Everyone, and welcome to the Becker's healthcare podcast.
I'm Scott King. Thrilled today to be joined
by Joey Soliske,
director, digital health strategy and operations
over at Allegheny Health Network. Joey, how are
you doing today?
Hey. I'm doing great. Thanks for having me
to the the Becker's team for allowing us
the opportunity to discuss.
Of course. No. So happy you're with us.
We're gonna have a great conversation. I I
know we're gonna get into a lot of
the kind of trending topics in health care.
So much going on right now. Just wanted
to see if you could don't mind introducing
yourself and and talking a little about your
background before we jump into the questions, Joey.
Absolutely. So as you head out, I'm director
of digital health strategy and operations for Allegheny
Health Network. We are part of Highmark Health.
Highmark is a 29,000,000,000,
nonprofit organization with over 44,000 employees, and the
HN Albany Health Network is a provider arm
within that. So we have about, you know,
14 hospitals, over 300 clinics, 3,000 physicians across
Western Pennsylvania.
My personal journey, you know, I started,
wanting to go into pediatric oncology through our
undergraduate, went to school at the University of
Wisconsin Madison. And in Wisconsin's backyard is a
company called EPIC who many many are familiar
with. You know, thought I'd only go there
for one year. I didn't know too much
about health care technology or the company. But
over time, you know, I fell in love
with what technology and health care truly can
do. How it can transform care, not, you
know, just for maybe for one patient, but,
you know, truly at scale. So, you know,
after that, I was there for multiple years
working across international health care, tribal health care,
mergers and acquisitions, and technology standardization initiatives, and
came to Allegheny Health Network about three years
ago to really help, you know, Allegheny Health
and Highmark Health Network, identify opportunities
for
using technology to better improve experience, operational efficiencies,
and, you know, clinical outcomes. So that's a
little bit about myself and how I got
to where I'm at today, and I'm excited
to talk more.
Thanks so much, Joey. You know, speaking of
opportunities,
I wanna ask you what opportunities
and headwinds,
you might have your eye on right now
in health care.
Sure. I I think there's there's two big
ones I specifically wanna chat about that we
hear often, not just the Allegheny Health Network,
but across the the country. You know, workforce
shortages are something that we hear every day
about statistics both now and in the upcoming
years. You know, by 2028, we're looking at
a shortage, you know, across the country. This
isn't specific to us, but in general, you
know, 60 to 90,000 physicians and over a
100,000 nurses over the upcoming years. So burnout
is real, and it's you know, we really
have to use that headwind looking ahead to
find opportunities for how do we prevent that.
How do we keep our staff happy and
engage with the patient? And there can be
a better way for technology
to fit into that. So especially in the
world of where we're at with artificial intelligence
and automate administrative tasks, you know, you're seeing
this in ambient documentation across the country, and
we're doing that at Highmark Highmark Health Network.
Ways that you can find also, like, chart
summarizations. How can you prevent, you know, a
clinician from needing to go search for something
that's being able to input a I wanna
find the lab results for this patient over
the past four weeks, and it can pull
it in quickly versus that time it takes
to remember where to go search and find
it. So that those tools like that that
really help our staff focus on patient care
quickly are are key.
I think today, we're trying to think about
hybrid care models to help with this. So
how can we implement concepts of virtual nursing
in our facilities or for maybe our remote
hospitals,
allowing a clinician from the city or Pittsburgh
to assist on rounding or with that specialist
in the future. So we're trying to figure
out how how staff can, still practice at
the top of their license, remove those admin
tasks, and, hopefully, that'll start to then address
some of that burnout or shortages projections.
You know, from a financial perspective then, that's
another headwind that, again, not just selling any
health network, all facilities are facing and, you
know, cost might be rising, reimbursement rates,
margins are tight. And with that, from a
technology lens, the opportunity
is using your platforms and artificial intelligence specifically
in, like, the revenue cycle as well. So
how can you, you know, accurately code, find
information from the inpatient stay, from the chart
to surface that code on the claim, you
know, reduce some denials using technology,
and, ultimately, also accelerate collections. And,
secondly, then use predictive analytics to optimize your
staffing. How can you best know where to
allocate your resources based on historical information
and also understand how your operating rooms, where
you should staff, you know, or tell your
patients to come and based on historical info.
