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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Eric J. Price, Chief Financial Officer at Schoolcraft Memorial Hospital
00:14:39
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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.
- [00:32]
B
Hello and welcome to the Becker's Hospital Reviewed podcast. My name is Will Riley from R1. I'm joined today by Eric Price. Eric is the chief financial officer at Schoolcraft Memorial Hospital. Eric, welcome to the podcast.
- [00:47]
C
Thank you, Will. Good morning. How are you doing?
- [00:48]
B
Great, thank you. Very good. I'm looking forward to talking to you. So to start us off, can you tell us a little bit about your role? Tell us about Schoolcraft and some of the priorities that you're focused on.
- [00:59]
C
Sure, yeah. So I'm the chief financial officer at Schoolcraft Memorial Hospital and I've been there just about three years. This will be my 15th year in the healthcare industry as a senior executive leader. Schoolcraft Memorial hospital is about 12 bed critical access hospital and we serve a population of about 12,000 individuals, unique patients. We're in the upper peninsula of Michigan and we have for a critical access hospital quite a bit of services, surgery, orthopedic, ent, while specialty services, swing bed, as you'd expect and a pretty robust home health, hospice and rehab program.
- [01:40]
B
Tell me about some of the things that are on your mind as you head into 2026.
- [01:45]
C
Well, I think a lot of healthcare executive, you know, we're, we're in an area of disruption, that's for sure. I think the biggest thing we're looking at is how do we navigate successfully, you know, the challenges, both economic, financial and political, that are happening right now. I think in my career, you know, we've always had financial headwinds, but the uncertainty in that landscape is making it a bit challenging for 2026. We're just trying to be, you know, kind of create stability. Some of our growth plans we are putting on hold for just a bit until we know for sure, you know, how some of these federal regulations may play out. And we also make sure we're not extending ourselves too far. So we're finding ourselves in a financial, you know, downturn or something like that.
- [02:26]
B
Okay, great. I want to touch on some of those things as we talk today. Let's start if we can though, with, with some questions about technology. Sure, I'm interested in that. And then let's come back and we'll talk a bit more about some of the financial dynamics, but maybe some payer relations and patient patient relations and so on as well before we finish. So obviously everyone at the moment in healthcare technology is talking about AI. I'm curious about what that looks like for a small critical access hospital.
- [02:56]
C
Yeah, so we actually, as I mentioned, have quite a robust specialty service offering and a key component for that for us is our imaging and radiology department. So about two or three years ago, we purchased a new fluoroscopy machine and a new digital X ray machine. With a portable digital X ray. We were slated to purchase a new CT machine this year, but we actually held off with the AI advancements in imaging. We wanted to see what might develop over the next 18 months. That was a decision a year ago and we are getting ready to issue an RFP for a CT machine with some of that advanced imaging AI technology. So we're really excited about AI in that space. Our current X ray equipment does have AI technology to help with dosage, so we're not overdosing or underdosing and it really helps with the imaging and the quality of the images we get.
- [03:51]
B
Do you feel like so. So healthcare has traditionally moved very cautiously with new technologies. For you, is that the case with AI or do you think this is different or how do you look at that compared with other technology evolutions that you've seen?
- [04:08]
C
Yeah, I think personally what I've seen is some kind of delayed adoption in the hospitals I worked for. I know that in some spaces AI makes sense. Like I said with radiology or anything with diagnostic testing, we're a little cautious around some of the AI that may be centered around, say, coding and billing. We want to ensure that the AI systems are, I guess, more robust and have matured a bit. So we're not getting bad coding. That's just a concern. The challenge, I think is there's not a lot of data out there that we've seen showing, you know, is there success with early adopters? We hear about the opportunities, but we're not hearing much about the downsides. And that's one thing we're just being cautious about. In some spaces AI, we want to just kind of take a wait and see approaches. Other spaces where like, yes, it makes sense, let's move forward because it has low risk and high reward type situation.
- [05:06]
B
And tell me about the kinds of partnerships that you're making around some of these new technologies. Are you working with incumbent partners like major legacy technology vendors or big payers like who, who do you see, I suppose, having the advantages in this new technology?
- [05:28]
C
So that is a good question. I, I think, you know, with our main ehr, we're, we're trying to kind of stay with the core functionality of our EHR and let that develop. We feel that that is probably a safe approach. But there are certain areas with like data inter interchange or passing information to other like third parties like our radiology group, whatever would like to look at maybe some smaller vendors that can help, you know, customize and tailor to our needs. I think the challenge we've seen with some of the bigger EHR vendors is it's just a challenge to move forward with any change, whether it be something we need at the local level or a state change or a national change. It just seems difficult to get all the updates that we want operationally into that system, whether it be. And I've worked with several EHR vendors throughout my career, so I'm trying to say vendor agnostic here. But again, I think some of the larger EHR systems, they're not as nimble as some of the smaller startups are and that's something we look at and evaluate.
- [06:31]
B
And is that on. You've given some sort of clinical examples so far you've said you're a bit more cautious on some of the administrative use cases. Does that hold true across both of those worlds?
- [06:43]
C
No, I think we'd be interested in if a vendor were to provide a, you know, a product that fits our need. That's our main thing. We, we tend to, we've actually increased our call it rfq, request for proposal process where we put out scope of work expectations, deliverables criteria that we say this is an acceptable product. I think in years past we'd had some vendors that sold us a product but we didn't get what we expected out of it. And so we're a little more cautious in that regard with our contracting and our negotiations. But as far as the AI in that conversation, we are looking at ways to increase efficiencies and gain, you know, just better outcomes.
- [07:27]
B
Yeah.
