Patrick Kovalik, Industry Principal - Healthcare & Life Sciences at Snowflake, sits down to talk all things data, and how it can shape the payer and provider space.
With 20 years of business IT strategy, including 10 spent in the payer space, he very much has his finger on the button when it comes to the world of healthcare data and leveraging technology to improve healthcare and insurance models.
“I lived my life in data and outcomes, and that's what Snowflake does,” he tells us. “Snowflake is a cloud-based data platform that can handle any volume, any type of data, and that's the world of what we're living in with healthcare. So, I drive outcomes and solutions for the payer space on Snowflake.”
Patrick also touches on the opportunities relating to payer-partner relationships, and what is needed to make these synergies work. Trust and transparency, he says, is critical to delivering value for end users.
To hear more from Patrick, tune in to the full discussion with Fierce Healthcare’s Rebecca Willumson.
Rebecca Willumson: Hi there. My name's Rebecca Willumson. I'm the publisher of Fierce Healthcare, and I'm here today with Patrick Kovalik, Industry Principal, Healthcare Payers-Providers at Snowflake. Patrick, thank you so much for joining me.
Patrick Kovalik: Thank you for having me.
Rebecca Willumson: So before we begin, can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your role at Snowflake?
Patrick Kovalik: Sure. I'm one of our Industry Principals. I focus on the payer and the provider space. And what that means is I came from the payer space. I was an executive for a health plan for over 10 years, and I lived my life in data and outcomes, and that's what Snowflake does. Snowflake's a cloud-based data platform that can handle any volume, any type of data, and that's the world of what we're living in with healthcare. So I drive outcomes and solutions for the payer space on Snowflake.
Rebecca Willumson: So kicking off, where do you see the greatest opportunity in working with payers?
Patrick Kovalik: Great question. There's so many. I think, again, with my experience in the payer space, the payers have such a breadth of data. When you're trying to get into these innovations of looking at the holistic member, they have the biggest footprint of how is that member's care plan delivered. So not just with the one hospital system or the one specialist, they can see the whole life and they have technology capabilities they can get out and pull in more data that's coming up with SDOH and health equity and population health. So I think the payers have a great opportunity to be that, like that chance to finally break down the walls of collaboration and be that hook that says, Hey, let's collaborate on our data so that we can have better value-based outcomes, better care coordination ultimately helped. What is the human at the end of it? That's what I loved about being on the payer side, and that's what I loved now in my role is how to have the payers be more anchored into the data we have and the data we need play the role to facilitate that.
Rebecca Willumson: So tell me, what do you need in a payer partner to really make that relationship work?
Patrick Kovalik: A lot of it is trust and transparency on both sides. A lot of the sessions going on today hook on this concept of value-based care. And I think the biggest anchor to value-based care isn't how a contract or an incentive is written. It's how at the end of it, it's the outcome. Are you actually driving value for the human at the end of it? So the more transparent you can be with a payer and a provider, the more you're willing to share your data of how are you calculating quality? How are you sharing your clinical depth? With our longitudinal breadth, that's where you have real symbiotic partnerships and it's not just a vendor arrangement. You actually can get into what is true symbiotic alignment at the center of it is the human. And so that's what I found is partners that want to actually share and get on board with the exact same mission that has an outcome that is a result rather than just a performance metric. I think that's where then those relationships just blossom. And I love seeing that the payers are at the foot of it and they're at this conference here learning how to do that better.
Rebecca Willumson: So tell me, how important are the innovations in healthcare technology driving opportunities for payers?
Patrick Kovalik: That's a great question. Again, I work for a technology company, so I think especially in healthcare, the data footprint explodes every day. I mean, there's so much volume now in what's considered unstructured data, DICOM images, physician notes, audio files, images. So it just, technology brings capabilities. Again, a line I use a lot too is you build trust with patients and you build trust with those relationships that you have by not having to tell your story multiple times. And so if you have access to all your data in one spot with lineage of knowing where it comes from and knowing that it's high quality and it's accessible, you have the opportunity to build more trust. And so that's what a technology platform can enable. So you can remove those silos. But every department, every pocket, they work on them in a silo.
And that's what I think technology innovations are trying to break down. And now you see the evolutions into ai, ml and LLMs and what can they do? It's almost limitless, but the amount of operational efficiency you can gain and just the insights you can ascertain from a physician note from an audio file that says, Hey, I didn't know you actually had a breathing issue because you came in for a shoulder repair. But boom, I can pull that out now with technology and get that to a care team that didn't see it because it wasn't front and center. So that's where I think technology is going is it's trying to make insights become, come to the forefront so that you can take action on 'em faster without having to wait 30 days, 90 days, or wait for that data file to be released. And that's what we see and that's how Snowflake plays in the market, is bring your people and your applications to the data so you can have insights and make decisions rather than having to wait for data to come to you.
Rebecca Willumson: Well, that feels like a good spot to end. Thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate the conversation.