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Welcome to What We Know, Advocatia’s monthly digest where we share conversations with some of the industry’s brightest minds about the challenges and opportunities they face.
Today’s conversation is with Mary Mirabelli, a healthcare visionary on strategy, delivery, and patient experience. Mary’s background includes having served in many facets of the business of healthcare including Vice President of Global Healthcare for Hewlett-Packard and Chief Project Officer for HCA. In addition to holding several Board positions with companies innovating in the healthcare arena, Mary is Senior Vice President for the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) where she helps to lead the organization and its Membership toward building a more innovative and collaborative ecosystem.
Mary on the Promise of Innovation
I think a lot about the promise of innovation for us as healthcare consumers, and for us as deliverers of care. People today have become more and more clear about what their needs are and how they expect those within their healthcare ecosystem to deliver on those needs. I believe that is because “We”, in the collective sense, are providing more resources and tools to help prioritize needs and respond to those in a more active sense. Needs are the basis for what we do and how “We” create solutions.
The integration of artificial intelligence into virtually everything we do essentially identifying and responding to our needs and desires as we are discovering them ourselves. The amazing AI tools available discover and/or ask simple, intuitive questions that reveal the things that are most relevant to us as individuals, as patients, and as participants in our communities. These beautiful algorithms wind up unveiling things to us, both responding to our experience and, perhaps even to help cast that journey for us.
Mary on the Advent of Self-Service First
While the pandemic accelerated the need for more self-service tools, I believe we were already well down that path. Things as simple as our fitness and health tracker watches and phones that remind us to get up and move around or symptom checkers that allow us to conduct triage that generations earlier would have required a visit or phone call to the doctor. More recently, digital health solutions such as more readily accessible and widely encouraged telemedicine have added both a convenience and an unexpected intimacy to the delivery of clinical care 24/7. It is, in essence, a nod to the days of house-calls where physicians would visit a patient in the comfort of their own home.
Self-service resources like Advocatia’s personal screening tool that allow people to quickly identify the social programs they qualify for and begin the enrollment process are examples of how innovation can meet people where they are. Self-service doesn’t have to mean “going it alone.” Rather, the information gathered or revealed during the process helps to cast a more personal journey and allows individuals along the care continuum, whether they be clinical or the supporting teams that are required to fuel the process, to provide quicker, more informed and more thoughtful assistance.
Mary lives in Nashville, Tennessee. In addition to her work with HFMA, she is currently serving in a variety of Board and advisory roles and providing insights and counsel to healthcare organizations in areas including revenue cycle, strategy, and clinical innovations. You can connect with Mary Mirabelli on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mary-mirabelli-74318057/