- Prepare to dive into the forefront
of healthcare innovation at our 14th annual meeting coming
up on April 8th
through 11th at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago, with thousands
of industry leaders converging over four dynamic days
of discussions on crucial topics from health IT
to executive leadership.
It's where the future of healthcare takes shape.
We can't wait to connect with you in person
and engage in these important conversations.
- This is Laura Dedo with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast.
I'm thrilled today to be joined by John Henderson,
vice President and Chief Information
and digital officer at Children's Hospital of Orange County.
John, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
- Thanks, Laura. Happy to be here. Glad to talk to you.
- Absolutely. Now, you know, I'm really excited
to get deeper into some of the different things
that you're doing at the hospital.
I, I know there's a lot happening in digital health right
now, and in particular looking at
how you can drive efficiencies
and continue to, um, you know, grow the system.
But before we dive into that conversation,
can you tell me a little bit more
about yourself and your background?
- Sure. Um, as you mentioned, uh, I'm
with Children's Hospital of Orange County.
I've been here just over seven years.
Uh, spent the majority of my career in pediatric healthcare
ip, um,
and as I've been out here in southern California, um,
we are a two hospital pediatric health system.
Um, we have, uh, five centers of excellence, uh,
focused in cardiology, cancer, orthopedic, uh,
the neurosciences, and also research organization, um,
30 plus specialties, uh, as well as 30 plus primary care.
- Oh, that's amazing. And really impressive, especially, um,
for a children's hospital to have such a breadth
of specialists in, in, um, coverage area.
- Yes, yes. You know, we are, you know, we are big, uh,
on population health.
We have a large geography to cover.
Uh, and, you know, we're really focused on trying
to create the healthiest community, uh, for peds,
uh, all across Orange County.
- Fantastic. Well, with that in mind, you know, I,
I am excited to learn more.
And, and from your perspective,
and looking back over the last year
or so, what is one change that you've made
that has really yielded some great results?
- Oh, wow. Great question. Um, so
what I would say is it's a combination of
creating our digital team
and the different results that we've been able
to, uh, deliver.
And so by digital team, I mean bringing in leadership
that's solely focused, uh, on automation,
but also, uh, with mobile apps
and solutions to serve, uh, to serve our organization.
So we've created this team, uh,
and we've had a heavy emphasis on, uh,
robotic process automation.
Um, we've, uh, been able to deploy over, uh,
just over think 10, 11, uh, automations,
uh, into production.
Um, and it's focused on a, a variety of different areas, uh,
some administrative areas, um, some clinical areas, uh,
focusing on how do we take manual, uh,
tasks from operations
and really put those into an automation, uh, capability so
that they can be more effective, uh,
and remove some of those mundane day-to-day process tasks
that, that they've been, that they've been focused on.
Uh, so I'll say that's been what, uh,
I'll say the biggest change we've made
that's yielded some really, really strong results.
- Absolutely. That's, you know, fascinating and,
and cool to hear that having that leadership,
building out a team that is focused on automation
and, um, can really have a,
a big impact on the system at large.
Is there anything in particular, um,
that you've done in terms of being able
to zero in on a project or,
or something that has, um, led to success or,
or, um, I guess describe what happened and what you did?
- Sure, sure. So there's been a couple of things we've done.
Uh, one of the, one of the products we worked on was
for our electronic prescribed, uh, controlled substances.
How do we provision our providers, uh,
that come into the organization to gain access
to, to those capabilities?
So we built an automation that, uh,
really provisions the providers, uh, and really gets them up
and running much quicker than, uh,
what we would historically have.
Three different teams have a step in that process.
And the length of time it would take could be anywhere from
three business days to 10 business days.
So that's really anywhere from one to two weeks to get
that physician physician that, that access.
Where now with the automation, we're able to turn that
around, uh, within a couple of days consistently.
Um, another, another project, uh, that we have, uh,
was focused on how do we, uh, remove access for our,
our, our patients who turn 18 from our patient portal.
So because of regulatory, uh, guidelines, as soon
as a a patient turns 18, we have to be able to,
uh, uh, terminate access for, for parents, uh, uh,
because they're no longer a minor.
Uh, so we've put in automation to automatically do that.
Um, and that's been, uh, one that's, uh, saved us time,
but also, uh, we're able to really monitor that
and have a whole monitoring, uh, program
that's solely focused on keeping us compliant with
that particular regulation.
Um, there's been a number of other items
where we've done some lead screening
that our population Health
and Utilization review group, uh, they have to, uh,
perform quarterly lead screenings now it's monthly.
Um, and basically they'd have to go out to, uh,
to a website, uh, look up information
and then document, uh, that they've performed that, that,
that, that lead screening.
So we've taken that, uh, and deployed automation.
So we have a bot that goes out
and performs that entire function, uh,
and provides the results to that team.
So lots of different, uh, areas we're focused on,
but, uh, those are just a few projects that,
that we've been able to deploy and sealing some pretty
significant, uh, time savings each month.
- That's fascinating to hear
and definitely makes a big difference on the time side in
terms of, you know,
having those administrative tasks automated so
that the team can focus in on other areas
where really their, their skills and in person
and person interaction is so vital.
