- This is Laura Dedo with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast.
I'm thrilled today to be joined by Craig Richville,
chief Digital and Information
Officer at Intermountain Health.
Craig, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today,
- Laura.
Thanks for having me.
- Now, I'm excited to learn more about
what you're doing at Intermountain, and certainly it's
always a pleasure listening to you and having conversations
because I'm inspired by the way you approach your work
and, um, really some of the innovative things that you do.
But before we dive into that discussion,
and for those who maybe are just
now subscribing the Becker's Healthcare Podcast,
can you introduce yourself
and tell us a little about your background?
- Sure. Well, as you mentioned, I am the TE Digital
and Information Officer at Intermountain Health.
For those of you that don't know Intermountain Health,
it's a integrated delivery system.
Uh, we operate in seven states.
We have 34 hospitals, hundreds of clinics, thousands
of employee caregivers.
We have 1.1 million members, uh,
and we have a total revenue of about 16 billion.
Now, in terms of myself, I started my career
at Marathon Oil Company back in Ohio.
I then went to ProMedica Health for 11 years at Atrium now,
Health for 21 years.
I've been in this role for five years.
Um, I'm married to a beautiful wife.
I have three wonderful sons.
Uh, they're all in the healthcare IT space.
So my oldest, uh, is with an early company, early startup.
Uh, my middle physician is a,
or my middle, uh, son is a physician,
and my third son works at Advocate Health.
- Well, that's amazing to hear.
And you know, what an influence that you must have had
for them as they're, you know, choosing their careers
and they all go into healthcare and medicine
and really, you know, uh, this growing field.
- Yeah, it, it's, it's fun.
I mean, our conversations are great.
I learned so much from them and,
and their, uh, uh, networking and their experiences,
and I could take some of that
and apply it to, uh, my work here.
- Oh, that's awesome to hear.
What a, a a great situation to be in, you know,
in your family, um, you can really relate
to and connect with on that level.
And along those lines, what are some of the biggest issues
that you're following in healthcare right now?
What is top of mind
and keeps coming up in those conversations?
- Yeah, there's, uh, there, there's a lot
of opportunity in healthcare.
There's a lot of, um,
stress happening in healthcare, as we all know.
I want to share the two system initiatives
that we're focused on at Intermountain Health.
There's value-based care.
This truly is, uh, changing the way that we,
um, deliver healthcare.
As we start to move things upstream, start to keep people,
well look at early prevention
and also really transcend the traditional growth boundaries,
you know, be able to touch patients
and members in ways we haven't done in the past.
That whole transition to value-based care
is a very important, um, uh,
cornerstone for Intermountain Health.
And the second is simplicity.
Simplicity for us is to embrace the cutting edge technology.
We really want to enrich the experience for our consumers,
whether they're patients or whether they're members
or whether they're caregivers.
And it real just reimagine our work,
become a lot more efficient and just improve the experience.
So if we're looking at how we want to, um, shape
and be part of the future of healthcare,
it's really focused on the value-based care
and simplify all the processes that we have.
- Well, that's great to hear. And you know,
certainly really cool to think through.
Um, you know, what a great opportunity
that we have right now, like you were saying, there's
so many different, um, challenges,
but also really great solutions
and technology in the evolution of how healthcare delivery,
um, really benefits not only the patients and communities,
but also caregivers at the same time.
And, and given all of the, these things we talked about,
and you mentioned in, in terms of, um, big initiatives,
what are you most excited about
for the next year and what makes you nervous?
- Yeah, there, there's really two things.
One ties into each of the two above.
So on the value-based care, for example, the thing
that I'm excited about, but also very nervous
how the healthcare is gonna get reformed in terms of the
redi, redistribution of the dollar.
And, uh, when you look at healthcare,
you've got the provider side, you've got the,
the payer side, you've got pharmaceuticals, et cetera.
And, and really what we need to do is start to shift, um,
a lot of those services over into
that prevention and wellness.
So if we can start to, uh, incentivize, uh, providers
and plans to move upstream, that would be a great change
to transition, uh, for us.
Secondly is artificial intelligence.
You know, um, been in tech, you know,
for over 30 years in healthcare tech.
And on the artificial intelligence side,
we have the opportunities to greatly assist our workforce.
