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- [00:02]
A
R1 is the leader in healthcare revenue management, helping providers achieve new levels of performance through smart orchestration. With more than 20 years of experience, R1 partners with 1,000 providers, including 95 of the top 100 US health systems, and handles over 270 million payer transactions annually. If you want to learn more about how you can transform your revenue cycle operations, Visit us at www.r1rcm.com.
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B
Hello, and welcome to the Becker's Healthcare podcast. My name is Will Riley from R1. With me today is Chris Harrison. Chris is the CEO of Quorum Health. Welcome to the podcast, Chris.
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C
Thank you. Well, thanks for having me.
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B
You bet, you bet. Looking forward to talking to you.
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C
Yes.
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B
Let's get started. Can you tell us a bit about your role? Tell us a bit about Quorum Health.
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C
Definitely, yeah. So I'm the chief executive officer of Quorum Health. We are a 12 Hospital Corporation based in in Brentwood, Tennessee, which is just outside Nashville. We have 12 hospitals in nine states. So we are a primarily rural operator that spans those nine states. So we go from Arkansas and Kentucky on the eastern side of the country all the way to California and Oregon on the western side of the country. So our portfolio is about half small critical access hospitals. So we have six critical access hospitals and then six, you know, just acute, acute care hospitals. And then obviously we run the clinic operations for our employed physicians as well as outpatient services in some of our markets as well, in addition to the acute care hospitals.
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B
Got it. Thank you. Thank you. Fantastic. Can you tell me about some of the key priorities for quorum going into 2026?
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C
Definitely. I think it's probably not much different than most health systems, but it's growth. You know, we want to continue to grow. Quorum been on a little bit of a journey in terms of a kind of restructuring and optimizing the portfolio of our hospitals. So we've gotten down to the current portfolio of 12 hospitals that we think gives us a good chance to continue to move forward. And so we like to grow both organic and inorganically. So organic in our markets and continue to look at ways to grow with physician practices, with physicians, with outpatient facilities, with partnerships affiliations in those markets, as well as inorganically as we look at acquisitions. Obviously, the M and A landscape in acute healthcare is very active right now as a lot of people and a lot of independent hospitals and systems try to figure out how to navigate one big beautiful bill. And all the regulatory dynamics, rising cost, they're starting to look at, okay, who do we potentially affiliate and partner with? To get scale and a lot of things that those independent hospitals don't get. So looking at those opportunities and then obviously, you know, just navigating the reimbursement and federal policy landscape with the one big beautiful bill, the Medicaid cuts, obviously a lot of those things don't happen until, you know, 2029 ish is when the big cuts happen. And so you've got the Rural Health Transformation fund coming, the $50 billion that's going to be coming out starting next year. So a big strategy will be how do we take those funds? Obviously as a rural operator, we where we're right in the line to receive those funds. So it'll be a big strategy to determine how we use that to invest in innovation, invest in technology, invest in AI, invest in growth. So that then by the time 28, 29 rolls around, hopefully you've grown and you can mitigate some of the cuts that'll come later.
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B
Down right sized. Yeah. You're ready?
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C
Ready. That's right.
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B
Let's talk about that then. I'd like to start by talking about innovation and technology. It feels like healthcare providers have been a space, an industry segment that has been traditionally pretty conservative when it comes to the adoption of technology.
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C
Right.
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B
But it does feel like that's changing with the advent of artificial intelligence and the availability of new solutions. It feels like there's some energy and some belief and it's, it feels like a different paradigm all of a sudden for healthcare and technology. Do you, do you agree with that?
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C
I do, I agree. I think, you know, the healthcare industry and the regulatory side of that, obviously with PHI and HIPAA and a lot of the compliance and regulatory pieces around data, I think drove a lot of the conservatism and a lot of the concerns that you mentioned the last several years of, oh, how are we going to navigate that our data and our patients data is going to be out there and all this artificial intelligence and all these robots and all these things are going to be using it and how do we protect that and put guardrails around that. And now to point, I think a lot of that has become, you know, a little not lax. I mean people have put more controls in it and more governance around it to get comfortable and, and I think people are seeing that there, there's a lot of benefit to the artificial intelligence so, you know, a lot of benefit to putting in and making your physicians and your employees and, and all your, your staff more efficient. You know, we, we aren't necessarily looking at replacing jobs. Right. We're just looking at how do you make the employees you have more efficient and how do you make your clinicians do what they were trained and went to school to do, which is care for patients and provide a better patient experience. And so a lot of our AI and artificial intelligence and technology innovation is centered around that is, you know, how do we put the clinicians back at the bedside to give the patients a better experience and then, you know, that'll lead to better outcomes, better clinical outcomes and obviously, you know, give back the physicians and nurses and clinicians a little more time, a little more work life balance. Obviously they're coming out of a, you know, with the pandemic and burnout and, and everything that came out of that, you know, 2020 through 2023ish time frame. You're, you're sort of like, how do we, you know, put some time back in their lives? And I think of these tools and innovations are a good way to do that.
