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.
This is Laura Dierdo with the Becker's Healthcare
podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by
Bob Berbecco, chief information officer at Mahaska Health.
Bob, it's a pleasure to have you on
the podcast today.
Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
Absolutely. Now I'm excited to have you on
the line because I know technology is evolving
so quickly, and it's such a fascinating time
in health IT right now. And so it'll
be great to get your perspective on several
things as we,
you know, talk through the conversation. But before
we dive in, can you tell us a
little bit more about yourself and your work
in health care?
Yeah. Absolutely.
So,
currently, I'm the chief information officer at Mahaska
Health,
and I lead all the organizational
information technology initiatives.
So data science,
artificial intelligence,
cybersecurity,
informatics.
And what my goal is is as I
do that, we wanna ensure that they're seamless
integration of those technologies
to enhance patient care and operational efficiency.
I was drawn to
Mahaska Health by its meaningful mission
and its, empowering culture.
Passionate
personally
about fostering collaboration.
Relationships are very important to me.
I love mentoring
emerging talent, and I look to make a
a daily positive impact in health care and
beyond.
Prior to that, I've been a senior leader
now in health care technology for about twenty
seven years.
I've done predictive analytics,
process optimization,
change management.
I also was an operational director as a
service line administrator,
data governance, experience design,
a lot of things.
I also have a six sigma black belt,
so I'm very
passionate about,
optimization
continual
optimization process
improvement.
And then beyond that, personally,
I I love to contribute
within the arts and academic communities.
I serve on the board of directors for
the Indianapolis
Ballet
and
the IU School of Science,
and,
I was,
very
humbled.
I received a distinguished alumni award from the
Science Alumni Association
based upon the contribute,
contributions I've made over the years. And then
in a nutshell,
I am very committed
and really enjoy fostering collaboration.
I I love mentoring emerging talent.
And just every day, I I I look
to make a positive impact within health care
and beyond.
That's amazing to hear. And, you know, certainly
a really fascinating journey you've had in health
care and now, taking you to Mahaska where,
I can imagine, you know, there's
a really
big need for your skills in technology. Before
we, you know, dive deeper, can you tell
us just a little bit more about Mahaska
Health and and some of the things that
you're doing there?
Yeah. Absolutely.
So Mahaska Health, we are a critical access
hospital
in rural Iowa.
We're very focused on meeting the needs of
our community, the health care needs, and doing
beneficial things within the community.
We have been
in Iowa now, I think, since 1910,
1912.
And,
every day,
we are,
we're growing.
We're growing our outpatient service lines.
We are doing,
services within inpatient.
And,
internally,
there are some things that we're working on
too with artificial intelligence
and EMR optimization,
workflow optimization,
a number of things that we're we're just
looking to provide benefits both to our providers
and to our, the patients that come to
see us.
That's amazing to hear, and what a important
mission and service that is to the community.
Now I know nearly half of medical practices
report using AI in some capacity over the
last year. And our main is a key
topic for health IT leaders as well. Can
you tell me a little bit more about
that and, you know, what you're seeing in
AI today?
Yeah. Absolutely.
So from what I've seen,
the real impact today, shows up in in
three focus areas.
So first, you have ambient
clinical documentation,
also known as the the AI scribe or
artificial intelligence scribe.
So within
our hospital, we do use a scribe today.
It's called MD Hub, and it's been well
received by our providers.
And it's reduced, burnout and after hours charting.
Second,
there is the operational focus,
and revenue cycle copilots.
So what can we do that enables our
revenue cycle to
have better processes around denial,
prediction, and appeal drafting,
coding assistance, and then inbox triage? So we
look at those, and we run those, like,
process improvements. And it's incremental improvement that we
focus on.
Third,
there's care access and patient experience.
So we use dashboard
within our organization
to maintain line of sight. We look to
reduce no shows,
personalize the outreach that we do
through we're on Epic. So personalized outreach we
do through MyChart and other mechanisms.
And then we look to route patients
so that wayfinding,
routing patients to the right side of care.
The second and the third items that I
mentioned in relation to what we do at
our organization,
we've been reliant
on so we are a community connect,
and we have a partner, and we're on
Epic.
So we've been reliant on our community connect
partner
and Epic's timeline for those. Our focus has
been on the AI functionality
that is embedded within our EMR.
We
aren't resistant
to adding third party bolt ons. We do
look at those as well.
When we look at bolt ons to our
EMR,
we're looking for specific value that is shown
by those AI products that would not be
something that would be available within Epic.
