In this episode

Tarun Kapoor, MD, MBA, Virtua Health’s Chief Digital Transformation Officer, discusses moving beyond superficial digital transformation efforts to achieve tangible outcomes. He breaks down how health systems can go beyond EHR-first approaches, leverage digital tools for true consumer success, and tackle real-world challenges like care gap closures and patient communication.

“We have to think beyond just a front door. Patients engage in different ways at different times—so we need to meet them where they are, how they are, when they need it. It’s about delivering success, not just engagement.”

– Tarun Kapoor, MD, MBA

 

Key takeaways

Focus on getting patients to the outcome they need, rather than on digital transformation for its own sake.

“Whenever I hear the word ‘digital,’ I say, ‘Time out. What part of digital are we talking about?'” Kapoor said. He defines digital transformation as not just adapting workflows to be digitized, but “fundamentally changing the business.”

And when he approaches the patient experience, Kapoor said, he focuses on more than just engagement or digital workflows, but on what patients need and how those needs might change even throughout the day. “You know me – I don’t use the term ‘digital front door,'” he said. “I can’t remember the last time I went through the front door of my house. You can’t say that you’re going to be multimodal and only be unimodal,” he said.

“Consumers want success, not just engagement. If you think about it, when I shop on Amazon, I’m not looking for a ton of engagement—I just want my order to arrive as quickly as possible. The same goes for healthcare. Patients don’t always want an appointment; they want answers. Meeting them where they are, at the right time and in the right way, is key to a great patient experience,” Kapoor said.

As a particular success, Kapoor covered an initiative to identify patients due for a colonoscopy who are eligible for a home Cologuard® test instead. “Almost thirteen thousand people we pinged. 3,500 sent us responses back, and 900 sent us a result. That’s really good news. They actually had done something. We just needed to give them a convenient way of getting us a result. Over two  hundred and fifty of them were walking around with positive results, precancerous lesions, and now we’re getting them in for their scopes,” he said. “Learning the techniques that other industries have been so successful with, bringing them into healthcare…these aren’t super expensive techniques to engage people. We’re saving lives and having meaningful impact on people’s quality of lives. It’s probably been some of the most fulfilling work we’ve done, both for me personally and as a clinician.”

Include staff and clinician experience in your digital transformation goals.

Adopt technologies that streamline workflows, reduce administrative burdens, and support staff in delivering efficient care, recommends Kapoor.

“We’ve done some great things for our patient consumers, but we’ve really mucked it up for our internal consumers—our clinicians and staff. Digital transformation isn’t just about patients; it’s about making sure our healthcare teams have the right tools to do their jobs efficiently and effectively. If we don’t support them, we’re not truly transforming healthcare,” said Kapoor.

“The three consumer sets in healthcare you should think about are, of course, your patient consumer, but you also need to think about your clinician consumer, and then the other nonclinical folks who work in healthcare. You have to have tools that are good for all three of them. And sometimes we don’t think this all the way through, and we do something that’s good for one consumer set, but usually because it’s at the expense of the on one of the other consumer sets,” Kapoor said.

He encourages leaders to look for “triple wins,” where the patient, clinician, and staff experience all improve.