Jan 3
2017
Health IT Thought Leader Highlight: Rohan Kulkarni, Conduent
Rohan Kulkarni, vice president of healthcare strategy and portfolio at Conduent, speaks here about Conduent’s healthcare strategy and the company’s move to brand following its separation from Xerox. While doing so, he steps back to look briefly at aspects of healthcare technology’s past then pivots to its future and what he’s most excited about in the space and how he hopes to be part of it. Finally, he describes wheat he would pursue if he were healthcare’s king, and what that would look like and how he would change the sector for the best impact to the patient.
You’re the vice president of healthcare strategy and portfolio at Conduent. Can you explain what the role entails, and how you approach it?
The transformation in healthcare that is occurring is generational and provides for unprecedented opportunities. As the head of healthcare strategy, I am responsible for identifying those opportunities that are relevant to us and help strengthen our portfolio. I then design and develop a strategy in collaboration with our business leaders that will help meet our growth goals.
Tell me how Conduent plays in healthcare and how its solutions specifically impact the point of care.
Conduent has perhaps the broadest solutions portfolio in the healthcare services, allowing us to connect the entire healthcare ecosystem.
Conduent provides solutions that help our clients overcome industry obstacles, including inefficient processes, inaccessible data, regulatory mandates and challenging economics so they can focus on improving patient lives through better, affordable, accessible healthcare. Our solutions are all designed to help our clients manage the health of their patient populations so they can improve healthcare outcomes. We help make the transition to value-based care models a reality, and we work with healthcare professionals to design solutions that meet their specific needs.
Conduent is dedicated to the efficiency of claims accuracy, facilitating bill payments and risk assessments, communicating benefits, driving medication adherence, improving patient engagement and technology education, and delivering on quality and care data across medical systems. Our solutions are designed to reduce preventable readmission rates for defined population sets, control costs by executing proactive engagement and provide ongoing management for patients with chronic conditions.
Conduent just completed its separation from Xerox. What does that mean for your company and for your customers? Why the move and why the rebrand? Why not build on the power of the Xerox brand?
When reviewing the products and services offered across the business, we determined creating two independent, standalone entities – Xerox and Conduent – would give us the ability to create greater shareholder and customer value. The separation is based on a structural view of two of our businesses and with simpler, more focused organizations, we’ll be able to adapt to market demands and ensure we’re positioning the business to deliver tailored solutions based on our clients’ evolving needs.
How has healthcare IT transformed throughout your career? How has Conduent been involved in healthcare’s evolution?
I think most of the healthcare industry expected healthcare IT to be a driving force in improving how providers deliver solutions to their patients, but I don’t think we expected the rate of change to be so dramatic, especially over the last decade or so. We’ve seen vast improvements in how providers use health IT with the advent of electronic health records, mobile health technologies, telemedicine, wearables, analytics, etc., to improve communication with patients, personalize care and drive healthier outcomes. Since our introduction to the healthcare space, we’ve been helping businesses and governments better harness the influx of information to enable transformation. From the back office processes like billing and payments, to using Big Data to drive medication adherence, assessing risk and improving patient engagement, our solutions meet today’s challenges and prepare healthcare organizations to meet tomorrow’s needs.
What are you most concerned about in regard to healthcare’s future?
Healthcare economics continue to be single dimensional in that the focus is on the demand side, i.e., insurance. The Affordable Care Act (ACA), while it has streamlined the demand side, it has not addressed supply side, e.g., hospital charges, cost of medication etc. in any meaningful manner. As such, much of the debate in the public domain about healthcare is unlikely to make progress until both sides of the equation are discussed.