Tammy Taylor’s distinguished career has spanned over 30 years leading large health system revenue cycle teams with a focus on tech-enabled service delivery. Taylor possesses a recognized talent to lead strategy execution, simplify processes, and capture available opportunities for development and growth. She has held senior positions in corporate compliance, hospital and physician revenue cycle, and large group practice management. In addition, she proudly served in the United States Navy.
© 2024 MyPodcast.Media / Two On The Lobster Productions
Hosted By: Shawn P Neal
Guest: Tammy Taylor, CEO at Advantum Health
Original Air Date: 01/01/2024
Tammy Taylor: Advantum Health CEO Recognized as one of the Top Women in Health IT to Know in 2023
Shawn P Neal
So you're no stranger to the healthcare business. Can you tell me a little bit about what just kind of, what pulled you into healthcare overall and how long you've been involved in the healthcare space?
Tammy Taylor
Sure, I started at, had gone off to the university when I got out of high school, of course, like everybody else, right? And decided that I wanted to roam the world a little bit first, and my parents weren't real happy about that choice. So my dad was like, either you go work for the airlines, or you join the military to get some discipline in your life. So I headed off to the military, and quickly realized, on the clinical side, I started off as a corpsman or a medic with the US Navy, and was doing that, and quickly realized that I did not like all of the standing.
And taking a lot of showers and washing my hands all the time and you know, all of that stuff. And they're like, what are you doing here? I loved it. I love taking care of patients, but I knew there was a different path for me. So I went on the administrative side and became a coder, biller, auditor, a compliance officer, all of those types of things. And then made my way to Advantum over the years. So I did clinical for a long time and then went to the administrative side.
Shawn P Neal
Yeah, and Revenue Cycle Management is kind of a fancy industry term, but can you sum that up for all of us laymen out here saying, what does that mean?
Tammy Taylor
It varies depending on what part of the revenue cycle you work with, right? And we are a full service revenue cycle company, so we do everything from the intake of a patient into the office because we do ancillary versus acute care, billing and coding, prior authorization, the nuts and bolts of all of that. Making sure that the provider gets paid, making sure that it's compliant and that we keep them healthy.
Shawn P Neal
Okay, so when we look at it, you're very much obviously involved in the kind of behind the scenes that we as patients might experience, but the work that you do there, of course, impacts us directly. I really want to dive into this nomination that you had received, this recognition.
116 Women In Health IT To Know
Now this came to us from Becker's Hospital Review, very well known in the industry. And what they basically were looking at here, women who are helping to streamline the, and I'm quoting by the way, "the burdensome behind the scenes work of patient care and leading their healthcare organizations into a new age of digital transformation." Translate that, if you will, into Tammy.
Like what, what is it about you that you feel really, you know, really takes that and puts that into what you do there at Advantum.
Tammy Taylor
I think it probably started when I went into the IT side of the world, right? Had been doing compliance, had been doing all of that for a long time, and then wanted to get into how can I make computers work for me? How can I make software work for me versus me always having to get angry at it all the time, right? How can I get to the other side of the dark, dark cave? And started off with a system out in Virginia, out of DC area,just getting all of their scheduling. Getting all of that incorporated so that when you called one of the five hospitals that you could get right through, right? And then if you had to move it or you had to modify it or you had to do any of those things. So I was always pushing that vendor or that software company to do better and to understand it from a product point of view, from a developer point of view, from a coder point of view. What's the best way to use it?
So I always approached it as a patient and as a person helping a patient. And so when I came to Advantum, I came with many years of doing that, whether it was living through the whole EMR debacle but I've always been fascinated by that. So when I got here, my mandate was "no paper." I really want to live a life without paper because I'm horrible at organizing paper. I get to organize files all day long.
Shawn P Neal
No paper!
Tammy Taylor
I love it. I live for it. Microsoft Planner is my favorite app in my life daily. But the amount of people, and the amount of young people, that still like paper boggles my mind, you know?
Shawn P Neal
It's surprising, isn't it?
Tammy Taylor
So I am constantly daily, hourly pushing my folks to say what can automate it? I s this task worth automating? How can we gain efficiencies from that automation?
Shawn P Neal
Yeah. And, you know, so 2023 did not invent AI by any means, but 2023 really pushed AI into the mainstream market. And I would love kind of your take on how AI and basically everything that you're seeing now enter the market, how that has impacted the efficiency there at Advantum.
