Podcast Q&A with CIO Ray Lowe, Part 1: “There Is Ripe Opportunity in the SDOH Space.”

One of the most difficult aspects of being a CIO is in making sure teams recognize the affect their work has on patient care. What often happens, according to Ray Lowe, is that IT professionals “get lost behind the bits and bytes and don’t see the impact.” However, when they are able to see that technology can change peoples’ lives, “it’s really rewarding,” said Lowe during a recent interview with Kate Gamble, Managing Director at healthsystemCIO.

A perfect example is the work AltaMed Health Services is doing to improve health equity by leveraging social determinants of health data. It’s an area he believes is “ripe for opportunity” — and one in which his organization has an edge because of the partnerships they’ve established with community-based organizations.

In the interview, Lowe spoke about how AltaMed is incorporating SDoH data to provide individualized care — and why that’s so critical; the need for CIOs to incorporate three “I’s” into the role; and what he considers to be his ultimate objective. He also talks about AltaMed’s laser focus on social justice, and why it’s more important than ever for healthcare leaders to share knowledge.

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Key Takeaways



* Through partnerships with community-based organizations and involvement in government affairs, AltaMed has put itself “in a unique position to educate the patient population and set up vaccination clinics.”

* Telehealth has become “a great equalizer in terms of health equity” because of the ability to provide care in new ways to lower-income populations.

* Three lifts of innovation: 1) doing things faster, cheaper, and better; 2) things you want to do that are just out of reach; and 3) “the things you never thought you could do.”

* Organizations that utilize tools like Aunt Bertha are taking a step in the right direction, but the focus should be on taking it further and leveraging AI and machine learning to “understand and address patient needs and make it individual for them?





Q&A with Ray Lowe, CIO, AltaMed Health Services, Part 1

Gamble:  Hi Ray, it’s nice to speak with you again. I want to start by talking about health inequity and the impact Covid has had. Inequities have been around for a while, but the pandemic seems to have intensified it.

Lowe:  When you talk about health inequity, social justice is at our core at AltaMed. We serve the Medicaid population and some of the lowest income parts of Los Angeles and Orange County. In terms of Covid, when you look at who’s not getting their vaccinations, it was Latino and African Americans. Because we’re so involved in the community and known in the community and we’re working closely with community-based organizations, we’re actually in a unique position to help turn and educate the central worker patient population and bring them in and set up vaccination clinics.  There was a lot of distrust around the vaccines in terms of what it can and cannot do, and what are the side effects.

Taking that further, coming out of the pandemic there was a program in the state of California called ‘Andale! ¿Qué esperas,’ which means, ‘let’s go. Don’t wait.’ AltaMed was selected to create the state campaign primarily focused on Latino and Spanish-speaking population encouraging them to get shots. And it’s been broadly used in the central parts of the state and other parts of the state as well.

Our impact has been local and statewide in leveraging the type of information and outreach that we have out there...