The Best Healthcare Is Local: The Pennant Group's Alicia Bowman on AI & the Hospice Addendum

About This Episode

Recorded live at the Home Care Home Base user conference, this episode features Alicia Bowman of The Pennant Group. She shares what is driving the buzz at the conference, from AI and the new Curate scribe currently in testing ahead of a planned November pilot, to the operational lift the hospice addendum will bring. She also explains Pennant's local operating model, where each agency is led with an entrepreneurial mindset because the best healthcare is delivered locally, and how the team is focused on quality of care and lightening the load for field clinicians.

Transcript

Tom: Welcome back to the Last Visit First podcast, the last one live from the Homecare Homebase Users Conference. Save the best for last. Thank you, Alicia Bowman, for joining me from The Pennant Group.

Alicia: Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Tom: What's going on in your world these days?

Alicia: You know, nothing. We're just pretty much chilling. I'm just kidding. Pretty busy, pretty busy year for Pennant. We are right now in our final stages and our last wave of the LHC and Amedisys acquisitions that are occurring in Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia. So our teams are busy and flying into the Southeast quite a bit.

Tom: So you're at the Homecare Homebase Users Conference. What's the buzz around here?

Alicia: It's all about AI. So I think the most exciting thing is the automations that are coming and some of the technology that is going to be integrated into our EMR, which everybody's looking forward to.

Tom: That's awesome. It's been a lot of fun. It really is buzzing around this Curate scribe AI platform. How do we make nurses' jobs easier, faster, quicker, better? Alicia's one of the top leading clinicians in the industry. She's been around for a few years, and she's someone I always go to when we're starting to think about new things, and she always has good perspective on it. So what's your thought on the new Curate product?

Alicia: It's very exciting. I mean, can you just imagine if this was available when we were in the field? It's pretty exciting, very fun to watch. We are currently in testing mode with it right now. And it's a little bit of a rough start, but we're hoping that it's going to have a successful outcome and we can take it to pilot in November.

Tom: Is it mostly about change management of nurses and how they document, or what's causing the challenges?

Alicia: Yeah, right now we're working with Alex and the HCHB team just to ensure that the app's functionalities are appropriate and the technology is actually working. So before we take it to the field, we have a group of clinicians that's working on it at a service center level. And then they'll test it, pilot it with ClinApps, and then we'll roll it out.

Tom: That's awesome. It's amazing how fast we can develop software now. I was writing an app the other day at the gym just to keep my golf scores and track our golf game, and literally by the time I finished at the gym it was done. It's crazy how fast we can build stuff now. So you have to harden it a little bit around the Homecare Homebase platform, but it's quick, and I know those guys are being really responsive and super excited. What's your plans for tonight?

Alicia: We're gonna sing "Ice Ice Baby," I thought. Vanilla Ice and Montell Jordan. How can you miss that?

Tom: Did you get backstage passes or anything?

Alicia: No, I wasn't one of the lucky recipients of the VIP.

Tom: Yeah, somebody had some VIP passes and they sent a group of people to go backstage. Not sure I want to go back there, but it'd be fun. It'd be fun. I remember listening to this guy when I was a kid in high school. That's fun. What'd you think of the opening ceremony here, with the pictures and the buzz of Hannah getting up on the stage and talking?

Alicia: I think HCHB does a great job. I can't thank them enough for having everybody here and being super transparent. We just had lunch with them. I think one of the best things about our partnership is the ability to be super transparent and to have that dialogue back and forth. They take time, specifically with Pennant, and I'm sure they do it with a lot of their customers, but I've really appreciated the partnership over the years, just to give feedback back and forth: what would make your life easier? Those questions, I think, are really important. They're important to me.

Tom: Yeah, and it's important for them to ask and listen. April was here just a little bit ago, and she said she really feels like HCHB is not developing software anymore. They're listening to their customers and developing what their customers want. And that's really good, that they're starting to work on that. What's going on with the future direction of Pennant?

Alicia: We're just ensuring that we're continuing to stabilize and making sure that we're producing high-quality care. I think our biggest goal, like many that are here at the conference, is that the quality of care is second to none, right? That's your primary goal, to provide life-changing service, but ensuring that we're able to do it efficiently, and to make sure that we're lightening the load of the clinicians that are doing the work in the field. So that continues to be our primary focus.

Tom: You guys have a unique model, and I've always been intrigued by it. So you'll do an acquisition of a company, and then you make that person the CEO of their area. And they have a CEO training school and all that, and it seems to be really successful. I listen to all your earnings calls and I'm like, how are they doing that? Tell us a little bit more about that unique model. I want you to share any secret sauce, but I know it's interesting.

Alicia: It is. It's a unique operating model, and it has its challenges, but it definitely has its benefits, and I think the benefits outweigh the challenges. We truly believe that the best healthcare is delivered locally. So what the community needs and requires in Oklahoma City is very different than San Diego, California. That's kind of our model and how we look at it. So each agency has that entrepreneurial mindset, but they're also ensuring that they're meeting the needs of their patients and meeting the needs of the local communities.

Tom: All right, let's talk about the hospice addendum. Everybody's talking about it here. You've got the AI buzz, then you've got the hospice addendum buzz. What are your thoughts around it? How impactful is it going to be? How hard is it going to be?

Alicia: Yeah, operationally it will be a giant lift. To operationalize any sort of technology or any sort of change is going to be a challenge for most. The time frames are tight, and so making sure that we remain compliant is our number one priority. So that is definitely top of mind for, I think, pretty much everybody in the room today.

Tom: Yeah, we went through this with CTIs, and then they had to do the face-to-faces, and then they had the NOA in home health, and now we have this addendum in hospice. It's going to be changed, it's going to be hard, we'll figure it out, we're going to solve it. But you're right, I think it caught a lot of people by surprise, and a lot of people are getting ready for it, but they're trying to figure out how they solve it.

Alicia: Absolutely. And I don't think we have a best practice solution, to be honest. I think it's cumbersome, it feels clunky. We just talked to Homecare Homebase about some additional suggestions that they might have, and it sounds like they have something coming out pretty quickly.

Tom: That's awesome. If somebody wants to come work for you, how do they find you?

Alicia: Yeah, they can look us up: ThePennantGroup.com. Come join us.

Tom: Yeah. She's all over the place and all over the world. And if I'm a home health agency and I want to become part of The Pennant Group, you guys have a business development team or something that we can reach out to?

Alicia: We do. You can also reach us at ThePennantGroup.com.

Tom: Just go to ThePennantGroup.com and find it on their website. You can probably go on LinkedIn and find her on LinkedIn. She's one of the most popular ones around here, so she has an opinion about a lot of stuff, and she has a lot of fun, and she's been an absolute pleasure to be a part of the show. Thank you for coming.

Alicia: Thanks for having me, Tom. Always great to see you.

Tom: You bet. Bye.

Alicia: You too. Bye-bye.