Dr. Nirmit Kothari, Associate Chief Medical Officer at Baptist Memorial Hospital – Memphis

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Becker’s Healthcare Podcast

Episode: Dr. Nirmit Kothari, Associate Chief Medical Officer at Baptist Memorial Hospital – Memphis
Date: November 3, 2025
Host: Chanel Bunger (Becker's Healthcare)
Guest: Dr. Nirmit Kothari

Overview

This episode spotlights Dr. Nirmit Kothari, Associate Chief Medical Officer at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis, sharing his perspective on the evolving role of technology—particularly AI—in healthcare. Dr. Kothari discusses how his large, integrated health system leverages AI to streamline clinician workflows, enhance patient engagement, and ensure operational efficiency. He offers practical advice on balancing innovation with real-world hospital constraints, sharing lessons from implementing AI-enabled tools.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Dr. Kothari’s Background and Role (00:51–01:55)

• Institutional Overview:
  • Baptist Memorial Healthcare: 24 hospitals across multiple states, specialty and primary care clinics, and a recently opened medical school.
  • Dr. Kothari transitioned from physician practice management to hospital leadership, focusing on aligning patient flow and quality deliverables with clinician and staff workflow.
• Key Insight: Increasing reliance on technology has become essential for operational improvement and quality outcomes.

“In that role, I found increasingly using or relying on technology to improve the pace of improvement and deliver results.”
– Dr. Kothari (01:48)

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2. AI Use Cases in Healthcare (02:17–05:22)

• Broad AI Definition: AI synthesizes and analyzes data rapidly, turning it into actionable insights and improving administrative efficiency.
• Primary AI Applications:
  • Clinical Documentation:
    • Ambient listening software records clinician–patient conversations, generating notes and care plans so clinicians can engage patients without screen distraction.
    • Enhances patient and clinician engagement, reduces burnout, and improves “pajama time” (after-hours work).
  • Coding and Claims:
    • AI bridges the divide between clinical language, coding requirements, and payer documentation, enabling faster, more accurate claims and real-time clinician feedback.
    • Supports opportunities to refine documentation specificity.
  • Chart Summarization:
    • AI distills large amounts of data into concise summaries, speeding clinician decision-making.
    • Described as “spark notes” or “clip notes” for medical charts.

“What AI has allowed us to do is summarize in a format which allows me to quickly review it and have and make decisions at a lot faster pace than I was able to do in the past.”
– Dr. Kothari (05:14)

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3. Introducing New Technology: Challenges and Best Practices (05:27–09:06)

• Advice for Leaders:
  • Focus on technology that specifically solves institutional problems—avoid chasing shiny, incompatible solutions.
  • Use multidisciplinary vetting: Clinical, compliance, finance, informatics, and operational teams should all be involved in decision-making.
  • Ensure new tools integrate into existing workflows; technology should augment, not disrupt or force change.
  • Consider ROI not only as direct cost, but as human hours and change management.
  • Implement new technologies in pilot phases, learn quickly, and then scale as appropriate.
• Example – AI for Sepsis Alerts:
  • Initial deployment led to “alert fatigue”; clinicians became desensitized to frequent notifications.
  • Adjusted alert thresholds to distinguish between urgent, semi-urgent, and informational alerts—improving effectiveness and reducing cognitive overload.

“If everything is an alert, then you know people are going to overlook those alerts... There’s no priority.”
– Dr. Kothari (08:06)

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4. Top Advice for Healthcare Leaders (09:22–10:51)

• Embrace Technology Thoughtfully:
  • Healthcare leaders cannot ignore technology’s central role in modern care.
  • Carefully assess technology for solution fit, platform compatibility, and workflow integration.
  • Favor simplicity—tools should be intuitive and not require staff to change routines.
  • Uphold governance and data privacy standards, and ensure strong patient engagement.
  • Establish fast feedback loops to track impact and pivot quickly if needed.

