[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to Health Data Talks where industry experts offer bite sized tips and trends for managing legacy data.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Hey everyone, thanks for joining us today. I'm Eric Johnson, the Vice president of marketing here at Harmony Healthcare IT and I am joined today by Brian Liddell, our Chief Financial Officer at Harmony Healthcare it. Thanks for being here Brian.
[00:00:25] Speaker A: I appreciate, appreciate you having me and taking the time to discuss.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: Brian, do you mind just providing a brief background and introduction for everybody joining us today?
[00:00:36] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. And again, I appreciate you guys having me and the invite to spend some time today. I've been at the company for it actually be 20 years in April of this upcoming year and I've really done everything from the initial plannings of the business and the market research to find the need, you know, for our product lines to the financial and the budgeting and everything that really surrounds this business. So I've been very deep with, with customers again from proof of concept to, to what we offer today and deliver today. And I look forward to again continuing those conversations with everyone to really find out what the market needs from us as far as doing data preservation, data utilization and things like that surrounding healthcare data and then where we can take this, this business in the future and, and where the future needs are going to be because we want to be a few years ahead of, of really where, where customers are going to be, need to, to take this data and where it can be utilized and, and, and everything you know, from, from AI to, to POP Health to you know, just archiving and making sure that, that, that everything is preserved is really where I want to take it. So again, 20 years here, you know, couldn't be prouder of the company and the success that we've had and the products that we've brought to market thus far and look forward to the future.
[00:02:06] Speaker B: Excellent. Thanks Brian. Certainly in the 20 years that you've been selling into health care and providing solutions into health care, you've seen a lot of changes in that time. So as we start to kind of dive in here and maybe talk a little bit about the basics and you know, really as we start to think about the challenges that health systems face today, lots of pressures from a resource perspective, financial pressures, security, professional security pressures, maybe we can just start with some of the basics and if you could just talk a little bit about how does data archiving, legacy systems impact healthcare's organization's bottom line and maybe we can kind of just start there.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: Sure, yeah. Yeah. I actually have a lot of conversations with both the CTOs, CIOs and CFOs of some organizations because that's where obviously the finance kind of hits the road there. But I'll go into really three facets of this. The first one would be the direct cost savings to customers. And, and one way that we go about helping customers with that is we look at specifically which systems they're still paying maintenance on and maintaining in that way. And saying, let's say it costs a million dollars for this Cerner system to stay up and running. Maybe it's read only mode, maybe it's still in their production system, but we really give them a direct ROI for the costs that they're currently incurring and, and then what it's going to be moving forward once we would suck that data out, archive it and make it available in our solution. So there's obviously those direct maintenance and hosting costs. You know, on average, I would say the roi, if you're still paying maintenance or if a customer still paying maintenance on a specific system, it's usually in that 12 to 14 months. Again, it will vary depending on the system and how long a customer's been on it or prospect's been on it. But usually that 12 to 14 months is where we fall in the ROI. So we're really, you know, in basically one budget cycle, you know, presenting a direct ROI for, you know, as far as cash considerations or budget considerations for those healthcare organizations. The second one is increased productivity and efficiencies for the healthcare employees or the employees that are at these health systems.
You know, somebody who might be in an HIM department where if they would get a legal or an insurance request for a patient, patient's records or historical records there, it could take them a day or more to, to search through all the disparate systems to find the logins for these systems to make sure that, that this, you know, this customer or this patient's data wasn't in, in multiple systems. You know, prior to, to archiving all these systems with us now at the, basically the, the flip of a button, they can type in let's say John Smith's records. It will bring up every system that we've AR records into, into one format for them. They can pick out of our templates, whether it's a legal inquiry, insurance inquiry, it will automatically filter the data that is needed for those inquiries. And then probably the best thing is it's put in a really user form, user friendly format that is, can be sent to the, the requesting party in a very easy secure mode that they're not giving or disseminating A bunch of information that, that A these person people aren't asking for but B they shouldn't be disseminating and this person doesn't have any right to to.
