Hi, everyone. This is Scott King with the
Becker's Healthcare Podcast.
I'm thrilled today to be joined by doctor
Deepti Bolenini
of Christos Health Trinity Mother Frances Hospital serving
as the medical director
quality and regulatory.
Doctor Bolenini, how are you doing today?
I'm good. Thank you for having me, Scott.
How are you? I'm good. Thanks so much
for joining us. I know we're getting into
a lot of kind of the big issues
in health care and and all the really
unique things,
you're doing with your role. But before we
get started, do you mind just telling us
about your role and and your background?
Certainly.
I'm Deepti Bolenini. I'm an on-site physician advisor
and medical director for quality regulatory at CHRISTUS
Trinity Mother Frances Hospital.
It's in Tyler, Texas, the flagship hospital for,
CHRISTUS Health System.
I'm a board certified internist by background, and
I have been practicing hospital medicine for past
seventeen years.
Over the years, I have developed interest in
regulatory,
financial, and quality aspects of health care,
and, I have had the opportunity to grow
into these roles that bridge both bedside and
boardroom.
What drives me is the belief that high
quality care and operational excellence are not mutually
exclusive.
They must go hand in hand, and I'm
passionate about bridging those gaps, enhancing integrated approach
between disciplines,
advancing value based care, and driving evidence based
decision making that is patient centered.
I I think that's a great point that
those those things are not mutually,
exclusive.
What opportunities and headwinds do you have your
eye on right now?
Well, that's a good question. Right now, health
care is at a pivotal crossroads with both
incredible opportunities and significant headwinds.
One of the opportunities
is the continued push towards value based care.
More organizations
are realizing that fee for service isn't sustainable,
and there's a momentum towards aligning incentives with
patient outcomes.
While adoption has been uneven,
models like ACO reach and bundled payments are
promising for achieving financial and clinical alignment.
There's also technology that's one of the opportunities
where, it's creating its pathways for transformation,
which we couldn't have imagined a decade ago.
AI is already starting to reshape, the workflow's
clinical decision support and patient engagement.
However, if it it has to be implemented
thoughtfully with transparency
and guardrails,
and AI could help solve long standing issues
like inefficiencies
in care delivery and clinician burnout.
But we also face,
serious headwinds. The most pressing is,
the
financial pressure that is intensifying.
The margins are razor thin, and, yeah, I
the other day, I saw in the Becker's
news, like, the hospitals closing.
And with with current inflation and increased labor
costs and reimbursement
pressures,
many systems are struggling to stay solvent, especially
safety net providers.
We're gonna see a great need for
innovation in operating models, partnerships, and capital deployment.
The other major headwind is the workforce crisis,
with early retirements and staffing shortage shortages across
health care,
which, you know, limit services.
This this isn't just about, filling roles. It's
about redesigning
the way teams work and finding sustainable models
of care.
So we are balancing immense opportunity
with real structural challenges, and leaders need to
be approach need
to approach this both with urgency and long
term thinking,
I believe.
You mentioned
technology
and AI there.
How how much testing
and and kind
of thinking or mapping out does your system
do before you adapt to and start regularly
using a new technology or a new feature
of AI?
We certainly have a test period over many
months before we incorporate,
it as for real and take feedback from
our teams and our leadership. So it's not
a one day decision making. We have lot
of tools available now, and they're emerging.
So,
we do go with the a testing period
and see how adaptable it is, how easy
it is to maneuver by the staff, take
feedback from them, and then implement it if
it's bringing value.
I think that sounds great. Thanks so much
for sharing that. Mhmm. Also curious,
how do you think health care organizations
should be thinking about growth and value creation
in today's environment from the perspective
of a physician adviser?
Sure.
As a physician adviser, I see growth and
value creation through the lens of clinical alignment,
care quality, and operational efficiency.
While in today's environment, growth along with expanding
service lines or increasing patient volumes, it's about
creating systems that support clinicians in delivering high
value care.
That starts with clinical documentation integrity where I
play a major role,
appropriate utilization management, and ensuring that care decisions
are both medically necessary and are aligned with
best practices.
One of the most impactful ways to drive
value is by bridging the gap between clinical
teams and administrative goals.
In my role as a physician adviser, I
help translate these clinical realities into
actionable strategies for improving outcomes,
optimizing resource use, and supporting reimbursement integrity.
This alignment is crucial,
especially in value based care, which is coming
or which is the current,
challenge that the hospitals are facing,
where quality, efficiency, and patient outcomes are interconnected.
