Exciting things are happening at Becker's Healthcare. Stay
ahead of industry trends with the new Becker's
CFO plus Revenue Cycle podcast,
your go to source for insights from top
healthcare finance leaders. Tune in wherever you get
your podcasts.
And don't miss the tenth annual health IT
plus digital health plus RCM conference, happening September
30 to 10/03/2025
in Chicago.
Join thousands of
executives, engage with industry leaders, and explore the
future of health care innovation.
Learn more about our upcoming events at beckershospitalreview.com.
See you there.
This is Laura Dirda with the Becker's Healthcare
I'm thrilled today to be joined by doctor
Deepti Pandita,
vice president of informatics and chief medical information
officer at UCI Health. Doctor Pandita, it's a
pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
Thank you, Laura, for having me on.
I'm excited for our conversation because I know
there's a lot of cool things you're doing
there at UCI Health, and certainly we'll be
excited to learn a little bit more about
how you're thinking about the future as well.
But before we dive in, I'm wondering, can
you tell us a little bit more about
UCI Health and what makes it unique?
Yeah. Absolutely.
So UCI Health is part of the University
of California Health Systems.
You as you know, University of California is
a large academic
organization,
and we have several universities.
However, we have five health systems affiliated with
our and
University of California Irvine is one of them.
We are,
six hospital system currently, five operational one that
we are building and will be operational in,
December of this year, and then we have,
perhaps another rehab hospital in the works for
next year. So we are soon to be
a seven hospital system.
We have a very large ambulatory footprint as
well. We see about 1,200,000
ambulatory visits
every year,
apart from what we do in the inpatient
space. And then we have multiple emergency departments
as well.
Great. That's amazing to hear, you know, and
what an important community that you're serving,
in Irvine.
From your perspective, what is the accomplishments that
you're most proud of from the last year?
Yeah. So there are multiple, but I I
would say,
I would
sort of proud to share two accomplishments. One,
I have been here close to about,
nearly two years now. And when I got
here, there was no clinical informatics structure.
Or if there was one, it was completely
broken. So,
in my mind, you know, clinical informatics is
that sort of translator role between
operational speak and clinical speak versus IT speak.
So,
getting that,
structure up and running was my first task,
and I'm proud to say that we now
have a very, very functional
clinical informatics division within ITS.
The other big accomplishment is with all the
acquisitions we have had,
meeting the needs of our provider and,
clinical communities,
because we now currently have disparate systems, and,
we have made the decision that we are
gonna bring everyone onto one system.
And just leading all the dis all the
disparate systems,
and the com the workflows and all that
into one
system has been challenging, but also rewarding in
many ways because it is also
what is going to align our cultures together.
So whether a patient goes to any of
our hospital sites or any of our ambulatory
sites, the patient experience is a UCI experience
and not an individual hospital or clinic system
experience.
That's amazing to hear. And, you know, I
can imagine,
easier said than done. And just a huge
feat to bring all those different, hospitals and
systems together into,
that one,
integrated
EHR system for one, but then two, just
the cultural side of things. Is there anything
from your perspective that you've been able to
do well to, make that process as seamless
as it can be?
Yeah. I am a very big stickler for
governance, and I think the biggest accomplishment
has been,
you know, promoting the value of governance to
all the stakeholders
in the whole process,
because,
you know, people were doing governance in their
own silos. And the
what I have been able to accomplish is
show them the value of shared governance
and shared decision making
and transparency in governance so that we are
actually able to be more nimble in our
decision making and also,
be able to,
drive decision making more, in a more coordinated
manner so that everyone is on the same
page and then can, you know,
abide by that decision in the future because
they were at the table when that decision
was made.
That makes a lot of sense. Thank you
for going a little bit deeper there. Now
I'm curious. Looking into the future, where do
you see some of the big growth opportunities
for you and your team in the next
twelve months
or so?
So I think, you know,
the growth opportunity is the same that has
been there all this time, which is what
are the challenges we are facing. You know,
all health systems are facing
challenges with narrow margins.
How do we make our,
care teams more productive, more efficient, more proficient.
And these challenges have not changed at least
in the last couple of decades. They've always
been there. It's just that the tools to
meet these challenges are rapidly evolving. And,
you wouldn't have a podcast if I didn't
mention AI. So I think the future of
plugging all the AI tools
to driving more administrative
efficiency, operational efficiency, and decreasing the cognitive burden
of our clinical teams so they can be
more free to provide that very,
you know, top of line patient care is
where everything is moving. So what I am
excited about is how do we use
AI in the realm of
improving,
efficiency and proficiency for our clinical teams.
That's fascinating to hear. And, certainly,
having the AI
opportunities with the, more broad clinical teams, I
can imagine, as you said, bring, some great
efficiencies and great opportunities, but also big challenges.
Can you dig a little bit deeper into,
some of those challenges that you're anticipating in
the next year or so and how you're
navigating them?
