Welcome to Becker's Healthcare podcast.

I'm Chris Sosa, your host, and I'm thrilled to be joined today by Rob Wetmore.

He is the director of digital health for Variety Care in Oklahoma City.

Rob, thank you for joining us today.

Thanks, Chris.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah.

We're so glad you could be here.

Rob, if you could please introduce yourself and tell our audience a bit about your background.

Sure thing.

As Chris mentioned, my name is Rob Wetmore.

I am the director of digital health care at Variety Care.

We are a federally qualified health center out of Oklahoma City.

We have around 20 clinics within the Oklahoma City area and a couple into rural Oklahoma.

And we currently serve responsible for, little over a 100,000 patients, So a fairly large system.

My path kind of coming here into this realm is a bit different than what, is the usual.

So I spent sixteen years working in inpatient mental health.

Everything from utilization review and prior authorization into clinical program management.

And then I even was working under supervision for my LPC licensure before my career kind of went off on a tangent and I ended up being on an epic implementation build as an instructional designer.

And then that transitioned again into what we called care transformation where I was able to work with some physician leads to develop best practices for that health care system to standardize care and processes throughout the whole entire thing.

And so that's really where I got a huge exposure into the transition between a clinical vision and operational reality and how those things worked for and against each other.

That does seem a little bit like a meandering path through health.

But but by and large, it just sounds like you've had a breadth of experience in in the industry.

What got you what made you go into health care?

What made you pursue that in the first place?

So kinda going back even further, I entered undergraduate, with this whole idea of, like, I'm gonna be a business major.

I'm gonna be a CEO and, you know, do all this and make all this money.

And then those classes put me to sleep.

And so I realized that probably wasn't the direction I wanted to go.

And I took an intro to psychology class and realized that it was very interesting to me.

It's very intriguing, the psychology, the social sciences, and I ended up getting a double major in psychology and sociology.

Ended up in Oklahoma after undergrad and quickly realized that a bachelor's degree in psychology and sociology was gonna get me nowhere.

And eventually got into a master's program at the University of Oklahoma and focused on my LPC licensure.

At the time, I was working for the inpatient mental health facility, so I was able to translate that real world experience into the classroom and vice versa.

So it was a really cool way of getting that accomplished.

So that's how I got into health care.

It just fell in my lap kind of a thing, and it's something that definitely is a part of who I am.

It's in my it's in my DNA, really.

I I I enjoy it.

No one's in my family has been in health care, but it's definitely something that's just ingrained into me.

It's it's really just I'm a helper, and I can't help but be in a helper.

Even on this side in digital health and looking at the systems of things, it's in that helper role of, like, how can I better the system, not just for the system?

I mean, sure.

That's great.

They they sign my paychecks.

But to me, it's all about the patient and patient first, patient engagement, patient care.

And that was driven in on the behavioral health side way before it was on to the medical side.

So I feel I got a head start on that patient first mentality before it really got into the medical side of health care.

And now in digital health, that's what it has to be about.

There's such a divide between technology and the human experience that with me that I live on that divide, that that gray line between those two realms of basically anywhere in life.

I live in that gray line.

And so for me to be able to take digital technology and use it to transform the human experience in health care is just like a win win for me, I guess.

Certainly, if there's any indication sure indication that you're in the wrong place, it's if it's not inspiring you and putting you to sleep.

But, fortunately, you found your way into the WR now.

I love the way you put it.

That that's a a gray line.

I hadn't heard that before, but it certainly, I think, speaks to a lot of leadership in health care that you as you said, you have to live between these two worlds of, you know, what digital and other technologies can provide and how you actually translate that to the patient.

So along those lines, could you let us know what exactly are your top priorities today?

Well, I mean, I kinda hit on it.

My top priorities are really, serving the the patients, reducing those disparities and providing access to the underserved communities.

That is always been true for federally qualified health centers, and it's really it's always been true for what I've been trying to do.

But now it's even more so.

