Teresa Ash, Director of System Operations for Digital Health at UC Health

Summary

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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast

Guest: Teresa Ash, Director of System Operations for Digital Health, UC Health
Host: Scott King, Becker’s Healthcare
Date: October 21, 2025
Theme: Leading Digital Health Transformation—Operationalizing Innovation, AI, and Process Improvement at UC Health

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Episode Overview

This episode features Teresa Ash, System Director of Digital Health at UC Health, discussing her unique journey from pharmacy into digital health leadership. The conversation explores how her team leverages AI to optimize both patient care and health system efficiency, navigates the governance and implementation of digital tools, and ensures compliance amid evolving healthcare legislation. Teresa’s practical advice and leadership insights offer a playbook for organizations embracing digital transformation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Teresa’s Background and Role at UC Health

• Pharmacy Roots, Digital Health Innovation:
  • Teresa started as a clinical pharmacist, focusing on chronic disease management, which led to early involvement with digital applications for patient care.
  • “My current role is as [System Director of Operations for Digital Health]. I serve as the Rosetta Stone between clinical and IS&T or digital health teams...” (03:06)
• Bridging Clinical and IT Worlds:
  • She acts as a translator and facilitator to ensure new digital tools serve both patient outcomes and frontline staff effectiveness.

2. AI & Digital Tools Transforming Care Transitions

• AI-Driven Disposition Planning:
  • Teresa’s team uses AI and machine learning to identify patients ready for post-acute transitions (e.g., rehab, skilled nursing) earlier, reducing unnecessary hospital lengths of stay.
  • “Utilizing AI tools...we’re able to identify those patients upon admission who would be good candidates for placement...and really guide that transition much quicker.” (04:38)
• Impact:
  • Improves patient/family clarity around discharge, accelerates transitions, and frees up hospital beds.

3. Operationalizing Innovation and Managing Change

• Change Management Is Key:
  • Teresa’s role was created to streamline the sometimes overwhelming influx of new digital tools and to ensure successful adoption.
  • “With rapid innovation comes the need for rapid change management and control…” (06:52)
• Cross-Functional Steering Committees:
  • Successful digital adoption requires collaboration across diverse functions (clinical, finance, IT, HR, case management, patient safety, etc.).
  • “We’ve included membership from human resources, information technology, case management, capacity management, finance…patient safety and strategy…” (08:04)

4. Strategic Stewardship of Digital Health

• Role Evolution:
  • Teresa sees her biggest responsibility as aligning digital investments with the system’s overall strategy, shifting from a reactive “firefighter” IS&T model to a more proactive, strategic approach.
  • “The benefit of this position is that we’ve got one foot in strategy and one foot in digital health, so we can really drive change and leverage the tools…” (09:49)
• Industry Movement:
  • Other systems are adopting similar hybrid leadership roles to bridge digital innovation and health system strategy.

5. Staying Ahead of Healthcare Legislation and Data Security

• Proactive Legal & IT Collaboration:
  • Legislation continues to shape digital health strategy. UC Health’s AI Steering Committee closely involves legal counsel to ensure compliance and robust data governance.
  • “We made sure we had our legal team involved with our AI steering committee…strengthening IT security… Overall safeguards for data…” (11:11)

6. Practical Advice for Healthcare Leaders

• Process First, Then Tools:
  • “These tools are just tools. They can’t fix a broken process.”
  • Teresa emphasizes evaluating and redesigning processes before layering on technology, deploying process engineers as needed.
  • “If you don’t adjust the process to utilize the tool, the tool won’t be utilized and it’ll be ineffective.” (12:41)
• Future-Ready Mindset:
  • Encourages an agile, collaborative approach—don’t chase shiny tech; ensure every investment aligns with actual workflow needs and patient care improvements.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I serve as the Rosetta Stone between clinical and IS&T or digital health teams…” (03:06, Teresa Ash)
• “We’re able to identify [post-acute] candidates upon admission and really guide that transition much quicker...” (04:38, Teresa Ash)
• “With rapid innovation comes the need for rapid change management and control...” (06:52, Teresa Ash)
• “We’ve included membership from human resources, information technology, case management, capacity management, finance…patient safety and strategy…” (08:04, Teresa Ash)
• “These tools are just tools. They can’t fix a broken process.” (12:34, Teresa Ash)
• “If you don’t adjust the process to utilize the tool, the tool won’t be utilized and it’ll be ineffective.” (12:41, Teresa Ash)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:32 — Teresa’s background and path from pharmacy to digital health
• 04:05 — UC Health’s AI tool for discharge planning and patient flow
• 06:37 — Strategies for balancing innovation and operational constraints; committee structure
• 09:20 — The evolving role of digital health leaders in health systems
• 11:03 — Impact of legislation and importance of strong data governance
• 12:16 — Essential advice for leaders preparing for future tech advancements

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Summary Takeaways

Teresa Ash shares real-world insight into what it takes to lead digital health transformation at a complex health system. Her leadership is rooted in marrying cutting-edge AI innovation with deep operational understanding and collaborative strategy. The recipe for successful digital adoption is clear: prioritize process improvement, build multidisciplinary partnerships, stay ahead of compliance and technology trends, and never lose sight of the front-line experience.

