At athenahealth, we know your ambulatory practice wants healthier, a healthier business, healthier care teams, and healthier patients.

But the complexities of modern health care tech make it hard for you and your care teams to focus on what matters most?

That's where athenahealth can help.

Our AI native all in one solutions reduce administrative burdens, streamline billing and payments, and deliver critical insights when clinicians need it most.

That means fewer clicks, more time for patients, and stronger bottom lines.

Practicing medicine is complex, but running a practice can be that much simpler with athenahealth.

See how simpler is healthier@athenahealth.com.

Hi, everyone.

Welcome to the Becker's Healthcare podcast.

I'm Scott King joined by a very special guest today, Karen Hunter, chief nursing informatics officer with Adventist Health.

Karen, how are you doing today?

I'm great, Scott.

How are you?

I'm good.

Thanks so much for joining us.

I think we're gonna have a a great discussion on a lot of kinda key topics and things going on in in health care right now.

But before we dive into questions, wondering if you could just please tell us a little bit about yourself and your work in health care.

Absolutely.

I am a nurse by background, and I worked, in the at the bedside and in operations for, fifteen years before going into informatics.

Since then, I've been, leadership and, clinical informatics while, implementing multiple EHRs, across the country.

And, most recently now, CNIO at Adventist Health as we are on an epic journey to convert our sites to one epic instance next year.

That sounds great.

Thanks so much for sharing that background information.

And, you know, getting to some of these kinda key issues in health care, I know nearly half of medical practices reporting using AI in some capacity last year.

It's still still a key topic for health IT leaders.

From your perspective, what are the use cases that are making a difference right now, and how are you leveraging them for your health system?

Absolutely.

So AI has been around for quite a while.

We just may not have been aware of it or calling it out.

And in the nursing space, we are using it right now.

We've had a partnership with the company for about five years, emergency department triage, assisting a nurse in that initial assessment where they're making snap decisions on how critical a patient is and whether, you know, when to move them through the system and how many resources to to assign.

And we found that, very helpful.

We've identified that it, reduces time in the ED.

Overall, it ensures that our sickest patients get moved back faster and seen faster.

And we're even kind of exploring correlation to decreased length of stay in patient, meaning that we got the right care to the patient at the right time and that affects their overall course of care.

So that's one use case.

Our physicians are leaning into this, of course, with ambient listening.

Very excited.

We've got that actively going now, and we're looking forward to, in the next year, bringing in nursing to ambient listening as well.

And just to follow that, in terms of all the kind of the practical uses of AI and health systems, have you found that, ambient listening maybe takes, like, the least amount of human, you know, interaction, human kinda correcting.

Is ambient listening kind of, pretty trustworthy at this point?

You know, I am only watching from afar on that topic.

So we have not implemented yet.

I have my opinions, but I have not no practical experience.

I think that's fair.

You know, as as virtual care expands from AI enabled tools, remote monitoring to broader digital health platforms, Introducing new technology kinda brings challenges.

What advice do you have for leaders navigating everything from governance to patient engagement?

And can you share an example of how your organization has balanced innovation with some of the operational constraints a lot of systems are seeing?

Sure.

I think first of all, you know, my experience as a nurse, I always, tried to be boring.

Right?

Didn't wanna excite my patients, didn't wanna overreact to a situation.

It was my job to be calm, prescient, and and see through.

And I say that applies here as well.

Often, we think, oh, shiny object, this cool new toy, and that sort of thing.

But we really have to stay focused on what is the problem we're trying to solve, what is the evidence of that problem, through metrics or value capture dollars, whatever that may be, and continue to, evaluate against those metrics.

Is this solving the problem, as we expected in tracking to that?

I know people hate the word pilot anymore, but, really, we need to practice with this new technology.

I think about my mother and a smartphone.

She wanted a smartphone so badly, but you know what?

When she got it, she still sat in the kitchen next to the landline to make her calls because, yeah, just adapting her, you know, her living experience to that new technology, and it takes time to do that.

And we in health care, we have to do that as well.

I think that's a great point, a a great story.

You know, people like practical things that, you know, they have experience with, you know, like, I was like, The Landline.

Or it's it's sometimes it is hard to adapt, to this new technology the way the health systems are are having to do right now.

How are you seeing recent legislation, both state and federal, affect health care organizations and and health care IT specifically?

Have you adjusted strategies in response to that?

Yes.

An organization we have where where it's very top of mind right now, and Adventist Health is a, community based organization, faith based, and we serve the most vulnerable populations in sort of a lot of rural areas, remote areas.

And, we're we're high, like, around 80% government pay.

And so we're very much watching the policy changes and, proactively making, internal changes.

For example, we've outsourced some some positions and that sort of thing looking to be most cost effective.

So it will affect our technology road map long term, but we are full on with Epic looking for greater efficiencies from a standardized single platform, that we haven't had in the past.

And looking at the data that we will gather from this will help inform us, on how to be most effective in our practice and our operations and, of course, financial management.

You mentioned Epic.

You know, we obviously hear so much about, what people like about Epic in in health care and what they use it for.

What are yours what are your some favorite, favorite uses of yours with Epic?

For me, I think the integration, right, that it's one platform and the patient information is seamlessly moving through.

But I've been in prior organizations where we messed that up.

Right?

So, you know, Epic is not infallible.

It's, we need to build it and maintain it in a standardized way, and I believe Adventist Health is approaching it in the right way.

If you had to give one piece of advice to health care leaders as they kinda prepare for more advancements in technology and the rising demands for care, what would that be?

I would say it's boring, but continue to follow fundamentals.

What is the problem we're trying to solve?

Do we have evidence that it's doing that?

Can we measure those outcomes?

What is our, you know, adoption?

What are our end users saying?

And follow that path just like we do with our patients.

We assess our patients.

We look for abnormalities, vital signs, that sort of thing, and we treat, to those symptoms.

And we have to do that in health care too and not just get excited about, new toy, but, stay calm, be boring, and and stick to our fundamentals.

Yeah.

I think that's great advice to kinda, you know, just keep it simple and and all hands on deck for for one, one most important thing there.

Something else I wanted to ask you, Karen, for our final question, something I like to ask all the leaders we talk to on the podcast is how do you think you're evolving as a leader?

That's a great question.

I, was reflecting on this recently, and I I think in such a time of massive change, like, in our organization, it's a time to be bold.

I have a lot of experience in this area, and I I can't assume that my colleagues, share my knowledge and experience.

So it's important for me to speak up and be bold and share information and help educate as we go so that we can make informed decisions based on evidence, based on, research, as we move forward and not just, again, what feels right or may, again, be a shiny object.

Sorry to harp on that so much.

Karen, thanks so much for joining us on our podcast.

I think it was a great discussion.

I look forward to working with you again soon.

Thank you, Scott.

It was my pleasure.

At athenahealth, we know your ambulatory practice wants healthier, a healthier business, healthier care teams, and healthier patients.

But the complexities of modern health care tech make it hard for you and your care teams to focus on what matters most.

That's where athenahealth can help.

Our AI native all in one solutions reduce administrative burdens, streamline billing and payments, and deliver critical insights when clinicians need it most.

That means fewer clicks, more time for patients, and stronger bottom lines.

Practicing medicine is complex, but running a practice can be that much simpler with athenahealth.

See how simpler is healthier at athenahealth.com.