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This is Laura Dirda with the Becker's Healthcare
podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by
Kieran Mysore, chief data analytics officer at Sutter
Health. Kieran, it's a pleasure to have you
on the podcast today. Thanks for having me,
Laura.
Absolutely. Now I'm really excited for this discussion
because I know, Sutter is doing a lot
of innovative things. It's a really,
unique time in health care right now where
innovation is moving so quickly and technology is
transforming the way health care is delivered. So
I'm looking forward to talking more about what
you're doing at Sutter and then how you're
thinking about the future. But before we dive
in, I'm wondering, can you introduce yourself and
tell tell us just a little bit about
your background?
Sure, Laura. I'm Kieran Meisser. I serve as
the chief data and analytics officer at Sutter
Health.
I lead our enterprise efforts in data strategy,
artificial
intelligence, analytics,
and our collective team's focus is really to
deliver
better care for our patients,
reducing clinician burden, and, improving our overall organizational
performance.
Now I've spent, you know, more than twenty
five years working in data and AI
across multiple industries,
and that also includes health care.
And that sort of cross sector experience gives
me a broad lens. But what I'm really
excited about is how we can bring some
of these ideas to the provider, the health
care space,
where we can really turn insights into real
impact.
And so at Sutter, we're using data and
AI to tackle some of health care's toughest
challenges,
whether it's improving patient access,
clinician productivity,
and so on.
I also wanted to give a quick background
on Sutter Health. We are one of the
leading not for profit
integrated health systems. We serve more than three
and a half million patients in California,
and our vision is to be the most
comprehensive,
integrated, and coordinated
health system in California.
That's amazing to hear. And, you know, what
great work that you do in serving such
an important patient population.
Now what are some of the big opportunities
as well as headwinds that you have your
eye on?
Sure.
So we're working on some exciting initiatives using
data and AI. I'm gonna focus a couple
of maybe give you a couple of examples.
One example is, you know, we are working
to improve
speed and accuracy of diagnosis
and, you know, flagging patients at risk for
serious health events.
So we use AI, for example, to act
as a second set of eyes for physicians.
Right?
For example, when you're reviewing a CT's lung
scan,
where, you know, we're trying to understand
early stage lung cancer diagnosis, right, and and
provide the diagnosis.
With AI's help, you know, sixty percent of
these Sutter patients actually received
an early stage diagnosis. Now that is significantly
better than the national average, which is just
at twenty seven percent. So we're really proud
of that.
When you think about stroke,
care,
AI based platforms provide,
an additional review.
They help our specialists identify
large blood vessel clots within minutes,
And this allows for faster treatment decisions as
well.
Now AI risk models also proactively flag patients
in the hospital
who are at high risk for in hospital
cardiac arrest, which is one of the things
that could happen. It's a leading cause of,
in hospital death and c diff infections as
well. And by predicting earlier, we're able to
take care of our patients much earlier. So
those are some examples.
Now one of the other thing we're also
working on is
to improve
access to care,
by making it more readily available. So
one example there is, you know, more than
half of those with diabetes,
they don't get a recommended eye exam each
year, and that places them at a higher
risk for blindness.
Now AI can actually detect
even the earliest warning signs in less than
a minute just through a picture.
And by placing these retinal cameras with FDA
cleared AI
in primary care offices
in a screening for more sort of health
patients is really possible.
I'm gonna maybe end with one other example,
which is all about our physicians. You know,
our physician satisfaction is really important.
Productivity is really important.
So we use AI to assist them generating
responses to patient emails.
So or to listen during a patient visit
to take notes
and generate a summary that directly flows into
the electronic health record for the patient. Of
course, the physicians do review and approve all
of this content before it reaches the patients.
And we've seen, like, almost a million notes
written in the system since our program launched.
And this is actually helping our physicians be
you know, overall reduce their cognitive burden,
and their mental fatigue of even up to
30%.
So this is a win for our physicians
and our patients.
That's amazing to hear, and it makes a
really big difference when you think about the
clinical workforce and how much the last few
years has really put a strain on it.
So to incorporate technology that can do a
variety of those administrative tasks and really add
value to their Workday, I I think is
critical. And I appreciate you talking through a
lot of the work that you've done there,
and how you're gauging those results is, fascinating.
Now Mhmm. I'm curious. You know, when you
look into the future, what are some of
the ways that you are thinking about growth
and developing
and continuing to add value to Sutter overall?
Sure. The best way to think about growth
and value is through the lens of our
mission,
which is patients first and people always.
Now there are several areas of focus to
help with this.
You know the first thing is we think
about
how we act improve access to care.
So the problem we face is that
too many
people experience too many hurdles in getting the
care they need.
