Accrete Well being Companions, the enterprise arm of Bon Secours Mercy Well being (BSMH), is working with a startup firm referred to as Atalan on accelerating the event of a brand new platform module designed to bridge clinician retention and affected person expertise information, serving to well being system leaders enhance each workforce stability and affected person outcomes.
Atalan has created what it calls a Clinician Retention Intelligence platform, serving to well being methods predict and stop shock clinician resignations as much as 12 months upfront. Utilizing real-time, goal information that well being methods have already got, Atalan says its machine studying fashions pinpoint at-risk clinicians, uncover the causes, and tailor proactive interventions.
Healthcare Innovation lately sat down with Cyril Philip, vice chairman of digital ventures at BSMH and Accrete Well being Companions, and Tiffany Chan, CEO and founding father of Atalan, to speak about their partnership.
Healthcare Innovation: We’re all the time when well being methods have enterprise arms that may make an funding in an organization but additionally pilot it internally.
Philip: At Accrete, we leverage what we name acceleration funding to assist drive co-development. Acceleration funding is a separate pool of capital from our direct investing, and it is particularly targeted on tasks the place we now have an operational sponsor. On this case, our medical group doctor recruitment crew, in addition to our market management, had been actually excited in regards to the work that Atalan had carried out for them, and want to broaden the connection additional. They acknowledge the issue that doctor turnover has been and what Atalan might carry to a desk. We launched this initiative in 2025 so it is comparatively new. There are a few different corporations that we have carried out this with. However frankly Atalan has been our first and fastest-moving companion.
HCI: Tiffany, are you able to describe how your platform works?
Chan: What we discover is that lots of well being methods depend on surveys to grasp the ache factors of their clinician inhabitants. A survey comes with lots of its strengths, however it additionally has its weaknesses. You possibly can solely deploy the survey every year, and the response charge may be very low, like generally, it is 35% nationally. After which there are survey non-response biases. So there are lots of silent victims amongst these clinicians, people who find themselves struggling rather a lot, however they’re not responding to surveys, so that you’re not likely uncovering their wants. As an alternative of counting on survey responses, we take a look at the operational information. What number of sufferers did you see in a day? How a lot time are you spending on the digital well being report, typing up notes? All of those components round workload and work atmosphere really influence and might predict the place the struggles may be within the clinician inhabitants. We’ve a platform that faucets into these operational information that well being methods have already got, and we use that to parse out the place the alerts of silence victims are, and establish them for the operational leaders at well being system in order that they will proactively help them earlier than they get actually burned out and depart the group.
HCI: There’s lots of work that goes on round EHR optimization, and efforts just like the KLAS Arch Collaborative, engaged on making an attempt to make the EHR much less onerous for clinicians. Is that the place an enormous chunk of the issue is — an excessive amount of information entry and feeling type of overwhelmed by be aware taking? Or are there lots of different parts too?
Chan: The fantastic thing about Atalan is we take a look at very complete information, and we really discover that for our well being system companions the danger may be very distributed. The foundation trigger is not only EHR utilization, however it consists of workload, the type of work atmosphere, the variety of breaks you are taking. We choose up greater than 100 totally different departure triggers that may result in individuals burning out and leaving. The EHR utilization and optimization is a part of the image, however solely a component. The image is much more sophisticated and complete, which is why it is necessary to take a look at information holistically the way in which we do.
HCI: So is AI concerned on this not directly?
Chan: I are likely to shrink back from the time period AI, as a result of I really feel prefer it tends to reference one thing that we’re not. We’re utilizing machine studying, which is related. We study from historic information, previous behavioral patterns from clinicians who’ve left the group. What had been they fighting? We’re these operational information 12 months earlier than they depart, after which utilizing machine studying to choose up on the patterns for present clinicians, and that is how we will predict with 70% accuracy as much as 12 months forward of time.
HCI: Does the corporate additionally provide options for the best way to assist the well being methods retain these clinicians?
