The Becker's team is excited to announce the
launch of our new CFO and Revenue Cycle
podcast.
Tune in for conversations with finance experts from
the top hospitals and health systems. We'll discuss
key trends and ideas to drive meaningful change
in the industry. Look for Becker's CFO and
revenue cycle podcast wherever you listen to episodes.
This is Laura Dierdahl with the Becker's Healthcare
podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by
doctor Richard Zane, chief innovation officer at UCHealth.
Doctor Zane, it's a pleasure to have you
on the podcast today.
Thrilled to be here. Thank you for having
me. Absolutely. Now I'm excited to dig into
some of the cool things that you're doing
at UCHealth. I know really on the forefront
of a lot going on with AI and
and more. But before we dive into that,
can you tell us a bit more about
UCHealth and what makes it unique?
Yeah. I'd love to. UCHealth is a relatively
new system in Colorado having been formed in
02/2012.
We are 14 hospitals, approximately 9,000,000,000
or so in revenue. And despite being a
relatively new system,
we are the dominant health care provider in
Colorado.
Lots of unique things about UCHealth.
One, first and foremost,
we are an operating company, which means
that we exist for our patients. We believe
that
we believe in patient centricity.
We use data to inform decisions,
and we
fundamentally
say that we exist for Coloradans.
Also, fun fact,
unlike a lot of other health care systems,
over our 14 hospitals,
six are from the ground up built in
the last twelve years. So pretty unique, and
it matches the growth
and, frankly, the excitement of the state of
Colorado.
Absolutely. That's amazing to hear, you know, and
really a lot of expansion as you mentioned
in the last few years. And so it'll
be,
really, really interesting to hear your perspective on,
some of the things that, you know, you've
done in the last year or so. Is
there an accomplishment you can share with us
that you're most proud of?
You know, that's a hard question because there
are so many,
that I'm proud of. But
we like to say that our innovation strategy
is our IT strategy,
is our quality strategy, is our virtual health
strategy.
So with that,
one of the things that we have done
is
substantively
reduce mortality
across our whole health care system,
specifically from sepsis. And then in general,
using a central
disciplined approach to sepsis and to deterioration.
What we do is from a central location,
a nondescript building
that's about three miles from where I am,
there are four fifty people
that look at delivering
virtual care across the spectrum,
whether
that's virtual critical care, virtual primary care, virtual
urgent care, virtual nursing,
sepsis and deterioration,
completely centralized telemetry and capnography,
virtual
admission nurses and discharge nurses, urgent care.
We look at fall prevention,
centralized respiratory therapy,
wound care,
really across the spectrum.
So what we're able to do is to
monitor patients
who are at risk for sepsis
and think about how we have deployed
AI and prescriptive analytics to identify them
and then intervene sooner. So we will centrally
order the bundle for sepsis,
order CBCs,
order lactate, initiate fluid resuscitation,
initiate antibiotics,
and really get
time dependent therapy to people with high consequence
time dependent disease.
And now we're doing that for deterioration writ
large. So patients who are in the hospital
where,
they would not or do not manifest
symptoms of deterioration but recognize it earlier. So
preventing escalations in care,
preventing unexpected operations,
and getting patients home faster.
That's amazing to hear, you know, and really,
an important mission, as you said, not only
for the patient care, but for
the organization as a whole. And, you know,
when you make this, change, I can imagine
some of it's technology, some of it's the
innovation, as you mentioned, and the people,
that are part of these types of projects.
How do you make sure that it's successful
and really have everybody
in a position where they can innovate but
do it in a meaningful way?
The most important thing is identifying what the
problem is that we're trying to solve.
So the most important innovations
come from the frontline, the people doing the
work, whether it's
choosing pharmacotherapy at the bedside,
whether it's thinking about how to better
organize operating rooms and infusion centers,
whether it's thinking about how best to deploy
capital. The problem statements
must come from the people doing the actual
work. And then it's thinking about what the
guiding principles
are about how you rationally
use and deploy technology.
So one of the things that's
crucially important
is that health care cannot be the last
bastion of industry
where deploying technology
increases cost and complexity. So that's guiding principle
number one. The next guiding principle is
deploying technology has to make your life easier,
not harder,
has to be fewer clicks and not more
clicks, and has to be bulletproof right.