So I think those are a couple larger
headwinds that, you know, we're thinking about and
just ways that we're starting to use that,
you know, as an opportunity to address and,
using technology to do that.
Absolutely.
And, you know, some of the things you
were saying about workforce shortages kinda dovetail into
our next question here, and that is how
are you thinking about
growth and adding value to your organization, you
know, especially,
in spite of those workforce shortages?
Yeah. I I think the first thing with
that is, you know, growth isn't also just
about maybe buying technology or implementing it. Sometimes
it's about forming,
relationships and connecting dots internally with with what
we have. So how can we, you know,
develop with our technology team, informaticists,
and groups
understand stakeholders
and understand listening, building trust, meeting with clinical
and operational revenue cycle teams to know what
are their top challenges,
and then using that to educate and say,
you know, technology and what we have now
could could solve that. You know, if we
partner and change the way that we do
work, we make this adjustment to it, it
could do it,
now. Or how do we then leverage market
analysis to say, you know, a health system
out west is solving that top challenge of
radiology. Here's how they're doing it. You know,
should we how can we learn from that
playbook and maybe implement that? That's our top
problem as an organization we wanna solve. And
so, you know, sometimes our our role in
technology, again, is not necessarily going to buy
it, but it's actually connecting the dots internally.
Being the dot connector and the relationship developer,
having that trust,
and then pulling all the teams together and
then make helping them show how to use
it in training.
I think then too, you know, the final
thing is
every organization now has to be using AI
and data as their compass. You know? It
is driving where we need to maybe consider
investing, you know, where it aligns with our
organizational goals, and how do we start to
use it in predictive models or analytics, the
generative AI, and the two in the future
here, AgenTek AI, to solve, those top things
we need. So those are, you know, a
couple things I'd I'd say for how we're
trying to, you know, add value in what
we're thinking about at at our organization.
Yeah. I know you touched on,
you know, emerging technology that's helped your system
and and others, like like, the types of
AI you just mentioned.
But do you think is there another risk
or investment that you think is worth making
for the next year?
Yeah. Yeah. I think there's two. So I'm
gonna address it from both the,
people perspective and then technology. Right? So from
a people perspective,
start to invest
now and then next year in AI literacy
and just team development. As I hit on,
you know, it's impacting every role in health
care. Clinician we need our clinicians, operators, and
leaders to understand, you know, what AI is
and what isn't, where and how it works,
and integrating the workflows that does not. You
know, teaching our teams how to troubleshoot this,
review the outputs,
and assess is operations ready for this or
not. You know, it's not just about the
technology as as you know and that we
talk about a lot. It's about the people
and process alignment.
And without all of that, even the best
technology fails. So it's important to, you know,
educate staff across the organization and within your
own department, in the technology or digital space
on how do we keep learning. You know,
stuff's coming out every day, new AI models,
new technologies, so we always need to give
our team time to learn.
Now, you know, from a technology perspective in,
an investment area, you recommend
to look into
is in the imaging space and around, you
know, AI in in that area. I think,
you know, regardless of, you know, your reimbursement
models or your contracts, there's value in the
fee for service or value based care realm,
and using AI platforms to assess your images
that are being captured
and to look at,
prioritize urgent cases, you know, assist in image
detection and saying, you know, this patient might
have intracranial hemorrhage. Maybe you should review that
now. And then also assist with generating the
report for radiologists. Like, they are starting to
become technologies that can do this, and that
is gonna help us develop our workforce of
the future
and really start to get through some of
this, you know, maybe backlog of images that
Telesys might be facing potentially across the country.
So, you know, if you if you make
sure you start to understand the market, what
is your radiology department doing, journey mapping that,
I think it's really important to to take
a look because,
whether that's,
you know, partnering with another vendor, whether it's
building it internally, you should start exploring that
area, you know, in '26 and '27.
Yeah. I think you made a really good
point. You you said, you know, even the
biggest or or best technology fails, and
you hear so many health systems people are
are worrying about getting that, you know, that
that next new shiny object. Just curious, what
what's,
what's the top
tech that has kinda failed,
you or your system or or let you
down, you know, at least temporarily?
Yeah. I I wouldn't say there's necessarily,
Ben, where the
technology fails necessarily or, like, where it, is
the it's like the partner we chose to
work with. It's more the concept of
we can't just put technology on a a
process or operational team member who's not ready
for change. Right? Understanding
what is the readiness for a change like
this. Take aside the technology.
