Philips is a health tech leader focused on
innovation that improves the health and well-being of
people. Our health care technology and informatics solutions
help care teams diagnose, treat, and manage more
patients with greater precision, speed, and confidence across
the care journey. With Philips, clinicians are empowered
with streamlined insights in the moments that matter
for every patient. Better care for more people.
Philips.
This is Gracelyn Keller with the Becker's Healthcare
Podcast,
and I am excited today to be joined
by doctor Mark Mavis, who is the chief
medical informatics officer and the VP of EHR
at Parkview Health. Mark, thanks for joining me.
We'd love to have you start off by
introducing yourself and sharing a bit more about
your background and your role.
Thanks for having me.
Yep.
As mentioned, I'm, doctor Mark Vebas. I am,
family medicine and clinical informatics,
board certified. I've been a been a doc
for over, 15 years at Parkview Health.
And I am the chief medical informatics officer,
which means that I help with,
provider efficiencies
and some tech projects, you know, clinical decision
support,
reducing
note bloat or documentation burden reduction, we're gonna
call it now,
and also,
lead our extensive epic. Everything clinical and revenue
cycle,
for our, Epic EHR,
reports up through me. So,
working with our,
with our clinicians
and our staff to, make Epic the best
it can be at Parkview Health.
Wonderful. Well, thank you for joining me. And
let's start by talking about
AI adoption. This is exploding in health care.
So in your view, what is the most
significant or promising application of AI technology right
now, and how is that informing your organization's
innovation strategy?
Sure. AI is, being,
tested out in so many different areas of
health care. Mine from a,
a provider
standpoint and an efficiency standpoint.
My big, area that I focused on that
helps providers right now is ambient
technology. You know, the technology
where you can pull out your cell phone,
start the app,
and,
have it listen to your patient encounter and
transcribe all of that into a,
cohesive bit of documentation.
You know, the Ambient vendors have been around
for the last couple years, and the functionality
within Ambient keeps growing as well. It's not
just for progress notes. It writes some of
the best progress notes out there. I know
my nurse herself says your progress notes look
better when you do the ambient.
But then also, you know, being able to,
you know, improve efficiencies in other ways, like
queuing up diagnoses
or orders,
just making that whole
documentation
experience that a provider has had to do
as a data entry specialist for the last
20 years, taking that out of their hands
and getting providers back to where they're more
comfortable
in treating that patient, that one
person that's right in front of them, connecting
with them.
I think it's such a great use of
the technology to,
empower providers to do what they wanna do
and help people, not be a data entry,
person. Yes. Of course, there's other areas that
AI can, you know, help out. But, you
know, that one is is is key for
for me and my providers,
getting them efficient and getting those,
people connection, you know, that, that really,
fills our tank. You know?
Absolutely.
And kinda going off of that, 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.
So this is a complex environment,
and I'd love to know what clinical data
integration tools or practices
you're seeing drive improvements in patient outcomes and
operations.
And can you share an example of this?
Data is is key to managing
your health care organization on a on a
on a individual patient level, but then also
on that population health level and then, you
know, as as a system, you know, and
how you interact with all the different areas
in the health care, sector. So,
one of the one of the key kind
of focuses that we've done at Parkview more
more recently is is trying to get more
discrete data, you know, in some type of,
you know, clinical repository
that we can, you know, run multiple different,
clinical intelligence and business intelligence metrics off of.
You know, everybody's trying to
be properly
compensated
for
the level of
different coding and, insurance and regulatory,
factors that go into that complex system that
is payment in the health care system. You
know, can we get more data to accurately
reference, you know, how,
a patient actually looks, you know, comparing it
to real life in in the computer and
all that data? You know, we've had some,
initiatives
at Parkview that look at,
the,
MCCs, HCCs,
risk adjustment factors,
the those clinical
indicators of the patient.
Different initiatives for better documentation on the provider
side,
help on the coding query side, you know,
through clinical documentation,
even throwing in some AI in this air
arena too. You know, looking at the, professional
billing claims and and hospital coding, you know,
are we capturing all of those, discrete little
nuggets of data that can help,
like I said,
accurately represent the complexity of a patient that
can therefore be translated
into all those different initiatives,
whether it's
for for reimbursement or for for population health
care gap closure,
all those things that make health care so
complex.
You know, work on it from a provider
standpoint in their day to day workflows, but
then also
encourage and empower your, your teams that work
in the background to make this work as
well.
A 100%.
And
how can health care organizations
better support both IT and clinical teams as
they carry out innovation efforts, and what are
some common pitfalls you've seen here?
Definitely, this is an area that everybody always
needs, you know, help with, I think.
There
are ideas
that come in from all different sites,
but you have to have great communication
between IT and the clinical,
teams. That's where informatics
certainly can help out, can help bridge that
gap between true clinical and true IT.
You know, look at those workflows.
Look to see what,
can be improved,
and brainstorm
on those,
ideas. You know, that's where that innovation,
comes in. You know, common pit pitfalls
are things like, implementing
without properly testing,
you know,
in in making someone do a completely
different workflow
just to achieve,
you know, someone else's goal. You know, if
I have to do something completely different to,
code a certain way, I'm gonna be more
resistant as a clinician to do that. It's
gonna take more effort, and they'll be more
resistant. So,
can can informatics bridge that gap,
and kind of meet the 2 in the
middle and figure out, you know, what is
that best workflow to achieve things? And and,
yeah, it could be innovation in workflow design.
It could be innovation in software design,
or could be some brand new, you know,
element of technology that we haven't, thought about.
I'm really thankful for
informatics
kind of filling that role,
and,
being so engaging
and, willing to,
know, help make
everything
all those different parts connect and work to
the best of, the,
needs for for each side, IT and clinical.
Wonderful. And then as we wrap our conversation,
I would love to know your top piece
of advice for health care leaders as they
prepare
for further advancements in technology and greater demands
for care.
Definitely be open minded,
to all those new different possibilities.
Don't fall behind
either. There's
you know, the
the the rate of technology explosion
just seems to get faster and faster. AI,
you you've seen it.
What was just briefly talked about, you know,
chat gpt a few years ago is so
integrated into all these new gen AI tools,
and it's becoming faster and faster
on, those improvements there too. There's a new
model right around the corner. So,
being able to keep up with,
what those trends are in technologies, what your
EHR vendors are
providing for you. You know,
there there are
so many different,
avenues of new things. Be willing to try
them out.
See what works for your health system. You
know, don't just do it to to to
do it, but do you have a use
case for it? You know, it it's not
something that IT, like I mentioned,
can implement, and the clinician would have to
completely change something around. Well, what fits into
that clinician needs, or what fits into that
IT needs?
Is there some area of technology
or a new module,
that would be helpful for your system? Don't
be afraid to
to reach out and get things going sooner
than later,
so you're not, you know, left, cleaning up
in in the background. I know
there are some things that, you know, we
we've been used to doing some things a
a certain way, and maybe you just need
to be a little bit more open minded
as to trying, something a little bit different.
Not completely disruptive, you know, but, maybe just
a a little bit different can help you
and your team achieve their goals
a little bit,
quicker and more efficiently.
Wonderful. Well, Mark, thank you so much for
taking the time to join me today on
the Becker's Healthcare Podcast and share these thoughts
and insights.
Thank you for the opportunity. Have a great
day.