So the health data archive, it really helps you know, employees become more streamlined and more efficient especially in that, that HIM department and then even going further, the, the release of information processes we do offer, you know, record release as a, as a, as a product line but really it's, it's our core functionality is really making that available, that data available for these record release folks so that they can fulfill those requests so that they can have a direct on their own time and not necessarily to cut staff or cut costs there, but to make the people more efficient in their jobs is really what we're looking to do. But again that's going to in the long run help the health care systems save money by having their employees be more efficient everywhere from the HIM departments to the finance departments to obviously the clinical workers that are having direct access to these records via single sign on in their, in their go forward solution there and then number three, provide the improved security and risk reduction. If you've got for a large health system, Hundreds of different EHRs, financial HR systems sitting around, whether they're online or offline, whether they're hosted or on prem, there's a lot of risk for a breach in those systems or for that phi to be sent somewhere where it doesn't need to be, or for the loss of that phi, let's say it's on an old server and there's a water leak or the power supply goes bad, or the hard drive goes bad, if it wasn't properly backed up or anything like that, those systems could have the loss of that information. And again that's vital for obviously legal requests and requirements, but also just for the point of care for those folks to always have their complete medical record. So, so there's, there's security, there's risks, we're taking all of that and even a lot of things. If you're looking at a direct cost reflection in the security, you know, cyber, you know, those insurances, they can be brought down if the risk profile is less from having a bunch of systems separated and out there in the ether.
[00:08:09] Speaker B: Excellent. Thanks Brian.
You work with a lot of CFOs on a daily basis, right. And have done so for quite a long time. I'm curious, you know, for everything that you just talked about in terms of the benefits for an archiving solution, maybe talk a little bit about how that applies to Large and small health systems. Right. Or does it, and if so, maybe do you have some examples of some customers that, where we've had some success. Right. And can talk about that in a little bit more detail?
[00:08:47] Speaker A: Sure, sure, yeah. And it does, you know, run the continuum of sizes of organizations. We work with one doc, you know, private physician practices and then we work with some of the largest payers and health care organizations in the, in the country, in the world really. But you know, a few that come to mind, you know, for me as far as a large health system would, would be Indiana University Health and, and they were one of our first, we'll just say enterprise sized customers and we've archived 100 plus systems for them and they've saved just in annual maintenance costs, you know, three to four million dollars a year with our solution. And, and we're about a tenth of that cost on a, on an ongoing basis. So not only do they have those direct costs of, of about 90%, they still have access to that data, but they have access to that data in a more user friendly format as well. If you're not, you know, accustomed to using, you know, old systems or, or you know, you're, you've been trained on EPIC or Cerner or Meditech and, and this old system is either, you know, all scripts or Eclinical or some boutique system, you have to know how to get to all the information that you're looking to get to in these old systems as well. If you put it in the health data archiver, it's going to look the same or similar whether it was coming from a Meditech or a Cerner or an EPIC or Eclinical or whatever those systems might be. It's in that one user friendly format that basically is as easy to get to the information as a simple search in our side there.
When you look at a small to medium sized practice, maybe where there's one to five physicians, obviously the dollar amounts aren't going to be as great, but the risk is still there and it might even be great because the smaller organizations don't have the security profile set up. They don't have the, you know, they don't have the, the need for, for those, those IT setups and those security setups. So having our solution in there is really a low cost way, relatively speaking, to providing security to de risking that protected health care information because they're held to the same standard as the largest healthcare organizations in the world are held to. As far as laws and legalities around that protected health Care information. So our solution set is really a great way for them to de risk for them to provide ROI to their physicians if it's more than a one physician practice and to really have a complete solution around those historical records should they have that need from us.
[00:11:32] Speaker B: Excellent, thank you.
You touched on roi, right? And we all know today more than ever, it's extremely important that as hospitals are evaluating the costs associated with software and services, the importance of having an understanding of what that ROI looks like so that they can make a sound decision on behalf of their institution is more important than ever.
What do we do at Harmony today to help these organizations understand what that ROI looks like? And how do you get involved in terms of working through that process?