The the pressures that are being put on us at the federal level, to perform, to do what we're doing with less funding, we have to figure out a way around this, and it comes down to access.

And to me in in my world view and, fortunately, my leaders as well, it comes down to things like telemedicine and remote patient monitoring.

Any sort of tool that improves access, increases access, gets us in front of our patients, and help them have healthier lives.

Along those lines as well, Rob.

So to say that things change quickly would be maybe the understatement of the year with technology and health care in particular.

And you've you've covered some of the challenges that you're facing with, respect to changes in the federal government and and the like.

So could you take this moment to just say describe to the audience how you anticipate your role is gonna change and how the role of your team is gonna change.

And lastly, how you work through you said you're really not alone in this.

Not at all.

So who are the people and and other systems, organizations that you're looking for to kind of collaborate with?

And that's a lot, I so.

So break it straight into it as as as you wish.

No.

That's a great question.

So to start things off with digital health is the department of Rob.

So I don't have a team to wrap around me, but, that doesn't stop me.

Yeah.

I talk to myself probably as much as I talk to anybody, and, we have good conversations.

But I have a good relationship with my leadership, doctor Lydia Nightingale.

She's our VP of medical affairs, and we have a good relationship and a good understanding of where we want this organization to go on that medical clinical operational front and really shift how we're doing things within the system.

And she and our CMO and our, like, chief of population health and all those aspects.

They're really working together with the synergy to kind of bring this together.

So, internally, that's my team that I work with is is doctor Nightingale and her chiefs that are underneath her to just transform the way that VerityCare is doing care.

Externally, I have a great partner with Evisit, Evisit Telemedicine.

They have been an amazing partner from the first conversation I had with them.

Gosh.

It's been two and a half years now probably that I've been working with them.

They've been amazing telemedicine partner.

More than a telemedicine partner, they've really been a partner just in digital health and innovating and expanding what that looks like and how people get involved in that.

So it's been a great partnership there.

Working with other vendors to try to bring in cleaner, better, faster, more efficient ways of doing things.

Novena AI is a company that I've been trying to work well, I've been working with a lot.

I'm trying to get them into our ecosystem.

They're gonna allow us to look at the medical record from a whole new level.

Novena uses its its AI to not only comb through our record, and we're an epic shop.

We go through Ogen instance of Epic.

And so not only to come through Epic and Nexus or whatever you wanna call it, Care Everywhere platform, all that stuff, but it also looks out to the health information exchange and pulls in information from that on that patient.

And so our providers right there in front of them are gonna have all of this information on on these patients that they treat and know a much more robust history than they've ever been able to look at before because it's pulling in information that we probably don't have in our health system, from records going way back.

And the AI will then make suggestions towards what diagnosis the provider may wanna look at to look at and and run through and just kinda dive deeper into.

So it's a really cool technology.

I'm very excited to get it going.

We have some internal barriers that we're looking into to make sure that once we decide to go forward with it, that it's gonna be clean implementation process, but it's something that I'm very excited about.

I'm glad you mentioned that the excitement aspect because, you know, that's really what's gonna keep all of us going in in all of our jobs really, especially when things can be a little difficult as they are right now.

Beyond what you just mentioned, and thank you for sharing all of that, is there anything else that you think, hey.

This is really exciting, and I really wanna share this as far as your job is concerned?

Just me personally, the fact that digital health care is isn't just like this side project now.

It's really looked at as a key strategic initiative.

It is one of our strategic initiatives here at Variety Care is innovation within that being the digital health innovation.

So the fact that that is my realm and the fact that it's at that high of level of engagement is, pretty rewarding and exciting in itself.

And I'm hoping to be able to take this from just, like, piloting tools and bringing some stuff on to really making this something that's sustainable and culture shift and just being able to make sure that we can scale it across the organization and that it sticks.

Rob, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.

I we're gonna see you at a a conference coming up this fall.

And, you know, we can't wait to share these insights and until next time.

Alright.

Thanks, Chris.

It'd be good talking to you.