Heidi Carpenter 00:00
We're constantly going back and forth with payers to get services covered. Some payer might think that only a speech therapist should be doing this not an occupational therapist, and so then working with the insurance to show them know, we're both trains in this area.
Jerrod Bailey 00:22
I think why does that break down there? Why what's the root of that breakdown? That is, we're going to guess.
Heidi Carpenter 00:30
And my guess is that probably the people, a lot of times the people who are making these decisions aren't clinicians. You know, they didn't go through school. And so they might just be looking at it from antiquated evidence or something that they were told 10 years ago.
Jerrod Bailey 00:52
I think that out of date policy or something like that.
Heidi Carpenter 00:55
Or it seems simpler in their mind to categorize it
Jerrod Bailey 01:03
will see you just pointed at the solution indirectly, though, it's like how do they get access to the right, clinical trained opinions quickly in a way that they can consume it and then be able to turn that into a better decision, right.
Welcome, everyone to reimagining healthcare, a new dialogue with risk and patient safety leaders presented by Medplace. We're excited to bring you conversations with top risk and patient safety thought leaders from organizations around the country, please subscribe to get the latest news and content. And if you found this episode valuable by all means, share it with your communities like to see these dialogues continue. If you're interested in participating as a guest, please email us at speakers at Medplace.com. You can also check out any of our related content like articles, videos, and more at blog dot Medplace.com/resources. Today, I'm joined by Dr. Heidi Carpenter, the President have helped me out is it Arizona OTA or Arizona? How do we want to pronounce that?
Heidi Carpenter 02:12
You got it! It's the Arizona Occupational Therapy Association, Arizona.
Jerrod Bailey 02:18
Arizona, I love it. Okay,
Heidi Carpenter 02:20
so thank you so much for having me. The one thing I do want to say about technology, though, is this ability to help with predictive, like decision making when there are these huge data sets that could be valuable. But we basically spend all this time on documentation that goes to our payers, but oftentimes a black hole, that valuable insight is often lost. So this kind of feeds into the drumbeat conversation of I want us to work smarter, not harder as the profession and use what we're, like leverage what we're already using to inform us to be the best clinicians we can because we don't want to be overtaken by AI. Right. Like I read an article about a gym teacher who fed into chat GPT How do I make a how do I set up an accessible basketball game? And chat GPT gave him an entire list of recommendations. Now they were generalized, it might not have worked for his specific population of students group of students. But still, that gets a little bit scary. Right? Yeah,
Jerrod Bailey 03:35
I hear you hear scary. I hear opportunity, Lukasz. Boy, we could have a lot worse, PE teachers be a lot better with some augmentation of what they know, like being able to give them sort of instant access to experience, right.
It's kind of like Google, for this last generation, they took for granted that Google is a thing right? For me, I had to go to the library and the whole Dewey Decimal System and you try to find a book and then you got to pour through it to find the one thing the fact that you were looking for it not because you're just Googling it, take for granted what it took to get there, like think the next generation is going to have the same access to AI. And it's going to be like, not just Can I Can you give me instant access to information, but can you give me the right answer synthesized and packaged?
And and then so then what the so what, what does that mean? My value is if, if that thing's doing that for me, and I can there's all kinds of interesting answers to that question. Right? So like, one point of value is like, how do you prompt the AI to get you the answer that you want? How do you do more faster, right? You know, how do I how do I account for mistakes or have AI be able to watch for mistakes so that I can help a larger population of people with fewer mistakes, right and have this sort of built in? Kind of advisor with me, so I just find it fascinating. I see nothing but you know, I've got rose colored glasses Skynet may take over and kill us all. But for right now it sure seems pretty interesting to me. Right?
Heidi Carpenter 05:06
This is what has been keeping me up at night. And I think you're speaking to what is our value? Now, our value can be offerings that we haven't necessarily even thought about yet. Because it shorter time to synthesize information, how many more people can we be serving? And what of a bigger impact can we be making? And then how can we leverage these technologies to teach our students when they're still in the education stages of learning how to be an occupational therapist or an occupational therapy assistant?
