Why AI Needs Clean Data Before It Can Help Healthcare

What if the companies profiting most from healthcare's data problem are also the ones best positioned to explain why it needs to be solved?

In this clip from our episode “Health Data Is Broken And We're Paying For It”, host John Driscoll and Michael Meucci, CEO of Arcadia, break down why the free market has proven it cannot fix healthcare data fragmentation on its own, and what becomes possible when health systems stop spending so much money just moving data around.

Listen to the full episode here

🎙️⚕️ABOUT MICHAEL MEUCCI
Michael Meucci is President and CEO of Arcadia, a healthcare data and technology company, where he has built a 15+ year career spanning roles as CEO, COO, and Chief Growth Officer. He has been central to Arcadia's growth in value-based care, leading the evolution of its technology platform to enable data-driven decision-making and improved patient and financial outcomes for payers and providers. He holds board positions at healthcare AI platform N1 Health and Fenway Health, and serves as an advisor to value-based care enabler Guidehealth. Named a Rising Star by Becker's Hospital Review and a 40 Under 40 by Boston Business Journal, he is a member of the Forbes Technology Council and a frequent media commentator on digital health. He holds a BA in Economics and Entrepreneurial Leadership from Tufts University.

🎙️⚕️ABOUT CARETALK
CareTalk is a weekly podcast that provides an incisive, no B.S. view of the US healthcare industry. Join co-hosts John Driscoll (President U.S. Healthcare and EVP, Walgreens Boots Alliance) and David Williams (President, Health Business Group) as they debate the latest in US healthcare news, business and policy. 

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Transcript

John: 0:06

What's that gonna take? I mean, that's a great idea, but what's that gonna-- what's, what's it gonna take to clean up the regulatory games and the administrative clutter to actually get to a place where we're paying, paying less and getting more from our healthcare system?

Michael: 0:25

I think that the first is we, we need to finish the work that was started by prior administrations on just making it easier to exchange data. Frankly, businesses like mine shouldn't make the amount of money we do just moving data around. We should get paid to use the data to impact outcomes, whether it's reducing administrative cost or improving trend. And that, that requires government intervention. The free market has proven that it cannot do it on its own. But from there, then there emerges this massive market. You know, w- when you start to think about the amount of money we spend just adjudicating payment, like if data were moving more freely, my thesis is that will collapse, and we will spend less money arguing over how much we should get paid, and we can start to focus on, let's pay people faster. Let's move to alternative payment models faster. Let's empower consumers to be part of their care. You know, we're, we're coming off of Health Evolution last week, where, you know, my big takeaway is we have a workforce problem in the United States, and AI is well-positioned to help address this. You know, AI can do things… AI can automate things that humans can do. It could, if we let it. But I think a lot of people are standing in the way. I mean, I'm, I'm on the board of a, uh, of a healthcare organization, and we just-- we're going through a union negotiation with clinicians. They don't wanna be replaced by AI. My comment was, "We don't wanna replace clinicians with AI. We want clinicians to create access and capacity, and we wanna enhance them." And when you think about what AI can do, it can either automate things that humans can do, but more importantly, it can do things that humans can't do. It can see things we can't see. And what I'm most excited about and, and where I think if we can liberate the data and start to redeploy some of this admin spend where we've, we've dedicated to just moving data around, we can start to say, "Let's get every healthcare consumer a care manager." I've been, I've been studying, um, the way that the US effectively got all of its… all, a, a lot of people to understand how credit scores work. And we did it by, like, forcing the financial companies that create these scores to create interoperability so that individuals could access information in their credit score. Anybody could access

John: 2:38

them.

Michael: 2:39

Any-- for free. And then you have companies like Credit Karma that pop up, and they say, "Download this app, and we're gonna give you, like, daily coaching on, you know, pay off this loan or open this credit card to create more revolving credit." Like-

John: 2:49

So you're, you're, you're painting a future where all of the cutting, cutting, if the rules are clear and the data is free and the data is conventionally available, we can lower costs and improve outcomes.

Michael: 3:03

I-- That's my, my belief, yeah.