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AI is here — in healthcare and in our everyday lives. Ankit Jain, founder and company lead at Infinitus, discussed the impact of AI on healthcare today and in the near future. He covered the following themes:
“I think we’re going to hear real stories of how the patient experience is getting better. We’re going to hear about how patients feel like they’re more heard, that the system has more time for them. The optimist in me believes that AI can give patients the gift of time.”
– Ankit Jain
“Before starting Infinitus, I’d started Google’s AI venture fund, Gradient Ventures, and I was investing in a number of different AI technology companies,” said Jain. “I showed my wife some technology to make restaurant and spa reservations, so you could say, ‘Hey Google, make me a reservation at my favorite restaurant.’ And she said, ‘This sounds like incredible technology, but is restaurant and spa reservations the best place where you could apply it?’” The question started what Jain called Infinitus’ “journey of understanding how data exchanges hands in healthcare.”
He argued that “the way processes get initiated, that data exchanges hands over phone calls and faxes…that’s the fundamental problem. How do we make data proactively, transparently, and instantaneously available to everybody who needs it?”
Jain covered the possibility of AI to help circumvent challenges of data structure and format that make interoperability more difficult. “The biggest problem in healthcare is that everyone’s data exists…in ways that are slightly different,” he said. [The previous generation of technology] said, ‘I can’t submit prior auth information from the provider instantaneously because the payer expects it in a slightly different format’…now, large language models came out of Google’s translation group, and the whole tenet of it was, ‘how do you translate tokens in Language A to tokens in Language B?'”
“I think there’s a lot of excitement around that ability to transform data and and connect systems,” said Jain.
Jain covered the ability of AI to provide a “knowledge base, when you want it, how you want it,” as an area where he’s optimistic about the potential to improve healthcare. Jain covered a personal example where more information, sooner, would have been hugely beneficial.
“My daughter was born with a very rare disease, and when we were told that we broke down,” said Jain. “We didn’t have the capacity to ask all the questions, and the questions we did have came at 10PM after the kids were asleep,” he said. Eventually, Jain’s family learned that different forms of the disease had different treatments, and one form was curable. “She was cured, but it was a six-week ordeal where Dr. Google was our resource,” he said.
Jain imagined the possibility of a better experience for patients and families by using AI to surface existing information anytime. “We have the opportunity to take those centers of excellence for each disease, whether rare or common, and…make it available to patients how they want it, when they want it. So at 10PM, when you have a question,” you as a patient could call or text to get answers, he said.
“There are so many parts of healthcare delivery and healthcare policy that I think will be affected by the ability to translate from what one group has published to what the other group needs to ingest, so we can connect those dots seamlessly,” he said.
Jain noted that AI for administrative workflows, in particular, is already in use and will continue to grow. Looking toward the future, he sees coordination between AI and human workflows as the next big challenge.
“[Over the next few years,] hundreds if not thousands of companies are going to come up with point solutions of AI agents. The first five, ten people will excitedly go and implement, but then they’ll realize, ‘Well, humans were connecting step 1 in the workflow to step 2.’ Or step 1 might be done by an AI agent, step 2 by a human agent, step 3 by an AI agent,” said Jain.
He said that “what we’re going to need as an ecosystem is a coordination layer, an operating system, that brings together the workforce of the future, which is human and AI agents working side by side.” Jain is of the opinion that in the next few years, “we’re not going to be using the term ‘AI.’ We’re going to be focusing on the specific problems [the AI technology is solving]. It’s not going to be sexy anymore…but I think we’re going to start hearing real stories of how the patient experience is getting better.”
In the meantime, Jain recommended that for health systems evaluating AI, “do the same [test] task ten times in a row. It might work perfectly the first time. But [what happens] when you do it ten times?” And for community health systems in particular, Jain said that now is a great time to try AI because “you can find very hungry partners to go try things out with very little risk.”
Healthcare interoperability has made enormous leaps in the past five years. So where are we now, and where can we expect to go in the near future? Kathleen Snyder, Sr. Counsel at Husch Blackwell, breaks down the current state of healthcare interoperability in this episode. She covers key advancements, challenges, and predictions for how healthcare interoperability will evolve in 2025 and beyond.
“I’m a true believer in healthcare interoperability. And for all the players, it’s got to be about getting the right data to the right people, at the right time.
– Kathleen Snyder
Snyder provided an overview of key interoperability regulations and major phases in the development of interoperability to date. She also provided her takeaways on current interoperability challenges and opportunities to move interoperability forward. Here are some of her major takeaways:
Interoperability has been making progress since the 2000s, and Snyder pointed to Executive Order 13335 and the The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) as major early milestones. But she focused on the work done by the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy/Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology in the 2020s as key to the current state of healthcare interoperability. In particular, ONC’s Cures Act Final Rule sets the stage for many interoperability regulations today.
“[ASTP has] done a great job at really expanding their footprint to say, we’re not just this weird standalone agency that no one pays attention to. We are the underpinnings for all of our sister HHS agencies. It’s 2025…people need to get on board with interoperability,” she said.
Snyder commended ONC’s HTI-1 final rule, which implements provisions of the 21st Century Cures Act, for addressing AI in healthcare. “I was really impressed with, HTI-1. I thought that it was a really brave move on ONC’s part to take the first step in the federal government towards saying, ‘Healthcare AI is here. How are we going to think through it?'”
Snyder also noted that the entire industry and even patients themselves are more familiar with interoperability and on board with it in the 2020s than in the past: “People are more aware, from a patient perspective. ‘I have the right to access this data, let me access it.'”
With prohibitions on information blocking, “we’re moving toward more formalization [and enforcement instead of] a ‘naughty list’ for those who aren’t complying, where nothing’s really going to happen,” said Snyder. Continued regulation will help “plug up the holes that people were trying to drive Mack trucks through,” she said. “I think that people are doing better [and are] a little bit more cooperative.”
Snyder said that making data exchange simpler and more convenient, especially for patients, is important for the future of interoperability. “Why are you making me print out and carry my images on a CD-ROM?…[and] the fax machine is still a real part of day-to-day business ops,” she said. And the staff workflow is also very manual, she pointed out.
“The number of people that a provider office has to staff to run an office and answer the phones, get the faxes to the right places, scan the PDFs in…it’s a lot of bureaucratic work to collect paper (or virtual paper,” she said.
“I think there’s a real opportunity for innovative companies to come in and say, ‘Let’s help you figure out how to manage your processes and streamline a little bit’…because interoperability is starting to really take hold,” she said.
In addition to streamlining data collection and processes for health systems and patients, Snyder mentioned expanded data sets and more productive exchange as areas where interoperability can continue to grow.
Snyder noted that expanded data in the United States Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI) could make healthcare data exchange more useful for applications like value-based care.
“I think it would be really helpful to be able to expand some of those data elements that we collect — social determinants of health, food insecurity or housing. [For example,] in the case of an elderly patient who doesn’t show up. Is that because they have transportation issues? Or a condition like dementia? …As we really try to give value-based care a go. I think that that would be information that would be helpful for both providers and payers to have available to them, because there are solutions,” she said.
Snyder pointed to buy-in across the healthcare industry as facilitating more productive healthcare data exchange, which she sees as a major evolution of interoperability that will continue in the future.
“Since I got into this space in 2013ish, there have been some really, really rigid rules that have maybe gotten in the way,” she said. “And now, we’re honing in on a collective. The industry has bought in, people have bought in. We’re starting to see better APIs. People are not guarding people are not guarding their [piece of the piece,] but expanding the pie.”
“Let’s try to bring people in, maybe we can break down some of the rigidity. We had to have the rigidity before because there wasn’t enough buy-in, and people were just doing different things. But now, I think it can work. This is my hope.”
Asian Health Services (AHS) stands out for their innovative approach to whole-person care for their diverse patient population. George Lee, MD, Chief Innovation Officer at AHS, breaks down AHS’ mission, key initiatives, and the creative approach that helps AHS serve their patients well. Here are some of the strategies he discusses:
“[Imagine] a faucet running and spilling water on the floor. A lot of our current healthcare today is mopping the floor – [for example,] being able to have the best treatments for diabetes. But that’s still just mopping the floor. The goal is to use prevention to turn off the faucet.”
– George Lee, MD
Lee discussed some of the initiatives that help Asian Health Services deliver whole-person care and address care gaps. Here are his takeaways:
AHS’ mission is to provide whole-person care, with a focus on Asian communities and underserved patients. AHS serves patients in 14 languages in addition to English, including Burmese, Mien, Mongolian, Tagalog, and Khmer, recognizing that “83% of our patients experience some type of linguistic isolation,” said Dr. Lee.
“The overall vision is that our patients deserve the same type of care that we expect for ourselves,” said Dr. Lee. “You don’t want to have disparity and differences in the system of care.”
AHS’ whole-person care includes an innovative dental clinic where patients can receive mental health and wellness screenings during the visit – helping break down stigma around mental health treatment in the AAPI community. Dr. Lee emphasizes this creative, culturally informed, and patient-focused approach when discussing preventive care interventions.
“The Asian population is often treated as monolithic on surveys,” he said. When surveying patients about their willingness to use technology, “we broke it down to survey our Chinese patients, our Vietnamese patients, our Korean patients,” to determine if specific patient populations experienced particular barriers.
“We do teaching kitchens, where we teach some of our patients how to cook in a more healthy way,” said Dr. Lee. “We’re working through a recipe but also discussing things like, ‘how do you make healthy substitutions?’ And we ask them to bring a friend – changing the way a household cooks and eats isn’t just an individual decision but a community one,” he said.
Dr. Lee began a remote monitoring program for patients with high blood pressure in 2020, starting with the patients who experienced the most challenges with management.
“We looked for patients who were monolingual, who had uncontrolled hypertension, and who had never had any sort of telehealth visit or video visit. We decided to see if we could bring care to them. And so we started off with a small pilot of about 50 patients, and by the end of it 89% were at their blood pressure goal or had made significant improvement,” said Dr. Lee.
Dr. Lee said that this small-group pilot allowed AHS to complete important steps like patient journey mapping and monitor challenges like how to troubleshoot with patients who forget how to use the devices.
Now, AHS has expanded remote monitoring to continuous glucose monitoring, and “we’re looking at ways to expand [further],” said Dr. Lee.
Dr. Lee is passionate about bridging the “digital divide” for AHS’ patients and ensuring that everyone has access to technology that can help them be healthier. One of the factors in the success of the remote monitoring program, he said, is ensuring that patients have tech support.
“We’ve hired a digital health advocate, who helps not just onboard patients but also troubleshoot,” he said.
AHS also surveyed their patients to understand any hesitations or barriers that might be preventing them from participating in programs like remote monitoring.
“86% of people were very willing to use video visits and things like that, but of those, 53% said they didn’t want to use it because they didn’t know how or didn’t have the tools. So if we were to provide them support, we can get more patients to use it,” he said.
The AHS team also recognized that more apps and logins created more challenges for patients, so they intentionally simplified the patient portal to help patients use it more easily following the survey. “Can we use biometrics to log in, or provide audio files instead of written information for our patients with lower literacy rates?” he said.
Telehealth boomed overnight during the COVID-19 pandemic. But how has it grown, and what does telehealth look like today? Angela Skrzynski, DO is Virtua Health’s Lead Physician – Telehealth, and has led the development of a robust virtual care program at the organization. In this episode, she discusses the program and what makes it successful:
“Where we’ve landed at this point is helping to drive people to the right care at the right time…and we’re finding that you can utilize telemedicine so much more than you might have thought you could.”
– Dr. Angela Skrzynski
Dr. Skrzynski shared how Virtua Health’s use of telehealth has evolved from the pandemic-era boom to now, and what she and the organization have learned about using it effectively to provide more flexible, consumer-focused care. Here are her takeaways:
“Virtua Health was at 28 encounters for telemedicine in 2019. In 202, it jumped to 180,000 or so encounters. It’s not a unique story, but it’s just incredible at a global scale how how digital health really exploded [during the COVID-19 pandemic],” Dr. Skrzynski said.“Although it may not have been the impetus that we wanted, it was really a driving force in moving digital care forward.”
