Altera is Relentlessly Focused on Addressing Client Pain Points

Marcus Perez, President at Altera Digital Health is focusing the company on delivering results for clients. Teams are relentlessly focused on addressing current client pain points – like cashflow challenges, workforce frustration, and patient throughput – while also building capacity to handle future needs like care-at-home.

Healthcare IT Today had the opportunity to chat with Marcus Perez, President at Altera Digital Health, at the HIMSS23 conference. We wanted to get his perspective on the pain points healthcare organizations are facing and how Altera is working to address them.

As quick refresher, Altera Digital Health is the former Allscripts Healthcare Solutions’ Hospitals and Large Physician Practices business segment. Harris Computer Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Constellation Software, Inc. completed the purchase in 2022.

Healthcare Pain Points

“For private entities the biggest pain right now is cash flow,” stated Perez. “This is relatively new for large hospitals and healthcare systems. The tumultuous financial environment over the past three years, coupled with the increasing complexity of billing, coding, charge capture, reimbursements have made it challenging for healthcare organizations.”

According to the January National Hospital Flash Report: “the median year-to-date (YTD) operating margin index for hospitals was 0.2% in December – the only month in 2022 where hospitals realized positive YTD margins.” That same report estimates that half of US hospitals had negative margins in 2022.

“For public entities, like in the UK and Canada, the biggest pain point is ‘ramping’,” continued Perez. “This is where patients are stuck in the ambulance because the throughput in the hospital is not fast enough. This has severe follow-on effects. Since ambulances are waiting at hospitals with patients inside, they cannot answer emergency calls.”

Perez also mentioned several other pain points:

  • Clinicians needing patient-centric views of data at their fingertips
  • Quick and easy access to health data across organizations
  • Accommodation for care-at-home

Relentless Focus

To address these pain points, Altera is focusing their development and customer service resources on their clients.

“For us at Harris, client success is our number one focus,” shared Perez. “We have redesigned our client success delivery organization. We are in the middle of redesigning our R&D organization. We have reworked our professional services delivery teams. We are reworking our managed services delivery. All of this is geared towards delivering [to clients] what we said we would do.”

The mantra at Altera is “Relentless Focus” which Perez said is a combination of discipline (the ability to do things you need to do when you need to do them, regardless of how you feel) and pursuit of excellence (being better today than yesterday).

Watch the full interview with Marcus Perez to learn:

  • How Altera is using a “Wayne Gretzky” approach to their product roadmap
  • Why being part of Harris gives Altera a more flexibility and focus
  • What Altera clients can expect from the company over the next 12 months

Learn more about Altera Digital Health at: https://alterahealth.com/

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About the author

Colin Hung

Colin Hung is the co-founder of the #hcldr (healthcare leadership) tweetchat one of the most popular and active healthcare social media communities on Twitter. Colin speaks, tweets and blogs regularly about healthcare, technology, marketing and leadership. He is currently an independent marketing consultant working with leading healthIT companies. Colin is a member of #TheWalkingGallery. His Twitter handle is: @Colin_Hung.

   

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