We can be more precise, we can enhance the efficiency,
enrich the experience.
Those are all things that, uh, we need to embrace
and bring full light into, um, our processes and workflows.
And on the same side of that, um, there's a nervous part.
There's some bias both into some
of the newer tech that's coming out.
There's some big consistencies in that.
Um, there's some reg regulations
that might limit our potential, um,
to bring this into our workforce
and into the, the hands of our patients.
So both of those, for me, the redistribution of the dollar
and utilizing the advanced
or um, artificial intelligence would be the two things
that are gonna be very exciting to watch
and have us, um, progress, but also was kind of nervous
because we don't really know
what the outcome is gonna be yet.
- I think that's such a, a really great point,
and definitely I, I love your thought process
around moving more of the healthcare services upstream
and then leveraging artificial
intelligence where it makes sense.
Um, you know, to really aid, I, I guess,
those goals in the healthcare space
for you at Intermountain, when you look at, um, you know,
kind of the intersection of
how technology can influence those things
and potentially support the organization's mission, both
with value-based care, and then, you know,
to looking at the workforce
and looking at everything else
that we've talked about today,
what role does technology play?
What role do you really see, um, yourself as well
as your team being able to, um, play
and contribute to some
of these overall big goals for the health system?
- Yeah, there, you know, when you,
when you look at the technology piece
and you see it in the other industries,
and you're starting to see it a lot more within healthcare
for sure, and it's the acceleration of the application of
that technology into our space.
So when you look at, um, from a replacement perspective,
we're not looking to see how we can use some
of this newer tech to replace what it really is.
It's a, uh, some people call it a copilot,
some people call it an assistant, really is something
to help the human workforce to be more effective,
to be more efficient,
and in many cases, start to move some of
that work toward our patients to give them the tools
and the technology or to our members, give them the tools
and the technology that's intuitive, easy to use.
It allows them to do a lot of that work.
Uh, and, and for the most part, that's what we really want
to do from a patient or a consumer perspective.
If you find yourself in the banking industry,
you moved a lot of clerical task of going into a branch
of cashing checks, um, withdrawing money, standing in lines.
Now I, I do that all on my phone
and I do it at three o'clock in the morning
or whatever time that I want to.
And that's the same thing when healthcare,
we've gotta take some of these tasks
that we've assigned in the processes that we've created,
we start to really totally reimagine what that is
and bring a lot of that back into the patients
and to our members and allow them to be able to take control
of their health and of their care as well.
- That's such a great point. And especially thinking
through, you know, how healthcare
has really moved into a space where, um,
the patients can drive so much more
of their care journeys than they have in the past.
It seems like a really cool opportunity
and, um, you know, a lot of opportunity again
for like innovation in that space
and technology being the driver there.
Um, from your perspective,
what will you do you think the most effective healthcare
leaders will need in order to be successful in the next two
to three years or so, especially given these changes
that are happening in healthcare?
- Yeah, I, yeah, I would say there's several things.
I think these are some, for some people
that are the same characteristics and some they're new or,
or need to be enhanced,
but we gotta get a lot more adventurous.
And that's going back to kind of reimagining exactly
how we do work today.
Uh, we have to be audacious.
Uh, we need to be courageous, have
to be very energetic in our work, excited about the work,
uh, but also very humble, uh,
and be able to continue to learn from others.
I think the boldness and the courage are the things
that we really need to do in the next couple of years.
This is no longer, you know, a continuous improvement
or a transitional, uh, change.
It really is truly transformational.
This is turning it upside down
and let's start to change how healthcare is administered
or delivered and finance, uh, in our country.
Gotta start seeking going to places we've never gone before.
Uh, but we have to do that in a very calculated way.
Uh, we do have to make sure that we ensure the privacy
of our data, uh, safety
and security, the services that we provide.
We have to use data to drive our decision making.
Um, you know, we gotta put the tools in the hands
of our patients as we mentioned earlier, and to our members
and to our caregivers,
and have them to be able to embrace where it's just another
tool for them on their tool belt
to help them do their job better.
- That's amazing to hear.
Well, Craig, thank you so much
for joining us on the podcast today.
This has been such a fascinating discussion
and I look forward to connecting with you again soon.
- Okay, thank you, Laura. Appreciate it.