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Transcript

[A]

@ Athenahealth, we know your ambulatory practice wants healthier a healthier business, healthier care teams and healthier patients. But the complexities of modern healthcare tech make it hard for you and your care teams to focus on what matters most. That's where athenahealth can help our AI native all in one solutions reduce administrative burdens, streamline billing and payments, and deliver critical insights when clinicians need it most. That means fewer clicks, more time for patients, and stronger bottom. Practicing medicine is complex, but running a practice can be that much simpler. With Athenahealth, see how simpler is healthier at athenahealth.com.

[B]

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Becker's Healthcare Podcast. This is Scott King, thrilled today to be joined by a very special guest, Theresa Ash, System Director of Digital health with UC Health. Teresa, how are you doing today?

[C]

I'm great, Scott. How are you?

[B]

I'm good, I'm good. You know, we actually got a little rain. It's actually cooling down in Chicago a little bit. We have had some kind of like an extra summer.

[C]

Yeah. So it's definitely same thing here in Cincinnati. We're, we're dealing with the rain now, but it's a, it's a welcome change.

[B]

It is welcome. It's going to feel like fall, it's going to feel like Halloween. But any hoot and holler, let's get down to healthcare. I know there's a lot we want to, we want to dive into a lot of kind of important trends and, and topics. But Theresa, before we get started with all that, can you please just tell us a little bit about yourself and your background in healthcare?

[C]

Sure, yeah, I'd be happy to. First of all, thanks for asking me to participate in this podcast. Healthcare is something I'm passionate about, specifically looking at digital health operations. And it's such a growing field that I'm always willing to take the opportunity to jump in and share my experience. So my background's unique in the health care digital world. My training is in pharmacy. I am a pharmacist and started out as a clinical pharmacist, working for a health care system, specifically focusing in chronic disease management and ambulatory care. And through that focus, which was unfortunately longer ago than I would like to admit, 20 years ago, when that was really still just kind of in its infancy, having pharmacists work in those areas, I was able to be on the front end of developing some digital technologies and digital applications and interfaces to help manage chronic conditions for patients. That paved my way into an interest in overall digital applications. And programs and products that help manage care for patients or enable the workforce to better care for patients. My current role is as system director of Operations for digital Health. I always like to say I serve as the Rosetta stone between clinical and IS and T or digital health teams to help implement those tools or improve those tools that we're going to leverage to make patient care easier or make our employees on the front lines more effective and more efficient to allow them to do the best work they can when caring for patients. So it's been an interesting journey to this point, but I'm in on the front line of some really cool initiatives right now as we look forward to the future digital health.

[B]

Thank you. Theresa. It sounds like you're kind of at the forefront of helping with an emerging digital health tool. Can you kind of give us a little bit of specifics there and how rewarding was that to be a part of that?

[C]

Sure, yeah, absolutely. So the current tool that I'm really working on right now is utilizing AI to help improve the digital patient experience and also improve our efficiency for the workforce. That is obviously the future and where we're headed. And you know, we're really focusing our current use case that's most recently out of the box is looking at disposition planning for patients who are admitted into the hospital and moving that plan and that initial request for placement up earlier in the patient's hospital stay to prevent week long hospital stays that are only there so we can get approval to transition someone to post acute care. Utilizing AI tools and data learning and machine learning, we're able to identify those patients upon admission who would be good candidates for placement in post acute care such as rehab facilities or into skilled nursing facilities and really guide that transition much quicker and provide the patient and the family caregivers with some clarity on where the planned discharge is to allow them to prepare for that, but also get them discharged from the hospital much sooner as we don't have to wait on those approvals to come through.

[B]

Yeah, you know, we hear with people utilizing AI and in systems that obviously there's an increase in efficiency and, and you get more time to do other things you need to do. But this is your practical use case that kind of talks about more than just efficiency and saving yourself time. You're actually saving beds and times when those beds will be used and better uses for them. So certainly, certainly a lot of rewards there.

[C]

Yeah, absolutely.

[B]

Let me ask you, as virtual care expands from you like AI enabled tools that kind of been discussing and remote monitoring monitoring to broader Digital health platforms. Introducing new technology brings 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 some operational constraints?