“I think what’s important to note is that clinicians and patients were using digital health as a necessity at that time. And today, we’ve moved into a position where people are choosing telemedicine and digital care, and we’re still seeing a lot of desire for that type of convenience and access,” said Dr. Skrzynski.
“Digital solutions add so much to our our ability to care for patients, but you do have to select the correct patient at the right time and the right service for them,” she said.
“Where we’ve landed at this point is helping to drive people to the right care at the right time…and we’re finding that you can utilize telemedicine so much more than you might have thought you could,” said Dr. Skrzynski. “And the best way to do this in a lot of cases is with a hybrid model.” Dr. Skrzynski offered examples of how Virtua Health uses a hybrid model to deliver virtual-first (but not virtual-only) care.
“Our urgent care telehealth practice sees patients exclusively virtually in telemedicine. However, when you’re seen and we identify that you really need escalation, somebody’s gotta take a listen to those lungs or take a look in those ears. We have a process for doing that with an absolutely seamless transition to our in-person sites. There’s also in our primary care telehealth practice, which is a digital-first practice — meaning that we provide mainly telemedicine care, but we still offer in-person care.”
Dr. Skrzynski see this hybrid model as a clinical necessity for virtual-first service lines, especially as in-home technology adoption still has a was to go. “Sometimes, you get sick. You may need somebody to listen to lungs. And if you have a Bluetooth enabled stethoscope at home, great, but the vast majority of people today do not,” she said. “And so we’ve found that the hybrid approach to care that’s digital-first is really best.”
Dr. Skrzynski points to patient support as the key for healthcare organizations that would like to do more with virtual care.
First, she said, “You’ve gotta have a support system for patients. We’ve got an incredible patient-facing technical support desk to help navigate patients through troubleshooting.”
Some examples include patients who need to reset access to their MyChart patient portal, or who need A/V help. “The clinician, that’s not their role,” she pointed out. “They don’t necessarily have the time or the knowledge to help a patient through that type of trouble. And so I think having that centralized area of expertise has been incredibly important.”
Next, she emphasized promoting the options that are available to your patients so they can take advantage of them. “As a consumer patient base, we’re all learning about the options that are available to us, how to use them, how to navigate them,” she said. “We’re working to do a lot of education.”
Dr. Skrzynski recommends making your virtual care options accessible to patients when they’re finding care. “When you’re designing your scheduling or educational tools, it’s imperative that you offer up digital. We’ve found that patients just by rote experience are selecting routine office visits in lieu of telemedicine visits even though we have more telemedicine availability. So we’re designing our scheduling pages to allow patients to be able to toggle between the in person and telemedicine availability much more easily so that they can really view all of their options at the same time,” she said.
As security becomes an increasingly pressing concern, Brent Williams discusses actionable best practices for health systems guarding against malicious data attacks. Williams, a veteran in cybersecurity with over 20 years of experience, explores the increasing threats to healthcare data, the importance of proactive security measures, and the evolving landscape of compliance and risk management. Brent emphasizes the need for a strategic, resilient approach to cybersecurity in healthcare. He said that:
“Security is definitely a complex thing, but it shouldn’t be something that only a few people focus on… it has to be a company-wide initiative.”
– Brent Williams
Williams encouraged healthcare organizations to focus on strong security compliance, proactive risk management, and continuous assessment to better protect patient data and navigate the evolving cybersecurity landscape. Here are his takeaways:
Cyberattacks on healthcare systems continue to rise in both frequency and sophistication. Williams highlighted that attackers are constantly evolving, making healthcare a prime target due to the high value of patient data.
“It’s a target-rich environment. You think about the datasets that are out there and what people can do once they have those datasets. It’s just really powerful in terms of stealing identities and, maybe going in and getting credit cards or financial [information].”
He explained that a reactive approach is insufficient and emphasized the need for continuous vigilance and adaptation. He also pointed out that cybercriminals are using more advanced techniques, which require healthcare organizations to adopt a multi-layered security strategy.
Proactive security measures can prevent devastating breaches by implementing regular security assessments, employee training, and advanced cybersecurity tools. Williams emphasized that technology alone is not enough; human factors play a significant role in security, and staff must be trained to recognize threats before they become major incidents.
Speaking to how he recommends approaching a secure culture at your organization, Williams suggested setting clear expectations: “It’s just super important for everybody to understand…these are the rules of the road. This is how we play,” he said. “And so if we have an asset out there, let’s bring it into scope so we can at least monitor, manage, maintain it.”
Regulations and compliance frameworks are evolving, and healthcare organizations must align with stringent data protection standards. Williams discussed the necessity of integrating security into compliance efforts: “Let’s go back and review it. What are the gaps? Because we probably didn’t nail it a hundred percent – how can we be better?”
He pointed out that compliance should be seen as a starting point rather than the end goal, with continuous improvement being the key to long-term security resilience. He added that organizations must be proactive in identifying and mitigating vulnerabilities before they are exploited.
How can health systems looking to invest in AI move beyond buzzwords and create a meaningful strategy? Anika Gardenhire, RN, CHICO , Chief Digital Information Officer at Ardent Health, discusses strategic investment in AI and digital transformation in healthcare. She emphasizes the importance of applying AI to real-world problems rather than chasing hype cycles and ensuring practical implementation at scale. She said that to meaningfully invest in AI:
“We need to be really honest about where AI technology is on the hype cycle. Is it super early? Do we actually understand it? Or is it really well understood, but we didn’t have what we needed to roll it out at scale, and now we do?”
– Anika Gardenhire, RN, CHICO
Gardenhire emphasized that by focusing on real-world applications, avoiding hype-driven investments, and ensuring scalable AI implementation, healthcare organizations can drive meaningful innovation and efficiency.
Gardenhire stressed that organizations should not adopt AI simply because it’s trending. Instead, they should ensure AI aligns with long-term goals and creates real, measurable value. Purpose-driven innovation leads to sustainable impact rather than short-term gains. She warns against falling for “shiny objects,” where companies chase the latest AI trends without clear use cases or defined outcomes. Instead, leaders should focus on AI solutions that address genuine business needs, improve efficiencies, and enhance patient or customer experiences.
Rather than implementing AI for the sake of novelty, organizations should integrate it in ways that support existing processes and improve efficiencies. AI should solve real problems and streamline operations instead of adding unnecessary complexity. Gardenhire emphasized that automation and AI should free up time for employees to focus on higher-value tasks rather than creating additional layers of work.
“Design matters, and you’ve got to make it easy to use, and it shouldn’t be overcomplicated,” she said. She warned organizations to be cautious of AI systems that overcomplicate workflows or require extensive retraining without clear benefits.
Successful AI adoption requires leaders who grasp both the technological and human factors. “We’ve gotten great reviews around the work that we’ve been doing, when we apply novel technologies, but it’s not necessarily magic… it’s a partnership,” Gardenhire emphasized.
Leadership must guide teams through change and ensure AI adoption is meaningful. CIOs and other executives should foster a culture of innovation while also addressing employee concerns about AI, such as job displacement or skill gaps. Strong leadership ensures AI is implemented in a way that complements human expertise rather than replacing it.
Organizations must be mindful of responsible AI use, ensuring transparency, fairness, and accountability in decision-making. Ethical considerations should be at the core of AI strategies to avoid bias and unintended consequences. Gardenhire highlights the importance of explainability in AI models, ensuring that decision-making processes are clear and understandable. She also stresses that AI should be deployed with equity in mind, avoiding biases that disproportionately affect certain groups.
“I hope that we’re going to take a step back in the broader lens of health equity and think to ourselves, ‘If we’re developing direct-to-consumer products, which populations are we missing by not thinking about how we apply our technology’?” she said.
In his role as the CIO of UC San Diego Health, Josh Glandorf is a linchpin between technology and patient care delivery. He dives deep into the evolution of his career and the core focuses that drive his work with technology and people. In this episode, he discusses the evolving role of the CIO in healthcare, the challenges and opportunities in digital transformation, the importance of interoperability, and strategies for leading IT in a complex healthcare environment.
“Part of the value, I think, in adopting technology is getting better over time [with technology that’s] better deployed, better implemented, better consumed.”
– Josh Glandorf
As technology continues to evolve, the role of the CIO will only become more complex. Glandorf advises fellow IT leaders to stay adaptable, foster innovation, and continuously evaluate new solutions that can improve healthcare delivery. He said:
CIOs in healthcare are no longer just responsible for managing IT infrastructure—they are strategic leaders who drive digital innovation and align technology with patient care. Glandorf explained how his background influenced his leadership style.
“I am an industrial engineer by degree, and that took me into software, which was somewhat unconventional as most of my colleagues were going into manufacturing or traditional engineering spaces,” he said.
He explained that modern healthcare CIOs must focus on integrating technology into all aspects of patient care and hospital operations. With the rapid expansion of digital health tools, CIOs are no longer just responsible for IT infrastructure but must also lead strategic initiatives that enhance clinical workflows, improve patient outcomes, and drive organizational efficiency.
Glandorf also discussed how his early career experiences shaped his leadership style. He highlighted how each role prepared him to think critically about the intersection of technology and patient care.
Healthcare systems generate massive amounts of data, but ensuring seamless information exchange between providers remains a significant challenge. Glandorf highlighted the critical need for interoperability to break down data silos and improve patient care.
“We generate so much data in healthcare, but if we can’t exchange it efficiently, we’re not realizing its full potential,” he said.
He explained how UC San Diego Health has worked to enhance data-sharing capabilities by adopting national interoperability frameworks and leveraging emerging technologies. The ability to securely transfer patient records across institutions ensures that providers have access to the most up-to-date medical histories, which is crucial for improving care coordination and reducing redundant tests and procedures.
Beyond data exchange, Glandorf also touched on the role of patient access to health information, emphasizing the need for digital tools that empower individuals to take control of their healthcare journey.
Technology plays a critical role in improving hospital workflows and patient outcomes. Glandorf discussed how UC San Diego Health is leveraging AI and analytics to drive efficiencies and improve decision-making in clinical settings. From predictive analytics that help identify high-risk patients to automation that streamlines administrative tasks, digital transformation is having a profound impact on healthcare delivery. However, Glandorf emphasized that simply adopting new technology is not enough—it must be thoughtfully implemented with a focus on enhancing patient experiences.
“It’s not just about having the latest technology. It’s about making sure that every digital tool we implement leads to better care, better access, and a better overall experience for patients,” he said.
He also acknowledged the challenges of digital transformation, including budget constraints, cybersecurity concerns, and the need for staff training. Successfully navigating these hurdles requires a strong leadership vision and close collaboration across departments.
Glandorf underscores the importance of industry partnerships, working with technology vendors, and aligning with government regulations to accelerate digital innovation. He stresses that CIOs cannot operate in silos—collaboration across institutions and sectors is essential for driving meaningful change.
“No one organization has all the answers. By working together, we can accelerate innovation and solve some of the biggest challenges in healthcare IT,” he said.
He also discusses how regulations and policies impact healthcare IT strategy, explaining that compliance should not be seen as a burden but rather as an opportunity to create more standardized and effective systems.
Industry news keeps coming, from cyberattacks to AI chatter. Amongst it all, health systems need to deliver patient access at scale, with fewer resources. Adnan Iqbal (CEO) and Aditya Bansod (CTO), co-founders of Luma Health, shared their perspectives. They highlighted key topics such as cybersecurity, interoperability, and the evolving role of technology in patient care. Drawing from recent discussions with healthcare leaders, they share insights on how healthcare organizations are adapting:
“It’s really all about the patient as the healthcare consumer. And not just as a concept. [The healthcare industry] has internalized: We are here to deliver care to our customers and their families. It needs to be easy, it needs to be clear, and it needs to get them to success – whatever that means for them.”
– Adnan Iqbal
As healthcare organizations continue to digitize their operations, the risk of cyber threats has become a pressing concern. Bansod notes that cybersecurity is a top concern for CIOs he interacts with and a key topic at healthcare conferences in 2024.