So
that's pretty simplistic, but hard to adhere to
guiding principles.
We think about workflows.
We think about how we integrate into what
people are doing to make their job better
and to make our patients' lives easier.
That's helpful to know. Thank you so much,
doctor Zane. Now I'm wondering too, when you
look into the future, where do you see
some of the big growth opportunities
for your team in the next twelve months
or so?
So where we are focusing in the next
twelve months is
deploying
AI however you describe AI, and you're not
gonna see in a single
strategy from a health care system that doesn't
include the term AI. And whether it's machine
learning, prescriptive analytics, computational linguistics, national,
natural language processing,
generative AI, whatever it is. We want to
apply it to the routine and the and
the mundane.
So we want humans working to the top
of their scope, and we want
whether it's a line of code or a
bot to work to the top of their
scope. So we are
laser focused on making the routine and the
mundane
easier,
simpler, more efficient,
cheaper, and better.
That's fascinating to hear. And AI is simply,
I know, something that's transforming health care across
the board and, in almost everything, it seems
like that new technologies and applications that are
coming up. So I can imagine it's critical,
for the entire organization
to have an understanding of what they can
do with AI and how to use it
safely.
Exactly. And it's very important to understand that,
you know, AI is not magical.
Right? It's just math.
And
there's a lot of constraints within AI, and
it can be scary or it can be
exciting. And we are right at the peak
of the Gartner hype cycle on AI, but
we have to be rational and patient on
how we deploy it and what we use
it for. And I think at the end
of the day, it's gonna make things better
for our patients,
and for society, but we have to be
patient and rational.
Absolutely. I can imagine sometimes easier said than
done, but but definitely important.
Now when you look ahead to I'm wondering
what are some of the big challenges that
you're anticipating and preparing for?
So the biggest challenges right now
are financial and regulatory,
full stop.
The financial pressures on health care right now,
very fond of saying, not in a nice
way, that it's white knuckle time in health
care.
We are all gonna have to make really
difficult decisions
and set priorities in an unapologetic
way,
and it's all gonna be about execution.
The three c's of
innovation or health care is that,
compassion without competence is crap, which means that
we are gonna have to execute flawlessly to
sort of stay in the game.
The other part that's really difficult is that
we have
an unsustainable
regulatory burden.
The number of people
and the amount of time that we've had
to increase in the last five years to
meet the regulatory demand
is suffocating.
So financial pressures, regulatory burden.
Absolutely. I I think a lot of leaders
across the board would certainly agree with that
and are seeing it. You know, a lot
of that, those same similar pressures coming through
on the financial side needing to figure out
how to grow, but but seeing, you know,
just those financial pressures and and regulatory,
policy changes as being a big challenge. I
know from a leadership perspective,
what do you have to do differently in
times like these these white knuckle times in
order to, make sure you get things done
correctly,
as compared to other times in health care?
Simplify.
Eliminate complexity.
And that's where
adopting technology
can
help you execute on that goal,
or,
it can go in the opposite direction.
So what I tell everybody that I work
with and works for me is that your
job is to simplify and eliminate complexity. So
if you're gonna present me with a plan
that has 19 steps, I'm gonna ask you
why it doesn't have three. And then we're
gonna figure out how to make it simpler
and more adoptable and how execution can be
flawless.
That's really helpful context. Thank you so much,
doctor Zane. Before we wrap up here, I'm
wondering, what's the number one thing that you're
doing right now in order to set UCHealth
up for a long term success?
Purpling down on high reliability.
Full stop. You know, it's a it's a
three hour, three day conversation on what that
means.
But what it means is that
whether you come to the University of Colorado
Hospital,
which is a quaternary care,
large academic health system hospital,
or you go to one of our smaller
hospitals,
you get the same experience and the same
high quality care and that everyone who delivers
care
understands and can articulate what our mission, vision,
and values are.
Absolutely. Yeah. I I I think that, as
you mentioned, just in
these days is so important right now and
critical and a huge conversation to be had,
but really important. Doctor Zane, thank you so
much for joining us on the podcast today.
This has been a really fascinating conversation, and
I look forward to connecting with you again
soon.
It was my pleasure, and thank you for
having me.