring:
Well, I would say definitely tracking, you know, KPIs, Key Performance Indicators, so if your primary care, for example, and we would take these and we would and we do this now, we would match it to different specialties. So, I don’t want to think I don’t want you guys to think that we only work with primary care. I’m just using them as an example.
We really work with multi specialty clinics and so, we hone it down to their specialty. That’s another really great thing that we do with the collaboration between the healthcare consultants.
And, we do plug into those resources as well. So, a lot of people think there’s overlap with Edafio and some of their free sources or the payer sources. So, we plug into those payer sources to make sure that we’re, you know, working with the Medicaid representative or the Medicare or the Blue Cross rep, to make sure we’re working together with them to look at all the areas.
But for primary care and for an example of an KPI would be really well, so, have you implemented your Medicare wellness visits, have you started doing your wellness visits, you know, for all of your payers and how are you documenting those. And, how are you making sure that you’re talking to them about advanced care planning; are you billing for advance care planning; have you implemented this care management program, and are you billing out for care management? You know, that’s another big thing.
As far as their quality metrics, and a lot of our clients participate in the merit-based incentive program or MIPS it used to be called meaningful use and that’s actually where I got started in this whole exciting game of value-based healthcare was with the traditional program that they term meaningful use.
Maximizing the use of the electronic medical record and making sure that, you know, you’re you have efficiencies within the office that’s something else that, you know, we like to look at and make sure that, you know, if you’re not getting that score of 100 on your MIPS score. Why not? You know, let’s talk about how we can get you from if you were a seventy last year and you’re only getting at one point, you know, two percent adjustment positive. Let’s talk about getting that up to, you know, a hundred and getting the full maximum positive adjustments two years from now because everything, you know, in that particular program is two years behind. What you report on in 2019, you will receive, you will see those adjustments coming two years later.
RJ Martino:
Wow! So, what you’re doing today really does matter. You know, so so great key performance indicators, great things to ask current providers to know if they are if they’ve already got a provider.
My guess is you guys’ services are so vast that even if they have a current provider, that provider probably doesn’t offer all of the things that you’re doing. Whether it’s a, you know, a great healthcare consultant who doesn’t do the technology implementation or a great technology partner who doesn’t do healthcare consulting.
But, often we’re interested as as leaders as business owners to, you know, not get married first but yeah, I’ll have a date and understand a little more. Is there a like a dating option? Is there like, is there a way that they can talk to you without being sold to? Do you guys look at their practice and see if you can help them without charging them anything? You know, what is that process, what’s the first step?
Valerie Moring:
Yes. So, I would say the first step, and this is actually evolving at Edafio right now because of our great additions to our marketing team and what Melissa Swan is helping us implement but so, right now that would really look like a sales team member setting up a time. It would just be a free time that we talk to the practice or talk to the office manager and just ask them a few questions.
And then, we come back and talk, you know, with the other consultants and then we say, well here’s kind of some high-level information that we can provide you based on your particular business needs or your questions or we know you are, you know, this type of provider. We know you are a urology clinic, so this is what you want to look at for those particular measures. Or you’re orthopedics so, you know, you would want to go and look here and here’s some of the, you know, bundled care initiatives that other orthopedics are doing in this region. And, you know, so just different things we can do like that with an initial sales call but doesn’t feel salesy. It really just feels like a conversation.
Now future state, we’re working on our website, putting out some assessments that would be just a quick, you know, five questions I believe. That they would go in there and answer. And then it would give them an immediate, you know, response back to kind of agree if you will to look at how well they’re doing on some of their particular quality programs as well as their compliance needs. How they’re doing around security risk assessments and things like that yeah.
Jordan Smith:
Yeah, I love that. So, audience members keep going to that Edafio website. We will put the website in the show notes and I will get it from Valerie a little bit but check that out because that’ll be really cool.
