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This is Laura Dirda with the Becker's Healthcare
podcast.
I'm thrilled today to be joined by doctor
Mark Mabus, chief medical informatics officer at Parkview
Health. Doctor Mabus, it's a pleasure to have
you on the podcast today. Thank you so
much, Laura. It's a a great opportunity to
be here, and I'm excited to share with
the community.
Oh, absolutely. And and this is gonna be
a fun conversation because I know there's so
much you're you're doing right now at Parkview.
Some really cool things in generative AI and
more. And so I know we'll dive into
some of that. But before we do, can
you introduce yourself? Just tell us a little
bit more about yourself and Parkview Health.
Sure. Sure.
Like you said, I'm doctor Mark Mabus. I'm
a practicing
family physician. Still see patients, a day a
week.
CMIO at Parkview. Parkview is a large,
not for profit, health system in Northeast Indiana,
Northwest Ohio with multiple hospitals,
a large employed medical group,
a strong focus on
community health.
We have we have urban centers, suburban centers,
and rural,
all within
our, area there too.
My role,
you know, I I sit at the intersection
of, you know, clinicians and technology
and then governance too. You know, the,
application analyst for the EHR report to me,
but I'm also in charge of, you know,
provider efficiencies there too. So making sure that
EHR,
AI, which we'll get into, and all these
digital tools, you know, create efficient workflows,
safer care for patients, and quality pair care
for patients.
You know, it it's a it's a fun
job to be in between all of that
and be able to see all the different
areas of care throughout our health system.
That that's, you know, so cool and definitely
an interesting place to be having that clinical
background, the technology, and and bringing that all
together.
You know, it is truly a a view
of health care that not many others have.
Now I I'm curious. When you think about
the last year or so, could you tell
us about the most important initiative that you
led? What did you do, and what were
the result?
I think our most
important initiative
last year was getting
assistive AI, you know, generative AI,
deployed throughout our health system. We did that
in a couple different ways. You know, the
ambient documentation
was a big one for our providers.
You know, we, partnered with a vendor to
provide that service,
through Epic,
and we use a lot of Epic's generative
AI tools that they have available as well.
And in fact, we just got our recent,
class research arts collaborative survey that that said
that 88%
of our providers
also said
that the best improvement
in 2025
to our EHR was the deployment of generative
AI in some form of an or another,
like that assistive AI. We moved from limited
pilots
to broad access, you know, and made sure
that we were able to deploy these tools
across all areas of care delivery, you know,
ambulatory, emergency department, and inpatient. And at the
same time, we were very
intentional about how we message this to providers.
You know, this was
the advent of assistive
AI. We're not we're not getting into automation
and, you know, computers making diagnoses for you.
Nothing like that. Nothing going to replace clinical
judgment.
It's kind of, you know, building that trust
with with your providers. Hey. We've got these
new tools that can help you be more
efficient.
And then, you know, deploying that out, you
know, with the with piloting first, we're able
to make sure it works for our workflows,
then we have the the mass adoption. So,
very early in 2025,
we had,
let our, ambient
documentation
be available to all of our providers.
And then in October
2025,
we made over 18 generative AI features available
in Epic to all of our providers
as well.
So looking at, you know, different areas where
we can deploy AI and do so
at mass scale. You know, we prepped it
with all these little pilots,
especially using some of our super users,
our, what Epic calls physician builders, you know,
to help us with testing and feedback,
and then getting it,
you know, out to the masses
that I
you know, specific points in time and bang,
big bang. I'll I'll give you another statistic
with the generative AI features like I mentioned
that we, deployed in October. We were running
at about, you know, 60,000 tokens per month
or something along those lines. In October, since
we turned everything on, that jumped to 2,000,000
tokens in that month. And just this past,
January 2026,
we hit 3,000,000
tokens. So it was like, yeah, just a
little bit here and there, you know, getting
our pilots underground and then, you know, throughout
the whole health system, these things are available.
People are using them, you know, not just
our providers. You know, there's there's obviously things
that help our providers, but, you know, we
also deployed in coding and revenue cycle,
side of our nonclinical folks can benefit from
AI. But, yeah, planning those things out took
a lot of work, and then you can
go
at scale and get these in the hands
of everybody.
Yeah. Generative AI is the thing. It's it's
what everybody needs to be doing across their
health care system to, to enable these tools
for for efficiency,
ROI, all those things. You know? It it's
it's here. Use it.
I love that. You know, such a a
clear call for having this technology and doing
what you can do in order to make
the most of it. And it seems like
you've got a really
strong process,
not only for, you know, having some of
those tests and those pilots, but then bringing
things to scale. And I think that's a
place where a lot of health systems and
organizations really struggle to, you know, do that
effectively.
