Welcome to our latest fireside chat, where we share how Fabric is redefining digital transformation to solve healthcare’s toughest challenges and deliver better care at scale. In this episode, Jon Pangia, VP of Clinical AI, and Tania Terrero, VP of Clinical Operations, unpack one of healthcare’s most pressing challenges: access. They explore how Fabric is going beyond by rethinking workflows, reducing complexity, and using AI to free up clinicians to focus on what matters most. From leveraging AI to eliminate administrative burdens to creating more connected, compassionate care journeys, Jon and Tania share how Fabric is building smarter systems that expand access and capacity to deliver better outcomes for both patients and providers.
Transcript
Jon Pangia (00:00)
It's cool getting together with you today, Tania. They want us to talk about, you know, the access to medical care, how we're helping patients and how Fabric is looking at you know, improving access. And so one thing I think we should start talking about is we talk a lot and we think a lot about improving access, not just adding tools, but, you know, really kind of looking at how we can disrupt and reshape how care is delivered. And so big picture, why would you say improving access is the challenge for clinical leaders today?
Tania Terrero (00:33)
Hey, Jon, good to chat with you. It's a great question. I think as clinical leaders, right, we know the operational pressures that are mounting in clinical services right now amongst all service lines. And so many organizations are facing backlogs and staffing shortages and their clinicians are burning out, which strains their ability to do what they do best, which is treat patients and to manage that demand. The work flow today is very fragmented and it's inefficient in lots of systems. And we really want to focus it on what our clinicians could do best and where we find the time. When it comes to technology though, I think the go-to solution has been adding tools and trying to solve the problem that way. And adding tools and layering them on just creates more complexities. What's needed is a smarter, more caring, thinking, intuitive infrastructure that reduces complexity, that has compassionate care, and that allows our clinicians to, again, do what they do best. Jon, you spent a lot of time in AI, and you were a practicing clinician. Where do you see AI helping clinical delivery the most, care delivery?
Jon Pangia (01:46)
Yeah, that's the thing, right? It's just like what you're saying is that over the last few decades, they've just been piling more and more things on top of the clinicians that just put more and more requirements and documentation burns between the clinician and the actual patient. It's become untenable. Burnouts going up, it's getting harder to find people. And then we're having them spend a lot of time doing things that are not actual medical care. And I don't know if you've heard, but it's kind of hard to go become a doctor. And so, you know, it's a limited pool of people and we don't have enough as it is. And so adding things on top of that aren't actual patient care, it just doesn't work. And that's what we're looking at now is we now have these new tools that are starting to chip away at these requirements where it's not decision-making. We don't have people struggling to figure out, you know, which way to treat a patient or what their diagnosis is by a long shot. What we have is people burning a lot of time doing everything else. And so now we're finding more and different ways to leverage AI as a tool to take care of the other tool that we've been forced to deal with. And so, I mean, that goes back to you too, Tania. Like you talk a lot to our clinicians, you you talk about what we're doing and what we're creating and what do you hear back from them?
Tania Terrero (03:02)
Well, I hear about eliminating the pain points, right? From a clinician perspective, it's not about just automation, right? It is about how do we get to the patients faster, sooner, and to do more and be more efficient, right? Reduce some of the friction that's already in the care delivery system, right? As leaders, we're also thinking, you and I and many other leaders out there, how do we reduce the overhead cost? How do we reduce the lack of access and the delays in care? And so, it's really important to be able to hone into those aspects and make them better. What are you thinking about those aspects, Jon? How is AI going to increase access to care?
Jon Pangia (03:44)
Yeah, that's a great question, right? Because we get the details of what are we doing today and what's possible today. And so there's some great examples of a lot of extra work that people are doing that we can take away from. So whether it be automated triage and just figuring out which way a patient can go, I was always surprised when I got out of residency training to start working in an emergency department and see how many people are calling the ER and asking the unit secretary whether they should come in for emergency medical care or not. And it's just, it's interesting to see that. And it wasn't done well. And so now we can take that burden off of the unit clerk who's busy enough as it is. And then you can start to get so many more different examples. As a medical director, I really struggled getting my doctors to call the patients after, that they discharged a few days before to check in on them. Cause they're also, again, they're busy. And even though they had value in it, they just weren't doing it consistently. Well, we can now automate that. We can automate the outreach. And now, we can escalate up and bubble up to a human, the ones who answer and actually have something they need to be talked to about and get that in front of the doctors. And so once again, taking away the non-clinical part and then getting rid of that with automation and then only bubbling up the important medical parts.
Tania Terrero (04:57)
Yeah, you touch on a really important topic–it's capacity. And so it sounds like you're solving the capacity issue as well too for the acts of care, but not just that, but also the clinician time. So really important stuff. Love to see the work that you're doing in that space Jon.