Yeah. So the biggest challenge I would say
is,
you know, AI cannot solve for broken systems
or broken workflows.
So if you are designing
AI to sort of, you know, be the
square background whole approach, it's not gonna work.
AI tools, you know, promise efficiency gains but
struggle when introduced into real world workflows, and
I have several experiences of this.
You know, physicians, nurses, other clinical care team
members are already overwhelmed with EHR burdens.
And if the AI tool doesn't seamlessly integrate,
into the workflow, it's gonna, you know, meet
resistance and it's going to fail.
So my role is how do I make
successful AI implementations that are almost invisible,
which means that they feel like a natural
extension of existing workflows rather than adding,
additional burden.
And how we do this is, you know,
again, having governance frameworks,
you know, that
can provide explainability of the AI tool or,
you know, accountability or
ownership of the tools,
to make sure that there is trust and
compliance with the tools.
And then the other thing that's happening
is ROI is being overestimated of these tools.
There is a lot of hidden costs of
AI, including, you know, workflow,
training,
accuracy issues,
data science evaluations,
and all of that.
So,
again, making sure that
the ROI will come conversation is happening
rather than, you know, falsely touting that the
ROI is here now. And then I am
a big, big proponent of keeping a human
in the loop. So
full automation
is not the right solution, and keeping people
cognizant of that
is very important in my view.
I think that's incredibly useful and helpful information
to think through, especially as you're incorporating
AI and trying to figure out the best
ways to bring it into the health system,
the organization, and then optimize it and and
find that ROI that you were talking about
as quickly as possible.
Could you dig a little bit deeper there
in in terms of, what are those conversations
look like? What do you have to continuously
think about and check-in on as you're starting
to implement new technologies or AI into different
workflows,
to make sure your that message isn't getting
lost and that ROI is actually being realized
and you have a, a, aligned understanding of
how, that will come in the future?
Yeah. That's a great question. So let's take
the example of AI Scribes, which I think
every health care system is looking at and,
you know,
decision support automation tools that save clinical
time,
the actual ROI depends on adoption,
ongoing maintenance, and integration costs. You know,
the tool must be measured by real world
impact, not just theoretical
savings.
So the metrics
for measuring that ROI should include clinician adoption
rates, reducing cognitive load,
improve documentation
quality.
And this is what I call soft ROI.
It's not like a hard cost ROI.
However,
there is enough, you know, social science behind
it to say, if you do all this,
if you reduce cognitive load, if you increase
the retainability of a clinician when they are
less burnt out, if you improve documentation quality,
that improved billing, improved engagement with the system,
being able to see more patients, that hard
ROI will come, but it's not there today.
So having that conversation and presenting it in
that manner is very important.
Got it. That makes a lot of sense.
And, you know, it's a really great and
timely example as I know there's so many
systems that are trying to bring in those
AI scribes or doing something along those lines
that,
you know, trying to figure out exactly what
makes the most sense and how they can
move forward there in a meaningful way. So
I appreciate that. Before we wrap up, I'm
curious. What is the number one thing you're
doing right now to set up UCI Health
for success in the future?
So, again, like I said, we have two,
big projects. One is, you know, bringing everyone
on a single EHR platform,
which is, what we are working fast and
furious towards,
to be have a big bang go live
in December.
And the second is getting a handle on
all of our AI suite of offerings
and then,
work with our EHR vendor to make sure
that we are highlighting, leading,
implementing
all those solutions.
At the same time, standing up AI governance
frameworks,
that, you know, assign clear accountability,
ethical standards, compliance, and trust in those systems.
So there are two parallel things going on
there.
Got it. Absolutely. That is fascinating to hear
about. And, you know, I I think especially
looking at AI governments governance and those frameworks.
I know you mentioned that's something that you
really,
dig deep into and that is really passionate
about that governance. So,
something that I know as well a lot
of health care leaders mentioned to me, but
they haven't figured out how to do it
right on their end. Just before we wrap
up, is there anything any advice you'd have
for them as they're developing AI frameworks, with
their broader teams and truly trying to make
sure they're hitting all the right notes so
they don't have to go back and revise
too much in the future, but really truly
have a a strong standing to move forward?
Yeah. So my my,
advice would be, you know, AI implementation
is not just about the model. It's not
like reaching out to the vendor and getting
an AI model. It's still at the heart
of it, goes back to the key principles
of informatics, which is people, process, and policy,
and
technology.
So the systems that will invest in clinician
buy in, robust AI governance
with multi stakeholder presence,
workflow integration, they are the ones who are
gonna see success in deployment of AI
and expect
gains rather than systems that are just implementing
AI
because,
you know, it is available.
Got it. That's such a great point.
Thank you so much again for joining us
on the podcast today,
doctor Pandita. It's been a true pleasure connecting
with you and, hearing from you today, and
I look forward to speaking with you again
soon. Thank you so much, Laura, for having
me on.