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April.
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Hello, everyone, and welcome to Becker's Healthcare podcast.
I'm Scott King, thrilled today to be joined
by very special guest, James Wellman, vice president
and chief information officer over at Nathan Littauer
Hospital and Nursing Home. James, how are you
doing today?
Doing very well. How are you doing today,
Scott? I'm good. Thanks. You know, it could
be a little warmer in Chicago as you
may have heard, but but, you know, we'll
get through it. And we have a lot
of of big topics to get to. But
before we do that, I was wondering, James,
if you could please just tell us a
little bit about your background,
in health care.
Sure.
So I am as stated, I'm the current
CIO
at Nathan Latower, but I've been in health
care,
IT for about thirty seven years.
Started out in a major university,
went to work for
for profit groups like McKesson,
and ended up in different hospitals around the
country where I've kinda
focused on cleaning up operations
and getting EMRs,
kinda back on track. Maybe that didn't have
such a great implementation or were struggling a
little bit, and that's kinda become a hallmark
of my career.
Appreciate you sharing your background info, James. And
now the the first
topic I kinda wanna get to is what
opportunities and headwinds do you have your eye
on right now in health
care? Sure.
I I think we're all facing a lot
of the same headwinds,
with with the way we're waiting on the
the final impact, I think, about the one
big beautiful bill, what that's doing to us
with our,
Medicaid and the Medicare and our reimbursement. So,
in New York, especially, it's having a major
impact on us.
You know, the opportunities,
we're using this one
to really start hyper focusing on the work
that we're already doing, making sure that we
are getting our full value and reimbursement.
And we're also spending a little time at
our particular organization,
moving forward with a lot of good new
technology,
some interesting things with Meditech and a few
other vendors that we're pretty excited about.
How are you thinking about
growth and and adding value to your organization
right now?
So for us, it's, I've been here just
a little over two and a half years,
and this year is a major transition for
us.
So from a growth perspective, we're really starting
to introduce data
to the organization
and, like I said, focusing
on what the needs are for our community
and for our families and residents
in our region of the Adirondacks.
The to do that, what we're we've done
is taken a pragmatic approach to AI,
And we think that we have a pretty
good four pillar process that we talk about
to introduce this and not just introduce a
an AI segment, for example, in ambient to
listen, that's great, and there's some fantastic products
out there. But how do we tie that
all the way through the entire process? So
we blended that with RCM,
with, search and summarization,
and gives us a soft audit capabilities going
forward to really make sure that
we're getting best information for our patients and
giving the best diagnostic
information to our providers
and also getting fully reimbursed for the work
that we're doing.
And, James, to follow that up, also, once
you you find these these uses for AI,
you know, after you you, do some research,
you implement them, and you work out the
kinks, are you already thinking of, like, the
next uses
for the system you wanna use, or you
still kinda wanna see this all run smoothly?
So what we're looking at right now is
we we spent a lot of time in
'25,
'24 and '25
speaking with multiple vendors about how we wanted
to approach this. So we went in kinda
all in with one vendor,
who's in happened to be a Meditech alliance
partner,
and we've now started deploying all of these
separate projects.
So that's that's a big
initiative for us. RCM is the one where
we think is gonna have the largest return
because that's the one that every one of
the payers that we're working with, they're already
using the AI to to work on denials.
So we kinda get ahead of curve is
what we're working on.
And so that's something that we think is
the future for a lot of organizations
to rural health organizations, but anyone's gonna benefit
from this.
What's one risk or investment you think is
is worth making in 2026?
So to to me, it's absolutely gotta be
the RCM, the mid cycle revenue.
Where can we make an absolute difference?
Rural health is, you know, under
amazing
pressures that we've never seen before. It's always
been a challenge.
It's something that, personally,
I really resonated with me and I devoted
my career to,
about twenty years ago.
But now we're seeing unprecedented
challenges for us. I really think the appropriate
use of AI
is something that can make a difference.
Bringing that data to us, letting us look
at information, making sure that we're getting
all the money and for everything that we're
being fairly represented,
that's a major initiative for us. And that's
something, you know
obviously, it comes with risk.
We have to make sure that we don't
impact cash flow. We have to make sure
that it's an already
tenuous situation in reimbursement,
but we feel like this can
make a very positive transition the other way.
Just the first run of data that we're
seeing
shows that we have a lot of room
for improvement, and we can make a a
better
impact on the bottom line.
What are some of the key things you
look for in that data to to know
that it's working the right way?
So one of the things that are challenged
for us when you're talking about a small
organization
is we do not have the ability to
have multiple people
watching everything that all our providers are doing.
So standardization,
pulling the data in,
improving the way that we can see patients,
expanding our schedule,
just setting up and creating,
chart prep,
you know, for a busy schedule on a
day and a provider
can take an an an enormous amount of
time.
And we are cutting that back to,
in a huge magnitude. Some of the providers
that we're talking to, and they're seeing this
because we're able to pull all the existing
data from our Mediatek expanse, but also our
previous systems that we were using, both Mediatek
Magic and MedEd for an ambulatory system.
And it's in a data lake, and they're
able to start they'll be doing a summarization
of this data.
And that gives them everything that they need
so that they can make the appropriate diagnosis.
We can actually help with the patient. And
then we also understand
it looks at our payer contracts, and we
know what our reimbursement should be.
And this helps us track it.
Otherwise, that had been a process that's, you
know, always available, and that data is there.
But actually running it all effectively,
without a large staff has been a huge
challenge. This is something we feel will make
a a big difference for us.
And the last question I have for you,
James, where do you see the best opportunities
for growth in the future?
I think that the thing for us is
we're going to go back to the basics
and foundations of data,
Understand
what your what your community needs.
We all have a lot of the same
standard, you know, diabetic,
COPD, something like that that we're tracking.
But it's the effective use of that. We
wanna make sure that I think if you
got a rural health organization and they focus
on providing
the best possible care and keeping the families
close to the patients
and not sending them away,
that's where we're making our investments. So we're
making clinical investments
that make a difference for our community. And
I think that's one of the things that
a lot of people can focus on.
Your satisfaction scores go up,
and you're doing what's best. And we are
integral part of the community. So that's where
our focus is right now. Well, James, thanks
so much for joining us on the podcast
and for a great conversation. Look forward to
working with you again soon. Alright. Thank you
so much.