So
what have you done or what have you
found that, you know, worked well when you
are taking some things from, you know, those
smaller pilots
into a a broader and scalable space and
seeing this kind of, like, adoption, which is
wild.
A lot of it is figuring out workflows
and where this fits properly. You know, you
can have your vendors give you,
the instruction manuals or or, you know, how
this actually works,
in technically,
you know. But when you dive into the
workflows of an actual user and start using
these things, you get to figure out that,
maybe it's not so cut and dry out
of the instruction manual. You've got to create
those best practices.
That's what pilots were able to do for
us on these in in these scales. And,
you know, it does take you
adopting the right people for your pilots. I
mentioned that we used physician builders, but, you
know, those physician builders are also in tune
with,
non savvy users' workflows too.
There's kind of that spectrum. You got your
your, early adopters and people who do great
with anything that you throw at them technology
or change,
management wise. Got your middle of the road
folks, and then you got your your,
we'll just call them slower folks, you know,
that that, a little more resistant to change
or,
you you know, you know, the the ones
that take some extra education. So you've gotta
keep all those different areas in mind. And
so when we are developing best practices,
practice.
We use our informatics teams to write those
best practices up, create videos,
you you know, document in in,
educational emails
or in, you know, in workflow
education as well. We utilize in basket messaging
for a lot of our informatics type and
workflow education,
because people actually look at their in baskets,
in in the EHR rather than having to
go out to, to, you know, their email
program to look at it that way.
So connecting with providers, getting boots on the
ground, our informatics team knew that these were
high initiatives for the year. So they actually
scaled back some of their just kind of
regular
scheduled clinic supports and instead focused on these
high level deployments, whether it was ambient,
documentation
or, you know, October when all 18 of
these features went live. They made sure they
scheduled time in each of the departments
to go over
the features that applied to the users in
those departments.
So so it's possible to get this out
to all those users, but it is a
lot of coordination,
a lot of effort,
and, you know, kinda all hands on deck
when these things do go live. Think of
it like a mini EHR go live. You
wanna be as prepared as possible because these
are high impact tools
and kind of a different type of tool
that they've had available to them than in
the past.
So we made these, you know, kind of,
our two big key points, you know, ambient
documentation and then the big bang of generative
AI.
High points for the year, big focuses for
those months that though that happened, and I
think that targeted approach, targeted education, and targeted
feedback, you know, being able to take that
back to our vendors,
and have improvements made from there, that all
led to
very successful deployment
of of these tools.
Got it. And that makes a lot of
sense and is, you know, really helpful to
understand that mindset and how you go into,
understanding where different people are at, along the
adoption scale and then, you know, looking at
those workflows and figuring out how to communicate
with them and and having AI really be
supportive,
to the things that they're doing on a
daily basis. Mhmm. Now something else you mentioned
there too is thinking about the value to
the health system and the ROI. How do
you think about that? How you're measuring that?
I I think, you know, it's, one thing
to look at some of the soft ROI,
time saved, and everything else. But, you know,
when you're thinking about the big investments that
you have to make in order to get
this right,
what makes the most sense for you when
you're trying to figure out, hey. Is this
actually,
doing what it needs to do? And and,
you know, what is that return on investment?
For sure with today's, financial climate and uncertainty
in health care, you do want to be
a good steward of the resources that you
are provided.
The kind of initial approach that we took,
you know, with with the ambient documentation,
we knew there could potentially be a financial
ROI with that. Yes. There are soft ROIs
with, like you mentioned,
decreased time in notes, decreased time in the
EHR,
more time with patients, decreased burnout. Those are
all kinda soft and hard to quantify,
financially
there too. But if you have, you know,
say, an extra fifteen minutes,
were you actually, you know, using that fifteen
minutes a day to throw another patient on?
You know, that those questions were, you know,
of course, big on our our finance side.
And, actually, with some of our pilots, we
did require,
that,
our, pilot users, if they were gonna use
the technology to help cover the cost, you
know, that they would have an additional patient
per per,
clinic day there.
But as we went on and saw some
of the other benefits of this, a little
bit lower provider turnout rate and definitely decreased
burnout metrics that we were seeing, you know,
we did become a little more
lax on on that requirement, and I know
a lot of other health systems have done,
the the same thing there. With some of
the generative AI functionalities,
I mentioned the nonclinical
side of things, encoding revenue cycle.
Those are ones that are,
kind of, I would say, no brainers to
implement. You know, that is something that can
absolutely,
potentially get you a financial ROI. We even
have one for our, providers that helps them
calculate their,
standard level of service e and m codes
based on medical decision making. Were they coding
things properly with, mild, moderate, or high,
levels of complexity there? They have a little
calculator that AI can read their note and
tell them, you know, which
which level of service to code. So that
brought a little bit of, financial
ROI
there as well.
