Interview with Curation Health CEO Kevin Coloton

Kevin Coloton always knew he’d be in healthcare. After all, both of his parents and all of their friends worked in the field. Three years ago he founded Curation Health to help providers make the shift to value based care.

As of March 2025 HealthBiz is part of CareTalk. Healthcare. Unfiltered and can be found at the following links:

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Host David E. Williams is president of healthcare strategy consulting firm Health Business Group.

Episodes through March 2025 were produced by Dafna Williams.

Transcript

0:03

Kevin Coloton always knew he'd be in healthcare. After all, both of his parents and all their friends worked in the field. And as a high school athlete, he frequently found himself injured and under the care of a physical therapist, Kevin started off in physical therapy and then he gravitated to the business side of healthcare, earning an MBA and accumulating experience as a consultant hospital administrator and startup executive. Just over three years ago, he founded curation health to simplify care delivery under risk-based contracts, curation preaches, three keys to ensure success a pre-visit review, contextual recommendations that make it easy for a physician to act, and to post visit review by a medical coder after medical visits dried up in early 2020 fee for service providers looked on with envy at their value-based peers who continue to get paid as usual curation health can help. But Kevin explains that fee for service providers typically under appreciate the hard right turn that's needed to succeed in value-based care when your whole infrastructure is built on a fee for service chassis. I'm your host David Williams, president of health business group. If your health care company needs strategy consulting support, please contact me at

David Williams 1:19

dwilliams@healthbusinessgroup.com.

dwilliams-healthbusinessgroup-com_54_05-19-2021_120356 1:29

Well, Kevin, thanks for joining me on the HealthBiz podcast today.

kevin-coloton_1_05-19-2021_120356 1:32

My pleasure to be here. Thanks for the invitation.

dwilliams-healthbusinessgroup-com_54_05-19-2021_120356 1:34

We're going to talk a lot about curation health, but first I want to ask you about your background in some earlier days. So w what was your upbringing like? What were some of your childhood influences?

kevin-coloton_1_05-19-2021_120356 1:45

Yeah, I think it's safe to say I've been a healthcare person since I was an infant, my parents are both pharmacists and our social network, as a kid, I grew up in a really small town in upstate New York. In near the Adirondack mountains, it was a great setting to grow up, but all of my parents' social network were allied health professionals, physical therapists, occupational therapists, pharmacists. And so I found myself gravitating towards the clinical world or clinical practice. And as an athlete, I was injured more, more than I wished. So suspend a lot of time in the trainers room getting rehabbed and gravitated to physical therapy. And I did a master's in physical therapy in Philadelphia, and I practiced for a while at Johns Hopkins. And then from there my path went to the business world,

dwilliams-healthbusinessgroup-com_54_05-19-2021_120356 2:36

yeah, got it. So that's like an easy and easy answer of where your influences were. Now. What sports were you playing that you were getting injured where they're like injury prone sports, or it was just, it was just, you

kevin-coloton_1_05-19-2021_120356 2:46

Yeah,

dwilliams-healthbusinessgroup-com_54_05-19-2021_120356 2:46

know,

kevin-coloton_1_05-19-2021_120356 2:47

it was a whole bunch in a small town. That's a university town St. Lawrence universities in my hometown, and it's a big hockey town. So certainly hockey. I had my fair share of injuries, but then I switched to endurance sports. So I was a triathlete and cross country running and Nordic skiing. And so lots of various overuse injuries over my high school tenure.

dwilliams-healthbusinessgroup-com_54_05-19-2021_120356 3:08

Oh, that's it. That sounds good. Well, I know Canton New York very well since one of my brothers actually lives there. And works for St. Lawrence. So maybe I've seen you around up in the upstate. And when people talk to me, the thing is like, when you tell somebody upstate New York, they think you're talking about maybe... maybe Albany, at the most, maybe they're even thinking like the Bronx,

kevin-coloton_1_05-19-2021_120356 3:26

white Plains, I always get that. Yup.

dwilliams-healthbusinessgroup-com_54_05-19-2021_120356 3:29

you go. So, yeah, but you're talking about now, you say the adirondacks so that's Canada is north of the Adirondacks, so

kevin-coloton_1_05-19-2021_120356 3:34

foothills. yeah, there it's in between the St. Lawrence river and the Adirondack mountains. It's the perfect spot for a young kid to do mountain climbing and boating in the same day.

