Our guest: Lauren Forni, PharmD, MBA, Sr. Director of Clinical Strategy at Bluesight
Welcome to today’s episode focused on healthcare technology and diversion monitoring. Our guest is Lauren Forni, Senior Director of Clinical Strategy at Bluesight, a company making significant moves in the healthcare technology space through strategic acquisitions, including their recent purchase of Protenus.
In this episode, we explore Bluesight’s expansion strategy, the future of their Control Check diversion monitoring platform, and how they plan to integrate newly acquired technologies. Lauren shares insights on maximizing the benefits of Control Check software and discusses how healthcare facilities can optimize their diversion monitoring workflows.
For healthcare leaders concerned about regulatory compliance and diversion prevention, this conversation offers valuable perspectives on how technology is evolving to meet these critical challenges.
Stay tuned for a deep dive into the future of diversion monitoring technology and Bluesight’s vision for transforming healthcare compliance and safety
Transcript
Terri
Hello and welcome back, listeners, to Diversion Insights. My guest today is Lauren Forni, the Senior Director of Clinical Strategy for Bluesight. Welcome, Lauren.
Lauren
Thank you for having me.
Terri
To get started, why don’t you tell us a little bit about you and your background. What led you to Bluesight?
Lauren
Yeah, so my background, I’m a pharmacist, former assistant director of pharmacy, part of the Mass General Brigham Health Network in the Boston area. I was in that role for a number of years, and I was actually a Blue Site customer before I joined the team here almost four years ago now. I evaluated and implemented a Kitchek actually in our crash carts as well as in our OR space with our anesthesia workstations. So had firsthand experience, loved the solutions, learned a lot about things that were coming at the time that got me really excited. And in my role at the hospital, I really took a liking to implementing technology and solutions to help improve our overall process. And so I ended up really leaning into that as I joined the Bluesight team here.
Lauren
And in my role within Bluesight, I help support hospitals throughout an evaluation process of our solutions and really helping them work through how to leverage or what features and functionalities questions they have, but more so how to operationalize and use our solutions in practice, whether that’s through evaluation or once they’ve made the decision to work with Blue Site and move forward with one of our solutions. So it has certainly evolved over the last number of years since I’ve been here with really growing our oversight in different areas and different aspects of healthcare and health systems. So very exciting role here across the team and working with our pharmacists here on the blue side. Side.
Terri
Yeah. Great. A lot of great background, and I think operationalizing the new purchases is always important. Right. We tend to get excited about, oh, I can’t wait to get this. And then sometimes it just kind of. It’s never fully used and implemented. So I think that’s a really important piece and yes, definitely exciting at Blue Site, because now let’s talk about your recent acquisition, which is your second acquisition of a diversion software package, right?
Lauren
Yes.
Terri
Yes. Okay. So what drove the decision to acquire Protenus?
Lauren
Yeah, so I think when you’re looking at our strategic vision as a company, we’re really focused on looking to the future of healthcare compliance as a whole, and with solutions acting more as holistic operating systems that expand across all aspects of care, automating workflows and offering value beyond just software itself. And so when I think about our core focuses or goals as a team. It is that holistic operating system. So giving more solutions, consolidation of data, workflows and kind of a single platform approach. And I think as we think about our acquisitions, how does that feed into creating more of a holistic system? The second goal is really to integrate across healthcare settings. We hear this more and more from hospitals that want coverage beyond just the four walls.
Lauren
They have oversight in outpatient clinics or surgery centers, even home based care or retail pharmacies. And the compliance tools really expand across even more settings. And so having more visibility across all of the care settings that we need to have coverage on, then automation really to handle complexities. And that stems again from having more data and things that can integrate together. There’s a ton of auditable events that occur on a daily basis, a monthly basis, and it’s very challenging to do that in a manual process. So how can we continue to make that easier and alleviate a lot of the stress on the resources that hospitals and healthcare teams are facing? And then the last piece that we really focus on is community collaboration and obviously collaboration and around compliance, regulatory diversion.
Lauren
It’s fundamentally human at its core, relies a lot on trust, the safety and culture of the organization, which really emphasizes the importance on. We need to facilitate knowledge and sharing across the industry and how can we best use technology to support that collaboration and support how we’re moving forward. So that’s really where we kind of focus our innovation strategy and has led us to certain acquisitions that we feel like really feeds into that goal. So, you know, and I don’t think we’re done with acquisitions. I think we’ll continue that as a company. But yes, in 2023. Now a couple years ago, we first acquired Metasyst, which was the other. Our first diversion acquisition.
