Connecting Care: A Journey of Innovation and Empathy

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[00:01:19] Hello there and welcome to the HIT Like a Girl podcast.

[00:01:23] My name is Joy Rios, I'm the shows host and this is a place where we talk about how complicated the world of healthcare is.

[00:01:30] The ecosystem is totally crazy.

[00:01:32] Each one of our guests kind of brings their piece of the puzzle.

[00:01:35] I liken it to how many pieces, 30,000 pieces, puzzles, what I've been saying but I feel like it keeps getting bigger and bigger trying to understand how healthcare works

[00:01:46] and everyone of our guests essentially brings a piece of it to us.

[00:01:51] To me, to our listeners and helps us kind of understand how your piece helps us make sense of the bigger picture.

[00:01:58] So I would love to give you a minute to introduce yourself.

[00:02:01] Thank you, I appreciate it and thanks for having me here.

[00:02:03] My name is Stacy Foxx, I work at Health Gorilla, I'm our BP of Sales, I lead our digital health sales team at Health Gorilla.

[00:02:12] I've been in this healthcare space for about 14 years now, started my healthcare journey at Children's Hospital Colorado.

[00:02:20] It was very passionate about that mission.

[00:02:24] My youngest brother actually has Down syndrome so that's kind of what interested me in getting into Children's Hospital driving that mission.

[00:02:31] I was a physician relations representative so in that role I spent almost every day in different physician practices really seeing their pain points, challenges building the world.

[00:02:42] Building relationships, building referrals to the hospital, providing education.

[00:02:47] Then from there I went to Correo which is the health information exchange in Colorado.

[00:02:52] So connecting all of those in that region to sharing data from the healthcare systems to ambulatory, to FQHCs, to government.

[00:03:03] Oh wow, which is what led me to Health Gorilla when I learned about Health Gorilla, I was like I have to go work there.

[00:03:09] That is my next passion. So I actually waited for three months for a job to open up and thankfully got that job and here I am two years later.

[00:03:18] What are you responsible for? You said sales and so our digital health sales team.

[00:03:22] Okay, yeah.

[00:03:23] I'd love to know more about your journey as far as like on the personal and professional level.

[00:03:28] With your brother's story and also working for the Children's Hospital, I'm sure that those are things that you carry with you.

[00:03:34] Going to any more detail about what you learned and saw in those physician practices and what's been meaningful for you.

[00:03:41] Yeah, absolutely. And you're right. It definitely helps drive my passion and my mission for sure.

[00:03:48] I would say working at Children's Hospital very mission driven.

[00:03:52] My brother's story is definitely one of the reasons why I wanted to work there.

[00:03:56] I also got lucky because I was in a completely different field for like 10 years and started off as an assistant was promoted up into a physician relations representative.

[00:04:06] But being in the practices is really, I think what led me to kind of my career path.

[00:04:12] So working with the physicians, one of their biggest pain points is getting access to clinical records outside of their four walls.

[00:04:20] So I would do a lot of issue resolution within those practices to try to help build that relationship for Children's Hospital.

[00:04:27] So a lot of the challenges I would hear about where we can't get access to their medical records.

[00:04:32] And this is why it's very important. We need this to provide better care.

[00:04:35] We need this to help them along their care journey.

[00:04:38] So that was kind of my first introduction into this large challenge that we're trying to solve and that we help solve at Health Gorilla getting access to nationwide aggregated medical records.

[00:04:51] But really seeing how it impacts the patient's journey afterwards too.

[00:04:56] And especially working at a large health system and looking at pediatricians, like you need to have a good partnership there because it's not just like oh they went to the hospital once and you're back at your PCP.

[00:05:08] So there's a lot of back and forth there.

[00:05:10] But what were some of the ways in the past that those challenges are problems were solved?

[00:05:15] Yeah, great question. So in that role it was really getting them access to you know if they weren't on our direct EMR we had a UI like web based separate login.

[00:05:28] So they could go to but they could get access to it so physicians weren't typically the ones logging in some of their front desk staff but it wasn't extra step and it was outside of their workflow but they could get access to it.

[00:05:39] It was better than fact for sure so they could log in and get that real time but it wasn't within their workflow unless they were on our instance of epic.

[00:05:48] Well, and imagine for some people that might be their whole job description right spending the time to get that information.

[00:05:53] Absolutely, yeah. Wow so what you're doing now is helping people save a heck of a lot of time.

[00:05:58] Yes. Can you tell me more about being in Colorado and just because like the Colorado AJAE and you know some of your experience during that chapter of your life?

[00:06:10] Yeah absolutely. So I grew up in Arizona. I moved out to Colorado for soccer for college and I fell in love with it.