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B
It feels like that's the clincher for it.
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C
Right?
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B
That it actually, that it really works.
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C
Yes.
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B
And that when people get it, they want more of it.
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C
That's right.
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B
And so it creates a, it creates an institutional sort of demand and energy.
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C
That's right. That's right. Yeah, yeah. And you know, and physicians are obviously, you go through lots of school and med school and you know, and you know, you've got Chat GPT, you've got other tools out there that you know, I think a lot of us as consumers and patients would, you know, you just go Google and in the, I say Google like it was 20 years ago. Right. But you know, you would go Google, what does this mean? And look up your own care. Right. And now I think you have physicians and other, you know, patients using chat GPT and some of this other artificial intelligence to help navigate healthcare and navigate what the physician's telling them. So your patients are getting more educated too on, you know, when they go to their physician and doctor and then you've got the physicians who, you know, for a long time, where I went to med school, I know, you know, I can provide the best care, I know how to do this. But now you give them the technology and the tools to be more efficient but also to be more educated and put more information in their hands and you can now, you know, partner and align them with other like minded physicians and larger systems that, you know, five, 10 years ago you couldn't do. So now you can take a, you know, a cardiologist in a rural hospital. So if I Take you know, like a cardiologist in Utah for example, where we were affiliated with a large academic health system in Salt Lake City. And now with the technology and the innovation, they, they're almost in the same network and kind of in the same, I don't call it a think tank, but can kind of think through things with other like minded physicians and these other large systems. And so I think it's, it's, there's a lot of different ways you can use the technology to connect the physicians and clinicians.
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B
Empowering seems to be a good word to sum up a lot of what you're saying there. Yeah, yeah. I want to ask you about partnerships as it, as it relates to innovation. So I'm glad you brought that up because like there's a couple of different archetypes in healthcare when it comes to innovation, right? You've got big established players, established providers, established technology players, established payers. They've got all sorts of advantages as incumbents, right? They've got data, they've got infrastructure, they've got network, so on. And then you've got disruptors, right, coming in. You could call them insurgents, right, With a, maybe a sort of AI native outlook, but they're coming in to disrupt. And I'm curious about how, how your, your Utah example is really interesting because like how are you seeing partnerships change or evolve?
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C
Yeah, no, that's a great question. I think, you know, a lot of the, the technology companies and the differentiators for me personally is looking for that true partner, right. I think a lot of the relationships of the past were a true kind of vendor client relationship. And I had a contract that was, okay, here's your five year contract and you've got this amount of fees and then we'll do a CPI increase. And then, you know, it was sort of a standard blocking and tackling almost, you know, MSA agreement. And now where we look to partner is truly finding, okay, who do we feel like the company that's going to partner with us the best, that our strategies are aligned, that what we're, the outcomes we're trying to achieve are aligned. And then many ways how you align with financially and incentives, whether that's through data sharing, whether that's through equity investment in some of these startup companies and different ways that you can now align with your partners that differentiates them from some of the other players that maybe are not necessarily wanting to be that partner of yours and are still trying to do the old school almost vendor client relationship, you know. And I think for most Healthcare systems and us alike, our data is very valuable. It's one of the most valuable assets we have. And so how do you think through these agreements, how do you align with that data and make sure that you're monetizing it in a way that makes sense for the health system in a way that you're not selling your data off and then suddenly all the third parties are then taking it and doing what they want and then they're monetizing it. So how do you partner with the right innovators and technolog technology companies that you can leverage that data and have a financial outcome from that data as well as the technology that you're investing in?
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B
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, excellent. What are some of the use cases or. The use cases seems too small now. What are some of the big process areas in your operations that you think this new technology is going to have the most transformative impact?
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C
Yeah, I think it's on the clinical side where we're seeing the most adoption today and where we've kind of made that investment is in the, you know, the AI scribe, you know, and the physician.
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B
Sure.
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C
You know, capturing the physician notes and capturing the patient visit in that, those clinic settings. We're mostly seeing it in the outpatient setting. We haven't fully gone yet all in on sort of the emergency room or the, you know, acute setting on that. We're mostly using it in the outpatient visits with our patients where those, you know, physicians are capturing those notes. And then it's, you know, the AI is listening to the conversation and then turning that in to, to the coding. You know, the next stage is, is in revenue cycle with our, our revenue cycle partner. There's a lot of, you know, autonomous coding and a lot of AI being put in around rev cycle to help, you know, get cleaner bills and get bills out faster and get it to the payers, hopefully reduce denials and, and you know, have better outcomes from a revenue cycle standpoint. You know, and then outside of that, I think any kind of manual, you know, process driven job is, is a job that you can look at. Okay. How can you put AI in to make that job more efficient and make that employee more productive? So other, you know, in accounting, finance and reporting and then ap, obviously the accounts payable process has AI where now you can scan an invoice in and the AI learns, oh, this is who that vendor is and it knows exactly. Okay, where does that get coded and how does it. So it can do a lot of that manual coding and a lot of that manual Processing of the past where an AP person would have to look at every invoice and you could kind of get it through the system faster. So I think those are the areas where we've already had some adoption and I see, you know, and challenge our organization to look at, you know, in your individual hospital or even in our corporate office or across the whole organization. Where are their manual processes being done and is there technology we can put in to, you know, to do that manual process? And again, as I said earlier, it's not a, let's, let's put AI in that manual process to eliminate the job. It's now let's make that person more productive and make that person, you know, make their job easier. And then we should have a better result as a company because now they can spend their time on more productive processes.