Jerrod Bailey 05:41
Yeah, I mean, think about all the times when someone should be going to an occupational therapist, and aren't because of cost a time expense in like just the volume of places that we could meet humans in the treatments. And in just enhancement of the quality of life that at some point, AI can probably help serves serve some of that up, right, we'll have smart homes that might be just monitoring our heartbeats and other things. And to be able to create a larger population for occupational therapists to work with earlier, right, get better outcomes faster things like that sounds delightful to me. But we'll see where it goes. I'm sure a little bit along the way.
Heidi Carpenter 06:23
Right. Right. It does sound delightful, and then creating financial models that support that, I think that these are the pieces that we learned how to be really good providers in school, but then the business side of it, the technology side of it isn't always included. And so then as I'm out in practice, I'm learning I really have to find the people who know the business side and figure out how to make all of it work so that we can progress forward.
Jerrod Bailey 06:58
You know, I'm curious, this doesn't have to be technology related, but what are what are occupational therapists really like? Struggling with the most? Like, what are the main things that you hear from the community of like, where they're struggling or where they need the most help or advice or whatever those things might be?
Heidi Carpenter 07:18
So it's a couple of different things. We're constantly going back and forth with payers to get services covered. You know, just really, some, some pair might think that only a speech therapist should be doing this not an occupational therapist, and so then working with the insurance to show them know, we're both trained in this area. I think,
Jerrod Bailey 07:43
why does that break down there? Why what's what's the root of that breakdown? If you’re going to guess?
Heidi Carpenter 07:50
And my guess is that probably the people, a lot of times the people who are making these decisions aren't clinicians they didn't go through school. And so they might just be looking at it from antiquated evidence or something that they were told 10 years ago,
Jerrod Bailey 08:12
I think that out of date policy or something like that.
Heidi Carpenter 08:15
Right. Yeah. Or it seems simpler in their mind to categorize it
Jerrod Bailey 08:22
will see you just pointed at the solution indirectly, though, it's like how do they get access to the right, clinical trained opinions quickly in a way that they can consume it and then be able to turn that into a better decision, right.
And I've seen the inside of these operations, they don't have access, they, they're sitting in a cubicle with a stack of files this high on their desk. And their job is to like that file cutting those files cut in half and in do all of these things and with not enough time. And in those are, those are problems that get solved with things like AI technology and stuff, being able to break down that barrier. So that they can press a button and talk to somebody who actually has a clinical background and be able to give them a better assessment. Right, and do that quickly. So it's interesting, if that's where the breakdown is, I think there's opportunity, right?
Heidi Carpenter 09:17
I think there is. And then another area of opportunity is some people work in facilities where the productivity requirement is 100%. And as a human, how can you work with someone for 100% of your day when you're there? And that doesn't include documentation. So
Jerrod Bailey 09:40
Oh, right. Yeah. I just saw a post the other day, that's like, it's something about what you're expected to do as a clinician, right? You'd expect to be like billable seven hours a day but you have seven hours of paperwork to do as well on top of that, so
Heidi Carpenter 09:55
great. Yeah. And you know, if you're helping somebody transfer from there, we'll Sure the toilet, you're not doing Point of Service documentation in that moment like that would not be realistic hope not.
Jerrod Bailey 10:05
Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, that's amazing. Yeah, no, that's great, though. Yeah. So we're expecting 100%. It's not realistic. So of course, things are going to break, right in the process and in that system,
Heidi Carpenter 10:22
and unfortunately, the people who are breaking people are getting burnt out, burnout is the highest I think it's ever been and rarely show signs of stopping or slowing down. I think in one sense, it's helping people really recognize what's important to them, and where they want to spend their time. But at the same time, it would be nice if these places where we're really needed had a more realistic view of what was capable in a eight or 10 hours a day where human. You know, robots don't need to take breaks. But I don't know if the AI is quite there for all the nuances required for taking somebody through a OT session.
Jerrod Bailey 11:09
Gosh, well, maybe AI can just sit there and like take notes and do all the documentation for us if nothing else, right?