The inpatient folks,
you know, being able to get their discharge
summary as done
faster too, you know, so they could, move
on to to see their their patients. So
finding,
those
key
AI functionalities
where you absolutely
can see a financial
ROI is kinda key
to getting things started.
And then those help to pay for, you
know, some of the other,
functionalities
that may have
more of that soft ROI
based more on efficiency and time savings.
I can use some of these to pay
for those. That was kind of the mentality
that that we used. It's also nice to
have, you know, for example,
with,
Epic Systems, you can have a,
monthly fee for
many, many different generative I, generative AI functionalities.
So you know that you are,
you know, getting your money's worth by having
the revenue cycle side to help pay for
the clinician,
side of the,
AI functionalities there too. So,
focusing on I guess I could mention that
too. You know, focusing on your key strategic
vendors that you already have, there are some
vendors that health systems, you know, pay 7
figures or more to that offer embedded
generative AI now. Why not
use those as opposed to
searching out a third party? You know, that
is a,
that's a niche area. You know?
Get your money's worth for what you're for
what you're doing. I think with financial headwinds
this year, there's gonna be a lot of
health systems that have to think that way.
You know, you know, if they do have
to prioritize things,
prioritize what is already
included or included with a minimal or a
bump in, you know,
licensing fees
as opposed to, you know, a huge investment
in something else. You know, we we, we
have to
weigh the options
of each of those and what works best
for our system at that time, what works
best for
that service line or service area at that
time.
There's there's a lot of different ways to
go about it while still being, you know,
financially responsible.
That's helpful to understand. Thank you so much
for providing a bit of extra context there.
And, you know, it seems like,
a very,
important thing to be thinking about as you're
looking into the future. And speaking of that,
what are some of your big priorities and
headwinds that you're focused on for 2026?
Oh, for sure, it's it's the scale
of AI, you know, not just,
getting,
you know, things available to all our providers
because it's really you know, even though it's
available to all of our providers, not all
of them are are using it. I'll be
I'll be honest.
We have about a third of our providers
who are in that high user category that
we will,
you know, see broad adoption of. We have
another third that are middle of the road
where they'll use some but not the others,
and another, third that seem to be a
little bit more disengaged. So our focus,
is going to be this year on the
education of that middle and lower,
thirds. And maybe we can hit, you know,
fifty fifty or sixty forty,
you know, this year. I think,
education
and, you know, perhaps even one on one
training on some of these things may help
us
move that needle, for clinicians
and how they are,
utilizing this AI. Another big area is to
be able to, you know,
properly inventory
and document
now that all these
AI functionalities
are live,
you know, you you gotta make sure there's
ongoing review, make sure there's not bias or
drift that happens with with some of the
models, you know, making sure that these tools
are still functioning
in a safe and high quality
manner.
We're doing some of these things through our,
what we call AI steering committee. You know,
every health system should have some sort of
AI governance. We call it a steering committee,
and that is overseeing and directing some of
these, tools. As we're waiting on, different, you
know, regulatory bodies or legislation
to, you know, specifically
say things, be proactive and, you know, start
audits yourself and keep track of all the
functionalities that you already have
live. So it's it this year is the
age of continuing education for users. It's the
age of
inventories, libraries, and, feedback mechanisms and and upkeep,
you know, all while,
weighing additional options with not just the generative
AI solutions, but
agentic and,
even perhaps autonomous in in the coding arena.
Nonclinical,
definitely best to go nonclinical for automation there
first as we're waiting on, some of the
other things to happen with, regulatory
there too.
But,
getting getting that groundwork so you're prepared to,
you know, take on
additional functionalities
or more advanced functionalities
while keeping in the back of your head,
you know,
how do I educate my users? How do
I ensure safety, quality,
and,
regulatory compliance
as all these tools are are there?
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And
I know it's always that fine line between
wanting to be innovative, continuing to push the
boundaries, but also not taking on too much
risk within the system in the health care
space too. Yes. Yes. Absolutely.
Well, what do you think the hardest thing
you're gonna have to do in the coming
year will be?
I I think it's saying no.
Actually, you know, because of that pacing, you
know, are there things that
need to
need to wait? In, you know, my health
system in particular,
you know, we're one of the one of
the leading medium sized health care organizations
in the country. You know, we don't have
unlimited resources.
So what makes sense for us, you know,
may be
something that is provided through an existing vendor,
like I was saying, rather than,
some new latest and greatest things. What can
we take on,
throughout all of this?
It may we may have to say no
to focus on instead
upscaling what we already have, educating
who we already support, and things like that.
We don't want AI to overwhelm
all of our,
users,
but we do wanna be transparent with what's
available,
how we can support things now,
things like that. It's not
it's yeah. I guess it's I guess you
could call it pacing yourself. You know?
