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- Hello, this is Kate Cruz recording live at the eighth
Annual Becker's, HIT
and digital health conference in Chicago.
I am here with Daniel Barce.
Um, Daniel, to get us started,
can you share a bit about yourself
and your role at your organization? Sure.
- Kate, I'm Daniel Barce,
I'm the Chief Information Officer for Common Spirit.
We're a $35 billion health system in 24 states
across the United States.
We have about 140 hospitals and about 2000 physician
and nurse care sites.
And so we're serving a large portion
of the United States population
and we're really focused on our Catholic mission
and serving all of our patients equitably.
- Well, thank you for sharing. That's awesome.
When you think of digital innovation in healthcare right
now, what excites you the most and why?
- I think the thing that excites me most is the way we can
use data to improve the care we deliver.
Healthcare's accelerated in so much in the past couple
of years and it was a point care solution
as recently as 10 years ago.
And now the kind of data we can provide our physicians
and our other caregivers is so extensive that it allows 'em
to make choices that they just weren't able to before.
And if I think about a patient in a remote area
of the country, he
or she didn't have access
to world-class academic medicine and now they do.
Uh, we can pervade the same type of care no matter
where a patient goes with the same type of care team,
with the same type of insights.
And we can provide our physicians
with cutting edge technology
and insights that they just didn't even
have a couple of years ago. Yeah, that's
- Huge.
Thank you. At your organization,
what are your top priorities for technology?
What are big issues that you're trying to solve?
- I think it's important to recognize
that more technology is not better.
So we're not looking for more technology at every turn.
What we're trying to see is
what are the best tools we can provide our caregivers so
that they're able to best serve the needs of our patients.
And so that might mean better data,
it might be better integration of the tools that we have.
It might be simplifying the tools that we have,
better optimizing them for what they need.
We've got many, many different instances
of electronic health records.
That's not a good thing. I wish we just had two or three
and so that our physicians could count on one tool.
And so my team is focused on optimizing them.
We've got more than 4,300 different applications.
It's not a good thing. You should have
fewer than a thousand.
And so in many cases, my role
as a technology leader is not about searching out new
technology, it's optimizing what we have.
And I think that's where our teams focus for the next couple
of years, especially as resources are constrained
and we need to focus our capital
on other areas, not just technology. Yeah,
- Interesting perspective.
Thanks for sharing. What is one piece
of advice you would give to healthcare leaders today
regarding digital innovation?
- I think we need to look for the best in digital innovation
and yet not focus on the bright shiny objects.
And so that's easy to say,
but the things that are exciting
to read about in New York Times
or the Wall Street Journal are not critical to the physician
or the nurse at 3:00 AM They're looking
for a core system that works well.
They're looking at keeping their patients in the
ICU in a stable condition.
Our surgeons want data
and the ability to see images as they're doing a case.
Our radiologists want easy access to the PAC system.
These things are fundamental
and in many ways when we get
so focused on cutting edge tools, we get away from
that core infrastructure.
My team and I have created something we call the Maslow's
Hierarchy of Healthcare Technology.
So at the very tip
of the pyramid are things like advanced care and AI
and integrated care, but at the bottom
of the pyramid is core technology.
And right above that is infrastructure.
And right above that is information security.
And then you get to the EHRs, then you get to the ERP
as you keep working up the stack,
customer experiences near the top.
And then AI is the very tip.
But unless you get those basic fundamentals done,
then you really can't do the advanced technology.
And it's our role in the healthcare space
to be thinking about all of these at the same time.
- Of course, of course. Could you provide examples
of specific instances where the integration
of informatic solutions led to improved patient outcomes
or enhanced patient provider communication?
- Sure. I'll think about two.
One is a purely AI based tool
and I heard from some of our cardiologists on the west coast
who are thrilled with the way we're using AI in our imaging
to give them better models for the procedures they're doing
and for the care they need to deliver.
It was something that we took
as an embedded tool within a core
infrastructure tool that we rolled out.
It was not a unique standalone tool,
but we're at the point where these kind
of integrated solutions are just rolling out.
Physicians are finding them and fully embracing them.
And the idea
that we are advancing the care in that way is exciting.
Another AI based thing,
although it's kind of fundamental to what anybody is doing,
is the way we're using sepsis prediction tools.
And so everybody's been focusing on this for
past several years and it was a lot of if then statements
and looking for basic indicators
from a patient's point of view.
At Common Spirit. We've been using an AI-based sepsis
prediction tool since 2017,
and our clinical informatics team thinks
that we've probably saved more than 2000 lives using it.
It's not something that we talk about every day.
It's core, it's ai, but it's not that exciting.
And yet it's the kind of thing that changes lives.
And then if I think about a consumer facing tool,
we're working with a company called Vital.
And in some of our southwestern hospitals,
we've rolled out a tool.
So if you're waiting in the emergency department,
we give access through a mobile phone application to know
how long a patient's gonna have
to wait while they're in the waiting room.
They can tell us if they're hungry
or they're tired if they're not feeling well.
Uh, and also once they're back in our emergency department,
we let them know the current state of their care.
If labs have been drawn, how long's it gonna be
before they get the results, how
long before they'll go home.
And that we also allow them to communicate with their, uh,
family members who are not there through the same tool.
So basic AI tool, um, not
that much cutting edge technology based in it,
but by tying all those pieces together, it makes
for a better consumer experience.
- Those are really great examples.
Five years from now,
what do you think will be the most significant change in
healthcare delivery and operations
and how should leaders prepare?
- I think we're gonna be surprised at
how little has changed in five years
and at the same time how much has changed.
And so I think
that reimbursement is gonna be much the way it is today.
We're gonna be focused on coding
and documenting appropriately.
Healthcare executives are gonna be focused on patient
throughput, length of stay,
and a lot of the infrastructure of
how we run healthcare will not have changed.
And yet the tools we bring to the table will,
if I think about things like ai, um, you know,
I think there was a great Harvard Business Review quote
that said AI is not gonna replace leaders,
but leaders who use AI will replace leaders
who do not use ai.
And so we're all gonna have to become very facile
with using tools like AI to drive the way we use change care
and if these kind of things
that are gonna change in the next couple of years.
- Definitely. Well, thank you so much
for spending some time with me today.
Is there anything else our listeners should know?
- I think the most important thing to know is
that our health systems in the United States
are working hard to keep up with the expectations for care
and the quality of the care continues to deliver.
And yet the challenges of reimbursement
and investing in our infrastructure to keep up with all
of the ways that we need to care
for our patients is challenging.
And I'm proud of what we do at Common Spirit.
I'm proud of the healthcare system in the entire
United States, and I'm really proud of the way
that technology is coming to bear
to improve the lives of our patients.
- That's a great way to end this.
I really appreciate your time, Daniel. Thanks again.
- Thank you, Kate. - It's so important
for leaders at the top of organizations to keep learning,
stay sharp, grow their networks
to help our audience better do this in a more simplified,
personalized, and meaningful way.
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