Epic,
many folks who are listening to this podcast
probably seen some of the road map items,
that's been mentioned as far as what Epic
is looking to do for AI.
As they continue to release these,
we plan to adopt as soon as they
become available to us.
And our strategic road map, they're on it.
We
follow our Community Connect host partner. So UnityPoint
Health is our host partner for our epic
solution.
So long story short and in a nutshell,
we're prioritizing
AI
to remove administrative friction,
to protect
clinical time, the clinician's time, and
look to improve safety and experience.
So and we also as we do that,
we're mindful about measurement,
thoughtful about our change management approach, and adaptable
and pragmatic about tech. We're preparing ourselves
to to, roll in Epic
as they come,
and we also are looking at those third
party tools where they show value for our
providers and organization.
Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. You
know, it's great to hear that you're using
it in the clinical as well as the
operational setting to really maximize,
the care you're able to give. Now I
I think especially during, you know, virtual care,
as that expands from AI enabled tools and
remote monitoring
to broader digital health platforms,
introducing new technology brings its own set of
challenges. Mhmm. So what advice do you have
for leaders who are navigating everything from the
governance to,
patient engagement? And and can you share some
of the examples about how you've been able
to balance that innovation with operational constraints?
Absolutely. Absolutely. It's the fun of being in
the technical world. There's unlimited demand.
So the the biggest challenge
that
I see and face today is
managing that
large amount of demand
for the innovations that are out there within
the constraints of financial resources. So we have
limited people. We have limited money.
And every organization,
including Mahaska, we're all looking to stay ahead
of that technology
trend curve and adopt those new tools as
they come in.
So the downside, you know, the the limitations
I mentioned
is that can restrict our ability to build,
maintain, optimize the solution. So the approach that
I have is is,
mentioned three,
before. There's three now.
Three important threads
that I look to model at our organization
is, number one,
provider engagement by default.
So we look to, at Mahaska, our clinicians'
voices, our providers' voices are are a priority.
We wanna hear what they need. We wanna
hear what they're looking for. The goal is
is to essentially make their lives easier so
that they could focus on patient care. So
we gather their thoughts.
We go in with a beginner's mind, so
no assumptions.
We may have things that we've learned over
the past. We can apply those, those, but
we wanna learn from them. No assumptions. We
identify champions. We validate workflows,
and we do usability
functionality validation. So,
the issues
as we're going down this path are minimized,
and adoption isn't something that's like an afterthought.
Number two,
you want governance.
So we promote clear governance.
We determine the countabilities,
communication pathways,
expected outcomes,
and, essentially,
we have a playbook.
So have a playbook drafted, have it in
place before you go down the path of
of the work.
Last
is a tiered demand process.
So as these things are coming in,
they're coming into a big funnel,
technology funnel.
And how do you prioritize those things? How
do you structure it so that those are
things that can be done with some of
the limitations we have?
So we have two pathways.
One is a formal one, not highly bureaucratic,
not allowed to red tape, but there are
steps, and it's for those items that are
high lift, risk, cost.
So there's a little bit more involvement as
far as how you structure those
as they go into where you you pass
them for deployment.
The second is you have, like, a demand
management light.
So smaller, lower risk requests, initiatives,
things that maybe you wanna throw against the
wall, just see if they stick. Those go
through DM light very quick. You can be
very agile about it. You look at it.
Hey. Low risk, Low resource need. Let's go
ahead and just try it out. So the
overall goal of that process is, you know,
find that business value as quickly as possible.
You wanna do it with minimum waste. You
don't wanna have a lot of resources cost
associated with it and then find out where
it's a failure.
So,
you know, get to the business value. And
then that light path you have will empower
you to get as quickly as possible
to a quick win or a fail fast.
Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. You
know, really embracing that mentality of trying new
things and being quick to make a change
as needed,
you know, seems to be really important in
the nimbleness of today.
And I wanted to ask you as well,
what are you seeing in some of the
recent legislation both on the federal and state
level,
that affect health care organizations and health IT
specifically?
Have you had to make any adjustments to
your strategy in response?
Yeah. Absolutely. Great question.
You know, life of place and,
environment is continually changing.
Like, sometimes it it almost feels hard to
keep up.
And and so,
really, our strategy
I mentioned earlier, we are community connect partners.
So our strategy to to meet as much
as we can of those legislative needs is
by putting
Epic at the center of our strategy.
