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Hi, everyone. You're listening to the Becker's Healthcare
podcast.
I'm Erica Carbajal. Thank you so much for
tuning into this episode today. We're honored to
have Colleen Malozzi, senior vice president and chief
nursing informatics
officer at Jefferson Health in Philadelphia joining us
today. Colleen, welcome to the podcast.
Thanks so much, Erica. Excited to be here
with you. Yeah. Thank you so much for
for taking the time.
To get us started here, can you give
us a brief overview of your background in
health care and your role at Jefferson?
Absolutely.
So I've been at Jefferson for just over
three years as the CNIO.
Prior to that, I spent twelve years at
Penn Medicine
working.
I I cut my teeth as a nurse
at Penn in the beginning
in electrophysiology
and then transitioned into informatics,
eventually working for the chief medical information officer
for the health system. I spent a significant
amount of time working on
large scale initiatives during the COVID pandemic that
really helped to
escalate my interest
in the intersection of of clinical care technology
and,
dealing with big, huge problems.
So
I I did make the transition over to
Jefferson a bit after we stabilized post COVID,
and I'm now overseeing
a team that covers our 32 hospital academic
health system.
Jefferson does span across New Jersey and Pennsylvania
and goes from Philadelphia up to the Poconos.
It truly has a a deep commitment to
innovation, which feels makes it the right spot
for me because my role sits at the
intersection of nursing technology,
quality, and operations,
but with this very specific focus on clinical
bedside work and how technology impacts it.
Yeah. No. Thanks for sharing that. Certainly, no
shortage of of big huge problems, especially right
now. And and at the intersection of tech
and and clinical,
I know that you had mentioned,
earlier this year, not too long ago in
a recent interview with Becker's, you talked a
little bit about
how you spent a lot of 2025
digging into how nurses interact with the EHR
and how small but meaningful changes, like things
like reducing clicks and cleaning up documentation
pathways
can make a a real difference. So
can you walk us through some of those
Jefferson has made in this area and the
difference that it's made so far?
Absolutely.
Whenever I'm talking about time with nursing, it
it must be at the shoulder with them.
So my team and I get out there,
and we see what day to day actually
looks like. Because as we move further away
from the bedside, it's really important that we
have the nurse's voice represented in the work
that we're doing.
So when we're out there, it's easier to
see the small things that just add friction
and noise to their day.
It's
technology. It can't it can't be a friction.
It has to give time back. If it's
not an innovation, then it really becomes noise
in their day to day.
And by going out and finding
small tests of change and looking at small
opportunities, it really does add up to a
greater good for them. So we had launched
a project. We called it very lovingly Project
Starlight,
and it grounded us in a purpose
of looking for the small things, the the
nonnegotiable
challenges that they're finding
that we need to fix.
So we went out and we looked at
what is the build in the EHR, but
then what's the day to day interaction that
they're having and focused on
really narrowing
the amount of time that they're spending.
After about a year's worth of work and
digging through flow sheets and pick lists and
everything else, we're about we were able to
take it down about fifteen minutes per nurse
per shift. And we're just getting started. We
have big huge initiatives coming up. They're gonna
help us really,
in my opinion,
revolutionize the way that our nurses are practicing
and documenting in the EHR.
So
I have a heavy focus on on giving
time back to them. Our caregivers deserve to
be caregivers
and not,
you know, technicians that are entering things into
a computer. It needs to serve them. Information
good information in, great information out.
Yeah. Definitely. And and it certainly has been
interesting just to hear, you know, over the
past year or two even just how you
know, there's been so much focus on administrative
burden and documentation
workflows on the physician side and now really
seeing that extend over to the nursing side
because there is still much still so much
burden there, and it's just a lot of
opportunity to to take that down.
And I know that,
yeah, I know that Jefferson has you mentioned
giving caregivers time back and giving them time
to be able to to do what they
entered medicine to do, which is to deliver
care.
And, you know, to that point, I know
that Jefferson has set a pretty bold goal
of giving clinicians back, I think it was
10,000,000
by by 2028.
And, obviously, a big part of that starts
with reducing documentation burden. So
as you look to 2026,
how are you planning to build on that
work? What what priorities are top of mind?
What headwinds do you anticipate as you look
to scale some of these efforts?
You are absolutely right. I I do love
the homework that you've done with ten million
hours by 2028.
Boils down in many different ways. But when
it comes to nursing, we look at that
as thirty minutes per nurse per shift.
So an hour a day that we give
back to nurses. And
and I I wanna be very clear that's
not to hand them more patients. It's to
let them take a lunch. It's to allow
them a breath. It's to help with their
well-being
and really create a more holistic experience of
being a nurse.
So
ambient listening is a big, huge thing that
is going to help us get there. We
are set to launch on our first unit
on January the week of January 26, and
it's taking time, but purposeful
design time with our staff. So
we are extremely excited to get this technology
out there, and what it does is really
enable nurses to have a device that's listening,
that's gonna help them file documentation into their
flow sheet. So have an open, authentic conversation
with the patients
to allow them to
look them in the eye, engage with the
family,
explain to them the medication that they're holding
or the experience that they're going through, coordinate
their care
instead of having to do all of that,
write it down on a piece of paper,
and then go sit down and document it.
It is it is time, and time is
one of the most meaningful things in our
lives. So we are very excited to give
time back to our nurses.
Yeah. No. That's that's great to hear.
Are there any, I guess, barriers or challenges
you're you're anticipating
in rolling this out or even on the
the angle of, you know, change management and
culture change, anything you're anticipating
and trying to plan ahead for on that
front?
