Cxo of the week: Anurag Mehta, CEO, Omega Healthcare

Omega, Founded in 2003 helps payers, providers, and pharmaceutical companies eliminate administrative burdens, accelerate cash flow, and reduce health management costs while enhancing patient care. The company streamlines medical billing, coding, and collections processes and provides clinical services, including triage, care continuation, clinical documentation improvement, and re-admittance avoidance. Combining the largest medical coding staff in the world with proprietary technology, analytics, and automation capabilities, Omega provides the most comprehensive outsourced solutions in the industry and is ranked among the top revenue cycle management business process services by industry analysts.

As an industry leader in technology-enabled, end-to-end revenue cycle management and clinical communication services, Omega Healthcare helps providers, payers, pharma companies, and other healthcare stakeholders achieve the triple aim: improving the care experience, lowering the cost of care, and improving the health of populations.

Anurag Mehta, CEO, Omega Healthcare comes With 34 years of US corporate experience, 23 of which have been with US-based healthcare revenue cycle and India-based BPO/KPO companies, Anurag is backed by strong leadership and management experience in start-ups and M&A. The first 11 years of his career were spent at Bayer Corporation, and then Anurag followed his entrepreneurial spirit in 2000 when he became Founder/CEO of a large US medical billing company which grew to nearly 1,000 employees.

In 2003, Anurag decided that building successful BPO/KPO offshore operations to bring about cost reduction and improved turnaround times for US clients was the better approach, and together with Gopi Natarajan, they started Omega Healthcare. Also, by having previously run large-scale medical billing operations in the US, Anurag clearly understands the needs of today’s US healthcare and revenue cycle management companies and the forces affecting their businesses.

Recently we have engaged in an interview with Anurag Mehta, CEO, Omega Healthcare. He talked about What role technology plays in the future of healthcare outsourcing, how is Omega Healthcare embracing technological advancements and much more.

Can you provide a brief overview of Omega Healthcare, including its mission and core values? (with focus on the 20-year milestone)

Founded in 2003, Omega Healthcare empowers healthcare organizations to deliver exceptional care while enhancing financial performance. We partner with organizations across the healthcare sector including providers, payers, pharmaceutical companies, and technology and service providers to improve financial outcomes. Our mission is to drive transformational impact across an empowered healthcare ecosystem.

Our comprehensive portfolio of technology and clinically enabled managed outsourcing solutions helps streamline administrative processes, enhance patient care and research, and improve overall operational efficiency for healthcare organizations.

Over the last two decades, we have grown to 30,000 employees in 14 delivery centers across the United States, India, Colombia, and the Philippines. We also are committed to empowering our people as demonstrated through our core values: Customer Excellence, Respect, Empowerment, Diversity, and One Omega.

When and how did your fascination for Healthcare technology begin?

My father is an engineer and when I was 12 years old he brought home one of the first Xerox computers. Ever since then, I have been fascinated by technology. I started Omega Healthcare with my business partner in 2003 and very quickly realized that by combining enabling technology with a highly skilled workforce, we could provide a more robust offering that created more value for our customers. As a result, Omega Healthcare has continued to invest heavily in developing technology-enabled solutions. We have more than 300 people in our technology team building tools to drive greater efficiencies across the business side of healthcare.

What do you believe sets Omega Healthcare apart from its competitors in the healthcare outsourcing industry?

With the ongoing financial pressures and labor shortages in the healthcare industry, Omega Healthcare brings unmatched domain expertise and technology-enabled solutions through the Omega Digital Platform (ODP) to alleviate these challenges. We offer unique clinical expertise, operational rigor, and technology innovation to continuously improve our solutions. Through our scale and breadth of capabilities, we provide flexible delivery models tailored to our clients’ needs and commercial arrangements aligned to outcomes.

We nurture a talent pool of 30,000 associates spanning multiple locations globally. We have invested in recruiting and retaining highly skilled professionals with expertise in end-to-end revenue cycle management, payer risk and administrative solutions, pharmaceutical market access, care coordination and virtual nursing solutions, registry data management, and real world data curation. We even launched The Omega Medical Coding Academy in 2009 to upskill our talent pool which has proven to be a game changer.

Finally, through our recent strategic acquisitions of imagine Solutions, ApexonHealth, Vasta Global, and Reventics, we have expanded our already broad portfolio to further empower clients in solving their critical challenges.

What role does technology play in the future of healthcare outsourcing, and how is Omega Healthcare embracing technological advancements?

With ongoing margin pressures and staff shortages, coupled with the rise in demand for healthcare services and changing regulations, healthcare organizations will be challenged to keep up with clinical and administrative workloads. And although outsourcing has become an integral part of many healthcare organizations’ strategies over the years, there is still a lot of opportunity for technology to further drive efficiencies. Emerging technology innovations have the potential to enhance operational efficiency, reduce costs, and help healthcare organizations improve patient care and financial outcomes.

Omega Healthcare is embracing several new technologies in our ODP such as artificial intelligence (AI) and automation to streamline repetitive tasks like data entry and claims processing, reducing human error and processing time. We have more than 300 technology experts designing custom robotic process automation (RPA) and machine learning (ML)-based solutions. We also utilize advanced data analytics tools to help identify trends, patterns, and areas of improvement in revenue cycle management for healthcare organizations. By leveraging these technologies, we can reduce the administrative workloads for our customers, enabling them to focus on work that matters.

What is the main problem that Omega is resolving in the healthcare space?

Healthcare organizations today are struggling to keep up with rising costs, staff burnout, and labor shortages. And while technological innovations have driven advancements within the industry, there are still plenty of opportunities for improvement.

Our technology-enabled solutions with the ODP help reduce administrative burdens, leveraging advanced capabilities like AI and automation to reduce mundane tasks and increase accuracy. By reducing costs and improving revenues,  organizations can redeploy teams more effectively, allowing providers and staff to focus on high-value work and direct patient care.

Can you give some examples of the results and impact that Omega has been able to achieve for customers?

We create trusted partnerships with customers aligned around their success and outcomes. Omega Healthcare helped its customers across a variety of areas including:

• Reducing eligibility denials by >10%
• Decreasing documentation errors by 7-10%
• Reducing A/R days on average by 30%
• Delivering >95% coding accuracy
• Reducing real-world data abstraction costs by 60%
• Lowering registry submission errors by 20%

Are there any specific industries or markets you are looking to expand into in the future?

At this stage, we are focused on the healthcare industry.

Can you share a valuable lesson or piece of wisdom you've gained from your experience as CEO of Omega Healthcare?

Leading an organization with over 30,000 employees requires finding balance across multiple fronts. On the one hand, I need to be decisive and make quick decisions so the organization can move swiftly, while on the other hand, I need to build consensus to ensure the entire organization is aligned with our strategy. This is mirrored in daily life where we often need to make decisions with imperfect information knowing that these decisions have a downstream impact. Finding this balance is something I continually strive towards and something I know I can always improve.