At athenahealth,
we know your ambulatory practice wants healthier, a
healthier business, healthier care teams, and healthier patients.
But the complexities of modern health care tech
make it hard for you and your care
teams to focus on what matters
most? That's where athenahealth can help. Our AI
native all in one solutions reduce administrative burdens,
streamline billing and payments, and deliver critical insights
when clinicians need it most. That means fewer
clicks, more time for patients, and stronger bottom
lines.
Practicing medicine is complex, but running a practice
can be that much simpler with athenahealth.
See how simpler is healthier@athenahealth.com.
Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Becker's Healthcare podcast.
I'm Scott King joined by a very special
guest today, Karen Hunter, chief nursing informatics officer
with Adventist Health. Karen, how are you doing
today?
I'm great, Scott. How are you? I'm good.
Thanks so much for joining us. I think
we're gonna have a a great discussion on
a lot of kinda key topics and things
going on in in health care right now.
But before we dive into questions, wondering if
you could just please tell us a little
bit about yourself and your work in health
care.
Absolutely. I am a nurse by background, and
I worked, in the at the bedside and
in operations for,
fifteen years before going into informatics.
Since then, I've been,
leadership and, clinical informatics
while, implementing
multiple EHRs,
across the country.
And, most recently now, CNIO at Adventist Health
as we are on an epic journey to
convert
our sites to one epic instance next year.
That sounds great. Thanks so much for sharing
that background information.
And, you know, getting to some of these
kinda key issues in health care, I know
nearly half of medical practices reporting using AI
in some capacity last year.
It's still still a key topic
for health IT leaders. From your perspective, what
are the use cases that are making a
difference right now, and how are you leveraging
them for your health system?
Absolutely.
So AI has been around for quite a
while. We just may not have been aware
of it or calling it out.
And in the nursing space, we are using
it right now. We've had a partnership with
the company for about five years,
emergency department
triage,
assisting a nurse in that initial assessment where
they're making snap decisions
on how critical a patient is and whether,
you know,
when to move them through the system and
how many resources
to to assign.
And we found that,
very helpful.
We've identified that it, reduces
time in the ED.
Overall, it ensures that our sickest patients get
moved back faster and seen faster.
And we're even kind of exploring correlation to
decreased length of stay in patient, meaning that
we got the right care to the patient
at the right time and that affects their
overall course of care.
So that's one use case.
Our physicians are leaning into this, of course,
with ambient listening. Very excited. We've got that
actively going now,
and we're looking forward to, in the next
year, bringing in nursing to ambient listening as
well.
And just to follow that, in terms of
all the kind of the practical uses of
AI and health systems,
have you found that, ambient listening maybe
takes, like, the least amount of human,
you know, interaction, human kinda correcting.
Is ambient listening kind of,
pretty trustworthy at this point?
You know, I
am only watching from afar on that topic.
So we have not implemented yet.
I have my opinions, but I have not
no practical experience.
I think that's fair.
You know, as as virtual care expands
from AI enabled tools, remote monitoring to broader
digital health platforms,
Introducing new technology kinda brings challenges. What advice
do you have for leaders
navigating everything from governance to patient engagement? And
can you share an example of how your
organization has balanced
innovation with
some of the operational constraints a lot of
systems are seeing?
Sure.
I think first of all, you know, my
experience as a nurse, I always,
tried to be boring.
Right? Didn't wanna excite my patients, didn't wanna
overreact to a situation. It was my job
to be calm,
prescient, and and see through. And I say
that applies here as well. Often, we think,
oh, shiny object, this cool new toy,
and that sort of thing. But we really
have to stay focused on what is the
problem we're trying to solve,
what is the evidence of that problem,
through metrics or value capture dollars, whatever that
may be, and continue to,
evaluate against those metrics. Is this solving the
problem,
as we expected in tracking to that? I
know people hate the word pilot anymore, but,
really, we need to practice with this new
technology.