[00:06:19] I was like there's four seasons here. Yeah, I did not know that and there's a time change what does the time change?

[00:06:25] So really loved Colorado. I live in the mountains in Colorado 10,000 elevation on 10 acres.

[00:06:32] It's really good to enjoy the mountain life but yeah and when I shifted over to Korea and that role it's hard to say it was like you still got to build the relationships but it was more sales focused and I am very like data

[00:06:48] driven also. My nickname in college was stats. Why? You just like you like I remembered like all the statistics I remember who scored when they scored.

[00:06:59] I remembered what the outcome was of every game so everyone called me stats. So working for working at Korea, like you see that immediate impact and it's more data driven and numbers driven because relationships are key I think in any sale but it's hard to quantify as well.

[00:07:17] So I really loved working at Korea as well and I got to open up and expand kind of who I was talking to on a day-to-day basis and see additional challenges because it's obviously not just tied to primary care and family practice groups but getting everyone to start sharing data for permitted purposes and creating that network.

[00:07:38] I'd love to know if you don't mind my asking a little bit more about your athletic journey because it sounds like that has been a big part of your life especially if it was part of your college career.

[00:07:49] Like how has the sports kind of impacted and influenced your life?

[00:07:54] I feel like sports are just so meaningful and impactful. I want my kids to grow up doing sports their whole life because I think it keeps you out of trouble.

[00:08:05] You create long, lifelong lasting connections. Like I have friends from 27 years ago that I played soccer with 30 plus years ago that I still stay in touch with today.

[00:08:17] It definitely my college career really I would say impacted my future and my leadership style for sure because we created such a strong team bond and we won national championship

[00:08:32] and we just all got together recently 20 years later and it was like we had seen each other last week.

[00:08:39] Wow so you just create a team environment and that culture and that unity and that's what I try to create with my team as a leadership but I would say soccer in particular learned a lot of lessons there

[00:08:55] but I was thinking about it recently and one of the biggest things is like you know in soccer you go backwards so many times.

[00:09:02] What do you mean like you're literally running backwards? You kick the ball backwards right like you're going the opposite way you're not going towards your goal

[00:09:09] But in life sometimes you have to go backwards before you go forwards.

[00:09:14] Absolutely that's a huge thing and well it's all strategic right you guys are playing together and when you said to 20 year anniversary or whatever if it's even more

[00:09:23] I would be curious to know about leadership skills from the other women on the teams and how that has tracked over the years.

[00:09:30] Like is there are there any parallels with other women who you played with that like they are in positions of leadership as well?

[00:09:37] Absolutely yeah we have tons of them that are on leadership but one of them says chief operating officer out in Sweden so yeah lots of women leaders, women in business

[00:09:51] None of them are really in the whole tech field unfortunately but yeah I have heard like that and maybe you can help with the stat

[00:10:00] But I have heard that there are when it comes to women in the sea suite that one of the common threads among them is that they are elite athletes.

[00:10:10] Yeah I've heard that too I don't know the stat but I have heard that.

[00:10:14] It's an interesting thread just because it and I imagine it comes with discipline, the routine and you tell me what else.

[00:10:22] Definitely discipline and routine those are key and drive motivation a goal in mind right like and the team environment like most sports even if like my daughter is a dancer

[00:10:33] it's still a sport right there's still a team aspect and a team component to it so I think that it really teaches you that

[00:10:40] you want to have strong powerful people on your team like the leaders not the best at everything they shouldn't be the best at everything

[00:10:47] You want to grow that team and you can only win together as a team.

[00:10:50] So how does that show up in health gorilla like is that something that comes into play as part of like the way that you guys strategize and work together?

[00:10:58] Absolutely it does I mean we try to create a really strong I try to create a really strong team culture.

[00:11:04] I try to utilize each individual skills and we try to create a lot of even education amongst each other.

[00:11:13] You know someone on my team is really good at discovery and what types of questions answered are really identified pain points and challenges

[00:11:20] and then you can have him help other people on the team and then where someone else might have a weakness where can we help each other in sales.

[00:11:29] You typically could get a team who is like I'm an individual contributor I'm just helping myself but we do not have that culture at all.

[00:11:38] Everyone helps each other we win together we drive towards a team quota everyone does have an individual quota too but it's very team driven.

[00:11:46] We have daily deal huddles and we just help each other like here's where I'm at with this prospect this happened what have you guys tried that was successful for you so I feel like that has been kind of the biggest win for the team to create that culture.

[00:12:01] Yeah and also I mean just like I like the team huddle aspect and just being able to sort of kick the ball around to each other like all right you're it.

[00:12:09] Yeah I'll be up here kick it up my way and I'll take it from there are there any other I don't know analogies from sports that you can kind of tie in.