So as a critical access hospital,
you know, in serving a rural region,
we our resources
the benefit of having
Epic
is
Epic is
is is actually doing a lot of these
things for us. So we have that relationship
with UnityPoint,
and we can focus on our,
having a patient experience
and and focus on that side of it,
whereas the regulatory compliance
ends up being embedded into many of the
things that Epic's doing already. So a couple
of examples that I have with that
is you have the interoperability
and pricing transparency rules.
So,
Tesco
or it's the trusted, explained framework, and common
agreement rule,
those were adopted. Those are things that are
out there. Thankfully, Epic
has adopted it within their EMR,
and they have, brought it into something called
Epic Nexus.
We have already signed into that. So we
are now meeting the TEFCA rules.
And through that,
the big benefit is our clinicians now can
access and send records nationwide
under
a single technical umbrella,
of all the different sites that have Epic
throughout The United States and, actually, beyond The
United States.
It reduces this need. You have a bunch
of interfaces that can exist out there. There's
that thing. The benefit is is that you
don't need those. It enables us to actually
be able to see these records very easily,
quickly,
reduce that clinical burden.
On the pricing transparency side, we are continually
we do have that out there on our
website.
We continually validate that machine readable data and
make sure the estimator is available publicly.
Now the
big one so I I mentioned a couple
of ones.
You know, the,
cybersecurity.
A hospital is amongst the crowd. So cybersecurity,
is something that is a huge focus,
and it's something that the government and regulations
and all of those is is something that,
you know, is is very
superior. And there's big repercussions for things if
you're not doing what you should be doing.
On the cybersecurity
front, it is continuous for us. So we
treat it as
continually
adapting,
continually optimizing.
We never stop. So as the best practice,
we've mapped our controls to the health and
human or health and human services,
health care,
performance goals for cybersecurity.
So h h h a s.
We've mapped to those. So that's our best
practice.
And we are continually reviewing
and looking at our cybersecurity
program to make sure that we're meeting all
additional best practices,
that are for health care. So as an
example,
we do education,
continual education with our team members, our clinicians,
our providers.
We do pen tests,
kinda test our seals
and for leaks.
We do risk assessments.
We do external monitoring,
and then we actually do dry runs. So
we do incident response rehearsals
with the team members, providers, leadership, all involved.
We treat it as a true incident.
And all of these things, those rehearsals especially,
we test our processes.
We find lessons that are learned. We bring
them forward. We bake them into the program
so that we we,
optimize that program even further. And then the
the last thing just to mention about cybersecurity
is the education,
it's it's actually been really good is we've
involved our team members, our providers, our clinicians,
and, you know, we're we're we're truly looking
out for them too because these things happen
on the personal side. So we do fish
testing.
We educate them. We make ourselves available if
they have any questions or they receive something
that might seem a little picky.
And and the whole goal really is,
not punitive. It's just really to grow their
awareness
and resistance
to
the Focal engineered attempt,
that, you know, they're getting every day to
gain access to our systems.
That's really helpful to know and understand the
plan there, because as you mentioned, cybersecurity
is so critical
alongside these other trends in looking at technology,
interconnectivity, and, you know, how you can really,
make the best experience for patients possible.
Now with our last minute here, I wanted
to ask, what's your top piece of advice
for health care leaders as they prepare to,
for the further advancement of technology and rising
demands for care?
Absolutely. So I would say two things.
Be disciplined
about the architectural
plumbing
and, the foundation,
and be bold about the outcome.
So be disciplined about your architecture, your data
foundations.
Invest in real business needs analysis.
Make sure you look to measure value before
you start projects,
and stand up COEs around the different focus
areas you you are looking to do. As
an example, we're doing a data science and
AI center of of excellence.
And
the the job of these things is to
make,
the business needs driven,
repeatable,
ethical expeditions.
Second,
run a structured, always improving playbook.
So have a playbook.
Determine what your current state is.
Establish some some KPIs
so that you have points of measurement
and and use that
as, like, your scorecard.
Something that I like to do just because
of my Six Sigma background is I have
an a three.
That's something you use within Six Sigma, and
it basically becomes your report card. You map
out the problem,
root causes,
the target future state, have it all on
there, and you can you can adapt
as as you're learning what you're learning.
And,
and then, you know, have some quick wins,
test solutions, do a lightweight, track those results
closely.
Absolutely. I love that. Bob, thank you so
much for joining us on the podcast today.
This has been such a fun conversation
inspiring to learn everything that you're thinking about
and working on and planning for the future,
and I look forward to catching up with
you again soon. Excellent. Thank you so much.
At athena Health, we know your ambulatory practice
wants healthier,
A healthier business, healthier care teams, and healthier
patients.
But the complexities of modern healthcare 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.