Heidi Carpenter 11:16
It's very possible. And I love this idea of assisted clinical decision making where, and I know that some physicians are using this, but basically, this really large bank of all this best practice data is pushed to a clinician where say you have somebody come in, they have Parkinson's disease, they are this far along in their diagnosis. Sure, I may have a bank of knowledge from my training of what to do. But I don't have time to read the 30 latest best articles on it. So what if that pushed to me? And then I could make a decision with that information? And you know, my client in front of me?
Jerrod Bailey 11:58
Yeah, that's fantastic. Well, Heidi, what? Anything with the mission as far as the folks listening, is there anything that you know, you want to ask offer? How do people get ahold of you? Like? How, what do you need from the world in? What would you like to say here? Looking for memberships just awareness. What's interesting for you,
Heidi Carpenter 12:27
yes, if you are listening, and you are interested in being a member, I think we even have like non OT practitioner memberships. I'm so bad. I don't know that off the top of my head. But certainly, if you are an occupational therapy, professional listening, become a member of Arizona, but I think there is so much room for collaboration.
And just really working on this preventative side of anybody could really see an OT my husband kind of teases me all the time, that we don't kind of wear our value on our sleeve, we attempt to kind of hide it when even if, if everything is going right for you, there is probably something that an occupational therapy professional could point out or just help you to see about your life or what you're doing. So I just hope that as healthcare continues to progress, we do find models to work together as much as possible.
And I'm a huge fan of like, the triple aim. And now the Quadruple Aim and the right provider, right? Client right time so there's also a new directory, I want to give a shout out to OT potential. OT potential has created an occupational therapy directory for providers. So if you Google that, find it. Yeah. And it's kind of the first of its kind. So it, it's worldwide and it highlights people who are doing great work and occupational therapy is not direct access in all 50 states yet. It is in Arizona, which is nice. However, insurance usually requires that we have a physician overseeing the plan of care. But if we're doing something more non traditional than or cash based, then it's direct access, which is nice. So I really hope to see the presence of occupational therapy continue to grow.
Jerrod Bailey 14:37
Amazing. I love it. Well, thanks for doing what you do. Thanks for joining me today. Is there anything else that we didn't cover that you want to give it?
Heidi Carpenter 14:50
Oh, we could talk all day.
Jerrod Bailey 14:51
I can keep you here all day. Here as well. This was great. I appreciate the flyover and kind of helping me and us understand a little bit more about what your world looks like. Can and hearing some of the challenges the challenges that others and other specialties and other areas of healthcare and medicine are, are all dealing with in one way or the other. So it's nice to know that we're not alone. That we're all thinking about what is the version 2.0 All of our industries look like right?
And a few of us about one one to 2% of us are actually actively visualizing that future in making things happen. So if anyone else is interested in helping you realize the future of occupational therapy, how would they get ahold of you they find you on LinkedIn or
Heidi Carpenter 15:39
yes you can find me on LinkedIn Heidi carpenter I think it's Heidi Ana carpenter, A N A is my middle name at
Jerrod Bailey 15:48
and we'll put that link in the in the show notes also. So if you guys do not have to furiously write those of you listening to this but great so your LinkedIn
Heidi Carpenter 15:56
Yeah, I have a linktree which I think is the coolest thing because you can just update it as you need to. But yes, if you'll find them in the show notes but at Heidi Ana OT is my handle for Twitter and Instagram. And my email is Heidi@embodyOT.com
Jerrod Bailey 16:16
Fantastic. Well, Heidi is pleasure having you. Thanks for spending some time with me. For everyone else. Thank you for listening to reimagining healthcare a new dialogue with risk and patient safety leaders. Subscribe and Share if you found it valuable. And if you'd like to participate as a guest again, just email us at speakers at Medplace.com and make sure that you follow Heidi connect with her on LinkedIn. Again. We'll put all of your info in the show notes. It thanks again. It's good to see you.
Heidi Carpenter 16:41
Thank you so much Jared