Can you kind of walk through what we do and what that looks like and at what point in a process do we want to engage with them? And is it appropriate to talk about roi?
[00:12:27] Speaker A: Sure, yeah, I think that's a great question. And I think every organization is looking to save money or cut costs where appropriately, or probably not even cut costs, but really become more efficient on where their spends are, get more for their spends. And we really take a consultative approach on the sales and sales engineering side. And it can happen as early as the first couple of calls to, you know, once we do basically a sales engineering call on, on what systems they're, they're looking to archive and might need data extracted from, etc. It can happen anywhere in the process. I like to do it. Or, or I, you know, I'd like to suggest that we do it earlier than later because then it allows us to kind of prioritize which systems they should be archiving first. Let's say you're a large organization, you've got 50 legacy systems that are sitting, you know, whether it's in your server, you know, you know, your server room or, or, you know, if they're hosted or whatever it is. But you've got 50 systems, but you're only paying maintenance on 25 of those. Well, those are the 25 that we're going to want to prioritize unless there's some security, direct concert security concern, excuse me, you know, with the, with the other 25 there. So the earlier we can get that information, the better. And one thing that we don't do is we don't price it based on what somebody's paying in maintenance. So we're, we're going to give an honest level of effort of what it is. So we want to be a partner with our healthcare organizations that we're working with to get them the best ROI for their time and their money. And that enables us to really look at this and say, hey, we can even give you, if you've got 10E clinical work systems, we'll give you a level of effort before you, even before you even give us what you're paying in maintenance so that there's no conflict of interest there. And it truly is a consultative arrangement with, with the prospect. And, and I think that's the best way to go about this because again, as I said, unless there's a direct security concern, you know, maybe it went out, Microsoft stopped supporting it or Oracle stopped supporting or something like that where it needs to be prioritized. I would always tell an organization let's prioritize where your monies are being spent right now. And that's the best way that we're going to give you ROI directly on those dollars. And we do even do things where we won't pay or have any payments due until they're off maintenance or hosting from their old system or legacy system that we're going to be archived. So we truly want to be a partner, we truly want to take a consultative approach to the sales process and we want to make sure that we're not selling somebody a solution that's a fit for one organization but not a fit for the other organization. We want to be a platform that allows people to build off of our, you know, off of our suite of services and you know, softwares that we, that we do offer.
[00:15:20] Speaker B: So Brian, would it be fair to say that if you believe that you have a need for an archiving solution, would it be fair to say that they could go ahead and reach out to us here at Harmony and have that initial consultative call. Right. So that we'd be willing to hop on a call with them essentially really at any time and walk them through an roi, even if they're looking at a point where they're just simply at an exploratory process and we'd be willing to support them in that kind of, kind of conversation.
[00:15:55] Speaker A: 1, 100% again, this doesn't cost them anything up front. Give us a call. We've, we've archived or we've done data extracts from 600 plus different systems in our history. So no portfolio has ever been, you know, too big or too small for us because we basically hit everything from a small boutique system that, that was, you know, that maybe you can't even find the, the original developers of it to obviously Epic and Cerner and the largest systems in the, in the world. So we're happy to take on that full, you know, suite of systems or inventory of systems that somebody might have. And again, we'll, we'll do all the upfront labor and sales, engineering and looking at that, you know, prior to any, you know, deal being signed or anything like that, all we do is we put an NDA, we put a BAA in place and make sure that everybody's protected as far as, you know, legalities and, and obviously security wise. But then we can really dig in and really say what can we do to help your organization succeed financially and, you know, risk and compliance wise as far as that data, you know, not to mention obviously the clinical aspects of all this.
[00:17:07] Speaker B: Excellent.
All right. Well, thanks, Brian, for joining us today. Certainly appreciate your time. Looking forward to having you back on our next episode of Health Data Talks. To everybody that listen, thanks. Thank you for joining us. We look forward to having you. Please tune into our next episode of Health Data Talks. We'll certainly continue to cover all aspects associated with life cycle data management. Thanks everybody for joining.
[00:17:32] Speaker A: Great. Thank you.
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