Lauren
And really the benefits of that were bringing additional expertise and resources to the blue site company as a whole with integrating in their team and really helping to advance the next generation of diversion monitoring. I think, you know, we’ve both been in this industry now a long time and it’s evolved a lot over the last number of years. Even 10 years. Right. Like what it was 10 years ago is very different from what it is now. And we need to continue to build on a comprehensive foundation and evolve with the times. And so if we have, you know, more resources, more team members, more expertise, there’s a greater chance that we can do that. And just from that acquisition in 2023, were able to release a number of new capabilities.
Lauren
Whether that was taking things that worked really well in the Medicis Solutions and bringing them into control check or just now that we had a bigger team able to expand into retail pharmacy coverage or, you know, creating better workflows for health systems. And we retained over 95% of the Medicis hospitals that were using that solution as we transitioned them over to ControlCheck, which just expanded our ability to benchmark because we grew the customer base, which has been very beneficial. And again, that sharing and community collaboration across the bluesight network. We also acquired sector in October, which is a 340B compliance solution, which has rolled in, but really again increasing our kind of expanse in healthcare sites and adapting to different landscapes. And obviously most recently, our integration with Protenus, which was certainly a major milestone for the Blue Site team.
Lauren
And I am super excited to merge our two teams. The expertise from the Protenus team and our Blue sites product team and our customer team really driving innovation first and expanding our systems, really leaning into that comprehensive operating system across the broader healthcare operations and compliance, not just isolating like pointed solutions, I think is going to be really exciting for the market. And really at the core of this integration is how can we honor our hospitals and our customers and listen to their needs and really create a solution that solves the most important challenges, which I think both of our teams have done over the last number of years and now we can continue on that trajectory together.
Terri
That sounds great. So Protenus has their HIPAA compliance side of the business. Right. So that’ll be new for Blue Site to bring that in. All right. And then there’s the diversion software piece of it. So in terms of the diversion software piece, will the two platforms of ControlCheck and Protenus continue operating separately or will they eventually merge into one system?
Lauren
So I think right now is we’re focused on really learning and learning the Protenus product and how that compares or complements and I do think that they complement each other really well. We’ve done some crosswalks of the two solutions, and we do crosswalks even when we’re supporting hospitals that are transitioning from one manual process to what that would look like in a solution or from what they do today with reports and how that translates in. So similar exercise, but really focused on listening to the hospitals and health systems. Like what do the Protenus customers really love and what do they lean into in terms of features and functionality? And how can we as a collective group really move towards a solution that fits for everybody out in the market, whatever that looks like, we’ll certainly make a determination.
Lauren
But a lot of these conversations are one one with the Protentus customers that are leveraging the Protentus solutions and figuring out what makes the most sense for them and really trying to lean in and solve their specific needs. So no specific directive yet, just still in the learning phase and making sure that we’re, you know, honoring our hospitals and doing what’s best for the teams that are leveraging both of our solutions.
Terri
Okay. So as of yet, it’s still kind of that research phase. You’re not quite sure of how they’ll integrate or if they’ll integrate or a new platform versus just changing up Control Check to incorporate some of those features and that logic.
Lauren
Yeah. So whichever direction we move forward in, it’s going to benefit all of the hospitals that are leveraging either solution. Whether that’s, you know, there’s a lot of, you know, features and functionality that our Protenus hospitals lean into. They, they made a choice to go forward with Protenus for a reason. Right. And they’re. We’re learning those and how can we integrate that in with Control check? So the control check hospitals can really get, you know, to the merge of two best in class solutions over the last five years and benefit from kind of aspects of both from the Protentus side. Right. I think that there’s a lot from ControlCheck that will now be able to provide to the Protentus customers, whether that’s, you know, system benchmarks.
Lauren
Because we have, you know, over 2,000 hospitals that are leveraging our solutions that we can now share kind of what is standard or what are we seeing as an industry marker, you know, peer group comparisons, industry in app collaboration across disciplines. We know that a diversion program is multidisciplinary approach whether it’s in app or not. But how can you make that more collaborative so it’s more effective in the hospital and we have unlimited user seats within ControlCheck, which I think will be an added benefit to that collaborative approach as we kind of continue on. So I think that there will benefits feature and functionality wise to both groups. It’s just a matter of what that looks like in the end.
Terri
Sure. And I think Protenus has some of these features, but has there been any discussion about incorporating more a facility’s specific set of policies or a state’s specific set of regulations into the algorithm so that the facility is kind of prompted of this? You know, they’re outside of policy or regulations.
