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00:00:00:11 – 00:00:22:04
Tom Haederle
Hospitals and health systems are continually advancing innovation and using technology to transform patient care and improve health outcomes. Examples include better methods of collecting and organizing mountains of data, as well as partnering with universities to advance research. Artificial intelligence plays an ever-growing role as well, a trend that many leaders in the field consider the only way forward
00:00:22:05 – 00:00:44:07
Tom Haederle
in a time of diminishing resources. Will the wider use of innovative tech make care more impersonal and put a damper on the human connection between patients and their doctors? Experts say no. In fact, just the opposite.
00:00:44:10 – 00:01:07:12
Tom Haederle
Welcome to Advancing Health, the podcast of the American Hospital Association. I’m Tom Haederle with AHA communications. In this month’s Leadership Dialogue series podcast hosted by Dr. Joanne Conroy, CEO and President of Dartmouth Health and the 2024 board chair of the American Hospital Association, we learn how Banner Health has gone all in with its commitment to embracing technological innovation.
00:01:07:15 – 00:01:20:05
Tom Haederle
Artificial intelligence and other technologies can relieve caregivers of many of the tedious aspects of their jobs, freeing up precious time to spend building relationships with their patients and greatly increasing patient satisfaction.
00:01:20:07 – 00:01:46:15
Joanne Conroy, M.D.
Thank you for joining us today for another AHA Leadership Dialogue discussion. It’s great to be with you. I’m Joanne Conroy, CEO and president of Dartmouth Health and the current chair of the American Hospital Association Board of Trustees. I’m looking forward to our conversation today with my colleague Amy Perry, president and CEO of Banner Health. That’s headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona.
00:01:46:17 – 00:02:19:03
Joanne Conroy, M.D.
Amy has a passion for innovation and research and has embraced Banner’s mission of making health care easier so life can be better. Her career has been spent championing a people-first approach to health care. And as you’ll hear, that approach extends to innovation and research that will make care better. Banner is a not for profit health system with 33 hospitals, including academic medical centers that provide access and health care services to over six states.
00:02:19:06 – 00:02:42:21
Joanne Conroy, M.D.
And it is so well-suited to advancing innovation and research that improves the lives of patients, families and the communities that it serves. What is the role do you think that technology plays? Because I know Banner is investing big in technology to kind of help us move from aspiring to deliver greater value to actually doing it.
00:02:42:23 – 00:03:11:21
Amy Perry
Yeah, I think it’s the only way forward for us because we need to do things dramatically different. We don’t see the reimbursement moving at the rate that it costs us to deliver the care that we need to. And at Banner, and I’m sure similar to other nonprofits, we deliver $760 million in free care and uncompensated services a year so, three quarters of $1 billion dollars,
00:03:11:23 – 00:03:38:17
Amy Perry
how do you make up that kind of difference? And we’re going to try to do it through technological innovation. So our board has agreed to put aside $1 billion dollars, that’s a really big amount of money that we’re planning to invest in technology. We’re nine months into our strategy. And number one is, and it’s no big surprise, it’s really organizing our data.
00:03:38:20 – 00:04:05:01
Amy Perry
And when you have a big health system like Banner that has really grown over the years, you find that there’s a lot of data platforms that have been plugged in throughout the years. And so we need to create one data platform, and that’s what we’re working on right now. We are, you know, unifying our data fields pulling all of our -I mean, massive amounts of data.
00:04:05:03 – 00:04:36:16
Amy Perry
We see 3.6 million unique lives every year. So you can imagine the data – that’s more than 10 million encounters on an annual basis. So the amount of data that we need to manage is just extreme. So we need to do that. We need to have proper indexing. And with that platform, with that foundation, we believe we’re going to be able to do all of the wonderful things that we hope we’re going to be able to do with AI:
00:04:36:16 – 00:05:01:05
Amy Perry
ambient listening, making it easier for our caregivers, letting our caregivers really work at the top of their license. So our technology plan is not only exciting. I think it’s mandatory for our future sustainability, not just at Banner, but everywhere, because we’re going to need to learn to work with less.
00:05:01:07 – 00:05:31:21
Joanne Conroy, M.D.
When you think about data and using data to make the right clinical decisions, and then all the AI, generative AI, ambient listening, all the chat bots, things that you almost say replace vacancies with technology, how do you marry the two, and how would you describe that patient experience once you get that marriage of the data as well as the sexy generative AI?
00:05:31:24 – 00:05:37:26
Joanne Conroy, M.D.
You know, having Hal in the room with you to guide you to care for your patients.
00:05:37:28 – 00:06:05:13
Amy Perry
Yeah, it’s a great, great point. First of all, I don’t think we’re really going to be replacing humans with technology any time soon. I think what we want to do is enhance the lives of the people that are providing the care, and allow them to work more efficiently so we can increase our access. You know, in Arizona, which is our largest market, it’s one of the fastest growing cities in the US.
00:06:05:13 – 00:06:47:03
Amy Perry
So just keeping up with the growth, what I’m hoping is that we can do more with the same number of people because we will, and not completely, but with less of a 1 to 1 addition, because we will be adding technology to make people’s jobs more efficient. You know, I love ambient listening and having a one on one, eyeball to eyeball conversation that gets, you know, automatically absorbed into the chart, helps build and document and do all the tedious work that keeps our caregivers from being able to have that pure relationship with their patient,
00:06:47:05 – 00:07:21:22
Amy Perry
that really gives them the joy that they came into medicine to have. And so I’m hoping that technology actually brings humans and our human interaction closer together, because it’s doing the tedious work so our people can build the relationships that they care about. So, I just feel like all of this, including device integration, all of the fundamental things that we need to do to be able to improve eye contact, be able to improve the human experience.