I think about my mother and a smartphone.
She wanted a smartphone so badly, but you
know what? When she got it, she still
sat in the kitchen next to the landline
to make her calls because, yeah, just adapting
her, you know, her living experience to that
new technology, and it takes time to do
that. And we in health care, we have
to do that as well.
I think that's a great point, a a
great story. You know, people like
practical things that, you know, they have
experience with, you know, like, I was like,
The Landline. Or it's it's sometimes it is
hard to adapt,
to this new technology the way the health
systems are are having to do right now.
How are you seeing recent legislation,
both state and federal, affect health care organizations
and and health care IT specifically?
Have you adjusted strategies in response to that?
Yes. An organization we have where where it's
very top of mind right now, and Adventist
Health is a, community based organization,
faith based, and we serve the most vulnerable
populations in sort of a lot of rural
areas, remote areas.
And, we're we're high,
like, around 80% government pay. And so we're
very much watching the policy changes
and, proactively
making,
internal changes.
For example, we've outsourced some some positions and
that sort of thing looking to be most
cost effective.
So it will affect our technology
road map long term, but we are full
on with Epic
looking for greater efficiencies from a standardized single
platform,
that we haven't had in the past. And
looking at the data
that we will gather from this will help
inform us,
on how to be most effective in our
practice
and our operations and, of course, financial management.
You mentioned Epic. You know, we obviously hear
so much about,
what people like about Epic in in health
care and what they use it for. What
are yours what are your some favorite, favorite
uses of yours with Epic?
For me, I think the integration, right, that
it's one platform and the patient information is
seamlessly moving through.
But I've been in prior organizations where we
messed that up. Right? So, you know, Epic
is not infallible.
It's, we need to build it and maintain
it in a standardized way, and I believe
Adventist Health is approaching it in the right
way.
If you had to give one piece of
advice to health care leaders as they kinda
prepare for
more advancements in technology and the rising demands
for care, what would that be?
I would say it's boring, but
continue to follow fundamentals.
What is the problem we're trying to solve?
Do we have evidence that it's doing that?
Can we measure those outcomes?
What is our, you know, adoption? What are
our end users saying?
And follow that path just like we do
with our patients. We assess our patients. We
look for abnormalities,
vital signs, that sort of thing, and we
treat,
to those symptoms. And we have to do
that in health care too and not just
get excited about,
new toy, but, stay
calm, be boring, and and stick to our
fundamentals.
Yeah. I think that's great advice to kinda,
you know, just keep it simple and and
all hands on deck for for one,
one most important thing there. Something else I
wanted to ask you, Karen, for our final
question, something I like to ask all the
leaders we talk to on the podcast is
how do you think you're evolving as a
leader?
That's a great question. I,
was reflecting on this recently, and I I
think in such a time of massive change,
like, in our organization, it's a time to
be bold.
I
have a lot of experience in this area,
and I I can't assume that my colleagues,
share my knowledge and experience. So it's important
for me
to speak up and be bold and share
information
and help educate as we go so that
we can make informed decisions based on evidence,
based on, research,
as we move forward and not just, again,
what feels right or
may,
again, be a shiny object. Sorry to harp
on that so much.
Karen, thanks so much for joining us on
our podcast. I think it was a great
discussion. I look forward to working with you
again soon. Thank you, Scott. It was my
pleasure.
At athenahealth, we know your ambulatory practice wants
healthier,
a healthier business, healthier care teams, and healthier
patients.
But the complexities of modern health care tech
make it hard for you and your care
teams to focus on what matters most.
That's where athenahealth can help.
Our AI native all in one solutions reduce
administrative burdens, streamline billing and payments, and deliver
critical insights when clinicians need it most. That
means fewer clicks, more time for patients, and
stronger bottom lines.
Practicing medicine is complex, but running a practice
can be that much simpler with athenahealth.
See how simpler is healthier at athenahealth.com.