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This is Gracelyn Keller with the Becker's Healthcare
Podcast, and we are recording live at the
tenth annual health IT, digital health, and RCM
meeting. I'm currently joined by John w Gachago,
who is the vice president of digital innovation
at Parrish Healthcare.
John, thanks for being here. Let's start off
by having you share a little bit more
about yourself and your work in healthcare.
So,
as as you mentioned, I am the VP
of digital innovation
at, Parrish Healthcare,
and, really, my work focuses on really
how we deliver care digitally.
And and I wanna say first and foremost,
primary to that is the patients.
That is why we do what we do.
So, essentially,
in our area, we particularly have a large
population of elderly patients,
rural patients, underserved patients.
So everything we do digitally is about serving
them.
I spent the last three years helping health
care organizations
basically
rethink or redesign their digital transformation
strategies.
That includes,
governments
in various parts of the world and just
really advise them on how to
begin that process of digital transformation for their
health care systems.
And by that, I mean, we're talking about,
things like from telehealth expansion to AI integration,
all with always with a focus on basically
equity,
access,
and sustainability.
At the same time, I'm also the author
of two books. One is Digital Health, the
How to, and the other is the, the
impact of AI on the maturity of hospitals.
So I love to write, love to do
research, as well as, certainly develop those digital
transformation plans.
Right now, like I said, I'm leading basically
the effort to modernize Parish Healthcare through smarter
infrastructure,
better data use, and certainly more patient centered
digital tools.
Wonderful. Well, thank you for being here. Excited
to talk to you today. Yeah. And let's
start our conversation with AI. Nearly half of
medical practices reported using AI in some capacity
in the last year, and it remains a
key topic for health IT leaders. So from
your perspective, what are the use cases that
are making a difference right now, and how
are you leveraging them in your organization?
So, first of all, I'll say one of
the things we've done,
with the excellent leadership of our CEO, George
Mccatarian,
is we looked at the entire organization, thought
first thing we have to do is redesign
our health care AI policy.
Right?
So that we can actually begin to
use AI, but, certainly, use AI in a
responsible fashion.
Now what does that mean? That means making
sure the AI we use certainly meets regulations,
federal, you know, government regulations,
making sure it's auditable, making sure it is
explainable,
and certainly making sure that
it does not cause any harm.
Right? So that's where we are starting right
now. But where we are going in terms
of leveraging leveraging the technology itself
is we're going to be looking at so
many tools.
I'm talking about Ambient Clinical Solutions. K?
Federated learning and privacy preserving
AI,
digital twins for precision medicine,
edge computing,
for remote monitor monitoring and acute care at
home, and even health care specific LMs.
For us, that is going to be the
trajectory.
Absolutely.
And going off of that Yeah. As virtual
care expands from AI enabled tools to remote
monitoring to broader digital health platforms,
Introducing these new technologies
does bring challenges. So 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
operational constraints?
So
one thing we can say is innovation is
very exciting. It's it's a great thing to
be doing, and, certainly, that's one of the
reasons I'm doing it. But at the same
time, I think it has to be grounded
in reality,
which I think leaders, particularly in this field,
need to be very conscious of at all
times.
My advice is start with governance and build
trust,
and build it early. Build that trust early
because you will need it down the road.
The earlier you can build a trust, the
better off you are down the road. And
that obviously means involving clinical leaders,
involving IT,
involving
local leaders in the community, right, who you
otherwise may not think of. But really just
getting everybody involved
involved in the design process so they have
equity in it. Right? At the same time,
when I think of the example of how
we are rolling out things like remote patient
monitoring,
It's not just giving patients devices. Here you
go. Monitor your weight. Here you go. Monitor
your diabetes.
Here you go. Monitor your asthma. No. There's
trainings.
There is engagement that takes place. It's about
really helping
the patient
and the providers understand on both sides what's
in it for all of them.
A 100%.
And and shifting gears slightly, how are you
seeing recent legislation, both state and federal, affect
health care organizations and health IT specifically?
And have you adjusted strategies in response?
So, certainly,
legislation
is shaping our road map in a big
way.
Local,
funding is very important to us from the
Florida legislation
as well as certainly legislate funding that's coming
from the big beautiful bill, so to speak.
Yeah. There's a lot of funding there that
we're looking
to certainly be a recipient of so that
we can do the things I just talked
about.
At the state, level funding opportunities like the
Florida House Appropriations Project are driving our decisions
in certainly big ways,
and they will help us invest in the
rural infrastructure we need to develop.
Certainly, federal changes around interoperability
and reimbursement models
impact everything we do on a day to
day basis. I mean, how would we do
what we want to do if we don't
get paid for it? Right? So it's certainly
pushing us to be more agile, and we've
certainly adjusted prioritizing
our digital
transformation strategy
around that funding, which is very critical
to, certainly, the goals we expect to attain.
Now
on the other hand, I will also say
it's a balancing act. Funding is always a
balancing act any which way you look at
it, but it's also an opportunity to align
innovation with policy.
And as we wrap up our conversation, I'd
love to know what your top piece of
advice for health care leaders is as they
prepare for further advancements in technology and rising
demands for care. Yes. Well,
I think probably the most important thing I
I can say is
stay focused on value and people.
That's what I would say. Stay focused on
value and people. We we we all have
to keep in mind that technology is
a tools.
It is actually a tool. It's not the
goal.
So that's very important for us to keep
in mind. And so my advice is to
invest in digital literacy
across your health service organization,
build flexible teams that can evolve,
and always keep the patient experience front and
center.
I think the future of health care is
not just high-tech.
It's definitely gonna be high touch.
So we need leaders that can balance both
high-tech
and high touch
to actually deliver the quality care that we
expect to deliver.
Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for joining
me today, John, on the Becker's Healthcare podcast
and sharing these insights and thoughts. Again, we
are recording live at the tenth annual Health
IT Digital Health and RCM meeting. Thanks so
much. Thank you.