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B
And I should imagine as an operator of hospitals in more rural locations, make retaining that workforce has been a challenge. Yes, most likely, yes. Over the last years. So it's not like you've got a surfeit of human resource.
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C
That's right, yeah. Yeah. You know, in the, in the rural markets, you're, you're often the only game in town in a lot of markets. So you're the only hospital, the only provider, but you're also the, the largest employer and you're a kind of economic lifeline for those communities because you're, you're providing that largest employer but also doing business with a lot of businesses in town. And so, you know, like you said, having the talent and retaining them and keeping those employees is important to the community as much as it is to us and to the hospital.
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B
Yeah.
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C
Yeah.
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B
Okay. Okay. What about, let's end perhaps with some thoughts on the patient. How do you see, we've been talking about innovations that are going to improve clinical effectiveness and physician well being, administrative performance and smoothing payer relationships, hopefully in the future. What about the patient and where do they sit in this innovation landscape?
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C
Sure. Great question. I think, you know, as, as patients and consumers, we all use technology and AI today on, on different, you know, facets of our life. Whether it's through financial relationships, through, you know, ordering things off of Amazon or whatever it is, we're all getting kind of exposure to how quickly and efficiently you can do things. And so I think in healthcare and hospitals it's the same thing. So how do we provide our patients a more efficient and better experience? So when it comes to scheduling their visit or their surgery or whatever it is, obviously if they come into the emergency room, how can we get to them quicker and triage them and see them before they leave and left without being seen is obviously not something you want a high percentage of. So you want to be able to triage and see those patients. So how can you use the technology and innovation to get those patients registered and then get them into the, to see the clinician faster and get triaged so you can make sure that they get to the right care? And then I think the whole registration process, like I said, scheduling, and then obviously the payment process and how patients pay their bill, they want to, you know, similar experiences they do when they pay all their bills, whether that's through their, their online banking, you know, bill pay, you know, text, or however it is. So I, I see a lot of innovation helping with, with them on the patient portion of their bill and, and navigating and managing that. And then obviously, I think as we mentioned, the physicians and, and the, the describing, I think having a physician who can spend more time and, and truly spend, you know, well, that's five, ten more minutes because now we've taken off a lot of the administrative kind of documentation and work off of that physician. Can they spend a few more minutes with each patient and then the patient feels more heard and feels like, you know, my physician is, listen to me. And now they have a better sense of what's going on and so they have a better kind of connection to, to that. So, you know, I think it all comes back to that patient experience. We're super focused on, on having the highest patient experience we can in hospitals and, you know, making sure that they, they feel like what they got, what they came for and they got heard and whether that's in the hospital or the physician practice, that they had a good outcome and, you know, would come back and be a repeat patient for our hospitals.
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B
Got it. Chris, it's really great overview. Thank you so much. Is there anything else you want to share before we finish?
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C
No, I think, you know, the last thing I'll say is, you know, on, on technology and innovation, you know, we're also looking at true robots. You know, people think about AI as, as the robot. You know, they're sitting at a computer and there's a robot literally typing on the keyboard doing all this work. But, you know, we actually have partnered with a company in our, in several of our markets and hospitals where we're putting in robots that are just like another employee in the hospital. So they have a badge and they can scan into the elevators and scan into all the rooms, and we're using that robot to do a lot of the pharmacy deliveries and a lot of the supply deliveries, and some of those, as I mentioned, mundane tasks and administrative tasks that a nurse might have had to do in the past, where it's like they've got to go to the supply closet or go down and get the prescriptions from the pharmacy. And now we can employ, I'll say, these robots that can do that work, and they just make runs all day back and forth from the departments down to Central Supply or to the pharmacy, and then that frees up the clinicians again to stay on the floor and see the patients. Yeah, and it's, you know, it's pretty cool to see it because they. They can interact and they can see that there's somebody else on the elevator and can actually, like, communicate or say hi and all that. So it's. I think it's probably a little scary for some, but in others, it's probably like, wow, this is really cool. That robot's talking to me. But, you know, that's just another. Another way that this. This innovation and technology is being put in. In that you don't really think about just somebody having to not walk down the hall 20 more times a day now is a game changer for that patient experience.
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B
Certainly, Chris. It's a great way to end. Thank you very much indeed.
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C
Thank you again for your time.
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B
Thank you.
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C
Thank you.