Live from the HIMSS conference, HITea with Grace brings the conversation straight from the floor as Grace sits down with Robin Roberts, Director of Health IT Regulatory Affairs at PointClickCare, to spill some timely tea on the future of health data. From the CMS Rural Health Transformation (RHT) Program to the broader push for more equitable care, this episode dives into how policy and innovation are colliding to reshape what’s possible—especially for rural communities.
Robin breaks it down with a regulatory insider’s perspective, unpacking what the RHT Program really means in practice and where health information exchanges (HIEs) fit into the bigger picture. As the industry continues to talk about interoperability, this conversation gets real about what’s working, what’s not, and what it will take to actually connect the dots across the healthcare ecosystem.
Of course, it wouldn’t be HITea without getting into the human impact. Grace and Robin explore why connected, longitudinal data is especially critical for senior populations navigating complex care journeys—and how better data sharing can move us closer to truly coordinated, patient-centered care. It’s equal parts policy, perspective, and practical insight—served up fresh from HIMSS.
[00:00:04] Welcome to HIT with Grace, where we spill the tea on HIT. I'm thrilled to be here live at the HIMSS conference with Robin Roberts. She's at Point Click Care. Thanks for joining me, Robin. Robin Roberts Spills Thanks, Grace. So tell me, who are you and what do you do? Robin Roberts Spills I am the Director of Health IT Regulatory Affairs, and I think the best way to think about it is I take all of the state or federal regulations and see how they apply to all of the health tech in our business. So that's anything from our certified EHR systems. We have a couple of different things.
[00:00:34] Robin Roberts Spills I am the Director of Health IT Regulatory Affairs, and I think we have a couple of those. Helping our artificial intelligence machine learning teams understand regulation for how their products meet our end users in a regulatory compliant way. And also super focus right now on all things interoperability, whether we're talking about exchanging with HIEs or even in TEFCA across the national network. And so making sure those people have everything they need to, like I said, deploy things to end users in a meaningful but compliant way.
[00:01:03] Robin Roberts Spills Whether we're talking about the technical standards or maybe even things like disclaimers and AI technology. Robin Roberts Awesome. Well, we're so lucky to learn from you today. So tell me a little bit about the career path that brought you to your role. Robin Roberts Yeah. So started way too long ago in healthcare, really with a billing company. They were focused on training and installing other major EMRs for people. That was really in the emergency medicine and acute space. And so I was doing that for quite a while.
[00:01:31] Robin Roberts And around about the time my tenure with that company ended where I got to wear a lot of different hats, meaningful use was happening. This is where the federal government was giving away those tranches of money for people to adopt technology or those certified systems. Robin Roberts And so I started doing a lot of that. I even worked for a regional extension center, did some work as a subcontractor to CMS, and really then went on to work in really interesting space in laboratory like pathology.
[00:01:59] Robin Roberts And so we'd like to say healthcare is like a million piece puzzle. And then I've navigated all of that really largely just to where I am today at Point Click Care, which is really interesting because it is specialized in its own right. It is not inpatient. It is not outpatient. The long term and post acute space has some really interesting nuances, whether we're talking about the level of acuity in some of these facilities or the round the clock nature of them, the staffing challenges that these people have.
[00:02:29] Robin Roberts And they serve a really critical population. Robin Roberts So you have regulatory in your title. So I got to ask you, what regulations are you tracking right now? Robin Roberts Oh my gosh. Well, let's just say, as you probably well know, there is no shortage of regulatory things going on for the last year plus. And so we are seeing a lot of RFIs come out, the request for information. We've seen them on imaging, right? That's out there. Talking about using AI, artificial intelligence to advance clinical care. Probably most recently, the ASTP Office
[00:02:58] National Coordinator Rule, HTI 5, really lessening the burden on EHRs for certain criteria that they had to do things that maybe didn't have a ton of value and some changes to information blocking. But I also would be remiss not to acknowledge that we're seeing a lot of regulatory changes come out. But we are also seeing a lot of changes even in value based care at large. This administration is moving very fast. And it's kind of all at a fever pitch. And it doesn't seem to be slowing down.
[00:03:27] Let's talk about the rural transformation bill. How is that impacting the folks that you work with? Actually, that's a really great point. I'm glad you brought that up, Grace. We just saw some of the first awards that came out to certain states. And so we are focused all across the U.S. So those are urban areas and rural health.
[00:03:45] The federal government putting those dollars in the hands of the states and the states deciding how to use those within the guardrails of what came out, I think has the potential to be game changer for some of those facilities in these areas in the country. Whether they are serving patients that have difficulty getting access to care, people that have trouble getting transitions of care completed.
[00:04:08] So our state directors are working with states all across the U.S. to help understand how we can be of value to them in those populations to use those dollars effectively in a meaningful way. Really kind of activating technology as a way to help facilitate the use of those funds for the benefit of those patients. I know a lot of HIEs, too, have talked about really hoping that this rural transformation bill will help save them in a way or really reinvigorate the work that they're doing. Do you find that as well?
[00:04:37] Yeah. So our teams are also, we work with a lot of HIEs across the country, state and regional. And so they play a key role in their states in facilitating the information exchange for the patients with an understanding of what happens at probably more of a hyper-local level than anyone else ever could. And so the partnership with them to understand how we can leverage those partnerships to help as well, I think will be key.
[00:05:02] They have, I think we see them right now also being a vehicle for some of these funds that are there in the state. And so I think it's going to lead to some really meaningful partnerships. For the many different folks that you work with, what are some of the biggest challenges you're hearing about, whether it be technical or care challenges? Just what is something that racks your brain? Like, why is this still around right now?