00:07:21:22 – 00:07:26:09
Amy Perry
And I think it’s going to have a dramatic impact on patient satisfaction.
00:07:26:12 – 00:07:53:23
Joanne Conroy, M.D.
Yeah. When we talk to our providers that are using the ambient technology, it is they’re never going back, right? It’s interesting. They initially say they it’s a little bit more difficult because they’re used to like filling out a framework. And now they’re just having a conversation. So they have to kind of adjust their perspective a little bit. But they love it because it does
00:07:53:23 – 00:08:30:12
Joanne Conroy, M.D.
just as you have said. It removes a lot of the tedious work. But there is tedious work that I think we’re hoping that AI will do for us, you know, outside of the patient visit. And that is not only a back office billing where we’ve actually had AI in revenue cycle for years, but probably in writing code so all of our platforms will talk to each other, as well as actually getting patients to the right place, minimizing the number of calls that they have to make or people they have to talk to.
00:08:30:14 – 00:08:40:01
Joanne Conroy, M.D.
Is there a downside to all the technology, though? Is there something that we should be concerned about and/or is Banner concerned about?
00:08:40:04 – 00:09:04:23
Amy Perry
Absolutely. I think that the number one concern that we have is quality assurance. And so pretty much all of the AI that we’ve implemented, in fact, all of it has what we call humans in the loop. So we don’t have any autonomous AI because we just are not confident with the data sources to make sure data in, data out.
00:09:04:25 – 00:09:33:20
Amy Perry
So everything we do now does have, a quality assurance review, a human review, a make sure that we don’t get too confident at this stage in the development that the technology is going to be right 100% at the time. So what we’re really hoping is that it just elevates each of our abilities, whether it’s in a business function or in a clinical function, but doesn’t completely replace it.
00:09:33:22 – 00:10:11:06
Joanne Conroy, M.D.
Talk a little bit about research. When I think about AI in research, I’m thinking it almost helps the patient kind of become a better patient, become more educated about the conditions they have, maybe access clinical trials if they’re candidates for them and/or almost make every single interaction be kind of part of medical knowledge. But that’s probably maybe overly simplistic as you look at really data and AI in research at Banner, what are your hopes for what that can do for you?
00:10:11:09 – 00:10:37:20
Amy Perry
I think it’ll have an incredible impact in a very good way. And you know, we have a very large relationship with the University of Arizona, three medical campuses and a lot of incredible researchers who need quality data to work through their ideas and to follow through in determining the potential for clinical trial candidates, things like that.
00:10:37:20 – 00:11:06:07
Amy Perry
So our ability in the future, to be able to identify people who could benefit from a emerging technology and emerging drug and emerging treatment. I mean, I think we’re going to be able to be so much more proactive because of the ability to have a computer scan all the data, find people that would be candidates for solutions that may not have existed when they were first diagnosed.
00:11:06:07 – 00:11:30:28
Amy Perry
So I think that data, again, it all goes back to data, which is why that’s the core of our technology plan and making sure that we’re creating availability and access. Again, so much of this is access – to the trials that we currently have open, which is, you know, hundreds of trials through our relationships and through our amazing, principal investigators here.
00:11:30:28 – 00:11:54:09
Amy Perry
And I’m sure you see the same thing, you know, working in an academic health system like you do. You know, just being able to match patients that could benefit from these emerging technologies. And that’s just in and of itself, impossible without these kinds of data intervention bots, the kinds of things that are going to help us streamline that.
00:11:54:11 – 00:12:12:03
Amy Perry
And then, of course, you know, the vaccine development, the kinds of things that were never even contemplated years ago are now facilitated with, you know, large processing, the ability to process just huge, large data models. So I could not be more excited.
00:12:12:05 – 00:12:37:11
Joanne Conroy, M.D.
Yeah. You know, there are certain areas that just are hotbeds. I think our radiology, you know, they’ve been using AI for a long time. Maybe people are not aware of it, but almost a second set of eyes, on you know, every single image. And our pathologists, are you know, doing amazing things. And as our organization says, oh, we have to get our arms around artificial intelligence.
00:12:37:11 – 00:12:58:10
Joanne Conroy, M.D.
And I feel like saying, hmm, it’s out of the gate and halfway around the track already. And how do you actually support our researchers who are doing things at both of our institutions are amazing. I think the world that’s facing us is going to be filled with technology and innovation, and we all just have to be a little bit nimble and open to change.
00:12:58:13 – 00:13:20:01
Joanne Conroy, M.D.
But you are so well positioned to do that. So we want to thank you for sharing your valuable expertise and insights. You’ve had a remarkable career and have served in just an incredible array of payment systems that you’re perfectly positioned to make a real impact at Banner in the six states that you serve.
00:13:20:05 – 00:13:22:25
Amy Perry
I feel fortunate. So thank you.
00:13:22:29 – 00:13:36:14
Joanne Conroy, M.D.
Well, thank you for doing everything you do, Amy. And until next time, thank everybody for tuning in. And I look forward to seeing you at next month’s leadership dialogue. Have a great day.
00:13:36:17 – 00:13:43:24
Tom Haederle
Thanks for listening to Advancing Health. Please subscribe and rate us five stars on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you
00:13:43:26 – 00:13:44:27
Tom Haederle
get your podcasts.