Chan: That is the place lots of the collaboration with the operational leaders of Bon Secours Mercy Well being is available in. On the subject of figuring out and defining motion, there are two items to it. The primary piece is knowing what are the departure triggers for this particular clinician or division. The second piece is knowing what might be carried out about that set off. We not solely floor the why, we additionally establish triggers which can be actionable, proper? Sure issues are outdoors of their management. There is no such thing as a level in surfacing that as a result of they can not act on it. So we deal with the triggers which can be inside their management. They are usually extra operational in nature. Is that this individual spending a a lot greater time at work than is wholesome? Is it since you’re not environment friendly in scheduling your sufferers? That is the place we’re collaborating with operational leaders, and Bon Secours has actually been a implausible companion on this.
Philip: When it comes to the flexibility for Atalan to make use of such massive information units from totally different information sources — that has been a very invaluable instrument for us, as a result of from a well being system standpoint, it is unattainable to catch all of those potential stressors which can be on the market on our personal or manually and even by dashboards. It is a problem. Atalan primarily supplies our market and on-the-ground leaders with proactive, actionable information that they will use. And this goes again to your AI level as nicely, in that probably the most invaluable AI instruments are those that truly generate worth and actionable insights. It is one factor simply to have a ton of knowledge, however if you cannot really carry helpful insights, it isn’t very useful.
HCI: I perceive that you just’re engaged on accelerating the event of Atalan PX, which is a module designed to bridge clinician retention and affected person expertise. Might you speak about why it is necessary to bridge these two issues and the way you may do it?
Philip: After we take a look at the Atalan PX module, it is actually important to bridge the hole between workforce stability and affected person expertise. Traditionally, well being methods have checked out these issues individually. That is our affected person expertise information and that is our workforce information. Truly, there’s lots of worth in connecting these, as a result of they’re primarily deeply linked. A well-supported doctor is a basis for good affected person interactions, proper? If in case you have a doctor who’s struggling or challenged, the affected person expertise goes to undergo and and maybe the opposite manner round as nicely. With Atalan’s experience in pulling all these information units collectively, we will make sense of a few of that noise that is on the market. It is nonetheless early on within the growth, however we’re very excited in regards to the potential.
Chan: For well being methods, their No. 1 purpose is to ensure their sufferers are wholesome and have entry. But when your clinicians will not be wholesome, or if you do not have sufficient clinicians due to excessive turnover, it turns into very laborious to satisfy that purpose of serving sufferers. Because of this we’re so excited to companion with Bon Secours to start out pulling these very disparate siloed information units collectively for the primary time and take a look at them holistically and say OK, what are some widespread issues that set off each clinician struggles in addition to affected person points, in order that operational leaders have a really clear motion plan and a focused manner to assist each populations.
Philip: One of many thrilling issues in regards to the PX module is that we gather lots of affected person suggestions and expertise information, however it’s typically fairly siloed. If you are in a position to primarily correlate all of those affected person alerts after which bridge it to the workforce information that Tiffany had talked about, it creates a a lot clearer image of the full medical atmosphere. This can allow our market leaders to see precisely the place the friction is that is affecting each the doctor and the affected person. We are able to then make these focused interventions that may enhance care supply.
HCI: Cyril, are you able to speak about some constructive early outcomes you noticed? I perceive you might be increasing it to further markets.
Philip: We do not touch upon particular person market outcomes, however I’ll say the pilot had a significant sufficient influence to make our management transfer ahead in increasing it throughout the system. I might say the pilot actually did validate that Atalan supplies a degree of primarily proactive, real-time insights into clinician wellness that we simply did not have earlier than. We knew we had been getting one thing that we could not do on our personal. And the suggestions from our frontline leaders is that these actionable alerts allowed them to intervene early and actually help our physicians, which is our purpose. We’re making an attempt to make our physicians’ lives higher.
HCI: Anything you want to add?
Philip: Success for Accrete means serving to Atalan construct a product that different well being methods use as nicely. We’re primarily a testing floor. That’s our co-development mannequin. Finally this may broaden to Atalan’s different prospects. We see that because the true metric of success, from the Accrete standpoint, is that we have co-developed a product that works nicely inside BSMH, and that different well being methods would discover invaluable as nicely.