dwilliams-healthbusinessgroup-com_54_05-19-2021_120356 3:44

Yeah. Awesome. All right. Well, I may say I may be up there in a couple of weeks. I'll see you around. Okay. so now why physical therapy though specifically, because you have the choice of the allied professions, but that one just cause you'd been worked on and they built, done a great job or you'd saw some gaps in care.

kevin-coloton_1_05-19-2021_120356 3:59

I loved Sports medicine. I thought sports medicine was great. I like working with athletes. I was a pretty competitive in athletics and really, really enjoyed and experienced some great trainers. You know, growing up in a small college town, the trainer was the division one trainer. That you would go see, so you had great care and expertise. And I saw the power of that to get me back on the field or back, back in the race. And I wanted to create the same. So I entered physical therapy and sports medicine, but also gravitated towards the holistic nature, inpatient orthopedics, neuro rehabilitation. One of the benefits of working in an academic facility, like, like the Hopkins health system was you have a rotation through various divisions and get a whole 360 view of the profession, which is awesome. I think and for me it was very educational because I hadn't spent much time on inpatient or other activities.

dwilliams-healthbusinessgroup-com_54_05-19-2021_120356 4:54

Now Kevin, a lot of people do go from one profession and decide they need to be in business. So they get an MBA. Sometimes that's somebody, who's an engineer and they feel like, okay, I'm building all this stuff. But these business people that don't know what they're doing are sort of lording it over me and happens with uh, clinicians as well. Did you have a moment when you said, yeah, I got to get on the other side of this

kevin-coloton_1_05-19-2021_120356 5:13

I did. Yeah. I had several moments, but one of the big moments was while working in academic healthcare, a few of my friends and I formed a company. this was 1998. I believe. So it was around the time of the first wave of dotcom booms. And everybody had to do a startup in my peer group at least. And we did an online healthcare education company and I served one of the key roles and actually left clinical practice to do that full time. We learned a ton, we were not successful. But it also taught me that I really needed to understand business better. And it's interesting when I reflect on that. Period of my life. I remember picking up a wall street journal and not really getting a hundred percent of the context of the front page. And clinical was sound, but the business practices, acronyms terminology, methodologies, frameworks were all novel. So I I had the benefit of being at Johns Hopkins and went to the MBA program there which was awesome because it was nearby and very convenient.

dwilliams-healthbusinessgroup-com_54_05-19-2021_120356 6:14

great. So then after that I think after that, or maybe during, during and after you were at the advisory board for the first time and what we'll come back to the second time. So

kevin-coloton_1_05-19-2021_120356 6:23

that's right.

dwilliams-healthbusinessgroup-com_54_05-19-2021_120356 6:23

the advisory board what was that like?

kevin-coloton_1_05-19-2021_120356 6:26

It was interesting. I was so after our startup was not successful, I needed employment and I was one of the rare at that time candidates that emailed their resume to the general email address at the advisory board and. Shockingly got a call. I was a very atypical candidate having a clinical background and no liberal arts. No you know, th the advisory board is an amazing place. Always has been gifted people, high intellect, lots of competence. Competitive spirit. But I was a clinical guy. I didn't know anything about how health systems work or strategy or operations. So for me, I was really surprised. I got a call back and the interview process was completely eyeopening. It was like nothing I'd ever experienced with cases and complexity, complex scenarios that I had that. Walk them through and I loved it. I just loved everything about the interview experience even. But then I was, I was really fortunate to receive an opportunity to join the advisory board company in the member services division, which was presentation, business development. And for me learning how to sell and frame a value proposition that early in my career was so valuable. And it, candidly is one of the one of the key learnings I had in my career was how to position, how to frame, how to present with effectiveness. I had a wonderful experience there. I was on the team when we were going through the initial public offering of the advisory board. I was on the business development team that was there during that time. And had had a great experience. But ultimately at the end of my first time at the advisory board, I really wanted to have expertise in the items I was teaching about. I wanted to understand how hospitals run. I wanted to know how health system strategies implemented and how to optimize approaches and workflows and all of the things that were taught by the advisory board. Very effectively. I wanted to live them. And I had the opportunity to go back to, to the Hopkins health system and an administrator service line administrative role, where I ran orthopedic surgery for a period of time and OB and peds and neonatology and oncology. And I had a really awesome opportunity to see a lot of different services at the one foot level and help design strategy and manage budgets. And all of that was new to me in my career trajectory. And it was great.

