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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Lisa Stephenson, Chief Nursing Informatics Officer, Cedars-Sinai Health System
00:07:36
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- [00:01]
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.
- [00:29]
B
This is Gracelyn Keller with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast and we are recording live at the 10th annual Health IT, digital health and RCM meeting. I'm currently joined by Lisa Stevenson who serves as the Chief Nursing Informatics Officer at Cedars Sinai Health System. Lisa, thanks so much for joining me today. Let's have you start off by sharing a little bit more about yourself and your work in healthcare.
- [00:50]
C
Well, sure, thank you for having me. I have been in a nurse for almost 25 years now and more than half of that now I've been in informatics. I've worked at several major health systems throughout the US now landing in Cedar Sinai.
- [01:07]
B
Wonderful. Well, thanks for being here. And let's start our conversation talking about AI, as nearly half of medical practices reported using AI in some capacity in the last year and it remains a key topic for health IT leaders. So from your perspective, what are the use cases that are making a difference right now and how are you leveraging them within your organization?
- [01:28]
C
Yeah, I think it's a great question. I think it's important to remember that AI has been around for a while in different forms. I think the predictive analytics for example, and giving clinicians really that decision support when they need it has been critical and as we're developing with AI, it's improving. So I'm excited to see how that will continue to develop. The other thing I think that's more recent with generative AI is the summary of the chart. So we're using epic, for example. They have several models at this point to really bring all that data we've been putting into the HR into different summarization type formats for clinicians, which helps them save some time looking through the chart and make sure that they're kind of bringing the information they need key to that patient's care front and center for them. I think the other thing that I'm really excited about that we're currently working on is the ability to have either voice or ambient documentation for nursing. From my perspective, that's been something that's taken a while and AI was really the key component to being able to link those verbal recordings to the actual discrete flow sheet rows versus just a narrative note like providers usually do. So that's been really exciting. We're currently piloting and actually about ready to really broader expand our AVA nurse assistant, which is able to record those observations from nursing and do that documentation for them. They've really enjoyed the time savings that they're seeing with the tool as well as we've actually been able to demonstrate some hard ROI with decreasing incremental overtime.
- [03:04]
B
Absolutely. And as virtual care expands from AI enabled tools and remote monitoring to broader digital health platforms, introducing these new technologies does bring challenges. So 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 operational constraint?
- [03:22]
C
Yeah, absolutely. There's definitely a lot of that. We're also been piloting for the last few months a virtual nursing program. Virtual Care, which is has several different operational key components. I think on top of just not even the infrastructure restrictions we've met and having to look at, you know, do we use some mobile carts because we didn't can't hardwire in these rooms one kind of component of it. But more from the operational and people perspective, I think really getting the key stakeholders engaged early in the process to make sure you have all the different components figured out. We've got a steering committee involved for a virtual care program that we meet with on a regular basis to help guide direction, make sure we're focused on the right use cases and the goals and problems that we want to achieve. And then there's also making sure that you have the other folks engaged early in the process like legal risk, regulatory, our marketing and communication folks. So to your point, around some governance and patient engagement, you know, we've got the marketing folks engaged to make sure that there was really talking points developed for nurses on how to communicate with the patients with this new technology in the room. What's this camera? What's it doing? As well as there was the consent component. So our legal really wanted to make sure that patients also realized that we were going to be using this technology and have a separate consent drawn out for as the patients are admitted, have the nurse talk them through that and get that consent. So working through those operational challenges was doable because we had the right people at the table early enough in the process to make sure we had the process figured out 100%.
- [05:05]
B
And shifting gears just slightly, I'd love to know how you're seeing recent legislation both at the state and federal level, affect healthcare organizations and health IT specifically. And if you've adjusted any strategies in response to this.
- [05:18]
C
Yeah, I think bottom line is it's, you know, it's been a concern, certainly from a reimbursement perspective. So financially, just making a lot more conservative decisions, really focusing on, do we, you know, the technology we're looking at, is it solving a problem? What's the potential roi? I've had to for both the programs I mentioned, AVA and Virtual Nursing, really look at what is that ROI and present it to our finance folks because we do need to make sure that we're, we're using our money wisely and we're focusing on the right things. I think there's also a continued drive and even more of a push to be efficient with the people and the tools we already have. So looking at the applications we already have in our portfolio, can we use those? Are there any that we need to maybe rationalize out of the portfolio just to really be conscious of the dollars we're spending?
- [06:11]
B
And as we wrap up our conversation, I'd love to know your top piece of advice for healthcare leaders as they prepare for further advancements in technology and rising demands for care.
- [06:21]
C
Yeah, I think really the key because AI, virtual care, so many of the changes that are coming are very exciting, but they're really fundamental changes to how we deliver care and requires people to think differently. So I think it's key that you've got the people being impacted by the change, clinicians, operations involved in the process to get that buy in up front. And you've got their leadership, their direct leadership, really engaged in the project and helping to continue to drive it because it is something that we've had to continue to iterate on. It's not necessarily perfect when it first gets out there. It is newer technology and we don't always know the best way it will fit within workflow. So working with them to partner and continue to refine and improve, but keeping them engaged really requires that direct leadership to continue to support the staff and make them feel like they're being heard and that we are, you know, we do have their interest as well as the patient's best interest in mind.
- [07:22]
B
Well, Lisa, thanks so much for taking the time to join me today on the Becker's Healthcare podcast and share these insights again. We are recording live at the 10th annual Health IT Digital Health Health and RCM meeting.
- [07:33]
C
Thank you.