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Hello, and welcome to the Becker's Health Care
podcast recorded live at the 9th annual health
IT digital health and RCM conference.
I'm joined today by Greg Bryant, IT director
at North Texas Medical Center.
Greg, to get us started, can you please
share a little bit about yourself, your background,
and your role at your organization?
Oh, yeah. Sure. I've actually it's a fairly
new role for me.
I've been a CIO previously and a director
at other facilities.
We are a
small rural hospital in Gainesville, Texas, about 50
beds
total. We do acute care for the community
and surrounding areas.
Okay.
So, you know, AI adoption is exploding in
health care. In your view, what's the most
significant or promising application of this technology right
now? And how is this informing your organization's
innovation strategy?
So I think for us, it's gonna be
more on the operation side. Mhmm.
Patient experience always is forefront. So Mhmm. We
are looking at ways to maybe use AI
to kind of
bridge the gap for the patient and the
provider.
Will it replace, like, nurses or for us?
No. No time. Not that will not happen.
But Mhmm. If we could find it to
be make the patient experience better, that's kinda
where my mindset is with that.
So in a in a smaller organization like
yours, how do you feel, you know, the
role of the future of AI is different
than it may be at, like, a bigger
health system?
So
at a smaller facility like ours,
we don't have the financial resources that these
big Mhmm. Huge facilities have that you see
around here at the conference. So we have
to kinda be more strategic in how we
deploy
Mhmm. Different technologies.
We can't get the best and brightest all
the time that we wanna get. Mhmm. But
maybe we can find a start up or
maybe find a way that we can bring
something to the community that hasn't been seen
before. Mhmm. So Mhmm. It is it you
have to kinda think outside the box, which
I like in my job. Right. It's easy
being at a big facility with the unlimited
paycheck. I've been at roles where I've had
an unlimited paycheck, and it gets boring after
a while also. So with a small organization,
you really have to tap into your own
innovation and create Yeah. You have to get
real creative real fast. Right. Right. That's fascinating.
So, you know, on a daily basis, health
care leaders are managing greater volumes of data
and more devices across a growing number of
care settings and populations.
In this complex environment, what clinical data integration
tools or practices are you seeing drive improvements
in patient outcomes and operations? And do you
have any examples you wanna share? So, we
have a kind of a hybrid environment with,
with a cloud provider. So we we use
both on prem and cloud based solutions to
kinda leverage,
our data integrations.
Mhmm. It helps us out because my team
is not the largest team. Mhmm. So I
can rely on on a cloud group or
analysis group to kinda handle
some of the situations.
We use a SOC,
for our network security because I don't have
enough people on staff. And it's not for
the hospital, it isn't worth us having extra
IT staff where we can pay a company
to do the role of 3 people,
year round 247. Mhmm. So for us, we
have to kinda like, back to that thinking
clearly and think outside the box to get
Mhmm. What we need as an organization.
Right.
And, you know, how can health care organizations,
better support IT and clinical teams as they
carry out some innovation efforts?
And do you know or what what kind
of pitfalls are you seeing here?
Most of the pitfalls we have are either
financial resources or human resources.
Being in a smaller area,
financial talent I'm not trying to tell you.
Human talent Mhmm. Is kind of the issue
we have where if you're looking for a
certain particular role,
that role may not be available to you
in a small area. It may be a
larger facility or a larger metro area to
look for so that you can try to
attract someone
from a big city Mhmm. To come into
your small area and do the job you
need done. So that's
that's one part. The other part is the
financial it it's money. And that's all of
the small hospitals are dealing with. It's either
using that money for other capital expenditures like
infrastructure
Mhmm. That were they could use more or,
you know, pours the patient experience. So Mhmm.
You're always playing that role of, what's best
for the patient and what's best for the
organization. It's not easy. Mhmm. Mhmm.
And so what would you say your top
piece of advice for other health care leaders
is,
as they prepare for further advancements in technology
and greater demands for care?
That's a good question.
I I would my advice is to, you
know,
keep it simple. Mhmm.
The the the technology is great, and it's
all shiny and new and, you know, everybody's
saying gen AI and AI and all that.
But sometimes simplicity is best. It's okay
to not have to have the best and
brightest technology
upfront. Mhmm. Give it some time to work
itself out. Maybe something something will work for
your organization. I'm speaking from a small organization.
Mhmm. We you know, we're not gonna have
everything you see here on the floor at
this conference because it's it's not practical for
us. Mhmm. But there may be something a
little piece of something somewhere where we can
kinda gravitate to Mhmm. And be able to
enhance the patient's experience better than what we
have today.
So, you you know, you talked about being
in a smaller organization and how you like
that that creativity and extra innovation.
And I'm genuinely curious. You know, oftentimes, you
know, when you talk to bigger pea people
at big organizations, they talk about what what
technologies they're most excited for for the future.
And I'm curious. Do you feel like, you
know, some of the technologies that they're looking
for, you know, maybe 5, 10 years down
the road differ is different from, you know,
you at a smaller organization, what you're excited
for? And do you see anything,
you know, on the forefront that you're really
looking forward to that best could be a
real game changer for some of these smaller
and community based hospitals? So I think some
of the technology is to scale.
Some of the the big organizations look at
something. We can look at something, but maybe
at 1 tenth of the, of the capacity
that that the big organization may do.
Bringing up AI like earlier,
we
are looking at we can look at it
to help maybe with a chatbot Mhmm. To
help with patient experience
or with automated check ins for ER patients
Mhmm. Or or for outpatient, you know. Mhmm.
That those kind of things that can help
us bring the patient more, you know, closer
in and and get them through the check-in
process quicker. Because a lot of ERs around
the country have been complaining about wait times.
Mhmm. So any kind of way you can
reduce something like that is better for the
patient and Right. And get them to come
to your facility more than maybe going down
the road to the big facility. Mhmm. So
it's it's it it's gonna differentiate based on
the technology, but
I'm not saying I'm just totally
not gonna worry about anything here. Right. Right.
It's just maybe to scale, what can we
do at Armacelets? Mhmm. Mhmm.
And so with that, you know, Greg, I
feel like we've had a great conversation.
You do you have any final thoughts you
wanna leave our listeners with today?
I I any leader listening right
now, go back to your pay you know,
your community and see what's the needs are.
It it's great to bring in technology, but
the community needs to understand what you're bringing
in. Mhmm. And you need to be the
your job as a leader is to be
that conduit between Mhmm. The patient Mhmm.
And the provider
and the organization
to let bridge that technology and be able
to explain it in all three aspects Mhmm.
Be it town hall meeting or in a
in a meeting with providers or meeting with
staff, be able to put in layman's terms
what they're trying to do with the organization.
Mhmm. Well and and, again, just to to
before we wrap it up, you know, you
being one of these smaller organizations, you know,
your patients are people that that you're gonna
see on a daily basis at the grocery
store and things like that. So, I mean,
do you feel like that gives you a
better ear to the ground about what the
needs are in that community than someone who,
you know, might not be running into, like,
their Exactly. I got it. Our CEO has
has mentioned how he's, you know, gotten
both praises and complaints from people that live
next to him. So
in the same capacity, I could be at
a grocery store and all of a sudden,
they find out I work at a hospital.
Oh, well, I'll I waited 4 hours in
the ER for this. Well, I I apologize,
but we are gonna try to do the
best we can to reduce that wait time
and figure out why that wait time took
place anyway. Right. Right. Right. Well, Greg, thank
you so much again for joining us today.
It was a great conversation. I hope you
have a lovely rest of your day. Thank
you.