dwilliams-healthbusinessgroup-com_54_05-19-2021_120356 8:53

that sounds good. Well, I know when you were at the advisory board, I think my friend Frank Williams was was running at if I, if I recall. So that was, that was some time ago. It's hard to believe it's been 20 years,

kevin-coloton_1_05-19-2021_120356 9:02

that's right. I know. No, it was, it was Jeff science. Who's the COVID czar for for Biden right now. He was the CEO during the IPO period and then Frank immediately after. So

dwilliams-healthbusinessgroup-com_54_05-19-2021_120356 9:12

yeah. Yeah. Great.

kevin-coloton_1_05-19-2021_120356 9:14

great people. I mean, what, what awesome. Opportunities to learn from really amazing leader. So it was a great experience. And then, so Hopkins was great. I had a great run there, really enjoyed it, but I wanted to get more variety too, not just the way one organization works, but many. And that, that led me to Deloitte which was a Great experience. I worked there for a number of years doing health system strategy and funds flow and ended my time there doing. Clinical information system installs mainly epic which, which really launched me into the path of clinical technology.

dwilliams-healthbusinessgroup-com_54_05-19-2021_120356 9:48

Got it now, for some reason you decided to get a job at at target looking

kevin-coloton_1_05-19-2021_120356 9:52

Yeah, that was completely, completely random. Honestly, one of my friends he went to the Kellogg business school and he got a phone call from a recruiter that was looking for healthcare expertise for target. And he said, I'm not your person, but I have a buddy who literally just moved to Minneapolis. My wife was doing her residency in the twin cities. So our whole family moved out there and I was there and I went into. To meet with them. And that's an impressive organization. It's just really fun to see how a fortune, I don't know what number they would be now, but fortune 50 kind of company runs that type of scale and standardization and power of the power of standardization is impressive. And it's really rare in healthcare. So to learn that, and, and I was, I was brought in to help with the clinics the target clinic launch A little known story here that a CVS minute clinics were inside of targets. And when, when CVS acquired the minute clinic brand target had clinics that were ready to be launched. So I was part of the team that brought them to life and to the market. And it was great, great experience. And later I ran healthcare technology for target. So systems that run the pharmacy and optical and over the, counter. And ironically beauty, I didn't really know much about that space, but I learned quite a bit. Yeah. And it was a great run there and I probably would've stayed a lot longer, but my wife moved us back east for her second medical residency. And so that's when I joined my old friend Trenor Williams from Deloitte. And we, we as one of the, founding partners of that group, that was Clinovations based in DC and it. was clinically oriented. EHR optimization is really what we were doing.

dwilliams-healthbusinessgroup-com_54_05-19-2021_120356 11:31

no, that sounds pretty good. Now then back to the advisory board, what was that about? Like, did you think you were going to like go back at us? Like, did you have to qualify for benefits? You were like coping they'd count your whole 20, you know, 15, 20 years of experience.

kevin-coloton_1_05-19-2021_120356 11:43

If it wasn't the complexity, but my email address already existed. Right. Because I was there from years before. But so the, the journey there was Clinovations was one of my favorite experiences. I mean, it's just so fun to build something that. You shape. And it was my first opportunity to have a real entrepreneurial venture that was constructed and very thoughtfully designed. And it was an era when technology was being installed. Massive spend on EMR and. We learned a lot from my Deloitte experience. at the power of transformation using this implementation of technology as a vehicle to optimize workflows and transform care delivery and use data differently. So we tried to take some of those learnings and create a clinically oriented version of that. Where most of our team were doctors, nurses, and others paired with great management consultants to go in and have a light touch on optimization of what they've already installed to add value and improve workflows. We had a great great run. And then in 2014 we elected to partner with the advisory board. We were acquired by the advisory board in 2014. And it was all, it was such a great pairing. I mean, one, I knew much of the leadership and had fond memories and current experiences with them. And it was a great a great partnership for us because at that time Growth was all being generated by the, the key leadership of Clinovations and to continue to grow and be successful. The advisory board was the perfect opportunity because no one had better health system and other relationships and access. And it really was a great fuel for our continued growth. And I stayed at a through 27... spring of 2017 and then took a little time off to figure out what's next for me.