[00:12:17] It's really creating that team unity in the end like that's what you want to create you want to work hard and play hard.

[00:12:24] I mean literally like I feel like that's I work so hard but then I play hard too you know so when I want to show my kids that I can work hard and play hard too as a woman leader.

[00:12:38] I think that they see that drive and you have to be passionate about what you're doing as we passionate about your team your company kind of your growth and help mentor each other.

[00:12:48] One thing that comes up for me is also just considering wins and losses right and like how does one take a loss in a way that it doesn't mess everything up right like we can't win every single time I'm terrible at sports analogies by the way like I don't follow that many sports so if I mess up the analogy forgive me but.

[00:13:07] Ultimately I'm like you can't win everything right it is a perfect example yeah yeah it's hard to lose yeah especially when you think of sports like you want to be the best you want to win everyone loses no one wins everything so that's a great analogy for sure and my sales team we won three quarters in a row and then we did not have a great quarter so looking at that and what did we win in that quarter and what did we look at that.

[00:13:36] And what did we lose and why did we lose and how do we improve and what do we need to do going forward so it doesn't happen again but it's the same thing after soccer game you get together with the coach and you're like a debrief right what happened why do we lose or why do we win having that same sort of conversation you know after after deals are after quarters with the team and ultimately like what's the lesson right they are turning the loss into a lesson yeah where did we learn.

[00:14:02] Can you share with me some of the big goals that you have for you and your team at health gorilla yeah great question so my team is very focused in the digital health text space we essentially are over majority of the sales that come into health gorilla outside of like channel partnerships so we have a lot of customers that our provider organizations health clinics payers who are treating providers digital health tech customers apps or software like an EMR.

[00:14:32] Or software that supports provider organizations who need access to clinical records outside of their walls and we are really growing as we become qualified health information network our team is really focused on opening up and unlocking these additional use cases so individual access and supporting B2B to see model but how you a patient can actually get access to their record and share that with a third party.

[00:14:58] So I'm very excited for that growth and then getting into payment and operations and public health so very exciting growth but that means that the team needs to grow too right so we've got lots of new use cases coming out which means a lot of new targeted customers that will be able to help support to get access to data at the right time.

[00:15:21] So just continuing to grow the team but grow and knowledge and education as well.

[00:15:28] When I think about all the different types of connections that you inherently need to bring together how do you come up with the use cases or tackle each one of those because like maybe let's talk about some of the use cases other than just a patient being able to access their data at any time there's so much more than that can you share absolutely.

[00:15:49] So today it's very focused on treatment so provider treating actively the patient and being able to pull in that medical record.

[00:15:57] So they can pull in an entire longitudinal aggregated medical record but they can also just get specific information so they may just want meds allergies and conditions that you don't want it to be overwhelming so being able to customize with our fire based APIs to get each organization exactly what they want.

[00:16:16] I would say every single customer uses us completely different so we're able to figure out what they need and how they need us it's going to be the same with all the new use cases.

[00:16:25] So we have so many different types of customers it's not like oh it's just providers right they all are different so within individual access and this is all driven by a tough cut and unlocking these new use cases in a trusted exchange framework.

[00:16:40] So we will be supporting individual access we actually already launched it we are piloting it with a few of our customers.

[00:16:47] We have a partnership with clear so the patient does the identity verification the IAL2 verification on with clear and then they can pull in their medical records through health gorilla but for the business it can all be within their platform with our APIs and it doesn't have to say health gorilla like it can be customized on white light.

[00:17:09] Customized and white labeled with their solution so really bringing in that patient engagement into their application so we've been talking to a lot of patient engagement platforms clinical trials, pharma etc but really anybody that has that patient engage that could pull in their record and ensure with whichever third party they choose.

[00:17:31] So that's the first unlocked use case and then when you get into payment and operations being able to actually use this for prior off to streamline that workflow is going to be huge.

[00:17:45] Oh tell me more about that that's such a huge issue it is going to be huge and it's so dependent on faxing right now and it's such a slow process so being able to actually query for payment or operations to do some quality.

[00:18:00] There's so many additional use cases that you need access to that medical record and you know it should follow the patient along the continuum of care so there's I mean we could talk for like 10 hours about all the new use cases and all the different types of customers will be able to support.

[00:18:19] I want to focus on prior authorization just for a second because it can be I mean it's one of the biggest challenges that patients face right and so how can you are slowly how the health gorilla solution help make that whole process better.

[00:18:34] Tell me I was at them is like absolutely really great and you're right it's like every solution at the end it goes back and it impacts the patient that's the whole goal right so we can work with large pairs large health systems

[00:18:47] through Tafka through Qhen as soon as that use case unlocks our customers will be able to query through health gorilla and that use case will be supported so it is voluntary at first so it's going to take time for adoption it's going to take time for the health systems and EHRs to respond outside of treatment.

