Daniel Williams: Well, Hi, everyone. I'm Daniel Williams, senior editor at MGMA and host of the MGMA Podcast network. I, am back with another mgma, member spotlight podcast today. And our guest is Katie Camaritis, and I hope I got that right, Katie. You can correct me if I didn't. But a little bit of background on Katie. She is a senior manager at Ecg. Management consultants, and I'm just going to tell you all a little secret here. I heard from multiple people at MGMA a lot of great work that Katie's doing, and I went. Wait a minute. This just sounds too good to be true. We got to get Katie on the show and talk to her about some of the things she's doing in her own practice and through MGMA as well. So 1st of all, Katie, welcome to the show.
Katie Komaridis: Thank you. I'm really glad to be here.
Daniel Williams: Yeah. And you were telling me that you are in Minnesota. That's where you live. But you're coming back from the MGMA Operations Conference, which was in Las Vegas. So tell us a little bit about Vegas. What was the show like, and what was Vegas like.
Katie Komaridis: Well, I did have the opportunity to go earlier this week. It was a really fun conference. I haven't done a whole lot of in person conferences in recent years. So it was really nice to get out and connect with people. I actually haven't been to Vegas before. Little secret. So it was for a 1st for me. I enjoyed it. I walked in on Sunday afternoon, and the conference was at the Bellagio, and it's just beautiful. There's so much to see and look at and think about. The people watching is terrific. So that was really nice. I didn't get a chance to get out as much as I would hope, but I did. One evening I had a colleague who was there for a different conference, so I walked a mile or 2 down the strip, and I got to see the outside of the of the different casinos. I got to see the sphere change colors and go by the Venetian where the gondolas are going. It was really it was a neat experience, so it was a lot of fun.
Daniel Williams: That's so neat. I'm so glad you got to go.
Daniel Williams: Did you partake in any gambling or anything? Or did you stay away from the tables, and all that.
Katie Komaridis: Actually, I've stayed away from it successfully. I stood and I watched a little bit. I thought about it, and I just kept moving. I had some other things to work on this week, so I didn't get to do any gambling. Maybe next time.
Daniel Williams: Yeah. And then, as far as the show itself, was there a takeaway, a session, anything that really resonated with you?
Katie Komaridis: There were several of the sessions that were really good. Some of them had some really good practical bits of advice that you could take away. I started on Sunday. I did. The executive roundtable, and I sat at a table with individuals, were just so knowledgeable about their specific areas. There was a lot of connecting and sharing ideas, hearing what one person's doing in their Emr, thinking about what another person's worried about from a staffing or a provider perspective. So it was a really great opportunity to hear what everybody's thinking and what everybody's working on. So that was a really good one. There were a couple of keynote speakers that were also good, really thinking about, how can you reshape your perspective? How can you open up? How can you engage differently with people. So that was really nice. There was one on integrated behavioral health into primary care. I really love primary care. And so it was interesting to hear how people are doing that really bringing those different pieces together. So all in all, I thought the sessions were really good.
Daniel Williams: Okay, that is so cool. And we had those keynote speakers on here on the podcast in the past month. So that was really neat that you got to hear them live as well. So let's get to know you a little bit better. Tell us a little bit about your healthcare journey just a couple of highlights you might want to share with us. So our listeners, who don't already know you might get to know you a little bit better.
Katie Komaridis: Yeah, thanks. It really goes back to my my early days. I was a good student, and I always thought I might want to be a doctor. Well, I got to college, and I was pursuing my science classes, and I quickly discovered that wasn't really my my passion, or the way my brain was wired, but I had some family experiences with health care, and I knew that the industry itself was really interesting to me, and so I moved in the direction I had this great major that was called Health and Society, the equivalent of a public health degree. And so I really got to learn about us healthcare systems. Think about how things worked nationally, and it sort of cemented my interest in health care as the area that really is one of the most important in our society. You need health to be able to thrive in the rest of your life. And so I approached it from that perspective. When I finished college I got a graduate degree in health administration. I really just love it. It's the only industry I've ever worked in. And so after graduate school I worked at a health system for a while. I had a whole bunch of roles across disciplines. I did some physician compensation and contracting. I did outpatient behavioral health. I worked with specialties. I worked in growth, and I ended my time working with the mother baby clinical service line here in Minnesota. And I just I just loved it. There are so many complexities to it, and it's so important in individuals, people's lives. So that's really why I've pursued it. And now consulting. And I've been here for 4 years, and that's really fun in a different way. I get to help organizations solve their problems usually more quickly than they can on their own, because they don't have the time to really dedicate the thought, energy, and really the effort that they would need. So it's been great. I really love it.
Daniel Williams: That is so cool. So in researching you and learning a little bit more about you, you do have a focus right now in both women's health. In primary care. Tell us a little bit about it, because, as you were saying, you're not in a practice in that day-to-day setting where you can't sometimes take that big picture view. So what are some of the trends that are taking place, or that you might want to share with us about either of those categories.