“When I talk to CIOs the three things they care [most] about are their EHR, their electronic resource plan, and cybersecurity,” said Bansod. “Protecting that [patient] consumer and the need of the consumer is so important.”
With hospitals and health systems managing vast amounts of sensitive patient data, the need for robust cybersecurity measures has never been greater. Bansod and Iqbal emphasized that organizations must invest in advanced security protocols and remain vigilant against emerging threats. They also discussed how cyberattacks can disrupt healthcare operations, leading to delays in patient care and financial repercussions.
“Healthcare hasn’t been the fastest adopter of technology,” said Iqbal. “But [we’re seeing] what the technology companies, your Microsofts, Googles, you know, pick one, are doing in terms of securing their data. Healthcare isn’t quite there yet, but the risk here is magnitude times a million.”
“It’s really all about the patient as the healthcare consumer. And not just as a concept, not just as a theme,” said Iqbal. “Everyone [in the healthcare industry] has really internalized: We are here to deliver care to our customers and their families. It needs to be easy, it needs to be clear, and it needs to get them to success – whatever that means for them.”
Bansod and Iqbal discussed that the need to bring patients back amongst competition from new entrants like retail providers is changing how healthcare organizations approach digital tools.
“Digital health has grown up. It’s not, what it was ten years ago…I think definitionally, ‘what is digital health’ is changing,” said Iqbal. “Before it was: ‘There’s point points, there’s technology. We use technology to solve pain points.’ And I think now it’s far more: ‘What is going to deliver impact at scale?’”
Bansod and Iqbal discussed creating “lifetime value” for patients with convenience at different points in their care journeys. In particular, they cited the experience provided by organizations like Northfield Hospital + Clinics and Banner Health, where patients have options like seeing the wait times for urgent care or texting with clinic leadership. Bansod noted that Walmart Health’s closure showed that providing a great retail experience is only part of a patient’s care journey. He also noted that process changes are a necessary but challenging part of providing this value, and that between a large-scale process change and a technology change, “nine times out of ten, deploying a new version of Epic will be easier” than a big process change.
Bansod acknowledged the rapid evolution of technology like AI and suggested that AI applied to actually help healthcare organizations change settings or upgrade their technology could be incredibly useful.
“We’re in this state now with the richness of technology, but change is difficult because ultimately, it’s change management. [And] if you can’t impact those changes, how are we going to push [impact] to patient lifetime values?” Bansod said.
Bansod and Iqbal also discussed the boom of AI solutions in the digital health field and how health systems are navigating it.
“Healthcare decision-makers have been living the digital health journey for fifteen years now. They’re fairly sophisticated and very astute,” said Iqbal. “[Just] calling your product ‘chat AI,’ that’s not AI…adding a ‘.ai’ to a new product someone releases is insufficient,” he said.
“There are real problems –business problems, people problems, technology problems – that healthcare delivery mechanisms are looking to solve. And there’s very clear alignment where AI can actually be very enabling,” including clinical imaging and diagnostics, call handling, and administrative work.
With the end of the 2024 election cycle, we’ll see changes to health policy. The Health Management Academy’s Stephanie Bernardes, VP of Health Policy and Strategy, breaks down how different outcomes might affect health policy, as well as top-of-mind changes that will be predictably coming by the end of 2024. She explores how different election outcomes could shape healthcare policies in 2025 and beyond. She provides insights into potential regulatory shifts, the impact on health systems, and key areas of focus for policymakers.
“We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but we do know that regulatory oversight is not going away. If anything, it’s increasing.”
– Stephanie Bernardes
Bernardes covered recent and upcoming changes in health policy. Her recommendation: By staying informed, engaging in policy discussions, and preparing for different regulatory outcomes, healthcare organizations can navigate the evolving landscape of health policy post-election.
With the election just weeks away, healthcare leaders are analyzing party platforms, candidate promises, and policy trends to anticipate potential shifts. Bernardes emphasized that while campaigns outline broad policy directions, actual implementation depends on numerous factors, including congressional dynamics and regulatory agencies’ interpretations.
Beyond political rhetoric, the media plays a significant role in shaping public and policymaker perceptions of healthcare priorities. Bernardes pointed out that journalists help translate complex policy topics for the public, which in turn can influence legislative focus. “What are the reporters saying? How are the reporters translating some of these political, wonky, maybe deep, policy things to their readers? Because that will tell you a lot about what the voters care about,” she said.
Another key factor in shaping policy is the role of federal agencies, which continue to implement and enforce regulations regardless of who is in office. Even when political leadership changes, many ongoing healthcare initiatives—such as efforts to expand value-based care and streamline interoperability—are likely to continue in some form.
Regardless of the election outcome, regulatory oversight in healthcare is increasing. Bernardes stressed that health systems and providers should be proactive in preparing for potential shifts rather than waiting to react once policies are enacted.
She explained that policy changes are not just about new laws but also about how they are enforced and interpreted by agencies. This means healthcare organizations must stay flexible and informed to remain compliant. “It’s not just about the laws that get passed; it’s about how they’re enforced and interpreted,” she said.
Additionally, state governments will play a major role in healthcare policy implementation. Organizations operating across multiple states must pay attention to both federal and local regulations, as state policies often vary significantly.
AI is transforming healthcare, but regulation is struggling to keep up with rapid innovation. Bernardes noted that while policymakers recognize AI’s potential, they are still developing frameworks to ensure ethical use, data protection, and fair reimbursement models. “[With] AI regulations, we don’t know what’s coming. We’re making educated guesses,” she said.
One major challenge is that government agencies are often reactive rather than proactive in regulating new technologies. Bernardez explained that while innovation moves quickly, regulatory bodies take time to assess risks and establish guidelines. “The government is trying to catch up with innovation, but innovation is moving faster than regulation,” she said.
As AI becomes more integrated into clinical workflows, future policy decisions will determine how it is used in diagnostics, patient care, and operational efficiency. Healthcare leaders will need to stay informed about evolving regulations to ensure compliance and maximize the benefits of AI-driven tools.
In patient access, the most important measurement is whether patients are getting what they need. But this can’t be separated from what they want — their preferences, how they engage with their care, and more. Luma’s heads of engineering, technology, and data science come together to share takeaways about what hundreds of thousands of patients really want.
For more detail on their data analysis and recommendations from it for healthcare organizations, check out this resource.
The discussion highlights how healthcare organizations can use data insights to optimize patient engagement and make healthcare more accessible. They discussed the following themes:
Many healthcare organizations assume that increasing appointment slots will solve access problems, but the reality is far more complex. Patients’ healthcare decisions are influenced by digital literacy, financial constraints, work schedules, and personal responsibilities. Former head of data science Lauren To emphasized the importance of understanding these deeper factors through data analysis.
To explained that improving access requires more than availability; it requires addressing barriers that prevent patients from booking or keeping appointments. By analyzing patient behavior, healthcare organizations can design flexible scheduling, provide better digital support, and create outreach strategies that truly meet patient needs. “What helps them get to care? What makes their clinical care experience better? A lot of that actually comes down to outreach,” she said.
Using data analytics, healthcare providers can shift from a reactive approach to a proactive one—predicting patient needs before they become urgent. Many patients miss or delay care due to challenges beyond their control, such as difficulty navigating scheduling systems or lack of transportation. By leveraging predictive analytics, organizations can identify at-risk patients and implement targeted interventions. Luma’s data science team “[is] always asked: ‘What is driving patient decisions, what are the barriers, and how can we improve access?'” To said.
For instance, if data reveals that a patient frequently cancels appointments due to transportation issues, healthcare systems can offer telehealth options or provide assistance programs. This proactive approach helps prevent health deterioration while improving efficiency within the healthcare system.
Digital tools, AI-driven patient engagement, and mobile-first solutions are transforming how patients interact with healthcare providers. The episode highlights how technology should be designed to accommodate patients’ preferences, such as mobile-based scheduling, multilingual support, and AI-powered assistance. Many younger patients prefer text message reminders over traditional phone calls, while others may require digital literacy support.
However, implementing technology alone is not enough—it must be intuitive, accessible, and genuinely helpful. Poorly designed digital tools can create additional barriers rather than removing them. The discussion emphasizes that the key to success lies in designing systems that allow for seamless appointment booking, personalized reminders, and easy access to health records.
By prioritizing user-friendly technology, healthcare organizations can significantly improve patient retention, reduce missed appointments, and enhance overall patient satisfaction.
With whiplash-inducing priority shifts taking place rapidly in healthcare, how do leaders balance innovation and the status quo? Sri Velamoor, president and COO at NextGen Healthcare, discusses his perspective as both a leader and a technology provider. In this episode, he discusses leadership through change, exploring how healthcare leaders can navigate uncertainty, adapt to shifting priorities, and embrace opportunities for innovation. He emphasizes the importance of strategic decision-making, resilience, and fostering a culture that supports transformation. Here are his takeaways:
“There’s always tons of change in our sector. The key is not just reacting to it but shaping it in a way that aligns with your mission and vision.”
– Sri Velamoor
Sri Velamoor discussed the balance between innovation and execution that technology providers must achieve to deliver healthcare outcomes. He discussed the following themes:
Velamoor emphasizes that organizations that view challenges as chances to innovate will stay ahead in a competitive landscape. Leaders who resist transformation risk being left behind, while those who encourage adaptability foster growth and resilience within their teams.
By shifting their mindset to see uncertainty as a gateway to progress, leaders can help their organizations navigate change with confidence. Successful leadership through change requires a willingness to challenge outdated processes, experiment with new approaches, and remain open to learning. Organizations that prioritize agility and innovation will emerge stronger from periods of disruption. “Change is inevitable, but growth is optional,” Velamoor said.
Building trust through transparent communication is essential during times of uncertainty. “Great leaders don’t just react to change—they anticipate it,” said Velamoor.
Open and honest communication reduces anxiety among employees and helps them feel more connected to the organization’s vision. Velamoor highlights that teams are more likely to embrace change when they feel included in the process. By actively listening to concerns and providing clarity, leaders can create an environment where employees feel valued and engaged. Frequent and consistent communication is crucial, as uncertainty can breed fear and resistance. Leaders should not only communicate the “what” and “how” of change but also the “why,” helping employees understand the broader purpose behind transitions. Transparency fosters a culture of trust, making employees more willing to contribute their ideas and energy toward achieving shared goals.
Velamoor stresses that the best ideas often come from employees closest to the challenges at hand. Leaders should foster a work environment that encourages experimentation and collaboration rather than micromanagement.”The best ideas often come from those closest to the problem. Leaders need to create space for those ideas to surface,” he said.
By removing bureaucratic barriers and giving teams the autonomy to take initiative, organizations can become more agile and innovative. A culture of empowerment allows employees to feel ownership over their work, increasing motivation and engagement. Leaders should provide resources, mentorship, and a safe space for employees to test new ideas, knowing that not every experiment will succeed. The organizations that thrive are those that nurture a mindset of continuous learning and encourage employees to take calculated risks in pursuit of progress.
Mistakes should not be seen as setbacks but as valuable learning experiences that drive long-term success. Velamoor emphasizes that businesses must encourage a culture where feedback is welcomed, and processes are continuously refined. Leaders should model resilience by acknowledging failures openly, analyzing their root causes, and using them as stepping stones for future growth.
When failure is normalized as part of innovation, employees feel more comfortable taking initiative and thinking creatively. Organizations that prioritize ongoing learning will be better equipped to adapt and thrive in an ever-changing environment. Establishing structured mechanisms for learning—such as retrospectives, feedback loops, and knowledge-sharing forums—can help teams turn insights from past experiences into actionable improvements.
“Every mistake is a learning opportunity. The key is to reflect, adjust, and keep moving forward,” said Velamoor.
Velamoor underscores that the best leaders are those who embrace feedback, learn from missteps, and create a culture where growth is a constant process.