Um, you know,
and kind of given your focus, especially as you're talking
through more population health
and some other areas where, um,
really you can make a difference.
What are some of the top trends
that you're following in healthcare?
What's top of mind for you?
- So right now, the, the digital health is still one
of the biggest trends,
but we're really looking at, uh, the ambient technologies
that can take natural, uh, language, uh, as part of a visit
and really, uh, looking at the solutions that can transcribe
that into a good solid note
and then be able to integrate that back into the EMR
to really, uh, increase the efficiency of the physicians,
reduce their, their cognitive burden,
but also, uh, give them the ability to
have a more engaging conversation with their patient.
I'm looking at those types of technologies and those trends.
AI is, is, is so prevalent with large language models,
gen ai, uh, under trying
to understand what's happening there
and how do we take advantage of those types of, uh,
capabilities at the,
but at the same time making sure
that we can do that, uh, safely.
I think one of the other areas, uh, in trends, uh,
really is, is, is focused on how do you, how do,
how do you really look at, um,
shifting your organization's talent profile, um,
to meet the coming needs of large language models and the,
and the type of talent you need
to really take advantage of those capabilities.
Uh, the digital, uh, programs
and platforms that, uh, been so prevalent, uh, looking
for, uh, product managers, uh, low-code developers,
so you have the right mix of talent to really be able
to drive forward the strategies
that the organization is looking forward
to become more and more digital.
Uh, those are kind of the things that, uh, that,
that, that we're really following.
And then of course, consolidation.
Um, um, you know, particularly with a lot
of the startups in, in, in a number of spaces, uh,
just trying to understand and,
and see where we think there may be consolidation, uh,
with some of these, uh, vendor platforms, particularly some
of the, uh, the, the early, uh,
early platform developers in,
in the ambient technology space.
- Fascinating. Yeah, I, I I think especially as, you know,
the, um, very much the digital health, uh,
industry continues to grow and, and change
and, um, really evolve, um, the ability
to have those connections
and then too to understand, as you said, how um,
companies are moving and what that means for organizations.
Um, you know, definitely important
to stay top of mind there.
Um, I'm wondering
before we wrap up here, how are you thinking about growth
and development over the next 12 to 24 months?
What do you really see as being spaces
where you can continue to build out
and, uh, grow, um, your accountabilities on the digital side
as well as, um, the hospital overall?
- Uh, so, um, right now I, I think our growth is going
to be in call center platforms.
So we have a huge access and carry design journey we're on.
And so as part of that, part of it is how do we, uh,
improve access to care in our specialty clinics?
And so as we, as we look at that particular program,
we looked at it from not only a, a technology,
but a people in process aspect of it, so that
that journey will, will wrap up in the next 12 months.
And if we are successful,
and I believe we will be, that will
increase our ambulatory specialty clinic volume
significantly gives us more capability, more capacity
to see more patients.
Um, and so with that, uh, our new specialty clinic tower
that's coming online in June of 2025, um, we really have
to be in a position to offer more digital capabilities.
So Cloud-based call center platform with a lot of, uh,
digital assistant, virtual assistant capabilities, uh,
that allows us to handle more volume
and not have to grow, uh, the staffing.
Uh, looking at implementing
and enabling, uh, some gen EI capabilities, uh,
particularly focused, uh, on, uh, on how do you take,
uh, a large language model that towards some
of our key insights and information
and leverage that to improve our access,
improve our efficiency,
and really be able to tie some of those capabilities into,
uh, some of the digital capabilities with our call center,
but also with, uh, our, our patient portal.
We're building, uh, currently a mobile solution.
We call it My Shock, um, that really takes a lot
of the wealth of information in a patient portal,
but really building out, uh, ability that are beyond
what a traditional patient portal offers.
So in addition to, uh, the ability to, to
to schedule your appointment, see, see your record,
we're promoting and producing content that's, uh,
that will be specific to the patient
and what they are coming to, uh, see us for, for services
and how do we take that, that platform,
leverage these large language models, uh, really offer, uh,
enhanced services that our patients
and patients families, uh, really want.
Um, so growth in those areas. Uh, I see.
Um, I also see growth in data science.
Uh, we have a data science team at CHOP that is doing, uh,
several predictive models at the point of care
that we integrate, uh, into the EMR
and looking to continue to grow that team, uh,
and the services, uh, really, really, uh, take us to,
to more advanced outcomes
and really help with continuing to kind of
support our care delivery process for our physicians, uh,
which we hope will also, uh, play a significant role in,
in reducing uh, kind of the physician burnout that, uh,
still continues to be on, not only for us
but also across the country.
- And John, that's fascinating to hear.
Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.
This has been a really great conversation.
I learned a lot and certainly a lot to think about,
you know, when we're looking to the future.
I appreciate your time today
and excited to have you, um,
speaking at our Health IT Digital Health
and Revenue Cycle event this October.
It'll be great to be able to continue these conversations
and, uh, talk about many of these themes,
um, at that point as well.
- Alright. It's been great talking to you
and looking forward to Becca's in October.