Katie Komaridis: Yeah, I spend a lot of time reading about talking about thinking about different areas, including those 2, particularly every year. We've done an outlook for women's health at my firm, and the themes have been consistent. So we're seeing consolidation. We're seeing birth rates stagnate, depending on where you are in the country we're seeing really challenges with provider models, making sure that we can keep maternity centers over across the country. Some of the news is really quite alarming in rural communities, in counties all across the country there's less and less access to maternal health care which puts our patients potentially at risk. So those are some overarching trends that we're seeing this year. We took a little bit of a different approach, and the trends that we're thinking about now for women's health. In addition to those are looking at a primary care focus. So how can we really bring together women's health? Holistically, looking at the primary care, together with the obgyn perspective, even bringing in that specialty lens. Because the physiology of women, it's it's different from men. And so the approaches for certain conditions may be different. We're also thinking about retail offerings. How can then we marry that strategic approach around primary women's health specialties? And then what are the complementary and other services that we might layer on to really create a comprehensive offering. Those are some things that we're really thinking about and excited about, and in primary care. It's been so interesting to watch the news over really, the last couple of years. There are so many changes we're seeing. You saw an explosion in different kinds of groups.
Daniel Williams: Wanting to get into the primary care space. Our retail partners, Walmart, for example, had lots of primary care clinics, and we're seeing some of that dial back, and so I'll be curious to see where that lands.
Katie Komaridis: We're also seeing new and emerging models of primary care while the retail space is dialing back. We're seeing more segmentation. So we have lots of membership models. We're also seeing women's primary care. As I mentioned, there's men's primary care. There's primary care for seniors, there's senior women primary care. There's just so much segmentation of the market and it'll be really interesting to see where where it lands. What do private practices do in response? And then what do health systems also do in response? How do we all get to share in the opportunity to take care of our patients?
Daniel Williams: Yeah, thank you so much for sharing that. And that is really interesting, and something that at Mgma we need to be keeping track of and provide some of that education because we're looking at segmenting information to our members because people who are Mgma members are looking for different things. And so we need to be able to really customize that information. So thank you so much for sharing that the next thing and this is one of the things that people were praising you about and saying, Hey, you need to go talk to Katie, but you're in the process of completing a video education session on project management for the Body and Knowledge series. So talk about that relationship, that partnership, and how that came about.
Katie Komaridis: It's interesting. I had a little bit of downtime about a month or 2 ago, and I thought, This is the moment I'm going to finally apply for the Mdma fellowship. So I did the Cmp. Many years ago. I won't say how many, but I decided I'm going to go for it. And so there's a nice link for volunteer opportunities in Mgma. And so I decided I would check out what was there, and there was an opportunity to do some education for the body of knowledge. So much of my work is doing presentations, doing research and then presenting them. So it felt like a nice fit and there was a project management topic as you referenced. And so I'm recording it later this week. This is a big mgma week for me and and so it really walks through at a high level. What? What is project management? What is it not? How can we get organized and use some structured tools to help us move our projects forward more smoothly. So just kind of an overview. I'm actually using an example, a women's primary care example to walk through a fictitious project. What should we do next? Given this example, I used a menopause program that my fictitious practice wants to open. And so, thinking about. You know. What is the scope? What's the right scope? What's possible? Who are our stakeholders? All those pieces? And then I've been chatting with some friends about this, and there are some pitfalls that they want me to share, you know. Think about who's a team member think about who's really a stakeholder? How do you use modern tools to make the project management process a little more efficient for everyone, too.
Daniel Williams: Okay? And that is a challenge for a lot of people. So someone who's getting a little bit dipping a toe into project management. Where would you tell them to start? What's that 1st step someone should take on any project.
Katie Komaridis: Well, the way that I frame this out is, I took the mgma, the project charter, and so it outlines. What are the steps you really need to think through before you're kicking off a project, so do you have the right scope to have the right timeline? Do you have the right stakeholders. Have you put a little bit of discipline into thinking, at least at a high level, what those individual tasks are going to be? I don't think you need to over engineer it, and certainly for small to mid size projects. But that discipline right up front can really help you move things forward more quickly, especially in healthcare operations. There's a phrase, things just operate at the pace of operations because you have so many other things to do. So my hope is by applying some of those tools we can help things move forward more smoothly and more efficiently.
Daniel Williams: Okay, just to show that you have a lot of irons in the fire. You're also co-authoring an article on changes in primary care and staying competitive talk about the article, how that came about, and really what your focus is within that article.
Katie Komaridis: So that's another one that I'm excited about. And there we are really going to touch on the changes that we've seen in the segmentation that I mentioned. And we're going to focus on that and talk a little bit more about that in detail. What does that mean? For from a payer perspective. How do you need to think about that? Strategically? What do you need to know about your practice in order to ensure that you can stay competitive because practices need to really think about who's their market? Who's their patient? What do your patients really need? What kind of contracts do you have? Are you dipping your toe in pay for performance? Or are you moving in a market that you think maybe there's going to be more capitation in the future that really shapes how you want to structure your practice. And really, holistically, do you need new staff members? Do you need new workflows? Do you need new technology so that you can remain competitive.