Yes. We we deployed all this stuff. We
we got things going.
Can we maintain that pace? We'll we'll see.
We have to balance the yeses with the
noes.
Absolutely. And I I know that can be
certainly no small task, especially with the volume
of things that are coming at you and
your colleagues on a daily consistent basis. And
so,
yeah, I I know you've mentioned being able
to, you know, kind of, like, make sure
you've got, things covered with your existing vendors
and partners along those lines. And so, you
know, when you do have, folks that are
excited about something new or or coming through,
how do you,
communicate, you know,
and identify the things that are gonna actually
make a difference,
and and decide on taking a new partner
when that, situation arises?
That's one of the ways that our AI,
governance helps out as well. We do have
a,
an update to our our vendor intake forms.
You know? Everybody's got their own way of
of getting,
new technology or new services into a health
system.
So embedded within that, we now created our
own, AI review. The AI,
does focus on generative agentic or autonomous.
We have other mechanisms in place for, you
know, machine learning and some of those, quote,
older forms of, AI.
And one of those,
questions, you know, that's on there, you know,
first off, what's what's the need? You know,
why are you looking at AI for for
this?
And then another question is,
does
our what we call trusted vendors, you know,
the those vendors that you spend a lot
of money on and you better be getting
your money's worth from, do they offer a,
similar technology and have you explored that? And
there's always that. If not, please discuss with
information services or informatics,
because they're, you know, up on this technology.
They're in the know of what our,
vendors are bringing. They know the road maps
of where our vendors are going.
And so that is that point of entry,
you know, for for our vendor,
I think, if it hadn't happened before then,
it gets caught in that process, and it
allows our, informatics and IS teams to take
that opportunity
to work with the requesters
and, you know, show show features that are
available. And our,
our our vendors have plenty of documentation on
that or, you know, happy to jump on
calls to explain some of those things. So,
embedding that in a
review process or that formal intake to get
your budget dollars approved,
that is
our way of,
making sure everybody knows what's going on.
Got it. That's helpful to understand. Well, before
we wrap up here, I wanted to ask
you about growth. Where do you see some
of the best opportunities for organizational growth in
the future, especially considering
all the the different use cases for AI
and how quickly the technology is evolving?
AI itself can bring,
so many efficiencies there, you know, to give
time back to our providers,
our nurses, our care teams. You know, one
of the one of the top reported
benefits of using
AI charting
from our providers has been I get to
spend more time with the patients.
And that's what medicine
is all about, and we've thrown so many
other, you know,
hoops to jump through just to be able
to deliver care to patients. So I'm very
excited and glad that,
AI charting has been able to provide that
connection
back with our providers. And as we take
things live with our nurses,
this year as well, our nurses can spend
more time with their patients too. So giving
time back, that it that is precious and
is so helpful for growth
for our, you know, employees,
there too, our users of of this technology
of AI. You know, the same thing can
happen on the on the nonclinical side of
things, Getting administrative tasks done faster,
getting, through that coding work queue a little
faster,
that will will help in their efficiencies
too. As a as a health system,
we are,
blessed with organizational
growth as well where we are expanding
our,
reach throughout the state, able to support,
especially some of our rural hospitals
in the state of Indiana,
with our technology too offering
through our,
EPIC,
Connect program
as well,
and also some managed services agreements.
Rural health is very important and
is very much struggling,
and and so we're happy to be able
to provide services there. You know, some of
this this AI technology,
you gotta think that there is some,
equity concerns going on too. How can a
small,
hospital,
or maybe FQHC
clinic, you know, afford
some of these,
technology tools?
And, you know, there are,
larger health system partners that can help out
in that area too.
There is some growing change at least at,
in Indiana's legislative level to also,
offer assistance,
to critical access hospitals and and others
that may need access to these tools too.
Because, you know, the
the technology
will help promote
safer and higher quality care.
All
areas of care delivery
should have equitable
access to these tools. And I'm happy to
be a part of a system that wants
to share that, you know, with these, other
areas that may, you know, have a bigger
bit bit of a struggle to to get
there.
Absolutely. I think that makes a lot of
sense. And, certainly, you know, having that ability
to support other facilities,
really keeps that care local and make sure
everybody has access to what they need. And
so, I think that's very much a point
well taken in thinking through how quickly technology
is changing. There's so much possibility and potential.
It seems like a a really exciting time
in health care right now.
100%
agree.
Absolutely. Well, doctor Mavis, thank you so much
for joining us on the podcast today. This
has been a a really,
fun conversation. I can tell you're very passionate
about everything you do, which is so much
fun. And, you know, look forward to seeing
you as well at our annual meeting. I
know you'll be speaking on a panel. We'll
dig deeper into many of the things we
talked about today, and so I'll look forward
to seeing you there.
Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.