Tammy Taylor
I would say probably about five years ago, we started with AI's fourth cousin removed, RPA...and really went crazy on the bots. The manned and the unmanned, the automatic, the non-automatic, all of those, and really looking for how bots can make our lives easier. And there's a lot of software platforms out there that are not open or easy to use, and they don't come with great APIs or HL7 interfaces or any of that. So bots sort of turned the tide for us. We were able to create a "human" that could do tasks 24 hours a day, right? No sleep, no meals, no calling out sick, no headaches, no, you know, I don't feel good today or my childcare is not working out- all of those types of things. But at the same time, I wanted to make sure I kept the human there because I fully believe that the human brain is something that's not able to be replicated at this time, right? So the thought, the reading the room, the emotional IQ that goes behind the human brain. I'm not saying that the bot won't get there someday, but it's not there right now. And the AI is not there right now. And it's funny because I use ChatGPT, and I still apologize to ChatGPT when I don't tell it something correctly, right? So you've got to be open to that. You've got to be aware of that. And I think that's what we do here.
We went from that bot to the API world to getting some of the predictive analysis, to seeing how we could incorporate chat or OpenAI into our appeals, into what we do on a daily basis.
Shawn P Neal
Yeah. And really looking at, I think that human factor, because that's the key. And there were a lot of industry professionals that were talking and I felt like I can talk shop with you a little here on it, but trust me, you're going to talk over my head. I know this. But we kept hearing (that) this is not a replacement for humans. This is a tool. AI is a tool to assist in some of those repetitive tasks. When you look at that and you look at keeping that human integration into, you know, a company and a product like Advantum serves, what are some of your top level thoughts on that as you look down over the next five years or so?
Tammy Taylor
I do think that AI, and this is probably controversial so we'll see how this goes- I do think that AI can replace human task.
We know that it happens. We've known this since Toyota rolled out the first robot onto the assembly floor, right? And I want people to understand that if I can do it faster. If I can do it with more quality. If I avoid errors, that type of thing, I'm gonna push the limit on those. Where I see the positive is that I See people becoming smarter. They're able to grow, they're able to learn new things. They're not stuck doing the repetitive tasking all day long. So I can take that same human and I can train them up on other things and then they feel more accomplished. And then they feel like the AI is working for them, vice versa.
Shawn P Neal
Right, right. And I think that's a huge point. I mean, as you're talking about that, I'm really looking into the fact that there are opportunities. you know, it's because AI everybody says, well, I'm out of a job now.
Tammy Taylor
Yeah.
Shawn P Neal
But you're talking about actually being able to take people out of those repetitive tasks and now allow them to grow into new skill sets. What does that look like then as we kind of work ourselves from internally to externally, to the customer? To how that technology keeps the human piece but serves the customer on that side.
Tammy Taylor
I think one of the most frustrating things in most of our lives are when we get a hold of a telephone tree, right? And you have to press this, press that, press this, press that, you know, and there's no – and we're all screaming "operator" at the end of the call, right? Or representative, representative! And we're doing it repetitively, right? So I really wanted to avoid that as we build this. Because we have a call center here at Advantum too, we get a lot of that. So we wanted to be able to make it as easy- and the only true way to make life easy for our patients- is to not have errors. Because that's what they're calling about. They're calling about errors on their bill or errors in their charges or they didn't understand something. So our mission is to sort of get in front of that, prevent the errors, prevent the denials, prevent the fat fingering of numbers, those types of things and make their life easier so that when they call, they actually get a human because it's gotten to that level.
Shawn P Neal
Yeah, wow. So much to be said in that. Now, your leadership style kind of intrigues me because you've got this tech side to you that I can hear. I'm with you to a certain point. And then, like I said, you'll talk circles around me. But, as you lead in this very high tech world that you're in, what are some of the leadership touch points that you have at a human level with your staff, with the people who are not only in leadership, but who are, on the front lines executing day to day.
Tammy Taylor
I think you have to stay in touch with everyone, not just the troops on the ground or the guys up in the tower. You have to stay in touch with everyone. And I think I learned that probably in the military. My dad's a long-term military. My mom was a military person. So it's sort of more innate at this point that I do that. But I know that you can lead everybody out to the battlefield but if you don't know them, they don't follow. They don't. You can't lead if you don't know your people, right? So when COVID hit, I think that's when we had to go full on with communication. So one of the things we talk about and laugh about and cry about sometimes here at Advantum is what we call the "lasagna method," right? Where we have multiple layers of contact with all of our clients, all of our vendors, and with each other.
So I don't have one single person with a client, right? I have multiple different layers and we meet that energy. I don't put somebody that's more introverted with an extrovert. We try to match that energy and I think that's very, very positive for all of us. But in addition to that, I want to know everybody. We can all shout and scream that we have an open door policy until they all run to your office at one time, and then you're like, "ah," you know. But what we do have is we went to Teams. We use Teams instead of Zoom, right? But we did a lot of groups where we had open discussions. We had mentoring programs. We have our Warrior League, we have ourStallion League- the guys named it, not me. We're constantly asking real life questions. There's always the whole-day-of-sharing-pictures-of-your-puppies-and-your-kids and stuff like that, right, which is very important. I struggle with it, but I know it's important so I share mine as well.