Lauren
So I think that there’s certainly benefits to incorporating in some best practices into the application. But a Lot of that stems from the outside of the software support as well. And I think because we’ve united our resources, we’ll have a much stronger diversion education and support system than either of us previously did on our own. I think Blue side has the diversion collective, Protenus has the Pandas community and we’ve retained most of the Protenus team that has now joined the Bluesight team. We have more than 250 employees now and a lot of expertise on their customer success side and their product management side that has now all merged in.
Lauren
I think that the possibilities are endless in what we can do and support that we are going to be able to provide because that’s really where I think we see a lot of the need in the market. To your point earlier, right, Nothing is plug and play when you adopt something new or when you’re changing something, or even when we do product enhancements, right. When we do a feature update, you have to think about, you know, your overall operations, your overall process, how that impacts your policies and procedures, how that impacts your state specific regulations. And now that our kind of support team has grown and our product team has grown, we’ll have more resources to provide effective support for the team.
Lauren
So it’s more easy, seamless transitions where, you know, they have ways that they can keep on top of all of the things that they need to.
Terri
Yeah, seems like a big project to combine two completely different platforms with, you know, the same goals, but to merge them together. So you’ve got a big team though, to work on that. I feel like it would take years, but it’s probably not as, you know.
Lauren
Luckily we’ve done it before, so it’s not our first time. But I also think, you know, we’ve, the teams are really coming together nicely and the support and respect on both sides. Right. Where we can just. Our focus is on how we can best meet the hospital’s needs and solve for the current challenges. And we’ve both been on that same path. Right. Working in parallel. And there’s a ton of synergies between the solutions. Just it shows, right. We both have the same goals, we both have the same kind of trajectory and now we can just escalate that because we’re pulling resources together.
Terri
Right. Okay. What should current customers expect? Both Bluesight and Protenus customers over the next few months?
Lauren
Yeah. So for the blue site side of things, obviously they’ve seen a number of updates and enhancements within the application over the last couple years. And I think we’ll continue to evolve, you know, our offering on the blue side and integrate in things that hospitals are really leaning into. I also think, you know, as a whole, across both bases. As I mentioned, you know, now we have over 250 employees and we support over 2400 hospitals across all of our products when we’re looking at our entire portfolio. And I think this provides a unique opportunity for us to really meet our goals of that holistic operating system, consolidation of data and providing additional value as a single vendor across multiple products and connecting additional data feeds that really benefit the product and the hospitals. That there’s so much disparate data. Right.
Lauren
If we can streamline that for them and make things simpler, I think there’ll be a lot of benefits overall. And you know, just from the Protenus hospitals, you know, we’re, as I mentioned, we’re really taking that one one approach and making sure that we’re connecting with them. And you know, their customer success managers for tennis are now on our team and so really collaborating and making sure that we have a solution that’s tailored to that specific hospital and really making sure that we’re hitting on our, you know, the top values and really centering our conversations on the hospitals again one one so we can partner, innovate alongside those hospitals and make sure that they feel comfortable with whatever next steps or forward process we have.
Terri
Okay, so for the most part, would you say customer service is going to be structured exactly as it has been during the transition?
Lauren
The customer success managers are staying the same. They’re still dedicated to their accounts. Now we’ve just grown our team and expanded our diversion expertise and the privacy. Customer success managers are on our team as well and will continue to support their customers. So everything staying the same from the customer support standpoint.
Terri
And do you anticipate migration support is going to be needed or I mean, cause you’ve got or are you working on your end to make it seamless that customers are not gonna require a lot of their IT time to.
Lauren
Our data team is working tirelessly in the back end to understand kind of data from both sides on how things are integrated in if there is crossover on how or on queries and things like that. The data science behind it all is a little out of my expertise, so I’ll leave it to them. But yes, they are tirelessly. So if you know, really streamlining the data coming in, which we do across the blue side product portfolio. So you know, it’s just another Another aspect of data feeds that we’re working to streamline and make consistent. So it’s. So it’s easy.
Terri
Okay, sounds good. All right, well, with you acquiring Protenus, you’ve knocked out one competitor, right? So you’re getting this narrowed down here to just a handful of you and a couple, I would say, pro of large competitors. What you probably don’t want to name your competitor, so I won’t either. What advantages do you think that this combined platform is going to offer over the other diversion software? Obviously, you have a whole portfolio of things, but in terms of the diversion software, what advantage do you feel that you have over your competitors?
Lauren
Yeah, so, I mean, I think our depth of expertise is expansive. I think between the Protenus team and the blue side team, now, one team from the product side, from the customer side, from our clinical team, we work hand in hand with the hospitals that leverage our solutions. We know them well, we know what they do, we supported them. And I think we’ve shown over the last five years that we listen and we evolve on both sides. Right. And we continue to deliver what would solve for the challenges. And, you know, when we’re looking at the solutions in general, they. Protentus and Blue Site have been best in class, kind of toggling back and forth for the last five years. And so, you know that says something, right?