dwilliams-healthbusinessgroup-com_54_05-19-2021_120356 13:33

Yeah. So there we are. So after all that work from the from, you know, face down in the mud in Canton, all the way through a PT and your MBA and a tour out to Minneapolis, which is almost as cold as Canton, depending on

kevin-coloton_1_05-19-2021_120356 13:46

It's same latitude. My parents would say, yeah,

dwilliams-healthbusinessgroup-com_54_05-19-2021_120356 13:50

And then all the way back and the advisory board, and now time to found a company. So cure curation health. So what is that all about? What was, what was the need for that?

kevin-coloton_1_05-19-2021_120356 13:59

So the Genesis of curation was in our clinic patients experience. One of the, one of the most interesting opportunities we identified were health systems. We're just, this is 2012, 2013. They were just starting to try to solve for what value based care would look like. And this is early stages and really candidly very. Early entry points to engage providers, to document a little differently and capture different information and go beyond traditional fee for service. And we created a solution that was highly effective, that was inside the electronic health record focused on those needs. Fast forward to 2017. I did a walk about of a, of a host of different organizations to understand what do organizations at the highest level of value based care do? What are their workflows? What information do they use, who uses it? What actions do they take? What results do they achieve? And then better understand what that type of organization would benefit from. And after that experience we architected a, a. Point of view on a tech enabled workforce flow to facilitate that that standard process that I saw over and over again, almost every organization, interestingly had millions of permutations of the little things, but consistent implementation of three key things. And that was the Genesis really of, of how we architected the initial curation health platform. And, and our journey was interesting. We, we partnered with early on with a private equity firm in New York called wind rose who have been awesome partners. And we we spent a lot of time in partnership with one of their other companies at the time, which was called trust HCS, which is a coding and CDI staffing company. And we had access to their experts to help shape our solution. And it was the perfect launch for us to build curation health into what it is today.

dwilliams-healthbusinessgroup-com_54_05-19-2021_120356 16:04

now what, and when you talk about what you're doing today I understand you work with providers. You work with payers. I mean, what's what, what, how do you do that?

kevin-coloton_1_05-19-2021_120356 16:12

Yeah, the, the three phenotypes of our clients number one is Large integrated health systems. That's really probably where we spend a tremendous amount of our energy. The second one is health plans that are either forging new relationships with provider networks or employ their own provider groups. And the third is interestingly, this one has been so fun home. Based primary care home-based specialty care. And candidly, that's been one of the fastest growing elements. I think it's, it's because of massive investment in emphasis in that space. But those are the three phenotypes of who we serve. The value proposition is different for each one. Each one has different priorities, but the central thesis is the same in order to win under value based care. A provider needs to document a specific. Note with appropriate diagnoses and accurate codes. That's the only way to elevate performance and really do a good job in value-based care. So knowing that's the central tenant of success, we approach how we partner with those different organizations around that theme of, of provider adoption, engagement and success.

dwilliams-healthbusinessgroup-com_54_05-19-2021_120356 17:29

and now on the, on the payer side, you know, how does that work? I mean, what are they really focused on? Cause they talk about value-based care, but a lot of it is also driven by whatever the government decides to do.