- [07:27]
C
And at the end of the day, I think one thing I should have mentioned at the beginning of the who we are as a hospital, we are keenly in tune with our needs of our community and really want to do the best for our people, our community and our patients. Because in a small community like Schoolcrest county, our patients are our family members. It's somebody you know, you went to school with them or you just. We're small communities, we take care of Each other that way.
- [07:51]
B
Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. Tell me about how some of these new technologies are changing work in the C suite. Are you, how as you introduce new technology, as you introduce AI, are you having to think about new ways of governing that technology or owning that technology in the C suite? And what role do you play as cfo?
- [08:12]
C
So we have had some conversations around compliance and I think that's one of the concerns we've thought about is what does AI technology do? As far as one area we look at cautiously is labor pool. We have some in our health information department and other areas, we have union shops. And we want to ensure that as we navigate forward in the AI space that we're very cognizant of the impact that may have on labor and how jobs may shift or evolve and to ensure that the people that we've invested so much time and energy in training have a good strong path forward. If AI becomes more prevalent, what are we going to do to ensure those people have, you know, a role in the future for the hospital too?
- [09:02]
B
Yeah, yeah. Okay. And how are you thinking about that? Can you tell me more about that? I mean, because areas like financial operations, for example, are shifting and are becoming a bit more technology led than they have been in the past.
- [09:15]
C
Yeah, I think one of the advantages. So I'll kind of stay with the health information thread we use. We have in the past had different coding auditors and vendors. We're hoping that in the AI space we can get a tool to help our coders select the right, I guess, code level edit, whatever it may be. But instead of using a third party for audit and char audits, hoping to develop the team so that they themselves become self sufficient. We are less reliant on external vendors for those chart audits. I think the current model is we have so much volumes happening. We've had a pretty big growth since the pandemic as well. I think we're about 30% volume growth. And so the team is processing more claims or more touch points per visit and any way we can make that more efficient would be ideal.
- [10:05]
B
Yeah.
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C
As far as governing it, again, we've. We haven't really explored much in the rev cycle workspace. There are some proposals reevaluating, but we've stayed more on the science technology, radiology side. Yeah, or like lab analyzers type thing. We just haven't pushed forward into the workspace that may impact the human impact factor.
- [10:25]
B
Yeah, okay. Okay. But it sounds like your hope is that when you do, you can use technology as a base and then sort of upskill or up level some of the work that your team does?
- [10:36]
C
Yep. One area, yeah, One area that has had a boost recently is our informatics team. We've seen a lot of better data, more accurate data, more timely data coming out of the informatics team with the advances in some of the AI technology and just even data analytic tools. So that's where I think we're going to see our biggest opportunity in the next year would be data analytics, improving our predictability of forecasts and just knowing where we're headed with this uncertain time.
- [11:04]
B
Yeah. Okay. Okay. Let's talk a little bit more about the financial administrative side. Obviously you mentioned at the start about a pretty dynamic regulatory environment.
- [11:15]
C
Right.
- [11:16]
B
And payer provider dynamic continues to be difficult for some people, I think. Can you tell us a little bit about how some of those things are playing out for you?
- [11:25]
C
Yeah. We, in my three years at Schoolcraft, we've worked hard to develop a strong relationship with the government payers, wherein WPS is our Mac and we're working with the state to improve some of our audit data cost reporting. We've also started having conversations with several of our commercial payers. In fact, we're starting to try to have a cadence where once a quarter we're sitting down with those payers and evaluating our claims data, clean claim rate accuracy and then their payment rate to see if we can reduce some of the administrative overhead that's occurring. A lot of our costs to get a claim through and the cost of being passed to our patients is that administrative overhead. So we're trying to find out, find a way to automate, streamline that. And ideal situation would be the payers and the hospital get to a point where we have some sort of similar tool to help us identify inefficiencies, to reduce those, but then to get more effective payment for services that are necessary and needed for our community. That's the intent.
- [12:27]
B
Yeah. Okay. Okay, great. And has there been a change in that conversation, do you think, in the last year or two, do you feel like things are a bit more positive and people are looking for answers and solutions?
- [12:38]
C
You know, I think it's been a, it's been a trying time in healthcare this past year. There's been some pretty high profile things have happened that just, I think we all take pause and evaluate what are we doing? You know, are we, are we, is this the right path to be on? And I know that for us in our small community, we have been having those conversations with the payers to say we need to start coming to the table instead of I use the there's a meme out there, it's the spider man meme where they're all three point each other. We can't be doing that. We need to be talking instead of assigning blame or saying, hey, this is not working. For this reason, let's come together and collaborate. And we do that with our payers and we also work with our neighboring small hospitals that are independent. We also collaborate. We have a mantra that we collaborate, not compete because we're so geographically distant from each other that we really don't have a lot of crossover with patients. Unlike an urban or suburban environment where you may have multiple healthcare systems in the same area, we only have one or two operating in a hundred mile radius. And so collaborating, having conversations with payers, trying to reduce the inefficiencies in the system, that's our, I think our main goal right now for the next 12 months. I'm sure in the next year something will change and we'll have to adapt our approach and our strategy. But right now our strategy is around efficiencies and consolidating our effectiveness in the backdrop of this uncertain time. And I think when I started in healthcare 15 years ago, the mantra was it's an era of transformational change with the Affordable Care Act. Now we're kind of in an area of disruption. And I think building that resiliency in our team, whether it be through training, education, AI tools, whatever it may be, as a leader, that's what we're trying to do, is just build resiliency in our community.
- [14:24]
B
Eric, thank you so much. It's been absolutely lovely talking to you. Thank you, thank you.
- [14:28]
C
Well, appreciate it.
- [14:28]
B
Thanks.