[00:05:26] Yeah, I think the biggest thing has probably been for the partnerships in skilled nursing facilities to be a more integrated part of care across America. Not only did those SNFs not get the high-tech dollars of meaningful use like we were talking about, but they did not have the benefit of the people helping train those end users. They were not part of the regional extension centers that were going on.
[00:05:50] And so when I think about how the skilled nursing facilities and post-acute world really lack some of this information and integration sometimes, it really just is still perplexing or befuddling to my mind.
[00:06:04] When that SNF patient leaves the hospital and needs to go to that level of care, there should be no reason that information has not moved in real time, that we do not have a patient or resident's medication list with fidelity, and that it is not nearly instantaneous. And so we know that the technical tracks exist to move that information, and we do a lot with it. But I think there is still a long ways to go.
[00:06:30] Point Click Care is such a unique position in the industry, and I don't think people realize the vast amount of collaborations, partnership, integrations that you have with so much in the ecosphere. So tell me a little bit about that, just the ecosphere that is Point Click Care and how it's empowering innovation in SNFs and beyond. Yeah, absolutely. I'll be honest with you.
[00:06:53] When I first learned about Point Click Care way back when, even before joining their team, I just thought that they were just an EHR focused in this population of long-term and post-acute care.
[00:07:03] I had no idea that they were tied into hospitals, that they were connected to payers, that they were helping transitional nurse navigators and care teams have the insights and information they needed about these patients and their transitions, whether they were coming for a post-acute stay for maybe just like a rehab or even facilitating a care, long-term care in the mental and behavioral health space.
[00:07:27] They are really tied in across that ecosphere, even to the extent that they're partnered with some of these pharmacies in long-term care, which is completely different than inpatient and retail pharmacy. The integration and tendrils into the market that they have on behalf of this population is certainly unique in its own right.
[00:07:45] And when I think about their ability to innovate, when they make a choice to do something, when we at Point Click Care are doing something solution by design or AI, we do a strong job thinking about how that solution will have ripples. And so the thing I love about that innovation is that they are always thinking end-to-end about where all of those tendrils go across the ecosystem into all of these key stakeholders. It's pretty incredible to think about just how many touch points Point Click Care has. The name couldn't be more fitting for you guys, seriously.
[00:08:16] Now, when you're thinking about innovation, what excites you in this space? What just kind of keeps you going? There's so much bad stuff, and I love to hear about just the good stuff when it comes to innovation that's happening right now. Yeah, I think one of the neatest things we've done, and it's really just about activating information, Grace, is when we talk about transitions of care, the information that we're able to share across our national network with payers and with hospitals and those key stakeholders that we just talked about.
[00:08:45] When I think about where that information meets an end user, that's where I get really excited. Even in thinking about the new team model that's out there for a hospital, for example, those hospitals have to do value-based care for certain surgical episodes of care. It is not voluntary. It is not quasi-mandatory. It is very mandatory.
[00:09:05] When that patient leaves the hospital for one of these new episodes of care in this new model, in this risk-bearing model, first single-sided and then double-sided in year two and beyond, you need a line of visibility into what is going on with that patient. You can't just let them leave the hospital and let these things happen in a vacuum. The thing that I am most excited about is how we are surfacing that information back to the people that have an interest in that patient. Very hub and spoke.
[00:09:31] It is all about that individual patient, all about that individual resident. And when we're sharing that information to the point that there is real-time collaboration between a nurse at a skilled nursing facility and maybe a care team member or transitional nurse navigator at a hospital, when that data has been activated to the benefit of the patient, it's really simple. But that's the stuff that I get most excited about. Well, my listeners love to hear about what's going on in the space. And thank you so much for sharing your insights with us.
[00:09:59] They also love to learn from women leaders about what drives them. So tell me, what are things that you do in your daily life to work your best and make a difference? That's great. I think the biggest thing, especially as a working mom, is probably just being hyper-organized. But at the end of the day, Grace, I always think about how we are making a difference for patients. Healthcare is really big. And at the end of the day, point-click care, we're serving those that serve others. And so to be able to sit in that seat is really privileged.
[00:10:27] But I can't run my day without being super, super organized. Yeah. So what are some things that you do to help overcome challenges in your life? Obviously, challenges, obstacles come our way. Horrible things happen. And as a woman leader, you kind of have to just still keep going. So what are things that you do to just keep going? Okay, I'm going to say something really silly. So everyone has challenges. Stuff goes on all the time. I had a mutual girlfriend say something a few weeks back that she listened to something and thought about things differently.
[00:10:57] That every time there's an issue or a challenge, she thinks about life as a board game and like how she's just drawn a card. And maybe it's a bad card. Maybe it's a go back two spaces card. Maybe it's a lose a turn card. But whatever this challenge is translates into this bad card you've just drawn. But here's what she told me. She said we have to learn from that move, whatever's been thrown at us in this game of life. And if you don't learn from it, it's no different than taking that card or that lose a space or go back, go around again and putting it back on the top of the deck.
[00:11:26] So as things come at us, we have no choice but to move through them. But if we don't learn from them, we're just going to relive them if we don't. So I thought that was really just kind of a novel way to think about things. And so no one gets the benefit of being able to hit the fast forward button and just move past hard stuff. And so trying to think about it in holistic terms. Also, my aunt says something I really love. She always says, everything is temporary, Robin. Everything is temporary. And it sounds cliche, but it's true. So inspiring. Well, thank you so much.
[00:11:55] Where can my listeners find you online? I am on LinkedIn. I'm also on X. But you can find Point Click Care all over the internet or at pointclickcare.com. Thanks for joining us. It was awesome learning from you. Thanks, Grace. And thanks to you folks for joining us too. Check out the High Tea with Grace podcast for more interviews with great guests like Robin today. Cheers. Like a Girl Media is more than a media network. It's a community. We want to meet you and amplify your voice and the voices of outstanding women innovating in healthcare.
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