← Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Moving Healthcare AI from Experimentation to Execution with James Murray
00:17:10
Loading summary
Transcript20 lines
- [00:00]
A
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Healthcare Podcast. I am thrilled today to be joined by somebody who's had a brilliant career at the intersection of healthcare and digital technology and a lot more. We're joined today by Jim Murray. Jim's the managing director of the BDO center for Healthcare Excellence Innovation and a brilliant thinker in person. Jim, can I ask you to take a moment and introduce yourself?
- [00:26]
B
Thank you, Scott. I am absolutely thrilled to be here. I come to this discussion with a little over 25 years of healthcare technology experience and literally my entire career. I've worked in academic, medical centers, in retail, health, pharmacy, payer environments, all focused around technology. And currently as managing director with bdo, I work with healthcare systems across the country on digital strategy, electronic health records, clinical system optimization. And my work is kind of at the intersection of technology and operations and leadership, you know, helping organizations go after these unbelievably complex environments, modernize their clinical systems, or really translate their technology investments into value or measurable outcomes. And a big part of what I'm, what I'm working on today, advising executive teams on how to take these fragmented digital initiatives towards a more like disciplined enterprise level strategy that can really grow their business. And I'm just thrilled to be here with you.
- [01:43]
A
Well, thank you so much for joining us. Talk about currently, the trends that you're watching in health care. What are you watching? What do you have your eye on? What are you most, what are you watching?
- [01:54]
B
The biggest thing that I'm, that I'm watching or seeing today is kind of a shift from experimentation to execution. And that's, that's especially with artificial intelligence. And you know, we have to say artificial intelligence in every, every paragraph we, we talk about now or every topic we talk about. But health systems aren't asking, can we do this anymore? Instead they're asking, you know, what value does this create? And so we're seeing that happen across the industry. We're seeing a very strong emphasis, I'm seeing it on governance and kind of simplification across the organizations. You know, these health systems have too many tools. They have overlapping platforms, they have disconnected and kind of siloed initiatives. And so leaders are starting to do a good job with prioritizing, getting fewer but more integrated solutions and solutions that are starting to move metrics, the big challenges around access or challenges around cost. And then I think the last thing I'll mention in this space is a real push to modernize legacy environments. And it's not just for innovation, but really to bring costs down, bring friction Down. It isn't always about more technology. It's more discipline with technology and ensuring that everything they're using kind of ties to value and outcomes.
- [03:33]
A
Thank you. When you see systems become more intentional, how hard is it to do that? With so many different applications and ideas being pitched to them, how do they sort out where they should be intentional about use cases, about AI, about technology, and where they should sort of say no or say, we just can't take that on right now. How do they sort of sort that out?
- [03:57]
B
That's, that's where the, the governance comes in. And that kind of strategic mindset comes in and says, okay, we're going to approach this and from a standpoint of we're not going to try to keep everything in place, we're not going to try and, you know, cut things in half. We're going to actually rationalize everything that is there. And look at that, like I mentioned, the, you know, moving those core metrics, figuring out what is going to impact the access, what is going to impact the cost in a consistent way so they're able to look at it holistically and that leads to the less siloed initiatives too. We're taking a view of this from an enterprise perspective and academic medical centers or smaller organizations that are doing this, they look at their whole ecosystem and we've seen that as a definite trend and, and artificial intelligence is driving a little bit of that because people want to jump into that space. But it's definitely been a theme that I've been watching and participating in.
- [05:10]
A
Thank you. Talk about the work you've been doing over the last couple years and looking forward, what are you most proud of from the last year to two, and then what are you most excited about and focused on going forward?
- [05:23]
B
What I've been proud about over the last year or two has been the impact that BDO is having. And then other organizations as well are bringing that focus and a little more discipline and governance to healthcare it. And we're able to guide organizations on the value and where to find it and we've got measurable results that we can reference on that and, and really show that improvement. Because in this crazy industry, you see things going every which direction that you can possibly imagine and people, you know, falling in love with new solutions every day. And what I like to say is, is fall in love with the problem. You know, really get at a deep level of understanding why the organization, why the system, why the process functions the way it does, and then you'll start to see the solutions or the logical next steps kind of present themselves. And what excites me now is, like I said, they're moving to execution, and we're helping organizations move from vision to execution. We're turning these big digital ambitions into real measurable results. Whether we're helping organizations understand the value of improved data integrity or taking, you know, mundane repeated tasks off the desks of a physician, of a nurse practitioner, nurse, down to the administrative staff, the support staff, anywhere we can do that, we're going to get everyone operating at the peak of their license. The physician will be practicing at the peak of his or her license. And that is really going to raise the whole system up. And so I think there's, there's a lot of value in simplifying those complex environments, kind of figuring out what, how your technology decisions are aligning with strategic goals. And we're absolutely seeing, you know, the improved access, the reduced burden, the lower cost. But when you see an organization take advantage of that without adding a bunch of complexity, that's probably what I'm most proud of and most excited about that we're doing now.
- [07:48]
A
When you see organizations execute well on these strategies versus not what are you seeing them do, right, when they're executing on digital strategies, integration strategies and more, where do you see it go?