So, good really key performance indicators, we, you know, we talked about a lot of our providers. I know that we’ve also got practice managers and you know, kind of that admin staff that are also listening. Maybe they’re listening to this and say man, this’ll take so much off my plate. I would love to be able to have somebody who, you know, has expertise in all these areas but I gotta get buy-in from my C-suite or I’ve got to get buy-in from my providers. What are some tips that you could give that specific listener on on how to bring this up to, you know, their boss.
Valerie Moring:
Well, you know, it would probably just take a little bit of time and effort on on their part and conversation to look and say, okay, here’s where we are at, you know, at least with these payers. Here’s here’s what we had last year and this is kind of what we do. And, some of the multi-year quality strategy planning that we do take that reflective look and here’s how we did last year, right. And, here’s where we know we need to go or we really don’t know where we need to go but we know we’re struggling.
And so, you know, we know that we can have have some conversations with them with a just a few just a few pieces of information. So, how we’re trying to build out this assessment to figure out who their largest payers are. So, if they’re really focused on Medicare and they have a lot of Medicare patients and we really want to talk about this and, you know, how well did you do in these particular programs. But, they may see a lot of Medicaid patients and that may be their biggest payer. So, we want to make sure we’re doing everything that this payer is asking us to do. You know, from front-end standpoint and closing care gaps, to keeping our patients out of the hospitals, to sending our records to each other electronically and so those things are really important.
Jordan Smith:
Yeah, I love that and I think you mentioned a couple things in there that are super important. And, for those audience members out there that are listening better in that position, I would say don’t do it alone. Call Valerie and her team. And, they’ll help you navigate that conversation if, you know, they think that they’d be able to help you out. Right Val?
Valerie Moring:
Yes, yes, absolutely. You know, we have, oh I’m sorry. I’m just gonna say, we have a few clients that, you know, we are there a day a week. You know, so we’re really, they do hand off a lot to our healthcare consultant there and say we need you to do these things.
RJ Martino:
You know, I think as a business owners, it’s not that there’s nothing to do. There are too many things to do. Trying to prioritize what to do is very hard to do. You meet with a consultant and they usually aren’t telling you anything you don’t know. But quickly, they can identify where to prioritize what. And so if if you’ve got a free assessment you’ve got an opportunity to just talk to Valerie and let her look at the problems and help prioritize, take advantage of it. I mean and she knows we she knows she’s being taken advantage of and that’s part of you know just getting in front of people. So they will add lots of value.
Valerie, can I ask another question that I know they’re they’re all thinking because they’re business leaders. Financial is- financials are so important. Can you talk about typical cost structures, pricing models and I know, it’s always hard because everybody wants to know. What is that cost and I’m sure it isn’t you know $9.95 plus free shipping. What is it?
Valerie Moring:
That’s right. Yeah. That’s always my first question or it’s definitely the first question my husband asks me about something and so, I always round down but I would give y’all flat figures here. Yeah, yeah.
So, yeah for our healthcare consulting which we’re mainly focusing on today, we charge $160 an hour. So, that’s our rate for healthcare consulting. We typically like to have a minimum of four hours a month so, for $640 a month, a typical 12 month contract, that’s very affordable for even small practice settings.
When we, when we look and see, you know, when we talk and ask if you’re those assessment based questions or questionnaires that I was talking to you guys about as far as, you know, are your HIPAA policies and procedures up-to-date, have you done your annual HIPAA training and is it is it even a training, is it just a paper-based training that you’re doing the same thing over and over but you’re not really adding any value. That is protecting your business today, meaning is are you all caught, you know, are they talking about phishing emails and are you training your users to not click on bad links in emails or visit sites that are downloading malware on your computers. You know, that’s the level of HIPAA training that we provide.
So, for a very affordable amount, we’re helping set up these practices where, you know, there’s an increased security awareness for the business. And, that can pay off in dividends when on the other side of the fence and on our cybersecurity practice when we get involved and work on some of our Incident Response services or incident determination or even helped do some consulting and in tandem with attorneys, of course, and insurance companies.