There's also an opportunity to leverage data more
meaningfully, whether it's identifying variation in care or
targeting avoidable admissions
or reducing denials through stronger documentation and peer
to peer collaboration.
Growth comes from improving not just what we
do, but how consistently and efficiently we do
it.
Well, ultimately, adding value means empowering care teams,
aligning clinical and financial goals, and building systems
that support
evidence based patient centered care.
That's where the role of a physician adviser
becomes a catalyst
and not just for compliance, but for strategy
growth.
We we've heard you discuss the opportunities and
headwinds
in health care you have your eye on
right now.
What's one risk
or
investment worth making this year that might deal
with those opportunities or headwinds?
Well, I would say, as a from my
perspective as a physician adviser, one of the
most worthwhile investments this year is,
intelligent automation, particularly in areas like clinical documentation,
utilization review, and administrative workflows.
Healthcare is still playing catch up, when it
comes to AI,
especially compared to other industries across.
But with growing workforce pressures and operational complexity,
we really can't afford to keep relying on
manual processes that slow down care.
I see real potential in tools like ambient
documentation, which our organization uses, which can reduce
the burden on physicians and improve documentation quality
at the same time.
There's also growing use of AI in streamlining,
medical necessity reviews, prior authorizations,
and revenue cycle tasks. These are areas where
a small amount of automation can lead to
outsized gains in both efficiency and accuracy.
Not to replace human,
touch to it, but it it definitely improves
the efficiency,
cut downs the
brings out more productive time for, our staff.
Of course, the risk is that, we adopt
these tools without engaging clinicians or without clear
guardrails,
and that can lead to mistrust or misuse.
But as a physician adviser, I see my
role as helping guide those conversations and making
sure we are implementing technology in ways that
support and not replace clinical judgment.
And I believe if we do this right,
we not only improve operational performance, but we'll
give our providers more time to focus on
what really matters. That's patient care.
You mentioned the human touch. How important is
it to you and your system,
you think, to make sure a human is
there for a lot of these AI usages
and kind of overseeing things and making sure
things are going well?
All the time. All the time. AI does
screen cases,
and gives us a more preliminary data, but
it's the main, the nurse or
the physician or the advanced care practitioner who
is making the ultimate call. So, so that
they are not spending time on on a
manual label where they are going case by
case, but it the AI helps screen through
the cases and brings up the more
main, main cases that that the staff can,
screen through.
So it's always there. The human touch is
always there. It's it's more it's helping us
complement our workflow and, bring us back our
productive time.
And the last question I have for you,
I just wanted to ask, where do you
see the best opportunities for growth in the
future?
From my perspective as a physician adviser, some
of the biggest opportunities for growth in the
future will come from improving
how we align clinical care with operational strategies.
One area I see real potential is better
leveraging clinical data to drive decision making,
not just at the bedside, but at the
system level.
As physician advisers,
we are in a unique position,
to identify the patterns and utilization,
how the resources are being used,
documentation,
and outcomes.
So that insight can inform everything from care
redesign to value based contracting.
So another opportunity I see is, standardizing
and optimizing care pathways.
There's still a lot of unwarranted variation in
care among the,
across, so which impacts both quality and cost,
by
by helping teams implement evidence based practices,
regular education,
and lunch and learns. It ensures that, it
and ensuring that medical necessity
is,
what is taken into account, and we can
improve consistency and reduce waste and ultimately deliver
more value. That's where I feel my role
is very pivotal.
I also, think that there's a big opportunity
in bridging silos between clinical teams, case management,
revenue cycle, and compliance
because growth isn't just about external expansion. It's
also about internal integration.
When these teams are aligned and integrated,
patient get more seamless care and clinicians are
better supported, and the organization can run more
efficiently.
And finally,
we can't talk about growth without addressing the
workforce.
As a physician adviser, I see growing value
in investing in clinician engagement and education,
especially around documentation
and quality metrics and evolving care models.
When we empower our physicians and advanced care
practitioners
with the right tools and knowledge, they become
the active drivers of improvement and innovation.
So for me, the growth the future of
the growth lies in smarter alignment of data,
people, and processes,
all rooted in clinical integrity.
Well, doctor Boni, thank you so much for
joining us on the podcast. I think it
was a great discussion, and I look forward
to working with you again soon. Thank you,
Scott. Thank you for having me. Have a
good day.