Speaker 0: This is where health care leadership comes together. Becker's sixteenth annual meeting brings more than 3,500 hospital and health system executives and nearly 800 speakers to Chicago, April 13 through the sixteenth. This year's event includes keynote conversations with Dallas Cowboys legend Troy Aikman and former president George w Bush. For the agenda and event details, visit beckershospitalreview.com and click on the events tab in the upper right. We're looking forward to hosting you in Chicago.

Speaker 1: This is Scott Becker with the Beckers Health Care Podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined for a short episode with Laura Dierdott, and we're gonna talk really about three different things. The first couple are are big health care institutions, systems sort of pruning what they do and and and pruning their their entire operations to be sharper going forward. Those are first two stories. And then third, we'll talk about some evolutions at Oracle HealthCare and what they're trying to do to make things better as well.

Laurel, let me ask you to touch on the first two stories first, what you're seeing at community health systems, what you're seeing at common spirit, then we'll talk a little bit about what you're seeing at Oracle Healthcare.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Scott. I mean, I think, you know, looking at community health systems, one of the largest for profit hospital operators have really taken some big and deliberate steps to, prune their portfolio and focusing on markets that make the most sense for them. Since the beginning of the year in particular, they've had a couple of big transactions, including one where they sold 80% stake that they had in a 270 bed hospital in system to Vanderbilt Health, in around $623,000,000 deal that took the the hospital and system into Vanderbilt's enterprise.

And then CHS also closed a sale earlier this year in Pennsylvania, which sold three hospitals to Tenor Health Foundation, a newly formed nonprofit, for around thirty three million dollars plus a $15,000,000 promissory note. So, with that deal, CHS was really exiting the Pennsylvania market in the hole and and trying to get into a space where, they're able to double down. The health system still owns around 65 affiliated hospitals in 13 states, but we expect them to be more selective around how they deploy capital and manage that attention in the future. And we're seeing a similar move by CommonSpirit Health as well, another huge, health system with locations across the country. CommonSpirit previously had been in a joint venture with Tenet Healthcare around, for health solutions, which is a revenue cycle management company and subsidiary.

CommonSpirit will pay Tenet around $1,900,000,000 over the next three years, and Conifer's paying 540,000,000 to redeem CommonSpirit's 24% equity stake. And so now Conifer will be fully tenants. And in that deal, tenant will be in a space where they have full ownership. It'll give them more flexibility to invest in Conifer's future, particularly in automation, artificial intelligence, and and global operating capabilities. But for common spirit, that deal signals something a bit different.

It's part of a multiyear integration and simplification strategy as stated by executive leadership, framing it as a move to align more around a single operating model, for the health system, which came together, as multiple different systems in regions across the country. And so they're really focusing on on how they can have a strategy that makes the most sense for their organization, in in really serving the hospitals that they have a mission to serve. I I think too for common spirit as well as many others, there's a really strong focus on expanding the ambulatory space as well and making sure that there are outpatient locations, ambulatory surgery centers, clinics, and more where they really see opportunities to expand access to care as well as in virtual care versus having more inpatient space. And so I think those are some of the big trends we're seeing for the large hospital operators as they're thinking about their portfolios and sharpening their focus for the future.

Speaker 1: I mean, it is fascinating to see tenant go back to owning Conifer a 100%. I mean, tenants really remade themselves a lot over the last decade. Really an outpatient provider to USPI back to the revenue cycle business through Conifer. Just fascinating. And then also community health systems really has sharpened their footprint too to get debt under control, to get those back to profitability, and they really made great strides in that direction.

Talk to us for a second about Oracle Healthcare and what you see there.

Speaker 2: Absolutely. So for Oracle Health, they're expanding their clinical AI agent, recent announcement, and that goes beyond documentation into another clinician pain point, which is order entry. So the company said that its clinical AI tool will be able to automatically draft orders, during patient visits and continue to use ambient listening to support physicians as they're trying to have more time to expand their capacity with patients, have more human to human interaction, and and less repetitive administrative work. And that really doubles into kind of a focus we're seeing across the board. I I know clinician shortages are something that is a huge challenge for hospitals and systems, as well as burnout.

And so when we're looking at how we can expand capacity and, really make sure they're able to serve patients in in a quick and effective manner, you know, there's not gonna be a huge increase in the health care workforce that might have been needed in the past. But if they can leverage technology smartly, they can, you know, solve some of those problems. And so I think some of these companies, are really taking that to heart, and it's been interesting to see how they do that.

Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Laura, fantastic to visit with you today. Three crisp, clear stories talking about common spirit, Tenet, community health systems, and and finally about Oracle Healthcare and what they're doing. The common spirit tenant stories are are related, so I count those as one story, and then separately, the community health systems and oracle. Laura, thank you so much for joining us today on the Beckers Hooktail podcast.

That was great. Thank you very, very much.

Speaker 2: Thanks, Scott. It's always a pleasure.