When we look at scenarios and in which breaches have occurred that are reportable, by the way, you know, a lot of these things can be headed off, not all because you don’t ever want to say hey, we’re gonna reduce absolutely every risk because that’s not honest that’s, you know, goes against our core value of unquestionable integrity.
But, it’s really important that a lot of these preventative measures, so just like in healthcare, we talked about preventive medicine all the time. Same thing with cybersecurity, there are proactive measures that we can take in order to keep our businesses healthy, up and running. So that we reduce our chances of getting those ransomware, those malware’s and so, you know, that’s an affordable rate. You know, the $160 an hour, for four hours a month is an affordable rate that we can again work with our practices to say hey, they want to work on this, this month well, we’ll look at providing this particular service for this month and and talk to your staff about that.
RJ Martino:
Well, our audience knows this is a safe space. You guys spend more than that I know on a in weekend, every weekend. So, that is very affordable, especially when you think about volume. It’ll feel like you are drinking from a firehose in the beginning. And so, I it’s exciting that you guys have an opportunity to help even at such a low rate to start off. I’m sure as it grows as you guys are there more, as you’re doing more stuff, it can increase from there. But, you know, as a as a business owner, I hope you find opportunities to keep helping me.
Jordan Smith:
Yeah, absolutely.
Valerie Moring:
Yes. And, on the quality side, you know, we can if we are able to assist those care managers and closing gaps, closing care gaps, increasing their performance on quality measures, then we know, they’re gonna get pay off, you know, from that as well. Can we quantify that with an exact number today? No, because again those payers are looking at it with different models.
Jordan Smith:
Sure. And yeah, you’re right about that just the value that you get for that amount but from the sound of it is enormous. So, that’s fantastic.
So, last question, we kind of ,you know, include kind of this this final round, but really, it’s it’s just one question.
If you’re standing in front of a room of new physicians, you know, maybe they’re just starting out, maybe they, you know, some of the problems we’ve already talked about before, they’re busier than ever but they’re not making money, you know, that’s kind of, you know, not uncommon in the healthcare world, you know, they’re battling through fears, worries, doubt, struggles.
What are two or three strategies you would recommend they focus on today that they could take the weekend and then start just to start on the path to success? What are two or three actionable things that you say just start doing these things and you’re gonna you’re going to start to climb out of the hole that you feel like you’re at?
Valerie Moring:
Absolutely. I would say that this clear communication, you know. So, whatever that is, that mission and that vision so and most practices have this, of course. But we really do I feel like need to align it to those larger payers. So, that again we’re thinking about the revenue pieces. But, that shared mission and vision that is really tied to, you know, taking care of patients, putting the patient at the center of the care model, the shared mission and vision approach to for everyone to see that larger vision.
You know, if everybody’s not working together and understanding that then, then that can be some issue sometimes within the practices as we know. And so, really valuing what your front desk person, you know, is bringing to the table. They’re the first person that your patients are talking to. Really valuing really just everyone in that office setting and and really serving each other. That’s so important and so, as we serve our patients as we serve each other, you know, that would that would be the recipe for me for the win.
And again from the financial piece, it would be, you know, going back and looking, logging into those payer portals, knowing how many patients I actually do have and where, you know, where they’re coming from. How many patients do I even have attributed to my practice today because the payers know, they know and so you need to know and you need to know that again these are my largest payers. This is this is what’s paying my bills every day. I need to focus on these top three.
We can fold in others as we go again through the multi-year quality strategy planning. But, let’s say and it may just be only focusing on one. Sometimes, it’s really just focusing on one payer because, you know, I’m Medicare heavy, so I really need to focus in on this particular payer, here’s the programs they have to offer and that is really going to look different for different practices.
The other thing I would say is if you are in an Accountable Care Organization or you are in any, you know, value based models that you do go look at those contracts and you see how are they paying their members. We’re seeing some frustration. You know, now with that as far as if they do earned shared savings then, how is that trickling down to the providers that are really you know providing the care.