[C]

Yeah, absolutely. So I think the first thing that we've done to balance innovation with operational constraints is to create the position that I'm in. So this is a new position to UC Health, and the position was purely created to help streamline the process of getting these digital technologies and the digital tools to the frontline staff. My background in pharmacy and hospital operations allows me to have a really robust understanding of what the end users are experiencing with these technologies and how to better leverage them to make them as efficient and as useful as possible. The other piece is with rapid innovation comes the need for rapid change management and control of the overall process of implementation. There has to be some strategy behind why we're moving forward with specific tools at specific times. And it seems like every time we have an AI governance team meeting, we have another five or six AI tools that may be native to other applications or standalone tools that get brought forward for review. Everyone, no matter what department or what team you're on, is getting inundated by AI tools to utilize. And so that's where it's important to have that really robust steering committee. And the way that we've rolled it out is to be intentional about including a wide swath of stakeholders in this steering committee. We're not just looking at operations. We're not just looking at folks in digital health or folks in clinical care, nursing or imaging. We've included membership from human resources, information technology, case management, capacity management, finance and revenue cycle management, patient safety and strategy, in order to make sure that we're making the best decisions when we move forward with a product that will match our overall strategy for UC Health, but also will provide the most benefit for each dollar we're spending with these new technologies.

[B]

You said your role is new, the Assistant Director of Digital Health position. I'm just curious, what do you see as your biggest responsibility in that new role? And have you kind of seen other systems adapt the same role?

[C]

Yeah, I think my biggest responsibility is to help drive that strategy to meet the overall strategy of the organization. We tend to think of is&t as kind of firefighters in the past, where if there was a problem with the system, we could go in and fix it, but there wasn't always a roadmap to the future there. And I think there has been in EMRs, but not necessarily in some of the other applications. And I think that's a big component of my position that's been really beneficial to bring in to the overall organization. And I was recently at the Beckers conference in Chicago just last week where I met several other people who are in similar positions as me at other organizations and they said exactly the same thing. The benefit of this position is that we've got one foot in strategy and one foot in digital health, so we can really drive change and leverage the tools that we're using to meet our strategic goals.

[B]

That sounds great. I'm so glad you're able to have those conversations at the HIT and RCM event last week.

[C]

Yeah, it was great.

[B]

Certainly AI invite all this. Emerging technology was a big topic over and over again. Had some great conversations as well. You kind of touched on this a little bit. But how are you seeing recent legislation, both at a state and federal level, affects health care organizations and healthcare IT specifically? Have you had to adjust some strategies in response?

[C]

Yeah, obviously legislation is going to continue to push and drive healthcare and IT strategy. One thing that we did pretty quickly was made sure we had our legal team involved with our AI steering committee to make sure that we were meeting the requirements of the current laws and understanding the legislation that was coming down the future. Those were the big things. The other big piece is strengthening IT security to align with, you know, reporting requirements or just overall safeguards for data. Data is obviously a hot commodity and we continue to evolve our data governance here at UC Health in order to make sure we're utilizing that data ethically and by following all required laws to make sure that it's safe and protected.

[B]

Absolutely. And my last question for you, Theresa, what's your top piece of advice for healthcare leaders as they prepare for further advancements in technology and and rising demands for care?

[C]

Yeah, that's a great question. So I think the biggest thing is we have to remember at the end of the day that these tools are just tools. They can't fix a broken process. So a lot of what we do with this digital steering committee is question is this where we need to put a tool or is there a process opportunity here? So we will deploy, you know, front facing engineers or process engineers to overall look at the process for a specific activity, determine if there's opportunity to improve the process, if not design what the new process looks like. When we have the tool on board, the tool's only going to be as good as the process that it's partnered with. So if you don't adjust the process to utilize the tool that the tool won't be utilized and it'll be ineffective. So I think that's the biggest thing, is to make sure we're not just looking at the tool or the investment that we're making from a digital health standpoint, but working with our partners to identify the process and what that process should look like so we can make sure the tool's effective. That means a lot of forward thinking, agile mindset, and cross functional collaboration to make sure those processes are understood.

[B]

Teresa, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast. It was a great discussion. I look forward to working with you again soon.

[C]

Absolutely. Thank you.

[A]

At athenahealth, we know your ambulatory practice wants healthier a healthier business, healthier care teams, and healthier patients. But the complexities of modern healthcare tech make it hard for you and your care teams to focus on what matters most. That's where athenahealth can help our AI native All in one solutions reduce administrative burdens, streamline billing and payments, and deliver critical insights when clinicians need it most. That means fewer clicks, more time for patients, and stronger bottom lines. Practicing medicine is complex, but running a practice can be that much simpler with Athenahealth. See how simpler is [e-mail].