[00:19:08] We will see that unlock will see the response and the return rate improve so it will be real time so help improve the approvals for prior us and streamline that workflow and reduce the time.

[00:19:21] Yeah, that is huge because as well I don't know that it'll change any sort of insurance companies mind as far as whether somebody is authorized or not to get treatment but at least the documentation that they need in order to make that decision can come sooner absolutely.

[00:19:37] Yeah, what about do you are you involved in any of the stuff in Puerto Rico is that in your wheelhouse at all? It is not I'm very familiar with it of course but it is not in my wheelhouse we have a government relation like sales person who really streamlines that.

[00:19:53] I personally have a personal affinity for that island and so I'm just like oh tell me what you know because I want to like I've heard great things about what you all have done there so even if it's high level I'd love to know what you know.

[00:20:05] We essentially build an HIE in Puerto Rico so we are the HIE for Puerto Rico so that is a little bit different than what we do in the US we literally are doing more of the point to point integration so getting direct connections to all the hospitals kind of like what I did at correct.

[00:20:23] So you're building an HIE you're getting all of the ambulatory practices help systems connected and creating that complete picture.

[00:20:33] And before that didn't exist right so there is like where they did not have information that was connected and now that they do.

[00:20:40] Absolutely yeah we got to go to Puerto Rico for our sales kickoff so that was fun but we worked the whole time and I'm like I want to go back and actually enjoy that.

[00:20:49] Where did you go I don't even remember where we stayed was it old town was it like a old San Juan and it was yes yes you did you get a chance to experience any part of the island.

[00:21:00] Mostly just restaurants lots of food eating like we even had a big pig one night we were in trainings and everything all day and then dinner but I saw the water once.

[00:21:13] I feel like that's a really common theme around people that work in health care it's like you get to go to all these exciting places and see the inside of a conference center.

[00:21:21] Yes yes hotel we started our our sales like pitches you could be here and it was like an office picture but you're here in Puerto Rico but then we were actually in the conference room.

[00:21:34] I swear like I'm like oh yeah I've been to Boston no I've been to inside of a hotel in Boston and like same same situation.

[00:21:42] If you had advice for women who are following in your footsteps somebody who wanted I love to ask people like if somebody wanted your job what would they have had to study or get interested in you know what practices would they have to have in order to do it.

[00:21:56] Yeah can you share that with me yeah for real like do whether it's what you studied or if it's just personal like practices or way of being either or absolutely I would say first drive and mission like you work hard there's going to be things you don't know you have to learn how do you learn that.

[00:22:14] It's a reading books is it taking courses finding a mentor is huge finding someone who will mentor you and then you passing that along and mentoring people as well.

[00:22:24] And go after what you want you know if you want to lead a team start just leading when I started at health gorilla we had no onboarding we had no sales training I created it.

[00:22:39] I was an elite air when I started so just start you know doing the job you want essentially if you have the opportunity to take on additional verticals take on additional projects you know step up and show that you can do that and hopefully one day you get rewarded.

[00:22:57] I love that there's actually a piece of advice that I love which has like stop asking for permission in a way of like if you see a need actually or a desire to do something go ahead and give yourself permission to go ahead and do it.

[00:23:11] Whether or not that's in a corporate setting but to your point of like oh if you want to be a leader find a way to lead yeah that's great advice.

[00:23:20] I have a few people on my team who want to be leaders and I tell them that all the time like start mentoring new people start thinking of ways you can lead where can you help the team today.

[00:23:32] You know through training or you know is there anything we're missing yeah you could create that would help improve the sales process.

[00:23:39] I love that well and that's part of it finding gaps you know like we all need support we all need help none of us can do any of this by ourselves so the idea of collaborating and if you see something say something and even better do something.

[00:23:52] Yeah to make a difference so Stacy thank you so much for your time today.

[00:23:57] If people want to follow your journey if they would like to connect or get involved in any of your work where would you direct them.

[00:24:03] They can reach out to me on LinkedIn.

[00:24:06] Stacy M. Fox you know happy to connect there.

[00:24:09] Fantastic we will send folks your way thank you.

[00:24:12] Thank you so much.

[00:24:13] Yeah my pleasure.

[00:24:15] Thanks for listening you can learn more about us or this guest by going to our website or visiting us on any of the socials with a handle hit like a girl pod.

[00:24:24] Thanks again see you soon.

[00:24:26] Again thank you so much for listening to the hit like a girl podcast.

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[00:24:48] I'm the shows host Joy Rios and I'll see you next time.