Malaz Boustani, MD, MPH is a leading geriatrician and professor of aging research at Indiana University Health. He is also the co-founder and Chief Innovation and Implementation Officer of IU’s Center for Health Innovation and Implementation Science. In this episode, he discusses the challenges and opportunities in adapting healthcare to an aging population. He highlights the importance of proactive, personalized care and leveraging AI, behavioral economics, and network science to improve geriatric health outcomes. He said that:
“We don’t want to wait for the perfect solution—because every time we wait, people die in the current healthcare system…at the Center for Health Innovation and Implementation Science, our vision is transforming health for better, for all, now.”
– Malaz Boustani, MD, MPH
Dr. Boustani discussed the importance of accounting for an aging population in healthcare delivery. He discussed the following themes:
As the population at large grows older, chronic conditions like dementia and other age-related diseases are becoming more prevalent. Dr. Boustani outlined the urgency of planning for improved geriatric care as life expectancy increases. He notes two major challenges that impact care for elderly people:
He discussed the potential to deliver customized healthcare solutions outside of traditional hospital settings, allowing for more at-home and community-based care. Dr. Boustani said that “the concept of an age-friendly community, age-friendly healthcare system” exists, but hasn’t yet touched the technology industry. “Can you imagine using technology to create an aging-friendly environment that allows you to stay in your community, and have embedded sensors [to monitor your health and provide reminders]? I think smart aging, aging-friendly smart communities, are the future,” Dr. Boustani said. “[But] that requires embedding technology, architects and civil engineers working together.”
Dr. Boustani covers the mission and goals of the Center for Health Innovation and Implementation Science at Indiana University:
“I am a scientist first and physician second. As an agile scientist, it’s almost like an engineer trying to understand, predict, and then steer the behavior of one human like you, or a patient or care provider, and the behavior of organizations…at the Center for Health Innovation and Implementation Science, our vision is transforming health for better, for all, now,” he said.
“We don’t want to wait for the perfect solution because every time we wait, people die in the current healthcare system. So speed is a very specific constraint for us. I took the agile software development [process] and expanded it, as a method of doing agile science,” Dr. Boustani said.
“My ultimate goal is to eliminate ninety percent of current healthcare positions, and trying to deliver that ninety percent through a very highly engaging, human-centric avatar. [In that future], you don’t have to wait for the hours of 8-5 and face your healthcare management alone after-hours or on weekends. We don’t want you to have to wait for expensive physicians and advanced care providers. Technology can scale up our unscalable workforce and create a win-win situation.”
Effectively reaching new and returning patients ultimately keeps them healthier. Brighton Ncube, an experienced healthcare executive and former SVP of Physician Practices and Ambulatory Care at Kingman Regional Medical Center, shares initiatives that improved outcomes for specific patient populations, even with limited resources.
He discusses the importance of understanding your unique patient populations and their healthcare conditions and challenges to effectively impact their health.
“As healthcare providers, we have to provide the best care, possible to our patient population and find ways to manage their health in the most effective way.”
– Brighton Ncube
Brighton Ncube has spent many years as an ambulatory care executive, in addition to extensive time working to eliminate preventable diseases in Africa. He brings this perspective to a discussion on strategies to effectively manage health at the population level:
“I always [try to] understand my [patient] population. What’s the demographics of my population? What are their barriers to care?” Ncube said. “For example, I’ve worked in rural communities where there are a lot of retirees. Most of the barriers to access are transportation. We then plan around that barrier,” Ncube said, with solutions for transportation and more virtual options for those patients.
Ncube also noted that after recognizing a demand for same-day sick visits, Kingman Regional began providing virtual same-day visits with guaranteed availability.
“In one of the systems that I worked for in Northern California, we had a wait time of nine months for colonoscopies. So we developed a team to [analyze the root causes] and implement process improvements,” he said. With multidisciplinary process improvements, including a period of time where colonoscopies were scheduled during weekends to address the backlog, “we reduced the wait time from nine months to three weeks,” said Ncube.
Speaking about Kingman Regional’s successful initiative to improve hepatitis C screening, Ncube outlined the following success factors:
Ncube emphasizes efficient processes leveraged from industries outside healthcare as a key innovation to be able to provide more effective care.
“There’s been a lot of innovations in implementing some of the methodologies which were prevalent in manufacturing industries…lean processes. Clinic managers will have a board outlining the metrics they’re tracking, which care teams are present…in healthcare, constantly we have to improve things. Applying processes from manufacturing to healthcare to say ‘This is how we do process improvement, this is how we monitor operations,’” Ncube said.
Ncube strongly emphasized the importance of operational improvements, capacity planning, and staff resources to make it possible to improve care.
The patient’s healthcare journey starts long before they walk through the door – and their readiness for care can determine how successful they are in getting what they need. Chris Dallaire, BSN, CRHCP, RH-CBS, formerly clinic director at Permian Regional Medical Center and an experienced technologist with a clinical perspective, discusses how to incorporate patient readiness into your outreach strategy. His recommendations are:
“Make it as easy and convenient as possible for your patient to provide information. And make it easier for staff to do their job – because they’re more willing to do it successfully if it’s not so convoluted and complex to do.”
– Chris Dallaire
“It’s extremely important for patients to be prepared for their appointments prior to coming to the clinic,” said Dallaire. “Their medical history, their med list, sometimes it’s really extensive. [They can fill that out,] gather their insurance information before they come so they’re not fumbling around and trying to find their insurancecard when they get here, accurately capture their current symptoms so they can explain it to their doctor correctly.”
Without a process for allowing patients to prepare for care, Dallaire said, patients could “feel rushed when they get here. When we hand them a packet of paper and say, ‘Fill this out in fifteen minutes,’ they’re racking their brain thinking, ‘When was that surgery? I know my mom had diabetes, but was she on insulin?’”
He noted that allowing patients to provide this information “in the own words, from the privacy of their home” is not only more convenient, but more likely to fully represent what the patient needs from their care. “I’m likely to be more honest about what’s going on if I can think about it sitting on my couch versus in an office with 15 other people around,” Dallaire admitted.
“When I came to Permian Regional MedicalCenter, there were so many processes that were still captured manually, either on paper or by phone calls. And it’s just inefficient to do it that way. It takes so much time,” said Dallaire. “We were doing manual insurance verification still. Like, manually, picking up the phone or going onto the payer website.”
To improve the efficiency of getting patients ready for care, the process needed to be easy for both patients and staff to use. First, the organization evaluated vendors with an eye to reducing manual work, and prioritized eliminating manual documentation. “A big piece of [evaluating vendors] was was looking for the right vendor that did the bidirectional, communication with our EHR,” Dallaire said.
Next, “we worked really hard to debunk the myth [that patients wouldn’t use self-service options] and have been very pleased with the adoption of our texting platform,” said Dallaire.
Dallaire recommends: “Make it as easy and convenient for your patient as possible to get the information that you need to for the visit. And make it easier for the staff to do their job because they’re more willing to to do it successfully if it’s not so convoluted and complex to do.”
Community health systems stretch limited resources to serve a large patient population, often of underinsured and uninsured patients, and manage to provide critical services like in-home maternal visits and preventive testing. In this episode, Linda Stevenson, CIO of Fisher-Titus Medical Center, dives into the strategies her organization uses to provide impactful services, reach more people, and maximize resources.
“Rural health care and community health care is bigger than you think. There’s over 6,000 rural, community, and critical access healthcare organizations in the United States… [And] it’s up to us to get creative, because of our margins, to stay viable and stay on top of technology.”
– Linda Stevenson
Fisher-Titus Medical Center is a cornerstone of their Huron County community, serving as the largest employer in the county and working directly with the state of Ohio to pilot in-home maternal visits. And like many rural, community, and critical access organizations, Fisher-Titus continues to provide innovative care with small margins. Stevenson shares more about the importance of organizations like hers:
“The number one thing people need to understand is, Rural health care and community health care is bigger than you think. There’s over 6,000 rural, community, and critical access healthcare organizations in the United States,” said Stevenson. She also pointed out that Fisher-Titus Medical Center is the biggest employer in Huron County, Ohio.
“We may be small as a hospital, but we’re wide in terms of our services. We have nursing home, home health, and we have senior living. We have our own EMS. We have ambulatory physician group. So, we view it as being there for our patients from birth to death,” Stevenson said.
“We serve four counties in total,” she said. “[And] it’s up to us to get creative, because of our margins, to stay viable and stay on top of technology.”
Despite the importance of critical access, rural, and community healthcare organizations, they operate on small margins, said Stevenson. “It’s up to us to get creative, because of our margins of less than one percent, to stay viable and stay on top of technology to bring things to our patients. So we partner [to do that].” One example she provides is four community hospitals in her area, including Fisher-Titus, that formed a consortium to work together. For example, “we might negotiate with a vendor for a better rate. It’s our four unique hospitals saying, ‘Vendor X, we’d love to work with you. Can we get better pricing if all four of us select the same solution at the same time?'”
Asked about Fisher-Titus’ work to pilot in-home maternity care, Stevenson used a wider lens. “We have grants and programs where we partner with the state of Ohio, [for example] to provide better prenatal care…and make sure we have the technology for our maternity patients,” said Stevenson. “We’re also very closely linked with [our regional HIE and discuss] ‘What’ll what do we do next? How do we exchange maternity care records next and make sure that maternity services out in a community physician’s office, that information can then flow to the hospitals?”
“We are more nimble and agile because of our size. But on the other side of the coin, our resources are are more scarce,” said Stevenson.
Stevenson spoke highly of her peer group and staying connected regionally. “I love Gartner, I love CHIME,” said Stevenson. “But I’ve also made it a job of mine to talk to every one of the CIOs in the state of Ohio, whether it’s Cleveland Clinic or other smaller organizations. We stay close. We say ‘Hey, what are you seeing, what are you doing?’ ‘Where did you go with this purchase?'”
She also noted the importance of focusing not just on innovation as a CIO, but on infrastructure, technology upgrades, process improvements, and optimizations that help the basics run well.
“When I got here, Fisher-Titus was known for having the very first smart room hospital in the country. Probably back in 2014. People would come from all over the country to see the smart rooms and all the automation. So I was very excited when I joined in 2019,” Stevenson remembered.
“But I found that the foundation was crumbling, technology hadn’t been upgraded, processes hadn’t been developed…the first three years were about rebuilding [the basics],” she said. “My proudest moment rebuilding the infrastructure to make Fisher-Titus successful.”
Mike Cordeiro has spent his career advocating for better healthcare information exchange in the United States and beyond. At MEDITECH, he’s a leading voice for EHRs and technology companies in healthcare and beyond partnering – not siloing – to improve healthcare experiences. In this session, he discuss MEDITECH’s approach to data exchange and his goals for interoperability. He outlined three major recommendations for continued improvements to interoperability:
“We’ve seen [interoperability] grow from a pilot to the industry using it nationally, adding technology that improves it further. Ultimately, it solves problems not just for patients, but for the health system.”
– Mike Cordeiro
“When I first started off doing interfaces in 2009, it was kind of this extra thing that people didn’t quite understand…and as data became more powerful, interoperability started to grow as a concept,” said Cordeiro. “And reflecting, one of the things that made interop blossom was actually government getting involved and saying, ‘You should all exchange data. A patient shall have access to their data using an app of their choosing. We’re creating these national frameworks.'”
He acknowledged that “Folks talk about government being involved as sometimes a barrier in that, you know, we’re just trying to meet regulations and check boxes.” But he encourages peers that “we as the health IT community should really be looking at what those regulations are, and what those mandates are, and actually leveraging them and and and using them to help advance tech.”
He provided an example of MEDITECH’s philosophy on data exchange: “What we’re trying to do here is take structured documents, put them into a FHIR construct, and use them more meaningfully instead of just checking a box saying ‘I pushed a document [to another system].”
Cordeiro noted that to create better APIs and interoperability capabilities, in addition to following data exchange standards, vendors can work collaboratively for better outcomes. He recommends “having an environment where we can actually test and prototype with the vendor community and work collaboratively.”
“There needs to be back and forth collaboration on kind of what the big picture is, because it’s a continued evolution,” said Cordeiro.