kevin-coloton_1_05-19-2021_120356 17:40

Yes, no, that's right. It's plan driven. And I think we have to, we have to submit a few tenants here. First one is most people I interact with believe that value based care is not. Perfect, but is likely a better reimbursement vehicle than fee for service, which has been the legacy structure. The second is most of the organizations to date and value based care that are under real risk where the plants providers would take a little bit of upside risks, maybe a little bit of downside risk. But they were very much in the, just getting started in that world. And the plans had. That held the risk. And because of that the Genesis of that evolution has been interesting because since providers weren't really incentive to participate directly in value based care plans were at on the hook for performance. So they built an entire infrastructure and system of finding ways to not. And not require the doctor to participate, but rather do things in retrospective format, which was the perfect avenue for technologies like natural language processing and others to harvest value from previously documented encounters and to, and to code on diagnoses that were captured comprehensively, but not previously coded. And that was a huge part of the evolution of value-based care from a plan standpoint is to run those plays. I think if we measure in 2020, things changed dramatically, not just because of a global pandemic. The pandemic highlighted a lot of interesting nuance here. One is provider organizations that have more value based care than others were more insulated against downside volume. Which was interesting and plans also with utilization had had an interesting year where utilization was down, but, but they were still getting the funds flow they would expect. So there was this interesting period where there was a re-evaluation of how do we partner with providers because the retrospective activities lock you into last year's best possible outcome instead of this year's potential outcome. And the real recipe here. Is to make sure that you are being prospective to capture the true complexity, the care that the patient requires today. And I think one of the interesting things, David, is that if you look at it the way, the way most of our approach, if we were just using retrospective care, Mary Jones last year had a diabetes without complexity, right? Mary Jones. If you're just recapturing year after year rediagnosed for the rest of her life might have diabetes without complexity, cause she still has diabetes. But the other factors aren't considered because you're driving in the rear view mirror, our approach is central around the provider. What information does the provider need to make the most comprehensive and accurate diagnosis? Today that the patient is challenged by. So we take last year's information for sure. But we also do real-time comparison against current information in the electronic health record and medication lists. Lab values, radiation, radiology reports CCDA documents, HIE. We try to create this 360 snapshot a couple of days before a clinical encounter to say. Yeah. last year she had that, but this year, Mary Jones has a comorbidity of CKD. Her A1C has climbed she's on these two medications. So, so doctor last year she had this, we would think you should evaluate her for this and for the physician. The key is, and this is where we spend most of our energy. David is understanding what the provider needs. They need contextual recommendations. If you just say Mary Jones has a new diagnosis of X without context there, you're asking them to act with their medical license on the line without really enough information to be comfortable. And there's for the adoption of these recommendations has traditionally been somewhat low or depressed? Our adoption is 80 plus percent of recommendations because of that contextualization. We justify the recommendation rather than just blurt out a black box recommendation that they're supposed to act on. So, that, that's an important differentiation of how we're trying to approach this is what does the provider need?

dwilliams-healthbusinessgroup-com_54_05-19-2021_120356 22:22

now Kevin, the providers and payers are supposed to work together in value-based care, but traditionally it's been more of an adversarial relationship. So do you make it all harmonized and nice and sweeter or you have some other approach or are you just stand back and let them go at it?