By implementing it, what will it do pre
and after?
And is that team ready or not? Is
it actually solving a problem that they have,
or is it adding a step? So I
wouldn't even you know, the the technology is
not always the the hard part. That's actually
the easy part. The hard part is culturally
getting folks,
assessed and ready and saying, yes. We are
ready for the change. We know how it'll
change us, and we think it is a
top thing to make that adjustment. And that's
where that concept I hit on earlier of
having trust across the business and clinical operational
and all teams,
allows you to have those conversations and then
sort of make a a checklist to say,
yes. We're ready or, no. We're not ready.
So maybe we should focus on a different
area right now.
So hope that helps answer that.
Yeah. 100%. Dude, absolutely. People have to be
ready and and willing to learn how to
use the technology,
properly for it to be efficient. Absolutely.
And last question I have for you, Joey.
Where do you see the best opportunities for
growth in the future in health care?
Yeah. So there's again, two two aspects. I
I like focusing I always like focusing on
the people and the technology.
You know, I think adoption and enablement teams
are critical. They have been, but I think
in the world of AI are so are
that much more. You know, whether that's informatics,
your training team, a different implementation team, however
that helps us in going across the country
to define it, you need to make sure
you're ready,
for this and have a plan. I think
a lot of organizations right now, right, think
about
AI. I will use that as an example.
We have governance and maybe compliance around it,
and we need to make sure we're thinking
about clinical integration or the operational integration into
our workflows and change management again. You know,
a AI is not gonna deliver value or
solve the the true problem. We need teams
who really know where and how staff interact
with technology of the patient. How do you
prompt the tool or technology to get the
output you need, and how does that fit
into your true care delivery? Where and how
are you talking to the patient in the
call center? Need that AI model to output
to so you don't leave the system. Or
as a clinician, where are you talking to
the patient now, and you need that to
be surfaced.
And then when you do that, you know,
you can assess to the business readiness.
That's, again, I'll head out from the last
question. But, you know, before implementing AI, evaluate,
is your department prepared for that process change
again? You know? If not, let's not maybe
introduce the technology yet. Let's start with the
education. Let's just talk through what it is
and what it isn't, and then design a
smaller pilot before we scale. I think it's
easy to just think throw on the technology
when, again, you don't maybe have the the
team ready for it. So, you know, the
the question is not
AI versus not AI mindset. Like, the secret
sauce here is mapping how people, how AI
how other technologies that aren't AI, so it'll
always be there, all interact with each other,
and then how those collectively work together sort
of in, like, an end to end journey,
start to finish.
And so when you can do that, map
it out, and document pain points, how it's
solving that, that all then is truly how
we're gonna change some of the, you know,
the headwinds that we talked about at the
beginning.
Now from a technology perspective,
the biggest opportunity for growth is you're again,
you're seeing it across the country with ambient
intelligence, but I you know, conversational intelligence is
is a huge opportunity. You know, our voice
is powerful. Whether that's patient facing in clinic,
video visits, whether that's on a telephone in
your call center, all that information from that
voice conversation
is now being able to be captured, you
know, guide your next step documentation, the action
you should take, maybe that protocol that you
need to take from the call center when
you're getting called in.
And so
it's happening now, and it's just having a
conversational intelligence strategy across the various platforms
and making sure you are moving forward with
that in all all care settings and roles.
So I think, you know, generally, my my
takeaway is for folks to to think about
is process map out workflows. You know, find
where inefficiency
is costing time or money,
and then take, like, a an approach of
getting rid of stupid stuff or the gross
d r o s s approach. Like, what
are things that we're doing that maybe we
can just get rid of? Or how can
we find a quick win that we could,
you know, implement now and change that off
your plate? And, when you do that for
the various care settings, you're gonna find opportunities.
You know, technologies isn't just about the tools.
It's, you know, the culture, the education, and
alignment. So, you know, start small, really think
about real problems, and that'll truly allow for
you. And, you know, what we're thinking about
is to build readiness for our future, at
Allegheny Health.
Joey, thanks so much for joining us on
the podcast. Really appreciate all your great insight
on on not just tech, but but people
in health care too. And, it was a
great conversation.
Thrilled to have, you know, the teams, from
Allian Health Network contributing to some of the
work, you know, that I talked about, and
the great work that they're doing. So thanks
again for having us. Absolutely.