He notes that co-creating an API or innovating on a use case with a vendor pays off even beyond a specific partnership. “[When we’re working with a vendor like Luma on a new API,] this isn’t an API specific to Luma and MEDITECH. It’s the API for how we’ll do provider-patient messaging on a specific topic. It’s not just MEDITECH coding in a silo and saying, ‘Okay, now you must use this the way it is.’ It’s actually collaborating…relative to the use case. We try to work as a community and not MEDITECH in a bubble dictating to others.”
“I’m hoping what 2025, 2026 will bring is wide-scale adoption of this national exchange framework beyond structured documents – ultimately leveraging the trust element of these networks to not just share data at scale, but use it,” said Cordeiro.
He noted that it will be important for EHRs to take a collaborative approach to make more interoperability advancements happen. “At MEDITECH, we wanted to develop an ecosystem that would allow innovation,” he said. “Our EHR isn’t a closed-box EHR, but a platform, and we know that health systems need to build on that platform. If we were to put cost barriers in for app developers to innovate…no one really wins there. The right thing is to have an innovation platform, and that’s what we do.”
Dr. Stefano Bini is a leading orthopedic surgeon and researcher at UC San Francisco who is passionate about advancing the orthopedic field with technology including AI and robotics. He is also the founder of the Digital Orthopaedics Conference San Francisco (DOCSF), a forum to foster connections between stakeholders to promote healthcare technology innovation. In this episode, he discusses recommendations for improving the adoption of groundbreaking new technology in healthcare:
“Residents, doctors, they need to be exposed to [new and innovative] technology…if you’ve seen digital solutions and you’ve seen them work, when you’re dealing with your own problems, you might say ‘Wait a minute. Is there another way to do things?'”
– Dr. Stefano Bini
Dr. Bini discussed his career and observation of silos between clinicians and researchers and the technologists that could be able to help with innovative solutions. “I continued to get more involved in digital health, and I’m going to orthopedic conferences [realizing]…these two sets of people [research-minded clinicians and technologists] are not talking to each other. There’s no place where the CEO of a startup could go and meet a bunch of forward-looking orthopedic surgeons, and throw some health care administrators and venture capitalists into the mix and have a conversation,” Dr. Bini said.
He pointed out: ”If super smart people don’t know that these technologies exist because they’re just not exposed to them in their daily life, or they don’t think of them as being accessible, then they’re not gonna start dreaming, asking the question, pushing the boundaries, making investments. I see my role as exposing people that need to know [about new] technology to the technologists themselves.”
To address this challenge, he founded the Digital Orthopaedics Conference San Francisco (DOCSF), a forum to foster connections between stakeholders to promote healthcare technology innovation. He said: “It’s a perfect place to innovate…by placing these startups in front of of an ecosystem, not just a subset of venture capitalists or perhaps a couple of hospital administrators – with everybody there, you have presentations, but afterwards, conversations…it’s what happens at the breaks [in conference programming that creates the magic, creates the glue, creates the connections, the network effect that occurs when you bring in these different parts of health care.”
Dr. Bini recommends creating forums like DOCSF to foster more collaboration that can move the healthcare industry forward.
Dr. Bini gave an example of collaboration with technologists that has helped solve pain points:
“I was in joint replacement, and demand was growing through the roof as the older generation was coming through. We had limited access to physical therapy. But I came across a small company with a platform that allowed us to interface with patients using video clips. We leveraged it and demonstrated a 60% reduction in demand for inpatient care paths in a randomized controlled trial.”
“We all saw huge opportunities to take these nascent technologies and apply them to actual pain points.”
He gave another example of robotics innovations discussed at 2024’s DOCSF conference: “We wanted to get people thinking about what the possibilities are when we upgrade the robotic platforms that are currently being used in healthcare…there’s a lot of places where robots can be helpful, whether in the operating room, the client setting, and we’re seeing them run around delivering coffee in hospitals. Particularly in pharmacy, [robotics can be] super useful. But until you know what you don’t know, you can’t ask the question, ‘Bring this technology to my world. What would that look like?'”
KLAS Research is a leading voice in healthcare IT, understanding what patients and their providers need and fostering innovation in technology to make it happen. VP of Digital Health and Patient Voice Adam Cherrington leads research into how patients interact with their providers’ healthcare technology. In this episode, he shares recent insights about what patients want from their providers’ digital options and provide a look at what to expect in the coming year:
“You have to ask the patient, and pay attention…Are we bringing our preconceived notions of how healthcare operates, or are we actually understanding the true voice of the patient?”
– Adam Cherrington
Since 2022, Adam Cherrington has led robust reporting into not just how health systems are adopting available technologies or improving “patient experience” – but how patients perceive that experience and where there are gaps. From this analysis, he shared the following takeaways:
Cherrington shared that in his research, patients are actively asking for the ability to self-serve, not needing to be engaged. “Patients tell us, they want scheduling. They want access to check in. They just want ease of use to to engage,” said Cherrington. “That’s one of the big ironies about patient engagement. Patients are trying to engage. They want it.”
In KLAS Research’s 2022 report “Patient Perspectives on Patient Engagement Technology 2022,” Cherrington and his colleague Dan Czech found that the self-service options offered by healthcare providers often don’t focus on the areas that patients want most, such as self-scheduling or check-in.
Speaking about a simple “pizza tracker” consumer experience for patients, Cherrington said, “For basic stuff, like to communicate that I’m going to miss my appointment, I want the Domino’s Pizza experience for that….we’re seeing some alignment there. [Since the 2022 report] there’s been wonderful progress on things like self-scheduling that are a high priority for patients.”
With KLAS Research’s Patient Voice Collaborative initiative, “we’ve gone from a report to a collaborative, and we’re interviewing patients. It’s a survey where we can compare and benchmark,” Cherrington said. “Now we’ve got data to start challenging assumptions.” Some of the common assumptions about patient behavior that Cherrington mentioned are:
Cherrington continued, “For listeners, I hope [a takeaway is] the next time they’re in a meeting and someone says, ‘Our patients won’t behave that way. They won’t do that thing.’ I hope a yellow light goes up and they say, ‘How do we know that?'”
Cherrington pointed out that bringing in the voice of the patient can also help improve the staff experience. “[Patient self-service] can be used to reduce the administrative burden on some of these basic things [like] ‘I just need to reschedule.’ That ought to free up more resources for for more complicated things.”
He noted that the same challenges that affect the healthcare organization and the staff experience also affect patients. “Health system leaders, the vantage point is aligned to the organization, like ‘How do I bring patients in?’ ‘How do I get the right revenue mix?’ But from the patient side…if I want a reservation at Emeril’s restaurant, and he’s not available, I’ve still got to eat…[an organization I spoke to recently] realized that they were losing two-thirds of their own patients due to schedule inavailability.”
Cherrington shared an example where the organization addressed clinicians’ hesitancy to open schedules to patient self-scheduling: “They opened up more schedules, more opportunities for patients. Scheduling went through the roof. Patient satisfaction went through the roof. No-show rates dropped. Revenue increased…there’s a lot of synergy when we pause and really address what the patient needs.”
Patients are paying for a larger share of their healthcare than ever before, and the patient financial experience is an increasingly important part of the care journey. Patrick Drewry is a healthcare financial industry veteran and the VP of Product – Patient Access & Financial Clearance at Optum. In this episode, he discusses what makes a great patient financial experience. He covered the following themes:
In his role at Optum, Patrick Drewry is always thinking about how to improve the patient financial experience. In particular, he discussed the need to eliminate “points of abrasion” that patients experience throughout their healthcare journeys. Here are his takeaways:
“Insurance verification, out-of-pocket estimates, prior authorization, all these things can be a point of abrasion for providers, patients, and payers alike…there’s so many points in healthcare, and in the financial domain it begins at the point at which the patient is getting on the schedule,” Drewry said.
From the start of the patient journey, tasks like verifying the patient’s insurance benefits and coverage affect the financial end of the experience, Drewry pointed out. He acknowledged that the uncertainty of healthcare billing is a continued challenge for patients, and emphasized that unlike in another setting where prices might be more transparent, financial journey steps can impact the patient’s care.
“Just being able to make sense of, what do you expect your out-of-pocket expense to be for this healthcare event, that’s a question we’ve been trying to answer for the last 15+ years,” Drewry said. “If you think about your experience with just about any other sort of retail environment, you don’t have a likely higher-than-normal expenditure where you don’t know what it’s going to cost.”
“Solving for these points of abrasion by engaging the patient pre-service can help mitigate downstream consequences like delayed care, lack of payment,” Drewry said.
“‘Patient financial experience’ is sort of a misnomer. It’s really just the patient experience,” Drewry pointed out.
“The demand we’re hearing from the patient is, ‘Let us do it ourselves.’ Patients want to have either a validation check or the opportunity to input the information themselves, which we love, because we see no better source of accurate information,” Drewry said. “Step one is to meet that demand.”
“The next step is, we have to get more connected,” Drewry said.
“The byproduct of how technology has evolved in the last few years, everyone came to the realization at the same time: Our patients need to have some sort of self-service option for our specific function. So all at once, all these different technologies have the ability to text. But it creates a disharmonized experience for the patient. It creates an experience where the patient ends up filling in or validating the same information over and over. So we have to be able to integrate and interoperate, and take information from the patient and connect it through the entire journey, regardless of where you’re sourcing the information or who your technology vendor is.”
The health IT market seems like it can’t possibly hold more vendors, and yet it continues to grow. How should health systems make sense of all the potential partners out there? Bobby Guelich is the co-founder and CEO of Elion, an independent healthcare marketplace focused on helping health systems evaluate vendors. In this episode, he provided insight into how peer organizations search for, find, and evaluate partners to discover the best fits. He discussed:
“There’s there’s so much great tech out there these days, and it’s getting better so fast. There are a lot of challenges, but it’s exciting to see the direction new technology is going.”
– Bobby Guelich
Guelich’s work at Elion is focused on evaluating and comparing health IT vendors. He spoke about the challenge for health system leaders looking to effectively solve for their use cases with health IT vendors and offered strategies for doing so, based on his experience. Here are some of the major takeaways:
“Big picture, over the last ten years, the health care technology landscape has gone massively more complicated,” Guelich said. “Over the last 10-15 years, you had a ton of technologists come into the field, a huge explosion of startups. The pandemic just made the field that much more complicated, and now AI makes [evaluating your options] even more difficult.”
“It can be challenging to go to vendors’ webinars and figure out, ‘what does their product even do, am I the right customer?’ And we created Elion to help people make sense of this landscape.”
Guelich points out that “the average hospital has over 1,300 vendors they’re working with across technology and services,” and the process of starting with a problem and finding a vendor that effectively addresses it has gotten more complex.
But Guelich also notes a trend toward vendor consolidation. “I think people feel like, in the last five years and [during] the pandemic, they went out on kind of a buying spree. They brought in a whole bunch of new solutions, and now they’re kind of looking at it and saying, do we have duplication? How does this intersect with what our EHR can do? There’s definitely a feeling [we’re hearing] of…wanting to move away from point solutions or go with platforms as much as possible.”
But Guelich also notes a trend toward vendor consolidation. “I think people feel like, in the last five years and [during] the pandemic, they went out on kind of a buying spree. They brought in a whole bunch of new solutions, and now they’re kind of looking at it and saying, do we have duplication? How does this intersect with what our EHR can do? There’s definitely a feeling [we’re hearing] of…wanting to move away from point solutions or go with platforms as much as possible.”
If you’re looking at adding a new technology or vendor, Guelich recommended starting with the root problem you’d like to solve.
When presented with an example scenario of an access leader looking at solutions to solve for high call volumes, he said: “If you’re talking about long hold times, what is the reason for that? Is it because people can’t get through because of call volume, or perhaps because people can’t do what they want to do with self-service options that are available? Maybe there’s a common issue, such as a billing issue, that’s driving up call volume. Or maybe you need an intelligence solution so that you can understand why people are calling in to begin with.”
Identifying these root causes, Guelich said, can help narrow down the field of vendors significantly. In the call center scenario, the answer to these questions could be the difference between a revenue cycle solution, a conversational AI agent, or an intelligence vendor, for example.