kevin-coloton_1_05-19-2021_120356 22:38

no, we try to harmonize. I mean, we, the goal is the patient's outcome, right? Th that's that's, that should be the shared objective. And if we use that lens that way we go upstream from that promise is the provider needs to be able to act with effectiveness, to comprehensively care for the patient. Then you'd go up to the financial mechanisms there. I think if you ask a provider organization, they want simplicity. They don't want gas, gauges, bar graphs, thermometer displays. They just want, what is the workflow or the to-do list clinically that makes it most advantageous for me to care for this patient right now. I don't want to have to know what four-letter acronym risk adjustment plan this patient is, is, is aligned with. I just want to know what are the challenges this patient faces. So the goal in the provider organization is simplicity and fidelity of the recommendations in how we approach working with them. The plan has a different challenge. The plan is challenged by the adoption of these providers to fulfill certain tasks or diagnose certain conditions or rediagnosed certain conditions. So we subscribed to, if you make it as easy as possible for the physician to act on great information. Everybody in the value chain wins. The plan wins because there's there, they are acting on the information that's available and comprehensively categorizing the diagnoses and the true complexity of that patient, that provider wins because they're able to efficiently go through their workflow and be successful in value based care. And the patient wins because they're actually getting the full care that They're promised as part of value based care. So we find, if we focus on those fundamentals, it becomes harmonious. The, the challenges payers face are a little different than providers though. The plans have always been challenged by they're not allowed in the room with the provider and the patient. The plans have often an information lag where it can, they have to wait until the claim comes back to know if. Care gaps were closed or diagnoses were completed or annual wellness visits were completed. And that can be seven weeks to three months of time. And they are also challenged by often their list of patients that are in that program are different than the providers because they change over time. So what we work with plans on is we can solve a lot of those pain points for them by. Harmonizing those attributed lists where we're only firing in the providers, EHR, those patients that are mapped to the source of truth, for example, or we know if a provider took care of something the day after the visit, not three months after the visit. And we can circle back if, if we're given permission to them, So the plan and say, Hey, they completed these clinical tasks. And ultimately the goal is for adoption and use and make it easy for the physicians to do the right thing for the patients and that inertia. We seek to remove now we're not a, not a silver bullet. There's a lot of workflow, investment and change management required. But our solution definitely is take steps to make it easier. And I think David it's important for me to just mention how this works now that I've gone into the real, the intricacies of the partnerships and the, and the paradigms we call it, the three Cs. And I mentioned in my walk about, I saw millions of permutations, but three essential functions. The first essential function. And I would submit the most valuable function is the pre-visit review, which is becoming in Vogue in the last couple of years is not relying on the physician to review all of the last years notes that they wrote about this patient, but having another professional pour through the records to pull out what are the likely scenarios and challenges and recapture rediagnose opportunities or. Immunizations vaccinations and others that need to be done for this patient. All of that pre encounter. And that could be telemedicine encounter in-person encounter home-based encounter. Everybody does that. The second thing, most organizations that are high-performance do they try to make it easy as possible for the physician to use those insights on paper, on an Excel spreadsheet, the MAtelling the doc right before they go in the room, full integration into EHR, et cetera. And then the third step is post visit coder review. A lot of organizations are still using physician directed coding, and I'm married to a physician and we work with them all day and they did not go to med school for, for coding or really for documentation expertise. So having a coder review. The encounter that the documentation and the codes and make sure they're appropriately mapped or query. If they're not, is a very essential function that high-performance organizations do. So once we understood those three phases of intervention, we built a technology enabled workflow that. Automates that workflow across those three phases. So pre-visit, we analyze all the available information and we run it through our algorithms. We've been had the good fortune of doing this for a very long time, since 2012, at least where we've developed algorithms that say this diagnosis, plus this diagnosis. Plus these medications yield this likely outcome. And we run all that information through those algorithms to discern you can call it AI, but I would rather be more comfortable to say it's algorithmic of proven and evidence driven diagnoses workflows. We, if you have a human involved in the equation where most high performance groups do, they then review the output of our curation workflow the rules engine, and then add context that that makes it easier for the physician to interpret that information or adds insights to that. They then click submit and we're embedded in the EMR. And I'm going to pause for a minute. I'm going to clarify. There is a challenge in our marketplace of the word interface. It means everything from a pipe that is throwing data outside of the organization, somewhere else to fully integrating, enter embedding insights in the workflow of an EMR. The, the bookends are very broad. We have gone through the exhaustive and awesome process of being certified partners with most of the major. Electronic health records, which gives us access to the inner workings of the EMR. So our results are part of their internal EMR workflow. So when the physician clicks the name on the schedule, our window pops up within their EMR that facilitates their intervention, which is awesome. And it removes the inertia of going to a portal or going to some other website or using an external form. It's just part of it. Um, so that, that is the second phase is making as easy as possible. And having, you know, lots of years of experience of EMR optimization, we're very comfortable with how to design this in a way where physicians celebrate it. And our physician net promoter scores are very, very high, which we're proud of because we've made it easy for them to do the right thing when they're done. Then the coder is prompt and the curation platform to review that documentation and coding for accuracy and compliance. But also if it's not subs, if the diagnosis is supported with enough or the right documentation to be a partner to the physician, to help them improve and, and elevate their performance and make sure before it goes into a bill form, that it's correct. So that is the third step of our workflow and we technology enable that process.

dwilliams-healthbusinessgroup-com_54_05-19-2021_120356 30:29

no, that sounds good. Well, Kevin, you know, it sounds like, the value-based care is interesting. You have to sometimes explain it to people on why it may be better, worse than fee for service. As you mentioned about a year ago. When the volumes stopped and those that were reliant on fee for service. So did the revenue, whereas in value-based care found that wasn't the case. That's I think people have got a memory that's now firmly implanted with that. And it sounds like your, your three key functions are going to help them to to take the next step. Now that we've got everybody interested in it,

kevin-coloton_1_05-19-2021_120356 31:00

I think the interesting thing, David I would I agree with what you just said fully. I think the challenge is people innocently believe that it's literally just a pivot.