Erica, all of the above.
So this is
actually a small technology change. The the company
who is
the company Eats, who have created this, have
done the heavy lifting on figuring out the
immense and incredible
AI behind it. We just put the device
down. It is all about change management and
cultural
shift. So what we're doing and why we're
putting the time in, every single nurse will
go through simulation
of how to do this, how to do
what, to nurse out loud.
They're going to have to come to three
or four one hour sessions to practice. Because
right now, nurses do this in their head
very, very often, especially the newer to practice
nurses who are still getting their bearings, getting
that maturity, and,
practice
nurses who are still getting their bearings, getting
that maturity and confidence in how they assess
their patients.
They are less likely to do it out
loud with their patients, and ambient requires nursing
out loud.
So we are taking that hands on time,
that hands on approach to manage the change.
We
start by working with the manager, and, actually,
we start by looking at the data. So
we jumped into our epic data to figure
out where we have great opportunity. We looked
at our workforce data to figure out, do
we have a stable unit who hasn't had
a lot of turnover?
Do we have a unit that has a
mix of new to practice nurses as well
as more mature nurses who have had some
time under their belt? And then because we
want both. We need both opinions in this,
but we need strong leadership from a nurse
manager perspective. So we've really honed in on
the right people
at the right time.
And as we get on calls with them
and as we get on the unit and
start working with them, we're hearing good pushback
of, oh, jeez. This feels like this is
gonna take me more time. We're like, okay.
Good. We need to hear that feedback. It's
not. I promise. But the fact that you're
thinking that means we need to be clearer
about how, why, and when this is gonna
have a positive impact on you. And if
it doesn't,
then we're not doing it.
So I am unapologetically
going to be saying no in the new
year to things that don't serve us, don't
serve our nurses, and don't serve our patients.
Yeah. And that that's such a relevant and
interesting point too just on the the fact
that there's such a shift in terms of
having to do it out loud and document
out loud. I think that's an aspect that
we don't hear a ton about, so I'm
glad you glad you mentioned that. Mhmm. And
I know you said, so planning to launch
on a unit in January 2020 this coming
year. So and thank you for walking through
just helpful to hear about the actual
kind of preparation that's going into this and
the the sessions that are being held to
practice. So is that something that's already been
going on or that's something that's starting in
the new year?
It is January.
We start the training of our staff to
help train on these simulations. So we're right
in the heat of it at this time,
with a plan go live with the actual
technology at January.
So we are living.
We are living on this unit,
engaging with this staff, and I I can't
thank my team enough because they truly have
rolled up their sleeves. They are outrageously
excited to bring this technology, but really, it's
not about the technology. It's about the change
in how we practice and engage with staff.
We handed our group an EHR. The EHR
revolutionized
clinical care. Right? Lots and lots of positives,
but there are some negative there are some
negatives that came with it. Two and a
half hours of documentation
per shift is a long, long time to
either be sitting or in front of a
computer
just entering information or trying to,
get information out of the chart.
So we wanna give that we wanna give
that back.
Yeah. Certainly.
Well, Colleen, what do you see as some
of, like, the best opportunities for organizational growth
in the year ahead and how this work
ties into growth
across the system?
I think from a a growth perspective,
I mean, there's
there's lots to be figured out. There's a
lot of financial pressures, but we really need
to acknowledge more of the workforce shortages
that are challenging us. I think we've stabilized
from a turnover perspective post COVID.
But from a growth perspective, it has to
be
keeping and retaining
people and being able to manage that we
may have patient care tech shortages or EVS
workers.
And how do we keep keep a stable
environment
with those potential shortages coming in in all
different areas?
We have pressures in our supply chain that
may make it hard to get the resources
that we need.
I I think AI sits at the center
of all of that. It helps us to
be able to plan and react and be
more nimble
from a business process perspective.
It helps us to get the reimbursements that
we need to be able to get a
bottom line that's sustainable
to keep our doors open.
I think AI has huge potential to unburden
the administrators
who are overseeing large groups of
clinicians. So we think about our nurse managers.
Our nurse managers could have anywhere from, you
know, 30 to a 100 direct reports,
and they need to be present for those
individuals that they oversee while also sitting in
all of these meetings and doing payroll and
making sure that the supplies are where they
need to be. So I think we have
a great opportunity for artificial intelligence to unburden
people, to allow them to do the thing
that they signed up to do.
And, I I'm really excited to see it.
We're seeing a lot on the revenue cycle
side, gaining efficiencies very quickly from a billing
and coding perspective
as we work with our payers to make
sure that we're appropriately being reimbursed.
And then the coordination of patient care. We
have to get people to the right resources
in the right place at the right time
for them or it's not useful for them,
and they'll be right back in our emergency
department suffering from the same issue. So technology
can help us be smarter
at the right point in time.
Yeah. Certainly. So much more to come on
that front. Colleen, thank you so much for
joining us today. It's a pleasure.
Thank you. Thank you so much for thinking
of me and having me on. I I,
I'm really happy to be able
to be the voice of so much great
work that's going on
and talk about the risks and the wonderful
potential ahead of us. Things are moving very,
very fast,
but we are
running alongside of it, trying to do the
best that we can for our people.
Yeah. Love that. Well, it was so great
to learn more about the work you're leading
at Jefferson and certainly look forward to following
up on the Ambient Nursing rollout as well
later in 2026.
Awesome. Alright. Well, thank you so much. Thanks,
everyone, and thanks to our listeners.