Guelich offered several tips for healthcare organization leaders to make their vendor evaluation processes more effective:
Marlena Kane is the former VP, New Patient Access & Acquisition at City of Hope and a powerhouse in patient access leadership. Kane shares her insights on what it takes to modernize access, the critical role of investing in people, and how a culture of engagement leads to real operational impact. She breaks down the strategies that turn access centers into strategic front doors for healthcare organizations.
“If you invest in people first—develop them, empower them, and get them bought in—you create a team of problem-solvers instead of just fire-fighters. That’s when real transformation happens.”
– Marlena Kane
While improving access involves solving complex problems, delivering a stellar, empathetic patient experience is something that teams can control and directly impact. In this episode, Kane dives in to the long-term benefits of investing in people, both for improving KPIs and fostering a positive organizational culture. Here are her strategies:
Kane asserts that true transformation in patient access starts with investing in and empowering teams. By fostering a culture of engagement, transparency, and ownership, organizations can significantly reduce turnover and improve operational efficiency.
“I’ve been in healthcare my whole career. I love solving complex problems to make things better for patients and developing people along the way to be able to to do it even better than before,” Kane said.
“You tend to come in as a leader and focus on process and technology first. What I’ve learned is that that doesn’t work,” Kane said.
“You really have to make sure that you’re putting all of your most of your time and energy and investments in the people, particularly with access centers. I mean, I think you would hear a lot of leaders say that, you know, invest in the people. Particularly in my experience with access centers, this is a team. You really have to make sure that you’re putting most of your time and energy and investments in the people… really getting the people and the leaders on board with what you’re trying to do and having them help shape it is gonna go much further,” she said.
Kane recommends meeting with front-line teams often and making sure they have the resources they need to solve problems. “You’re investing a lot of time upfront, [but] now you have not only a team of leaders, but you’ve empowered their teams to solve problems. And then you have 200 problem-solvers instead of five of us fighting fires,” she said.
Many organizations treat access as a transactional department, Kane said, but she advocates for it as a critical, strategic entry point. “Access in particular is the front door. It’s very tightly connected to how our physicians get reimbursed and how they advance their research… it tends to be a department that is most ignored, least invested in, but we get the most feedback and complaints, she said.
Kane outlined a unique “rounding” process she implemented with her team to transform the culture of the access department, empower her staff, and understand friction points. She shared how transformational regular, face-to-face time between leader and team has been at City of Hope.
“When I first started, I would ask my team, ‘Can I go [look] around? They thought I was crazy. They were like, ‘We didn’t prep for this.’ People wouldn’t even give me eye contact,” she remembered.
“Now I have my set rounds, we have huddles. [Even] with four days of working from home…they’re involved in process improvement. They know how we’re doing on our metrics. They can speak to the why. They’re calling me over for ideas. They’ll give me crap for paying more attention to [another team],” she laughed. “When we compare our KPIs to before, it’s an incredible improvement, and the team is super engaged,” she said.
Fran Palm is the president and CEO of Zufall Health, a large FQHC delivering care in New Jersey. She discusses her organization’s strategic growth, commitment to trauma-informed care, and innovative approach to navigating funding challenges to expand healthcare access in underserved communities.
“We are purposefully seeking growth because it fits our mission, and it strengthens the organization overall to be able to provide more services and lean on the systems that we already have.”
– Fran Palm
Zufall Health has expanded significantly, growing from a few sites to 12 licensed locations. Their ability to sustain and grow services, despite funding challenges, is largely due to strategic planning and partnerships with schools, hospitals, and mental health agencies.
“We have to change the way we look at [rapid growth]. It is not just accidental, it is intentional,” said Palm.
With COVID-related funding drying up, Zufall Health has diversified revenue streams, securing grants, leveraging New Jersey’s expanded reimbursement policies, and launching its own foundation for fundraising. Their proactive approach to federal and state funding ensures continued service delivery despite financial uncertainty.
“We’re not waiting around,” said Palm. “We do a whole lot of fundraising on our own from state and private sources. For example, last year, we set out to replace our aging mobile medical van, and through a combination of efforts—special events, etc.—we raised about four hundred fifty thousand dollars so that we could purchase a new vehicle. You have to take advantage of what else is going on with others. Your opportunities come in different forms, and you just have to be ready,” she said.
Zufall Health has prioritized trauma-informed care, recognizing the long-term health impacts of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Their approach focuses on patient-centered care and internal workforce well-being. Additionally, behavioral health services continue to expand, supported by new funding opportunities at the state and federal levels.
“In the heart of trauma-informed care, which we’ve been doing for a couple of years now, it translates into just really great customer service. Because it’s really taking into account the patient’s experience. Right? And understanding that why they react to things or don’t react to things has all to do with them and their life experiences and less to do with us.”
Rob Ellis, CFO of Carolina Asthma and Allergy, discusses the importance of patient access in a competitive healthcare market. He shares how his organization has leveraged technology—such as automated scheduling, digital engagement tools, and online reputation management—to improve patient acquisition, reduce no-show rates, and optimize operations. Rob also highlights the challenges of staying independent amid dominant health systems, the role of data in strategic decision-making, and the importance of continuously evolving to meet patient and staff needs.
“Put yourself in the patient’s shoes and look at the obstacles for getting in the door. Technology’s evolving and changing. The market is constantly changing. Complacency will get you run over.”
– Rob Ellis
With large health systems nearby, Ellis emphasized the importance of patient access to maintain revenue, create a distinctive patient experience, and stay independent and competitive. “There’s now many more ways you have to reach people, everything is online,” he pointed out. He describes how leveraging digital engagement tools, online reputation management, and data-driven scheduling can help your organization stay independent and competitive in a market dominated by large health systems.
“With patients trying to get through on the telephone, we found that you can never hire enough people. And especially in asthma and allergy season in the Carolinas, it was difficult for patients to get through,” said Ellis. “We began measuring no-shows, cancellations, reschedule rates. Because if you can’t get patients in the door, that’s problem one.” “Looking at the business cycle, if you can’t get customers in the door, business is going to fail,” said Ellis. “So in healthcare, that means you’ve got to be able to get patients in the door. No matter how good your physicians are, if patients can’t get an appointment, they will go somewhere else. And we all live in a fast-paced culture, where if we can’t get through to someone in five minutes, I’m looking elsewhere.”
Ellis pointed out the challenges of recruiting and maintaining clinicians and staff, and emphasized that technology can help.
“We’re competing, not just for patients, but for staff, with the larger hospital systems,” he said. Technology and patient self-service are part of how his organization competes for staff, said Ellis, with physicians seeing fuller schedules and administrative staff having fewer repetitive tasks.
He also notes that the ability for technology to take on repetitive tasks for staff can help justify it in an organization’s budget. ”IT is always a large line item,” he noted. “But I can explain, ‘Because of that system, I don’t have to account for [staff expenditures to complete those tasks.]” From the CFO perspective, he said, “It’s good to have the metrics to say, here’s what here’s what’s been done lately, and here’s here’s how things are going.”
Ellis’ advice for fellow CFOs is to “constantly be looking ahead.” He stressed the importance of putting yourself in the patient’s shoes, tracking key metrics, and embracing innovation to meet changing demands.
“Technology’s evolving and changing. The market is constantly changing. Complacency will get you run over,” said Ellis.
Professor Elizabeth Woodcock, DrPH, MBA, FACMPE, CPC, founder and executive director of the Patient Access Collaborative (PAC), dives deep into the challenges and solutions surrounding patient access in healthcare. She shares valuable insights on how health systems can break down obstacles and better serve their communities through the power of listening and finding hidden barriers.
“If we don’t listen, the price being paid is by our most vulnerable patients. Their voices are not being heard, they’re fighting to get into our system, they’re getting sicker. We need to be more intentional about finding solutions instead of giving up.”
– Elizabeth Woodcock, DrPH, MBA, FACMPE, CPC
Many obstacles preventing equitable patient access are created within the healthcare systems, Woodcock said. “I think in health care, we have kind of a black market. We have to know who to call, the right phone numbers. We’ve got the backdoor channels. Many of [the healthcare barriers patients face] are ones that I would argue we’ve created,” she said. She also discusses external and hidden barriers. Examples of each include:
“We’ve added this extra layer of complexity that’s really unnecessary,” Woodcock said. These added barriers make access even more difficult for underserved communities.
When asked what health systems with great patient access do differently, Woodcock said: “I know this is a very simple answer, but listen. Really, really, listen.”
She encouraged health systems to go beyond traditional patient satisfaction surveys, which only capture feedback from those who successfully navigate existing barriers. And looking only at metrics like no-shows, Woodcock said, don’t give the full picture. “Think about what a no-show means to the family who doesn’t have transportation two hours away, who doesn’t have the money to pay to get into the parking deck. [As a healthcare industry,] we’re turning that around and saying ‘You no-showed, now here’s a $25 fee you have to pay us,'” Woodcock said. “So let’s turn that around and ask that family, ‘How can we accommodate you?’ Mind blown. It’s such a simple, effective way of realizing we’ve got to do better for our patients.”
By proactively listening—through direct outreach in patients’ preferred languages and addressing real-life challenges like transportation—Woodcock argued that healthcare organizations can create meaningful change.
Unlike industries like airlines that can adjust pricing or add more flights to meet demand, healthcare has a rigid supply of providers and limited flexibility, Woodcock pointed out. “Supply and demand are fundamentally out of balance in the US,” said Woodcock. “We have too many patients for our providers today…and it’s not like a store where if there’s not milk on the shelves today, we can likely get it the next day. We can’t get a new neurologist for eleven years…we have to do the very best we can with that precious [provider] asset we have today.”
Woodcock recommends addressing inefficiencies in scheduling, eliminating outdated processes like faxing medical records, and using digital tools effectively to help maximize provider time and improve access.
Tarun Kapoor, MD, MBA, Virtua Health’s Chief Digital Transformation Officer, discusses moving beyond superficial digital transformation efforts to achieve tangible outcomes. He breaks down how health systems can go beyond EHR-first approaches, leverage digital tools for true consumer success, and tackle real-world challenges like care gap closures and patient communication.
“We have to think beyond just a front door. Patients engage in different ways at different times—so we need to meet them where they are, how they are, when they need it. It’s about delivering success, not just engagement.”
– Tarun Kapoor, MD, MBA
“Whenever I hear the word ‘digital,’ I say, ‘Time out. What part of digital are we talking about?'” Kapoor said. He defines digital transformation as not just adapting workflows to be digitized, but “fundamentally changing the business.”
And when he approaches the patient experience, Kapoor said, he focuses on more than just engagement or digital workflows, but on what patients need and how those needs might change even throughout the day. “You know me – I don’t use the term ‘digital front door,'” he said. “I can’t remember the last time I went through the front door of my house. You can’t say that you’re going to be multimodal and only be unimodal,” he said.
“Consumers want success, not just engagement. If you think about it, when I shop on Amazon, I’m not looking for a ton of engagement—I just want my order to arrive as quickly as possible. The same goes for healthcare. Patients don’t always want an appointment; they want answers. Meeting them where they are, at the right time and in the right way, is key to a great patient experience,” Kapoor said.
As a particular success, Kapoor covered an initiative to identify patients due for a colonoscopy who are eligible for a home Cologuard® test instead. “Almost thirteen thousand people we pinged. 3,500 sent us responses back, and 900 sent us a result. That’s really good news. They actually had done something. We just needed to give them a convenient way of getting us a result. Over two hundred and fifty of them were walking around with positive results, precancerous lesions, and now we’re getting them in for their scopes,” he said. “Learning the techniques that other industries have been so successful with, bringing them into healthcare…these aren’t super expensive techniques to engage people. We’re saving lives and having meaningful impact on people’s quality of lives. It’s probably been some of the most fulfilling work we’ve done, both for me personally and as a clinician.”
Adopt technologies that streamline workflows, reduce administrative burdens, and support staff in delivering efficient care, recommends Kapoor.
“We’ve done some great things for our patient consumers, but we’ve really mucked it up for our internal consumers—our clinicians and staff. Digital transformation isn’t just about patients; it’s about making sure our healthcare teams have the right tools to do their jobs efficiently and effectively. If we don’t support them, we’re not truly transforming healthcare,” said Kapoor.
