(Typically) on Fridays, we schedule our rounds with Healthcare Brew readers. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Click here to introduce yourself.

This week’s Making Rounds spotlights Devika Mathrani, chief marketing and communications officer at NewYork-Presbyterian, the second-largest health system in New York City by annual net patient revenue. Mathrani, who leads a team of just over 100 people, spoke about the changing dynamics of healthcare marketing as the industry becomes more consumer-centric.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What’s the biggest misconception people have about your job?

When people see “chief marketing officer,” they immediately think about advertising. There is so, so much more than just advertising…So much of it is about how you take the brilliant information and knowledge that our nurses and our physicians have and make it approachable and attainable for consumers in their daily lives…The marketing team is thinking about every patient communication. Like, when you arrive at your appointment, what does the greeting feel like?...You’re almost a chief customer officer in many, many ways.

What would you consider your biggest accomplishment during your time at NewYork-Presbyterian?

One of the things I’m most proud of is the reinvention of the brand…The old brand was “Amazing Things are Happening Here,” which felt a little bit more insular. It was talking a little bit more about us, and it wasn’t bringing the customer into the story. I felt that for all of the innovative things that we wanted to do—whether it was launching a new podcast or redoing our content programs, or relaunching our social channels—it needed to be done with the customer at the center of everything.

Keep reading here.—MA

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email Maia at [email protected]. For completely confidential conversations, ask Maia for her number on Signal.

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Hospital outpatient departments are more likely than independent doctor offices and ambulatory surgical centers to treat patients from populations the American Hospital Association (AHA) says are “medically underserved”—and many have complex medical conditions, according to a new study.

A late-March AHA report found that Medicare patients who received outpatient care at hospitals were more likely to be lower income, non-white, and “burdened with more severe comorbidities or complications,” compared to those treated in other facilities. They were also twice as likely than those treated in independent physician offices to have received care in an emergency department or hospital in the previous 90 days.

And about one-third (31%) of Medicare recipients enrolled in the federal insurance program due to disability or end-stage renal disease were treated in hospital outpatient departments, compared to 19% who got care at an independent physician office, according to the study, which KNG Health Consulting, a Maryland-based firm, conducted for the AHA.

AHA President and CEO Rick Pollack said in a statement that while hospitals serve “the sickest patients and those left behind economically in our communities,” Medicare reimburses facilities “less than the cost of providing care”—84 cents for every dollar spent on care, according to 2020 AHA survey data.

AHA executives have criticized “site-neutral” payment policies, which seek to align reimbursement for services, arguing that they “fail to recognize the legitimate differences in the types of services hospitals provide.”

Methodology: The study covered the period between 2019 and 2021, and “aligned beneficiaries to the setting where they had the most ambulatory care claims.” It did not include Medicare Advantage plan beneficiaries. A different classification method for patients “could potentially yield different results,” the authors noted, adding that the Covid-19 pandemic “may have skewed patient and clinical characteristics.”—SY

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email Shannon at [email protected]. For completely confidential conversations, ask Shannon for her number on Signal.

Nasim Eftekhari thinks healthcare could use a few more data engineers—the kinds of professionals who know how to work with the predictive models supporting California’s City of Hope medical center, where she oversees applied AI and data science.

With the help of AI, City of Hope patients can be continuously monitored for surgery complications, like sepsis or infection. The analytical models pull from the facility’s electronic-medical records system, known as Epic.

“These models are continuously monitoring patients, and if there is a risk, if there is something that needs to be done, there is a notification that pops up inside Epic, in a physician’s working environment, and they get to take action,” Eftekhari told IT Brew.

While some AI applications are already in effect at City of Hope, other “moonshot” ones are in the works, like using models to closely watch cells for early signs of cancer.

Whether moon-bound or Earth-bound AI, Eftekhari told IT Brew about the AI-specific skills that are in demand—and how to acquire them.

Keep reading at IT Brew.—BH

Today’s top healthcare reads.

Stat: Black residents in counties with more Black doctors had much better health outcomes and life expectancies. (Stat News)

Quote: “She probably would have continued to wither within herself. I think she would have been a stay-at-home person and a recluse.”—A woman in Missouri on her daughter, who has Down syndrome and could not get a quick and accurate diagnosis of a traumatic brain injury due to her genetic disorder (NBC News)

Read: CoolSculpt, a body-contouring and fat reduction treatment, has “considerably higher” patient risks than manufacturer estimates, according to a New York Times investigation. (the New York Times)

Catch up on the top Healthcare Brew stories you may have missed:

• Drugs left off PBM lists can lead to worse patient outcomes, higher costs
• Northwell Health President and CEO Michael Dowling likes to ‘be 1st in everything’
• NYC mulls hospital price transparency measure