But we do talk a lot about executive presence. We talk about women in leadership. And then we are constantly promoting the good that we do. I think a lot of companies, if you're not drinking from the water hose, you don't feel like you're successful. But we really try to focus on the positive here. And we try to celebrate the positives. We don't celebrate everything, which I'm told I need to do better at, but we do celebrate a lot. And a popcorn machine helps every day.
Shawn P Neal
A popcorn machine. I love it! Popcorn machine and coffee maker for those of us who are (into coffee). Like everything else could just like be gone and as long as those two things are intact, we're happy. That's really good. That's really good. As we start to talk here, we're really kind of, I think, unfolding some of the reasons that you were both nominated and recognized in that report. I think that that's very evident here.
I'd love to just take a minute as we kind of come to the other side of this and do a couple things. Let's future-forecast a little bit. So, you know, when I was doing consulting back in the day, we call this the visioning time. So let's talk five years down the road, as you look at Advantum Health from 30,000 feet- what are some of the things that you see on the horizon for Advantum? And where do you see things going? Like, you know, just paint that picture for us.
Tammy Taylor
I think probably this year we are focused on more technology automation. We have a very good group of developers in our company, right? We have our own little nucleus of power, right? Where they produce a lot of this. And we have our product team that brings the business case to them and then exercises it, makes sure we're doing all of that. We're also starting to look outside at other vendors. You know, clearing houses, other folks that can work with us and partner with us because we're not the walrus on the island, right? As I tell them all the time.
I'm a little bit older than most of them, so. But they're looking to see what else is out there. But also, what we've done is we've broken down all of our workflows, right? And we're now going through and doing a heat map of where AI can be injected. And so that's our first and second quarter goal is to discover new land, right? And to really shoot for the moon on all of that. But to get that down to hardwired in our brains... It's funny because when we started provider enrollment, which is one of our areas, right, which is getting providers signed up with payers. At one time where we were doing writing with a pen and paper and then mailing it in. And we've automated that entire process- automated it to the payer, from the payer, to the provider, all of that. And if I went in today and took away any of that technology, they would attack me with pitchforks, you know? So I know it. But I do recall and remind them subtly how they used to tell me it would never work, right? So, not so subtly, but you know what I mean.
So they are really, "what else can we do? What else can we do?" And it's so exciting. You can just hear it. You can hear that it's just vibrating off the walls here. What else can we do to make this more efficient?
So I'm super excited about that.
In the future though, I think that AI is going to play a much bigger role. It's just too smart, right? In a good way. I don't think it's a negative thing. I don't think Skynet's going to come down and the Terminator is going to show up anytime soon, right? At least not in our lifetime. But I do think that you have to understand how to ask the question. But it can take just copious amounts of data and just roll it all up in 15 seconds and give you an answer. But it really depends upon your answer. So we're doing a lot of understanding how to ask a question right now.
Shawn P Neal
That's great. Yes. Well, you could almost say that three times over and I don't think it'd be enough. Not only to AI, but in general. So a couple of final thoughts. I would love to get your best accomplishment of 2023. And if you want to share you know a personal and a professional that's fine but you know your best accomplishment that you did and then tell me tell me what is one i'm going to say "future forward action-based goal" that's going to happen in 2024 for you.
Tammy Taylor
I think our biggest accomplishment in 2023 was probably being able to automate our ability to predict if a claim would get paid or not.
And predicting what claim was going to get paid. And then not just understanding the question, but also having actionable insights. How do we fix this? As I watched companies, I've known about Sean Lane and Olive AI and all of that, and it was, it's devastating to our entire community. But I truly believe that you can show people the path, but you can't always get them to walk it, you know? So helping people walk that path is my goal for 2024.
Shawn P Neal
Oh, that's good. That's good. All right. Last one. Last last thought for you here. Again, and you're going to hear a lot in this interview because I think that for me, that human factor is so important when we talk about technology. What would you say is your maybe your core that you lead by? You know, that kind of core value- what is it for you that really drives you forward? And I know that's a question to ponder, isn't it?
Tammy Taylor
I think it's two things, right? One is...Muhammad Ali has the quote about your service here on earth is the price you pay for your place in heaven. And I really truly believe that. I think that you have to have a service mentality. You have to have a servent mentality. The second thing is, I don't think I've ever asked anybody to do something that I wouldn't do myself. And I try to keep that core belief. And moving forward, I'm trying to make sure that I'm growing leaders, not just followers.
Shawn P Neal
Yeah, I have so many times in my life stood next to somebody I was working with / mentoring, whatever the case may be. And, you know, it's been that thought that I'm not here because I'm better than you. I'm here because I've done this before and I will be happy to help you.
Tammy Taylor
Exactly. Yep, you've got it. You've got it.
Shawn P Neal
Well, Tammy Taylor, thank you so much for sharing some insight into yourself as leadership there at Advantum, as well as to Advantum. I'm excited to see what's coming around the corner.
Tammy Taylor
Me too, me too. Thank you, Shawn. It's been a pleasure and thank you for having me.
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