Daniel Williams: - that is awesome. So thank you for sharing that. Let's see what else there's so much that you've got going on. I'm trying to focus it in one area. Here, let's talk about this. And what are some of the biggest operational challenges medical groups are facing right now. I know our listeners are going well, I know what I'm facing here, and we had a really interesting webinar earlier today, and it was on claims denial. And there were some fascinating, really threading the needle type questions where people wanted to get it very specifically into what they were dealing with in their practices. So I wanted you to share some of the things that you're seeing that are. I don't know if they're surprising you, because you're staying in tune with what's going on in healthcare, but things that may that are rising up to the top that are really challenges or causing friction points out there that you might want to share with our audience.
Katie Komaridis: I think that a lot of the challenges have remained the same for the the last bit. You know, staffing really is a huge challenge. We need to have the right staff in the right place at the right time. One of the presenters at the conference earlier this week had a couple more ours in there. But we need to focus on staffing. The nice piece about staffing is we have a lot of disruptions with technology. And so we're not quite sure, I think, where everything's going to land. But there are definitely some tasks that we can make more efficient in the future via technology. One of the women I met this week. She was talking a little bit about even AI driven prescription refills. And that's an example of a task. It's really important to get it right. And sometimes it takes a lot of staff time. Imagine if we could start to peel off some of these areas that can be well supported by technology, and we can rededicate that time to connecting in a new or different or more authentic way with our patients. So I think there are a lot of really good opportunities out there. Some of the other challenges around the practice financials. Of course, we're seeing expenses go up. We're not seeing corresponding increases in revenue. And so that's a definite challenge. Another thing that my colleagues and I have talked a lot about over the last couple of months is value-based care. We were really headed in a direction where we thought this was where we were going by 2030. We're going to see really high penetration, but now it's a little bit less certain. And so how do you balance that? How do you readjust your strategy again? To make sure you can be competitive.
Daniel Williams: Yeah, in reading about you. One of the things you have consistently done wherever you've been is really expand services. You've also implemented innovative programs throughout. If you don't mind, share a case, study something you might want to share with us where you've had success there. In doing that.
Katie Komaridis: When you've worked in healthcare as long as I have, I've gotten to do such fun, interesting things. One of the projects that I always say that I'm proudest of was putting together some outpatient behavioral health clinics, and this was early on in my career, so that we matched the inpatient units that we had. So patients had a really good, solid, safe place to go that took their insurance to help them transition and continue on their journey. That was a really fun one. At my last health system role, we worked in high risk pregnancy. And so getting to think about how you could take your some existing capacity existing physician capacity, how you could optimize the number of ancillary services you were having, and then you were able to use the same cost base and really strengthen the practice. That was another really neat one. And then working in consulting. I've gotten to work on team based care projects and lots of women's projects around call coverage and call models. And it's just been I've had so many great opportunities and great projects.
Daniel Williams: Yeah, I mean, the fun thing is, I see your face light up when you start talking about this. I mean, you really do enjoy.
Katie Komaridis: Really do enjoy it. Yeah, it's it's true.
Daniel Williams: It's very contagious. And so with that said for a last question, then I'll give you sort of a blank canvas, so to speak. What's something that you can pass along because your enthusiasm even though you've said a couple of times that you've been in healthcare a long time, but your enthusiasm about it doesn't seem to have waned. So how would you share that continued enthusiasm to our listeners? What can they do? So they can continue to feel really good about the work that they're doing out there, even though sometimes there may be a lot of challenges, and it can be really frustrating, but can to be able to keep that enthusiasm about it.
Katie Komaridis: Yeah, that's a good question. It's it's great work. And it's also really hard work, especially folks that are working in operations day to day, because there are so many challenges. Sometimes it feels that they're not surmountable that you're not going to be able to move forward. But there's always progress that can be made. And I like to think about the what are the small things that you can resolve? How can you move forward one piece at a time. So that helps me get through the day, or always did when I worked in operations. I also really rely on the people around me. Either my managers or the people I report to, or really staff people, and in consulting my fellow consultants we're always surrounded by so many smart people and so many people who are also engaged. And they're in this because they ultimately want to help patients and and really make a difference, and that to me is really motivating.
Daniel Williams: Yeah, Katie, it has been so much fun getting to meet you here, so thanks for joining us.
Katie Komaridis: Well, thanks for having me.
Daniel Williams: Yeah. So everybody, I will be sure and provide several links in our episode show notes. You can learn even more about the work Katie's doing, and I will put out there her company website, ecgmc.com. And I will put a direct link in our episode. Show notes. So until then thank you. All for being MGMA, podcast listeners.