Jon Pangia (05:14)
Yeah, yeah, thanks, Tania. It's very true that when we're seeing patients, actually a minority of the time are we doing the real part of the work. And so when you take all that stuff away, yeah, you increase capacity too. And so you can get a lot more out of people. And that sounds terrible when we say it because, more work with less, but it doesn't feel that way. When you actually take away these burdens you're doing twice as much work and you feel like you've done half as much. And that's where we're really getting to is these clinicians are now seeing so many more patients in the shift and saying like, yeah, but I breezed through it and they're doing real work and doing real care. So it's pretty awesome. And so how do you think about that and reinvesting in it and what do you think the biggest opportunities are?
Tania Terrero (05:59)
Yeah, I think it's improving access, as you said, right? It's delivering more care to more people, right? It's taking away the friction. It's allowing more patients to have access despite any socioeconomics and to be able to get what they need sooner rather than later. And we find that patients drop out when they're waiting a very long time. And so I think there is a better opportunity for access, but also for the clinicians to do mor e and feel good about what they're doing and not have burnout, to be able to spend that time doing things that they care about as well too professionally and outside of work, right? And so it's expanding their clinical scope. It's reinvesting into the community, looking at the open opportunities where they can spend their time in addition to spending more time with the patient when we increase that access of care. And so those are the things that I'm looking forward to. Those are the things I know that our clinicians are looking forward to as well too, is being able to give access sooner rather than later and being proactive in healthcare, right? And not waiting for that problem.
Jon Pangia (07:02)
Yeah, yeah. And I think I'll expand more too. Just talking about like, as we do more and more, you know, we meet a lot of caution and resistance, know, by and large and concerns of, you know, all this hype about AI and it makes these errors and whatnot. But yet at the same time, what we've been seeing is I think the natural progression of people getting pretty comfortable with it. I don't see anyone in reality. Like you'll see some flashy news, but the reality is, there's really no one out there pushing hard to do the clinical decision making, to actually prescribe the treatment and whatnot. And what we are seeing is higher and higher expectations from our clients and the senior clinical leaders of like, hey, I am expecting the AI to do even more, which has been most welcome, even though was a little surprising because only a year, year and a half ago, they're like, hey, slow down, slow down. And now I say very much speed up because they're realizing the value of like, oh my gosh, you're offloading all this extra baggage that we've put onto our clinicians. So I need more of that as quickly as possible. And we find that, you know, the joy of having, you know, senior experienced physicians and clinicians on our team and on our client's team is we can cut through the chaff really quick because there's certain things where we just know like, hey, practice medicine for a long time. You don't need this. This is low stakes. I can let the computer do it and deliver that information. It's still going to be safe.
And we end up walking out of a lot of meetings, whether it be with clinical leaders or AI governance committees, and there's just a bunch of head nods of like, yes, absolutely. And so when we actually get to that part of these deals and these discussions, we're finding the trust is actually quite high because we're a trustworthy organization. We're just saying the right things because we're living it the right way of bringing it to where it's safe and where it's something that wasn't high value for the clinicians to do but delivering very high value information so that decisions can be made very quickly.
Tania Terrero (09:01)
I think you touched on something really important, right? Clinical leaders, AI is new and clinical leaders are worried about it and the decision making. And I think you've touched on those really important points of why you can trust it and how the clinician is still involved in those decision making. Why it's not so scary. Anything else you add to why leaders, clinical leaders should not be worried about the support of AI in healthcare?
Jon Pangia (09:27)
Yeah, I think the big thing that I would deliver is coming from a clinical background and then getting more into the tech side like we are at Fabric, it looks so easy. AI is very, very easy to build. It is very, very difficult to deploy. And we have hundreds of examples of this, including within our own company. And so that piece of advice I give to clinical leaders is, this is great. Now hand it off to the experts who are really good at doing this. And again, we are certainly biased being those experts. However, time and time again, we can show you it's the right move. And we're gonna get our clients there a lot quicker than if they did it themselves. And I would put that back to you though, what do you want every clinical operations leader to remember about the opportunities we're having?
Tania Terrero (10:10)
Yeah, I think, you know, as we talked about earlier on, right, there are solutions out there, but it's not about layering or stacking them on. It's about making intuitive and streamlining the workflow so that we're taking the pressures off of our clinicians so they can do what they do best, right? Care for the patients and thinking about the patient experience as well, too, I think is extremely important. But it's not just about creating that virtual front door. It is about creating that experience, the journey for the patient start to finish. The front door is not enough. We want to make sure that the patient has the full journey. And I think that's one of the most important things operationally with the aid of what we're doing is really impacting our patient journey and clinician capacity to access as well.
Jon Pangia (10:56)
Yeah, agreed. And as usual, Tania, you're a great partner in this and I really love working with you. This is making great strides.
Tania Terrero (11:03)
Same my friend. Anything additional you'd want to add? Any advice out there to your clinical partners?
Jon Pangia (11:08)
Yeah, it's a brave new world. It's going to be very, very different in a very, very short time. As the hype is dying down and we're getting to the actual like true meat and bones of what's out there, it's not much less impressive. It's just a lot less glittery. But as we're actually making it happen, it's pretty cool. And practicing medicine is going to be a lot easier real soon.
Tania Terrero (11:30)
Yeah, awesome. Thank you, Jon. As always, it's fantastic being partners with you and look forward to what we do next.