And Sutter is leading the way in removing
as many barriers to access as possible.
And this is where our digital tools, our
innovations play a crucial role in this work.
I'll give you one example.
Our work actually helps us
serve more than a 100,000 new patients,
across our system last year. That's 100,000 new
patients last year.
And
we're doing that by improving our online scheduling
capabilities.
For example, last year, we saw an increase
of 27%
in online appointment scheduling.
This is really great.
The second thing we think about is workforce
well-being.
Now we are growing our workforce,
especially our physicians.
We hired more than a thousand physicians and
clinicians last year
while keeping turnover
really low.
Now burnout is a key factor in all
of the work that they do. So our
digital tools, like I mentioned,
are really helping our workforce,
and essentially making their life easier.
A good example is the fact that,
last year,
we saved a million hours of our workforce
time through efficiencies in our digital tools, and
this is amazing.
So these are just two examples of how
our work in action
really drives,
our collective organization
and really advance that mission of patients first
and people always.
I love that. Really tying it back into
what health care is all about. Now I
I know there's so many hospitals and and
systems across the country that have that vision
that are trying to serve patients well and
figuring out what technology is going to do
that the best.
And that is, you know, easier said than
done. And so when you think about many
of these institutions having tight margins or looking
ahead and seeing continued belt tightening, what investments
should they still make this year, especially
thinking about technology,
you know, that can make sure they're set
up for success?
It's a great question, Laura. I think,
again, taking a lens of how Sutter is
really thinking about this,
we'll maybe stick with the same theme of
growth and expansion, right? We are actually making
some big investments in our ambulatory
growth.
We have a very ambitious,
program in ambulatory expansions.
This is a billion dollar program.
This includes, you know, 76 new care sites,
more than 160 hospital beds.
I already talked about our physician hiring, which
is also a growth area for us. We
actually hired, like, 500 physicians this year alone.
We're also,
on our way to becoming Northern California's
largest
community based health care training institution. This is
great.
We're growing our medical,
residency programs, our academic partnerships,
and workforce development investments to really help our
future generations of caregivers be even more efficient.
One other thing I'm really excited about to
sort of complement the amb ambulatory expansion
is that we're rolling out a new
fully integrated digital care delivery model, and we
call that SutterSync.
So this program actually allows our patients to
track and manage chronic diseases,
such as hypertension
and diabetes at home. And they can do
this on their schedule in their house Mhmm.
And in concert with a dedicated care team
that can really provide timely support and treatment
adjustments.
So our
investments in ambulatory expansion coupled with our digital
tools like Sutter Sync are really helping care
for more
patients in more places.
That's fascinating to hear. And, you know, really
truly embracing that tech enablement,
it makes a big difference. You know, those
are huge problems trying to expand capacity and
increase the number of patients you're seeing. Well,
also, you know, dealing with, as we have
talked a little bit about here, just some
of the challenges with staffing and all those
kinds of things. So that's that's amazing to
hear.
I'm curious before we wrap up here. Looking
ahead and and looking at, you know, growth
for yourself in particular, what does that look
like over the next two to three years?
I know, right now, things are changing very
quickly, and it likely will continue that way.
So how do you see yourself and your
teams evolving?
I'm excited for the future. I reflect on
this all the time. You know? One of
the things we think about,
and I tell my team to think about
growth is to really define what growth really
means. Right?
It's not just growth for the growth sake,
but it's about creating
greater access to care, meeting the demand where
where we need to.
And, like I said, I've given some examples
of already, you know, how we do this.
I think growth is taking on new forms
beyond just the traditional ways.
This is where I think digital health, AI
innovations play such a big role.
I just think some of the work that
my team is doing
and enabling,
especially around AI, these are not just incremental
opportunities. These are transformational opportunities.
And in some ways, we're changing the way
things are done entirely,
whether it's workflows, whether it's treatment plan, care
care mechanisms, and such.
And our clinical areas, our operational areas have
tremendous opportunities for growth.
And so as we transform all of this
easy work, we're actually going to go deeper,
maybe towards personalized treatments that will actually truly
change our patients,
well-being.
So,
yeah, personally I'm excited about the opportunities for
growth in the future.
I truly think not just Sutter but just
healthcare as a whole has a unique opportunity
to serve our patients
with better technology, with AI, with data,
to elevate the scale,
to improve the quality of care. And I
think our growth journey is a great example
of this.
That's fascinating to hear. Well, Karen, thank you
so much for joining us on the podcast
today. This has been a really fun conversation,
and I look forward to connecting with you
again soon.
Thanks, Laura. Thanks for having me. It was
great to talk to you, and I hope
that our conversation sparks some new ideas for
the listeners to accelerate their own journeys.
Thank you.