Lauren
Like whether it’s features, functionality, whether it’s support, whether it’s, you know, the workflows and the operational
aspects, you know, they’ve been leading for a reason. And in terms of the solutions themselves, we have a wide range of hospitals and health systems that leverage our applications. So we have a huge community of hospitals that, when leveraging the same solutions, can share best practices, can share policies and procedures, they can share their SOPs, they can share what went well, what didn’t, what did they wish that they thought through. We have hospitals that have a multidisciplinary approach and some that don’t. Right. And there’s always someone that you can lean on or connect with in the industry. And I think collaboration and sharing is so crucial. It’s one thing if we’re sharing what we’re seeing, but it’s way more impactful if hospitals can connect with each other.
Lauren
And I think we lean into that and that community collaboration and really drive that connection between the hospitals and health systems and just leaders in the space that do such a great job of sharing their learnings, their best practices, what they’re doing. And we see that at all of the conferences that we attend, everybody is willing to share and help each other out, which is so amazing to see. And it’s how we’re going to progress. And so I think we lean into those aspects and if we can, we’ll continue to innovate, we’ll continue to listen, we’ll continue to collaborate. And I think that’s really what sets us apart.
Terri
Okay, that sounds great. You mentioned best practice. So I have a question for you with your current control check clients. What is the recommendation from bluesight in terms of a best practice for how they use the software to get the maximum benefit from it? And there’s many ways. There’s no one like every time this is going to work. But in general, what would you say is the best workflow to maximize the benefit?
Lauren
Yeah, I have seen in my years that teams adopt their workflows in different ways. Within ControlCheck, we do have more prescriptive workflows around the analytics to help support a routine monitoring and surveillance process. Really what we encourage is that they create a process of routine monitoring and surveillance that works for their team, their resources, so that they can have an effective process and an escalation path and really establishing what that looks like in a policy that everyone can speak to so that it is consistent, which is very important, and that you can actually do a deep dive into the information that’s being given to you so that you have a very clear picture of whether someone is exhibiting risk of diversion or a potential practice issue that you need to address.
Lauren
And so a lot of that stems from, you know, how are you routinely looking into your high risk individuals. And typically we use a stoplight color scheme, so those that flag as red are in your top 1% and they’ll drop into your needs review queue. And typically hospitals are running through a routine monitoring and surveillance process on a monthly basis, whether that’s led by pharmacy or multidisciplinary or a collaborative approach. Really up to the team and the resources and how they want to leverage that. But we don’t have a prescriptive, certain number of investigations or reviews that they should do on a monthly basis. It’s more about having an effective process that they feel confident in and they do a deep dive on the risky individuals so that they can take the next steps as needed.
Terri
That makes sense. And in terms of individuals going into the red for review, is that something that is based on a 90 day, a 30 day? It’s fluid. It’s going to be fluid as different comparisons come in so that overall score, which is different from the monthly scores, what time range is that overall score based on?
Lauren
So it’s always based on a rolling 30 days. The score updates every day based off of a rolling 30 day period. And you can change that date range, but it does update and reflect every single day there is a flagged score. So the flag score would be as soon as they hit that red threshold, they would flag and drop into your review queue. And then you can always see their score as today. But once they’re in your needs review queue, you can then prioritize them based off of the information that’s presented to you. Based off the time that they flagged, has their score improved or has their score continued to climb? You might prioritize those differently. Did they flag two weeks ago and they’re still high? Did they flag a week ago but now their score has already improved?
Lauren
You can also see if there’s been reviews or investigations on that individual in the past. So different ways that you can prioritize and determine what’s the appropriate individuals to really drill down into.
Terri
Right, yeah, that makes sense. Okay, well, this is great, Lauren. I want to thank you so much for your time and it’s exciting news for Blue Site and you guys are just like taking over.
Lauren
We think that we’re providing great value, but very excited to have our teams join forces and really work, work with hospitals to solve all the pain points that they’re seeing out there.
Terri
Yeah, it’s great. It is nice to bring things more collectively under one umbrella as opposed to, you know, piecemealing it out to different vendors for different services. I mean, it’s just nice to have it all under one umbrella. So.
Lauren
Makes it a lot easier for hospitals as well from adoption standpoint or, you know, implementations contracting, so. And not to mention, you know, the data aspects when it’s all in, in one place provides a lot more value, right?
Terri
Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Well, good. This was insightful and I want to thank you very much for your time.
Lauren
Lauren, thank you so much again for having me.
Terri
Absolutely.