“Making sure the tool is simple enough that it does not require you to go out of your way to use it, but it should fit into your regular workflow... making sure that data privacy is at the forefront, making sure that our patients are able to engage with that.”
– Dr. Kothari (09:44)

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Notable Quotes

• “Technology should augment the workflow, not force people to use a different workflow.”
  – Dr. Kothari (07:01)
• “We often start on a small scale rather than an enterprise wide rollout and then learn from that quickly to see if this is something we want to scale up...”
  – Dr. Kothari (07:48)
• “We live in a day and age where technology is going to be a key part of our care delivery. So I don’t think we can look away from it or put our head in the sand.”
  – Dr. Kothari (09:23)

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Key Timestamps

• 00:51 – Dr. Kothari’s background and Baptist’s organizational overview
• 02:17 – AI applications in clinical documentation and remote monitoring
• 05:14 – Chart summarization and AI as “spark notes”
• 05:54 – Strategies for evaluating and implementing new technologies
• 08:06 – Managing alert fatigue during AI sepsis tool rollout
• 09:22 – Top advice for leading through technology-driven change

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Tone and Takeaway

Dr. Kothari’s approach is pragmatic, measured, and optimistic—seeing technology as a key but not all-encompassing enabler for better care. Success, he emphasizes, depends on contextual fit, interdisciplinary collaboration, and continuous improvement, rather than simply adopting the latest tech trends.

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Transcript

[A]

Philips is a health tech leader focused on innovation that improves the health and well being of people. Our healthcare technology and informatics solutions help care teams diagnose, treat and manage more patients with greater precision, speed and confidence. Across the care journey with Philips, clinicians are empowered with streamlined insights in the moments that matter for every patient. Better care for more people. Philips.

[B]

Hello and welcome to the Beckers Healthcare Podcast. My name is Chanel Bunger and today I'm currently recording live at the 10th annual Health IT Digital Health and RCM meeting in Chicago and sitting down with Dr. Nirmit Katari, the Associate Chief Medical Officer at Baptist Memorial hospital in Memphis. Dr. Kothari, thank you so much for joining me today. Could you get us started out by talking a bit about your background and work in healthcare?

[C]

Thank you for having me. So as you mentioned, I work at Again, I'm Nurmud Kothari, I'm internist by training. I currently serve as Associate Chief Medical Officer at Baptist Memorial Hospital Memphis, which is a flagship hospital of Baptist Memorial Healthcare Corporation, which has about 24 hospitals spread across West Tennessee, North Mississippi, East Arkansas, multiple specialty and primary care clinics and recently we have started our own medical school and have few residencies. So fairly integrated, large system. My role, you know, prior to serving this role I worked, I managed physician practice group and for now, last two and a half years involved with the hospital senior leadership really with the goal of aligning the patient flow and quality deliverables with physician workflow as well as the hospital staff's workflow and delivering results. And I think in that role I found increasingly using or relying on technology to improve the pace of improvement and deliver results.

[B]

Got it. Thank you so much for that introduction and now getting to the meat of the podcast a bit. So we all know that AI is a huge buzzword and everyone's talking about in healthcare and actually nearly half of all medical practices reported using AI in some capacity in the last year. From your perspective, I'm curious to know what are some use cases that are making a huge difference for you right now and how are you leveraging them in your organization?

[C]

So I think as you mentioned, AI is the buzzword and again, I don't have technological background, so I always have to go back to the drawing board and remind myself what does AI mean? And it is really in my mind that's a kind of a technology that allows you to synthesize or kind of analyze the data quickly, provide data in a format which can be more actionable and then improve administrative efficiency. So keeping that in mind, I think the few key areas where we have seen AI used increasingly is around in clinical documentation space, remote patient monitoring, and not necessarily at our organization, but when I look and read other things, it's particularly use of AI in research and analysis. But I'll focus more on the clinical documentation and remote patient monitoring. So we are leveraging AI in terms of listening or the ambient software which records clinician patient communication, where the clinician is not distracted with either writing down notes or looking at a computer, but really able to maintain eye contact with the patient. And as they're converging, the software allows them to generate notes. Not only generate notes, but generate meaningful notes as well as care plans which a clinician can quickly review and sign off on those. So what it does is it improves patient engagement, it improves clinician engagement, improves results and also reduces the clinician burnout or the time, improves the pajama time in addition to. So that's one aspect of the node capture. But there's also what AI has allowed and I think it will increasingly allow us to break down our thought process, which is in silos. And the reason I'm saying that is as a clinician, when I write a note, I'm not keeping in mind what a CDI or the coding team is looking for, which is probably different than what I'm documenting. And then payers are looking for something different. AI has allowed us to kind of translate a clinician's language into what is appropriate for coding capture, and then it allows allows quicker processing of claims, more accuracy with the claims, and not only that, allows us to give more or quicker real time feedback to clinicians. So whether it's the nudge while they're documenting or a monthly data audit, or the note audit and providing them opportunities, or providing or identifying opportunities where they can be more specific around certain diagnoses. In addition to that, I think recently I've seen a lot more involvement or AI and particularly integrated in our ems. And the feature is note summarization or the chart summarization. So as a clinician it's not that we don't have enough data, sometimes we have too much data. What AI has allowed us to do is summarize in a format which allows me to quickly review it and have and make decisions at a lot faster pace than I was able to do in the past.