“The three consumer sets in healthcare you should think about are, of course, your patient consumer, but you also need to think about your clinician consumer, and then the other nonclinical folks who work in healthcare. You have to have tools that are good for all three of them. And sometimes we don’t think this all the way through, and we do something that’s good for one consumer set, but usually because it’s at the expense of the on one of the other consumer sets,” Kapoor said.
He encourages leaders to look for “triple wins,” where the patient, clinician, and staff experience all improve.
Arz Raheem, Former Senior Director of Digital Transformation at Montefiore, explores how health systems can drive meaningful change without getting stuck in outdated processes. He discuss the critical role of culture, stakeholder buy-in, and balancing innovation with the unique challenges of healthcare.
“You need the influencers within your health care system….Create that coalition of the willing. Only then can you make real meaningful digital change.”
– Arz Raheem
Raheem shared his insights on balancing speed and caution, leveraging agile methodologies, and ensuring solutions address both provider and patient needs. Let’s dive into the conversation to learn about his toolkit required to drive meaningful digital transformation in healthcare. Here are his takeaways:
Success in healthcare digital transformation depends on moving away from rigid, slow-moving processes and fostering a culture of innovation, iteration, and collaboration across all stakeholders, Raheem said.
“Culture is really important. In technology, we’ve always had a culture of preservation and maintenance, but in digital it’s a culture of iteration and innovation. [To innovate,] you have to be able to bring the village to the table and say, ‘I’m going to try small things. I’m not gonna promise you the world, but I think I’m onto something. I’m going to show you what I’ve got, and iteratively, I want you to tell me if I’m on the right track,” said Raheem.
“If we can promote that and and and instill a culture of innovation in our entire health care system, then and only then, you can you can do real meaningful digital transformation,” Raheem said.
Engaging the right people—clinicians, administrators, IT, compliance, and more—ensures that digital initiatives are adopted effectively and drive meaningful change, Raheem said.
“You need the influencers within your health system, the folks that can help bring about change,” he said. “Even if it’s just, ‘I’m part of this pilot. It’s going well.’ Identify your influencers in security, in compliance, on the operations side, administrators of your department, physician champions, and your superstars who are interested in technological change,” Raheem said. “[Then] create that coalition of the willing.”
Raheem sees this coalition as essential to creating impact and getting ideas off the ground. “If you don’t have the right support, then that speed to impact doesn’t really happen because you can’t rush things in an environment that is heavily regulated. You have to be extremely careful about what we do and how we implement change. So for me, that village is very important. If you don’t have the right support, then you’ll have great ideas, but they’ll die on the vine,” he said.
To be effective in his role and solve pain points, Raheem said, he connects with others as much as possible.
“I communicate a lot,” Raheem said. “I speak a lot with lots of different people. I’m interested in different viewpoints. The best ideas for me are the ones that you have by the water cooler or you’re having offline.”
Bill Citro, Sr. Digital Experience Analyst at OrthoNebraska, explores how digital transformation is reshaping patient care. OrthoNebraska, a specialty healthcare system focused on orthopedics, emphasizes their differentiation through speed, ease, and quality of care, with a strong commitment to delivering an exceptional patient experience while maintaining operational efficiency. Bill shares insights on creating a seamless, high-speed orthopedic experience, the power of patient-centered innovation, and the impact of technology like Luma on reducing no-shows and improving access.
“The continuum of care is this big buzzword in healthcare. [But] it’s about starting before they walk through the door, creating that digital experience all the way through when they pay their bill.”
– Bill Citro
Citro emphasized that speed and convenience influence not just OrthoNebraska’s marketing or digital initiatives, but also the way the organization delivers care. OrthoNebraska has dramatically reduced wait times for imaging and appointments, cutting what typically takes over a month at other providers down to just two to three weeks.
“We have to win the patient every time [they need care],” Citro said. “For new patients, we’re really trying to lead with [how] we’re easy to get into. [We emphasize] ease and speed. Even in our branding, we try to communicate that. Simplicity, ease, and speed allow us to differentiate in the market.”
Once the patient has begun their care journey, OrthoNebraska has designed services to avoid back-and-forth and lag times that patients might commonly experience in orthopedic care.
“A lot of our value is the services [we provide like] physical therapy or imaging. [A common] struggle is turnaround times to get things to imaging and then back into clinic and to know what to do about it. We’re fifty percent faster than our competitors in the market [because of how] we’re set up where we have a clinic site and a hospital all together, all focused just on orthopedics. So, think of us as as an orthopedic little little mini orthopedic health center,” Citro said.
“I feel like I have a a very strongly internalized sense of what patients value,” Citro said. “I really don’t believe in hiring research firms [to collect patient feedback]. I like getting my boots on the ground and talking to people, talking to our patients, so I can understand what’s really happening at the ground level. If I’m rolling out some new software or project, I don’t just say ‘Access staff, tell me how it’s going.'”
This experience influences how Citro thinks about the patient portal. “From a technology perspective, they’re designed to be closed and locked down…locked-down pieces are hindrances when we’re trying to have a digital front door.” Citro said that when patient self-scheduling was available only in the portal, “I think we had nine patients using it in a month.” Citro pointed out that a true digital front door needs to be more accessible, without a barrier to entry especially for new patients.
Citro also looks at the impact of patient experience improvements on how patients are accessing care.
“Most healthcare organizations really underestimate the impact that moving to using a primarily SMS communication methodology is going to have on the their their operational metrics, Citro said. “They think, ‘Our younger patients will like [texting], and we’ll get more younger patients.’ They do it as more of a marketing thing. And what we’ve seen is that that that’s that’s not really true. Where you see that really come through is in no-show rates. A that helps us be so much more efficient, in clinic when we have we don’t have those unexpected holes in our schedule.”
Keith Fraidenburg spent much of 2024 traveling across the United States to understand how health systems are approaching AI. He dives deep into what they’re most excited and concerned about, and where we’re likely to see healthcare AI going in practice in 2025. He called out the following themes in how health systems are approaching AI:
Fraidenburg discusses these trends and what to watch as AI implementations become ever more commonplace in this episode.
“This new world of AI, it’s moving so fast, and it means something different for so many different organizations…I expect the industry to change rapidly over the next one to two years.”
-Keith Fraidenburg
Fraidenburg surveyed health systems on their attitudes toward AI in a 2024 “roadshow” over 9 months, which culminated in published AI Principles from the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME). He discussed their feedback and his observations – on what’s being done today, barriers to using AI for health systems, and his advice based on this feedback to health systems interested in AI. Here’s what he said:
When asked about what health systems are doing with AI, Fraidenburg said: “If you’ve seen one hospital or health system, you’ve seen exactly one. And that that’s because every organization is so different. You have to look at the the culture of the organization, their appetite for taking on some some risk, capital and resources.”
He pointed out that some organizations have the culture and resources to be early adopters of new technology, and others have far different concerns. “Speak to any CIO at a rural or critical access hospital about GenAI, and they’re like, ‘We’re just trying to keep the doors open here.'”
“Every organization is probably exactly where it needs to be based on their own organization, their culture, politics, funding, et cetera, in terms of what they’re able to do today with AI,” Fraidenburg said.
He encouraged healthcare organizations that, “If you’re blazing a path, great. We need trailblazers. If you haven’t even started yet, that’s okay too.”
Fraidenburg noted that not every organization has the bandwidth or resources to explore AI, but for those who would like to get started, there are resources you can leverage to define your plan.
“If you’ve got questions about where to find some of these resources, feel free to reach out to me, or the CHIME organization,” Fraidenburg said.
Fraidenburg expressed excitement about the future of “adoption and application of AI beyond administrative efficiencies…improving health outcomes directly, identifying patients at risk before they get sick.” He continued, “Improving our ability to diagnose patients and get them into more customized programs…that’s promising potential, right on the other side of this.” But he also acknowledged enormous opportunities for operational and administrative improvements using AI.
“Most of the applications [of AI today] are focused on GenAI. And those specific applications tend to focus on achieving administrative or supply chain efficiency, driving revenue cycle efficiencies. It’s maybe not rocket ship building…and a lot of people think innovation is building a rocket ship. But listen, we know that there’s a lot of administrative and operational and supply chain waste in healthcare. There’s tremendous opportunity to wring out waste and save money…organizations are driving administrative and operational efficiencies, improving revenue cycle.”
Fraidenburg specifically calls out that critical access hospitals might not have the resources or organizational push to consider AI, but could benefit significantly from this technology to help extend their resources.
“If there’s a part of our ecosystem that could really benefit from AI tools, it’s rural healthcare, and they simply don’t have the capital and resources to take advantage of it,” Fraidenburg said. “So if there’s an opportunity for us as an industry to come together and do some good, it’s supporting rural healthcare with GenAI, because I think it can help them.”
“Meeting patients where they are” is one of the core premises of digital health. But what does it look like for downstream health outcomes when this is done well? Exact Sciences is a pioneer in home cancer screening with their at-home Cologuard® tests, and continues innovating ways to make preventive care easier and more convenient for patients. In this episode, Exact Sciences’ CIO, Nassar Nizami, discusses:
“Convenience and early detection dramatically improve cancer treatment outcomes. The easier it is for patients to screen, the more likely they are to complete it.”
– Nassar Nizami
Key takeaways
Exact Sciences’ CIO Nassar Nizami provided an overview of the importance of convenient, simple ways for patients to get preventive care. He discussed trends in cancer rates and the importance of screening, covered strategies for addressing barriers that patients face to cancer screening, and offered a look at Exact Sciences’ work and mission.
“Over the last ten years, Exact Sciences has tested about sixteen million completed screenings, which is approximately one every twenty seconds,” he said.
Here are themes from the discussion:
“Cologuard’s at-home screening option plays a crucial role in making colorectal cancer screening more accessible and convenient,” said Nizami. “By offering convenience, we help patients complete their screening in the privacy of their own home without needing to take time off or arrange transportation. These are some of the things that many of us don’t think about − taking a day off or transportation [to get a colonoscopy].”
“[At-home options] recognize that this is not an option for many, many people. So convenience matters a lot,” said Nizami.
Nizami emphasized the link between convenience, earlier screenings, earlier detection of cancer, and improved outcomes when cancer is detected and treated early. “Convenience and early detection dramatically improve cancer treatment outcomes,” he said. “The easier it is for patients to screen, the more likely they are to complete it, which ultimately helps prevent cancer − essentially through early detection.”
Nizami also covered ways to remove barriers in patients’ access to and likelihood to complete home screenings:
“There’s friction in the healthcare system at many different stages,” Nizami pointed out. Exact Sciences established Cologuard.com, with a virtual provider available who can assess orders, to make it easier for patients to access home cancer screening themselves.
Helping patients remember to complete the test once they’ve received it is also important, Nizami notes. “We find that continuous reminders encouraging patients to complete [testing] really increase screening rates dramatically,” Nizami said.
Finally, “We are taking great care to ensure that test results are timely and very simple to understand for patients,” he said.
Nizami discussed the success of a targeted outreach program to enroll patients in Cologuard® testing at Virtua Health, which identifies patients using care gap reporting in the EHR and sends guided outreach to patients using Luma. He also noted that co-branding outreach with both Cologuard® and health system branding “dramatically increases adherence.”
Within five months at Virtua Health, patients completed 3,500+ Cologuard tests, which led to early detection of nearly 300 positive results and the opportunity for earlier treatment. To hear more about Virtua’s results from Chief Digital Transformation Officer Tarun Kapoor, MD, MBA, check out this episode of Digital Health: On Air.
“Life sciences can exist somewhat separately from technology and healthcare providers…Exact Sciences is trying to bridge the gap there,” Nizami said. “There’s tremendous value in connecting, partnering, and working on different campaigns together.”
Tina Shah, MD, MPH has extensive experience as a practicing physician, the Chief Clinical Officer at Abridge, a federal advisor on physician burnout for both the Obama and Trump administrations, and the VA’s first director of clinician well-being. In this episode, she discusses care team burnout, opportunities for using AI, and large-scale technology and provider experience trends.