- [08:02]
B
Well, where I see it goes well, it's the organizations that are, are looking at value beyond just scale. Value is going to be created by, by how an integration kind of reshapes the, the economics, of course, the, the decision where, where the decision sits, decision rights and really ultimately clinical behavior. There, there are so many variables when you look at what's happening now, and there's probably way too many to discuss in the short time. But I think organizations that focus on the data and data being used to drive behavior rather than looking at data as a reporting mechanism, the real value is driven by data that is, that is timely, clinically credible, and tied directly to consequences ultimately. And consequences can be both positive and negative. But it's going to have to, you know, if you have a dashboard or you have a data set of some sort, it's going to have to answer questions that physicians really care about, that all providers really care about. And I think that's, that's what's going right, is when there's a focus on data integrity and meaningful metrics coming out of these organizations, right?
- [09:30]
A
That's when you can create real value versus causing challenges. And you talk about the opposite when people are giving, throwing data at you, but it's not actionable. Or it's not really done with the user in mind. Are there examples of spots where you see integrations don't really help or can destroy value? Any examples or thoughts there?
- [09:53]
B
I think, you know, it's maybe not destroy value, but eat away at value. How about that? It diminishes the value when the data is not timely. For example, it's like, okay, great, you told me something, but I needed to know that yesterday, a week ago, a month ago, to really make change. When it arrives late or when the data feels punitive to the, the providers or the clinical staff that you're trying to move in a different direction, they're not going to want to be called out for that. They're going to want to see how they can change and be better. Metrics that are kind of disconnected from the levers that are in the practice or in the organization become meaningless and providers of all levels will begin to show a distrust in the numbers or, or even ignore them. And, and once that's, once that's done, then the value is gone. So it's, you know, you can throw a lot of data out there, you can be very transparent in your data, but without that actionability, it, it's going to just breed cynicism and, and that's where it's going to, where it's probably going to fall apart. And I think the, you know, there's some areas around that in how you prevent that and you know, make the metrics more meaningful. But it's all going to come down to standardization and treating standard data standardization as more of an ideology than just a tool or process. Because then you can, then you can impact clinical pathways, you can impact revenue cycle, you can impact payer contracting with by bringing standard data definitions that will kind of drive the, the business intelligence.
- [11:51]
A
Thank you. And are there places where you're seeing very real measurable return on investment from AI and automation in healthcare? Are there spots that you're seeing, you know, real measurable return on investment?
- [12:04]
B
Absolutely. The, the largest measurable returns that I'm seeing are coming from automation. That takes the friction out of the work that clinicians and operators do every day, those repeatable tasks. It's in clinical documentation. The ROI comes in when you're saving time, not just chasing a particular coding dollar. That's where the ROI is and we're seeing it now, or I'm seeing it in ambient documentation for outpatient visits, that scribe in the background that's listening in automated note taking or note drafting. I'm sorry, for clinician Review inbox management, just the amount of messages providers get on a constant basis. Chart summarization. So they're not, they're not flipping through page after page, screen after screen of, of information. They've got a, a virtual assistant. And then in just the, and you may have seen this yourself with your own experience and your listeners experience. The visit preparation and post visit documentation are incredibly accelerated by some of these tools. And there we're seeing the true value and there's, there's, you know, there's, those are the, those are the cool things that I look at. You know, there's some, you know, less glamorous like the workforce management and you know, looking at demand forecasting and smart scheduling and you know, all those lead to an environment that helps with retention of staff and providers. You know, what I'm saying, I guess is that all, all high ROI cases have a few things in common. And I've summarized these or tried to boil these down and they're, you know, they're narrow scope, focused on, you know, one decision and one outcome. They're, you know, keeping the human in the loop. You know, AI is there, automation is there to recommend, but that the human is making the decision. It's easy sometimes when you look at these systems and the solutions to quickly put it on the side of the operation and reference it rather than truly embedding it. The ones that are bringing value are embedding in the operation. There's no swiveling on the chair from screen to screen or system to system. Another one differentiator that I've seen is the clear economic owner of any initiative like who, where, which PNL is this going to, where is this going? And getting that fast feedback, fast feedback cycles. So you can see the value, you know, really in weeks, not years. That's when it's going to make a difference for an organization.
- [15:07]
A
No, I love that in. Seeing sooner returns versus later returns is very important for a million reasons. Momentum, confidence, having people continue to work with whatever it is that you're doing. Is that a fair assessment?
- [15:21]
B
Absolutely, absolutely. That's why we would go back to the strategy side and we say, hey, you've got to map out a strategy. So you're looking at this in kind of a unified way. That doesn't mean you have to wait a year to start getting returns. You just have to make sure that your initiatives are accountable to your strategy and your mission. And then you can start to, with those fast cycles, the discipline, the standardization, you can bring value in rapidly and build from there. And once you start adding these, stacking these strong returns one on the other, really, it's surprising to a lot of organizations and they kind of wonder why they didn't do it sooner.
- [16:07]
A
No, I love that. And it can be hard to implement and to integrate. And that's a lot of where you folks come in too, isn't it? In guiding people on how to do that?
- [16:14]
B
That absolutely. We have a tremendous team at BDO that have spent decades in the industry and understand how the different systems work and how the, how the data flows and probably most importantly, the pitfalls of some of these projects, because it doesn't take much research to find, you know, projects that have gone over time, over budget and not delivered the results. So very proud to say we have an incredible team at BDO that understands the industry, understands the solutions, and have really been in the, in the trenches working on this stuff for many, many years.
- [16:51]
A
Jim, I want to thank you for joining us again for our audience, for their understanding, for their background. Jim is the managing director of the BDO center for Healthcare Excellence and Innovation. Jim, what a great pleasure to visit with you today. Thank you so much.
- [17:04]
B
You are too kind. Scott, it has been my pleasure and I really appreciate it.