[B]

I like spark notes, I guess.

[C]

Exactly. Or clip notes. Yeah, absolutely perfect.

[B]

And now moving forward as virtual care expands from AI enabled tools such as remote monitoring and the AIM and listening as you were talking about to more broader digital health platforms. Introducing new technology brings challenges. What advice could you, would you give to other healthcare leaders, navigating everything from governments to patient engagement? And can you share an example of how your organization has balanced innovation with operational constraints?

[C]

Absolutely. So I think that's a great question. As you mentioned, technology is growing at a tremendous pace to certain time. I feel like that's, it's something it's hard to catch up with. But the reality is, rather than getting overpowered by the pace of technology growth, is really looking at what technology is going to bring. A solution for the problem you have at your institution. So focus on the technology which helps you solve a problem you're trying to tackle. Also, whenever we are faced with a new technology, having a process which has a multidisciplinary team, whether it's clinician compliance, informatics, your finance team, your operational team to evaluate the technology, it could be the best technology. But if it's not compatible with the platform your entity is using, maybe that's not for you. Also making sure it fits in the, in the workflow. In my mind, technology should augment the workflow, not force people to use a different workflow. So if it fits, it integrates, it's compatible. That's the technology you want to leverage or you want to invest further into, depending upon your institution. You have to also think of roi. And ROI shouldn't be just in terms of the direct cost, but the indirect cost in terms of the human hours needed to implement that or the change management piece. And how are you going to measure the results? One of the other things we found ourselves increasingly doing is even if it's a tool or a technology or a solution we like, we often start on a small scale rather than an enterprise wide rollout and then learn from that quickly to see if this is something we want to scale up or we may want to look at other options. So I think that's my other advice is be nimble, leverage the technology, start on a small scale and then expand as need be as you roll out new technology. In terms of the other thing you mentioned about how do you balance with the constraints you have? So an example for that would be some of the sepsis AI tools. So those are great tools, but we have to make sure when we rolled out at my hospital, for example, it created alert fatigue. And again, when we create alert fatigue, if everything is an alert, then you know people are going to overlook those alerts. Exactly. There's no priority. So I think the role of what we had to quickly adjust it, adjust the threshold or create a different threshold which allowed to, which then allowed those alerts to fall into, you know, something that needs immediate action versus something which needs a action in a great, in next couple hours versus something which is just an FYI alert. So just when you implement something, you have to factor in the workforce you have. And how do you avoid alert fatigue and still get the best results of new technology?

[B]

Absolutely. And now, Dr. Tari, I want to thank you for your time today. But before I let you go, I'm curious to hear what's your top piece of advice that you would share to other healthcare leaders as they prepare for further advancements in technology and rising demands for care.

[C]

So I think my biggest advice would be we live in a day and age where technology is going to be a key part of our care delivery. So I don't think we can look away from it or put our head in the sand. But I think we have to be very thoughtful in terms of assessing the technology. As I mentioned previously, making sure that it is providing a solution that you're looking for, it is compatible with your platform or whatever entity is using it is something that can be integrated in the workflow. Also, it is something which is simple because most of the hospitals have a large workflow force with varying levels of education, varying levels of alignment. So making sure the tool is simple enough that it does not require you to go out of your way to use it, but it should fit into your regular workflow and then at the end, making sure whatever technology you're implementing, it fits within your facilities and your local areas, governance and legislative structure. So making sure that data privacy is at the forefront, making sure that our patients are able to engage with that, and making sure that you're able to generate results or follow up results from that tool that you can share with the team and course correct quickly if you're not getting the results you're looking for.

[B]

Absolutely. Well, that's a great place to end. Dr. Kakari, I want to thank you once again for your time today and for sharing insights on the Bikers Healthcare podcast.

[C]

My pleasure. Thank you, Chanel.