So, it can be a little tricky. It’s something that again, you know, we like to help practices look into. We have the time to do that or there they want us to do that. Again, we’re there to partner with them but I would say those are some important things is really knowing who your top payers are, knowing what patients are attributed to you because that does mean whether you’re a primary care or a specialty care or even a more larger enterprise facility. You’re accountable. Whether you’re even in their models or not you’re you know that cost is being attributed. It’s pointed back at you.
Jordan Smith:
I mean, RJ talks about it all the time. Just knowing your numbers inside and out.
Valerie Moring:
mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
RJ Martino:
Well Valerie, this has been awesome. I mean, I think, we could do a few more and dive even deeper just into your knowledge on and we might ask you to do that in the future whenever we find a topic. We might ask to bring you on because of your expertise. I, you know, you, not only just on the technology side, on the cybersecurity side but even you know your your real-world healthcare experience as a as a provider, could be useful too.
So, thank you so much for your time. Do you have anything else you want to say in closing and lastly we’ll ask how people can get in touch with you if they are interested in something you’ve said.
Valerie Moring:
No, I just was gonna tell you guys though, thank you so much for having me on today. You know, it really is, it’s my passion that, you know, that’s that patients, I’m a healthcare consumer too right, just as you guys are and even our providers are and the people that listen to your podcast. So, it’s my passion that I’m doing something that again me personally is making a difference for healthcare for years to come. So, the quality based healthcare is very, it’s very much near and dear to my heart as well as businesses protecting that that health information is. It’s crucial and so I just I just want everybody to know that that’s my true intent and that’s my passion is that, you know, we’re we’re helpful and we’re valuable to our clients so that they can transition to this value-based healthcare that we know, we’re moving to, right, more rapidly every day.
Jordan Smith:
Yeah, absolutely. Valerie, we appreciate it. Last thing, tell everybody how to get in touch with you guys. How to get more information about you and Edafio. You know how can they reach out.
Valerie Moring:
Sure. So, if you just want to go to our website at edafio.com. We’ve got an email set up here on the website, under contact, contact us and you can just reach out directly here we’ve got a form you can fill out and that is really the best way to reach us.
We have an email info@edafio.com. That’s another way if you just want to shoot over a quick email, that is the best way to get in touch with us. Also, I can provide my LinkedIn profile or you guys can provide that if you want to learn a little bit more about me and us myself and my backgrounds and my passion a little bit a little bit more information about my passion for healthcare and healthcare quality
Jordan Smith: We’ll include all those links in the show notes and for those guys listening if you’re in the car it’s e-d-a-f-i-o; edafio.com.
Valeire Moring, thank you so much.
Valerie Moring:
Welcome. Thank you. You guys have a great day and thank you to all of our healthcare heroes out there taking care of patients right now.
RJ Martino:
Great! Thanks Valerie. Great great to talk to you. We look forward to talking to you again.
Valerie Moring:
All right. Bye-bye.
RJ Martino:
Jordan, Valerie was awesome. I could spend lunches and lunches with her because she could add so much value. But, I think what I liked the most is when we talked about Edafio and we heard it’s a technology company. We’ve all got this idea that technology below the line, it’s an expense, it’s infrastructure and we spent most of the time not talking about what traditionally you think of as technology. But, it is technology. What she was talking about is technology and the idea that technology can help you build a more profitable healthcare business that is, you know, kind of new to our discussions.
Jordan Smith:
Yeah, another one. And I hope you guys got the value of this. If you guys know of any other organizations or people specifically that you want to hear from or that you want to take us to take a deep dive in, even if you don’t know him personally, you just you just follow somebody or you like some of the stuff they put out, send it over to us. We’ll find a way to get in front of ‘em. We hope this is helpful.
Like, subscribe, comment.
We’re always looking for new guests. We’re always looking for input, as far as what you guys like and the type of content that you would like.
If you want to reach out to Valerie, edafio.com; E-D-A-F-I-O. We’ll also have all of the other links like to her LinkedIn and email everything like that in the show notes.
So, RJ until next time.
RJ Martino:
Thanks Jordan. Thanks everybody.