dwilliams-healthbusinessgroup-com_54_05-19-2021_120356 31:12

Yeah

kevin-coloton_1_05-19-2021_120356 31:12

and fee for service organizations that are highly successful, highly refined are underappreciated. The C the significant of that hard right. Turn. Because the infrastructure of most of our healthcare delivery organizations are built on a fee for service chassis, scheduling patient density time with patient seven to 13 minutes. All of the infrastructure is the antithesis of the way a full value based care organization runs where they have much less compressed schedules and up to 75 minute clinic appointments. And. And a team-based approach to facilitate a value based care workflow. And so a big part of our efforts with a lot of our provider organization partners is helping them discern the Delta between their current. Operational activities and what likely they'll need to invest in to achieve excellence and value based care. And that chasm can be very stark for a lot of organizations to fully understand the complexity. I think the appropriate. A challenge they're facing is the finance team is very excited to sign up for a value-based care, especially after 2020. The challenge is the, the flow to the operations team and the technology team and the provider organizations and the allied health professionals and clinical care that it takes to really harmoniously run. The symphony is very significant. So I think a lot of organizations are embarking on a more aggressive effort to go to value based care, but it's not without pitfalls and dangers in that it really needs to be a transformational approach, not an iterative approach to that migration, which is okay. Interesting to watch. W we have we have a ringside seat and we're really involved in helping our client make that turn. But I think there's, there continues to be an under appreciation of the investment required.

dwilliams-healthbusinessgroup-com_54_05-19-2021_120356 33:09

good. Well, we'll keep an eye on that and make sure that people can listen back and they can maybe replay it as part of the podcast. In case they thought that somebody told them it was going to be easy. Cause that's not the case. Kevin, let me just switch over to our last topic. And I know you've been certainly busy building this, this business, but. I want to ask you about reading. Are you reading any, anything, and anything you would recommend? If so,

kevin-coloton_1_05-19-2021_120356 33:31

so I have been, so in the last year, I think like many, the pandemic created a lot of of change in people's life. And actually interestingly, for the first time in my life, a sudden transition of intensity where I was, you know, 75% travel last 15 years of my life. So this all of a sudden not doing that was interesting and, and spending a lot of time trying to pivot how do you do what we do and serve clients at the same level of excellence. Remotely was a huge shift and I'm not alone in that many, many companies, especially entrepreneurial ones had to quickly figure that out. And we were very fortunate that our approach and solution is well designed for that, but I was not traveling. I was at home and I have three young kids at home, and that was a blessing to be able to spend more time with them. But I'll be honest with you. Most of my reading was new hobbies and pursuits. Like my kids call it the COVID table, but I built a dining room table. During the spring of 2020.Nice. And I had lots of woodworking experience, but not at that level of fine woodworking. So, much of my reading was how do you understand grain orientation of wood and joinery and all of these other things. And that was a big part of the early part of 2020 was trying to learn that and learn new things. I started getting interested in podcasts. I had never really had the time other than when I'm on a plane to really listen to podcasts. And there's a whole host of them that I've really enjoyed and out of industry and in industry and really related to what we're working on. And then I returned to some of my fundamental reading that I hadn't read in forever. Like the classic getting things done. Book trying to reorganize and reset some of the things that had become imbalanced in the past of being overwhelmed, entrepreneurial ventures are awesome and exhausting. And sometimes you, you forget how you fundamentally set things up before. So, so resetting some of those has been interesting. So a very diverse set of readings in the last year.

dwilliams-healthbusinessgroup-com_54_05-19-2021_120356 35:35

no, it sounds it sounds good, but maybe you'll be back hitting the road again soon if you haven't already.

kevin-coloton_1_05-19-2021_120356 35:40

yeah we're, we're starting to have, you know, most of our clients are care delivery organizations that are still being super cautious around COVID protocols, which we respect. But what I anticipate in the coming months we'll be returning to some form of personal interaction. I mean, it was really interesting to engage. Novel relationships in a completely virtual way. Because normally there's a personal approach to these types of partnerships. They're important. They're strategically imperative And we want, we take them very seriously, but building a virtual relationship is different. So we, we look forward to getting those only virtual relationships to have a human component to them, but also our long standing clients getting back out and spending time with them to understand how things are going on. The ground will be great.

dwilliams-healthbusinessgroup-com_54_05-19-2021_120356 36:24

great. Well, Kevin Coloton founder, and CEO of curation health, it's been a pleasure speaking with you today.

kevin-coloton_1_05-19-2021_120356 36:31

same. Thanks for the opportunity.

36:34

You've been listening to the health biz podcast with me, David Williams, president of health business group. I conduct in-depth. I think confused with leaders in healthcare, business, and policy. If you like, what you hear, go ahead and subscribe on your favorite service while you're at it. Go ahead and subscribe on your second and third favorite services as well. There's more good stuff to come and you won't want to miss an episode. If your organization is seeking strategy consulting services and healthcare. Check out our website health business group.com.