Shah notes that burnout is contributing to the growing provider shortage in the United States, which will continue be exacerbated by an aging population in coming years. She believes that addressing burnout is possible, but requires investment in technology and change management to implement evidence-backed interventions.
“Can we return humanism back to medicine? I think AI has massive potential to do that. If we use this tool to help people focus on each other and have conversation, I believe burnout will improve.”
– Tina Shah, MD, MPH
Dr. Shah discussed the contributing factors to clinician burnout and how AI could be used as one intervention to address them. She calls burnout “an occupational condition, literally caused by the toxic workplace culture in the United States and around the globe.” Dr. Shah argues that “if more than fifty percent of US physicians are burnt out, it’s clearly not a ‘me thing.’ It’s a ‘we thing.’ But somehow, we’ve stigmatized it.” She outlines some of the primary causes of clinician burnout as:
Dr. Shah believes that AI can help solve not just direct tasks that outpace physicians’ capacity, but reduce the cognitive load on physicians.
“We all generally understand burnout. It’s like you’re all at the point of no return. You go on a vacation, but you come back to the same place, and you need dramatic changes…otherwise you’ll be in the same situation again. That’s burnout, and we have surveys that can measure it, the degree of it, and they’re validated,” she said.
“But there’s an intermediate metric called cognitive load, which is literally the amount of working memory you have, and have you exceeded it. And that has a validated survey that you can measure too. There are papers that show that [exceeding cognitive load] is directly linked to the odds of burning out and the odds of making a medical mistake on a patient.”
Dr. Shah cites promising research showing that AI applied to repetitive tasks, such as responding to basic messages, might not meaningfully reduce physicians’ workload but does reduce cognitive load.
“With Abridge’s AI for SOAP note documentation, we’re seeing crazy reductions in cognitive load, somewhere in the order of 40-80% percent reduced cognitive load,” said Dr. Shah. “I’m really, really excited because as a burnout expert, I’ve never seen any intervention move the needle like this.”
Dr. Shah sees promise for AI to help providers be more present with their patients due to reduced cognitive load, which could also improve patient care.
“We’re asking a question to clinicians about ‘distracted doctoring,” Shah said. “It’s essentially a question that says, ‘How present do you feel with your patients? [With AI support], we’re seeing something like 30-40% more more physicians and say ‘I am more present with my patient.'”
“Just speaking about myself, perhaps if I was more present, I would write a nicer message back to my patient. There’s something about when you have just so much work to do, you aren’t as thoughtful. Also, you miss cues.”
Dr. Shah expresses optimism that with applications of AI, such as ambient listening, providers will have more complete documentation and fewer administrative tasks that allow them to provide better patient care.
Dr. Shah has three recommendations for health systems evaluating potential AI solutions:
Sonia Singh is the Chief Insights Officer at AVIA and the author of the report Radical Reinvention: Future Proofing Your Health System. Singh discusses three large trends that she feels have made healthcare delivery unsustainable for health systems:
Singh discusses these trends and how they necessitate a total reinvention of our approach to healthcare delivery in this episode.
“The status quo is crumbling, and the question is, do traditional tactics still apply? The answer really for most cases is no.”
– Sonia Singh
Singh discussed the highlights of her research and recent report, Radical Reinvention: Future Proofing Your Health System. She went beyond year-to-year trends to outline major “macro” shifts in the healthcare industry — arguing that we are now approaching an inflection point for these large-scale shifts that demands a different approach.
She heavily emphasized the intersection of the workforce and technology as a place for radical reinvention that can help healthcare evolve beyond these trends.
The three large-scale trends she outlined that demand changes in workforce and technology are:
“We will not have enough workforce clinical workforce to sustain, and provide healthcare for, all the upcoming healthcare needs. And you couple that with an aging population that is aging faster than ever before, with increasing chronic diseases, and the equation doesn’t make sense anymore,” Singh said. “It’s not about hiring more people…you have to think about it differently.”
She said that we need to evaluate “care delivery transformation,” including:
“With inflation, with increasing administrative costs, and you can’t really play with pricing that much anymore,” Singh says, simply reducing costs is not a sustainable way to drive revenue.
“Going back to the root problem of the workforce challenge and the shortage that we’re seeing…We just won’t be able to replenish fast enough. So we have to think about how do we do more with less. but that requires that our staff are able to interact with technology in new ways and be able to deliver care in new ways.”
Singh acknowledges that truly reinventing care delivery and the healthcare workforce using technology isn’t a simple fix, but a total paradigm shift.
“That requires a level of understanding of how technology and digital will work, understanding the limitations of it, understanding the ethical implications of it,” Singh said. ”And that doesn’t just happen with a class on ChatGPT. That requires a very involved, in-depth training for all the staff: How do you adopt this? How does this change your workflow? How does it change your mindset? How does it change how you interact with patients? How does it change how you interact with your colleagues?”
In addition to technology rapidly changing around us, Singh said, “couple that with medical knowledge advancing faster than ever before, and I think it’s leading to this point where we have to upscale workforce at all levels.”
She argued that this accelerating pace of change makes changes in staffing and the role of technology even more critical, but noted that technology can also help staff experience more fulfillment in their daily tasks. “Whatever we can do to make life easier for the the staff that we have and the clinicians that we have is critical,” she said.
Today’s patients expect a consumer-grade healthcare experience with easy, convenient access from their channel of choice. Tandem Health’s Chief Population Health Officer and VP of Business Development talk about how they created a best-in-business patient website and great patient self-service to make this a reality. They discuss:
“Healthcare has been kind of separate from the consumer driven-market, but it’s not anymore. Our expectations of being able to manage our lives via some sort of digital component have gone up. [As a health system], we have to adopt that.”
– Rob Bailey
Chief Population Health Officer Rob Bailey and VP of Business Development Curt Ackerman shared how they approached the redesign of Tandem Health’s website to provide a simple, intuitive entry point for patients. Here’s what they did:
“When Tandem Health rebranded in 2018, within that rebrand was an overhaul of just about everything in terms of how the organization operated,” said Ackerman. And the window into the operation is the website.”
“We worked closely with consultants, who, to my knowledge, did not do a lot of, healthcare — they were very consumer-driven. And, really, they kept pulling the reins back on us and forcing simplicity. Our natural tendency is to want to paint the biggest and the brightest and the most active portrait possible because we want to stand out,” he continued.
But from a patient and consumer perspective, Ackerman said, patients are either looking to establish care with a new provider and learn about the organization, or they’re looking to self-serve. Neither path is well-served by an overcomplicated website.
“The most common reason patients are on our website is to schedule an appointment. And they may not even be landing on the home page,” said Bailey. “We wanted them to have that action capability from anywhere.”
“Next, we want patients to be able to refill prescriptions. And lastly, when you’re looking for a primary care provider or even another provider, you want to learn about them quickly and then be able to do something about it, whether it be to chat with someone, to be able to get some quick information, or circle back to that scheduling component.”
Ackerman and Bailey emphasized that in addition to a consumer-focused website, Tandem Health needed to ensure that operational processes supported easy, efficient patient access. They discussed Tandem’s use of text messaging communications, an automated waitlist, and telehealth options to streamline access for their patients.
“I have often said delivering care, provider to patient, that is not the hardest thing we do,” said Ackerman. It is the most skilled thing we do, but it’s not the most difficult thing that we do. The grand majority of providers that I have worked around l say, ‘I just want to see patients.’ Well, guess what? Our customer base, they just want to see the doctor. Challenges I’ve seen are rarely about the care provided by the doctor, they’re about the experience [and challenges that the patient faces to get to care].”
Ingrid Lund, PhD is a healthcare strategy advisor and the former Executive Director of The Health Management Academy. She meets regularly with healthcare leaders across the United States to discuss their priorities, challenges, and opportunities. In mid-2024, Lund looked ahead to the rest of 2024 and into 2025, informed by the following trends:
Lund discusses these trends, why health systems are focused in these areas, and how they might play out for the rest of the year in this episode.
“There is certainly no shortage of problems in health care, and there’s no shortage of great solutions. But bringing the two together with the right timing and sort of relationship, that’s really difficult.”
– Ingrid Lund, PhD
Lund covered trends across the healthcare industry, from priorities for healthcare executives to the growing influence of new decision-makers to changes in strategic priorities for health systems. At a high level, she said, leading health systems shared major priorities and outlooks on 2024 and 2025. These included:
“A better margin means better ability to spend,” Lund said, and she argued that health system leaders were willing to invest in digital health solutions that would drive growth — especially for ambulatory service lines. “That doesn’t mean that strategic cost management is off the table,” though. “I think there’s sort of a new normal about careful cost management.”
When health systems do choose digital health solutions, Lund says, they’re focused on driving patient access and convenience in high-value outpatient service lines. “[Health systems] really feel that the growth will be much higher in the outpatient space…where patients have more opportunity to shop around, are a bit choosier, and having a good digital front door and patient convenience pieces is really important.”
Discussing a survey of health system executives, Lund said: “The number one priority for chief strategy officers was workforce. The number one priority for chief financial officers was access. Not what you would typically predict. That’s a reflection of health system executives becoming more system-minded – really working as a collaborative force to execute on system-level strategic priorities rather than in their own domain. Everybody cares about workforce. Everybody cares about access.”
She continued, “This might surprise some folks, but this is a trend we’ve seen for some time…a trend toward systemness.”
Lund sees this trend continuing into 2025 and affecting patient access across the health system, with healthcare organizations focusing on centralized scheduling and load-balancing across sites.
Lund expects three roles to grow in importance in coming months and years: the chief nursing executive, the CISO or cybersecurity officer, and the business continuity officer.
“The person stewarding cybersecurity, I think they probably will traditionally report to the CIO as they have been, but will receive an elevated budget, more staff, and more decision-making authority.”
“Another one I would cite is related – a chief business continuity officer. You need somebody in charge of scenario planning for cyberattacks, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, and to really have a plan in place to make sure that the doors can stay open and that the health system is prepared. I don’t know that a lot of systems have that, but they will start to put those people in place.”
Finally, an executive that Lund sees as “overlooked far too much” is the chief nursing executive. “The chief nursing executive is the one most likely to have come up through the system. They have incredible relationships and probably can get a lot done and have tremendous influence. They also want to be brought to the table for technology discussions.” Lund advises health systems to bring chief nursing executives to the table for their wealth of knowledge and ability to champion important initiatives.
Noreen Friel is Director of Call Center Operations at Main Line Health. At MLH, she’s led initiatives to solve challenges that many health system contact centers face today:
Friel discusses MLH’s strategies for addressing these challenges, and how she’s seen significant improvements from decanting lower-complexity calls from the contact center.
“You can’t just keep up-staffing and pulling people in. It’s not even just a matter of having enough people to answer the phones. It’s about retaining individuals and [ensuring] the quality of their work.”
– Noreen Friel
Main Line Health has four acute care hospitals and multiple ambulatory clinics in the Philadelphia region, and recently transitioned to a centralized contact center. But high call volumes and effective remote work remained challenging. MLH’s Director of Call Center Operations, Noreen Friel, discusses strategies that made MLH’s contact center more efficient, while improving the patient and staff experience.
MLH now uses a centralized contact center where staff work remotely. Friel discusses that adjusting how calls are monitored and clearly communicating expectations with staff has allowed MLH to be successful with this model. “We really make sure that everybody has the tools and resources they need to work remotely, they understand the expectations of working remotely. And then we monitor all of those expectations more, and differently, than we did before when we were all in one space.”
MLH uses Luma to allow patients to self-schedule straightforward mammograms and DEXA scans when they call in, rather than waiting on hold. Implementing this technology, plus decanting some calls to an external staffing resource, has helped MLH’s contact center handle high call volumes.
“Taking those mammo and DEXA calls off our team — which were a lot — lessens the burden on central scheduling and allows the central scheduling team to focus on more complicated calls. [The scheduling team can now focus more on] MRIs, CTs, nuclear medicine, perinatal testing — all the different service lines that we have under the imaging umbrella.”