“Most of us agree that nursing as a profession is pretty broken and we need to fix it.”
It’s a bold statement, but one that’s certainly supported by statistics.
According to a Health Affairs study, the total supply of registered nurses is dramatically decreasing as the need for care intensifies, and an alarming percentage of nurses leaving the workforce are under the age of 35. It has become so dire that the International Council of Nurses is calling for the worldwide shortage of nurses to be treated as a global health emergency, noting in a report that “protecting and investing in nurses as key to health system recovery.”
For people like Rebecca Freeman (to whom the above quote is attributed), this isn’t news; it’s the reality that nursing leaders deal with every day. “The whole profession is hanging onto a 40-year-old model of who we are and how we do things.”
And so the discussion has increasingly revolved around technology’s role in advancing nursing and filling some of the gaps. Specifically, AI tools have shown tremendous potential to take on administrative tasks, freeing up more time for face-to-face interactions with patients, which in turn can improve satisfaction.
Of course, there are myriad concerns with AI, ranging from the possibility of deskilling and the loss of human connection, to fears of job cuts.
It’s a lot to manage, but for CNIOs, leveraging advanced intelligence is no longer a rock to be kicked down the road. The question becomes how and where to use it. Recently, This Week Health spoke with two highly respected CNIOs – Freeman (UVM Health Network) and Sherri Hess (HCA Healthcare) about their approaches when it comes to selecting and implementing AI initiatives, how they’re meeting the challenges that arise, and what this means for the future of nursing.
Rebecca Freeman
At the core of any initiative is data – but beyond that, “good data,” Freeman noted. “It’s all about making sure your nurses and nurse leaders have the data they need to ensure that we’re delivering amazing care.”
Where AI comes in? Helping to turn data into information that can be utilized at the point of care, said Hess. “We spend so much time searching. If I could easily have the information I need, it would make a huge difference.”
The ideal scenario, in her mind, is to have not just vitals displayed for nurses when they enter a room, but also other critical details that can help nurses “get more connected with patients.”
In some cases, AI tools are being used to comb through documents to provide guidance on specific tasks like when to change central line dressings. Other examples include automating prior authorization requests and improving quality reporting, which can lead to significant time savings.
“My hope is that by taking away those things, we can have more time with the patient and focus on getting them out sooner,” Hess noted.
The education aspect, however, can be challenging, particularly given the fact that technology competency hasn’t been prioritized in nursing, according to Freeman.
“Most of our nursing faculty are low on that level of literacy, and so they don’t know how to integrate those competencies,” she said. “They’ll have an informatics lecture or course, and then we send them into the care setting, and it falls on the clinical educator or professional development specialist to move them from novice to expert.”
Although most seem to acknowledge that the workforce “desperately needs to be upskilled,” there’s little agreement as to who should bear the responsibility. “We need educators to expand their scope so that nurses have the knowledge they need to make informed decisions,” Freeman added.
The proliferation of AI tools is only adding fuel to the fire, she said, noting that “everybody either wants it or is terrified of it.” At UVM, she’s looking to quell those fears by holding 90-minute introductory sessions, both for executive leaders and staff, and making them available on-demand.
“Nurses are only going to trust artificial intelligence if they understand what we’re bringing in and how we’re using it,” she stated. “We need to educate nurses. We need them to be engaged in the build, governance, and education. Because this can really make their lives easier on a lot of levels.”
Sherri Hess
Hess, who has spent 26 years in nursing, isn’t surprised by the hesitancy many have to adopt AI. In fact, she believes the biggest barrier being faced now is one that’s always been there.
“It all comes down to change management. We can provide the best technology there is, but if we’re not preparing them for the changes,” it simply won’t stick, she noted. In addition to the most important component – the ‘why’ behind the change and the potential benefits – individuals want to know which challenges to anticipate. “If they’re going to lose some functionality with a new technology or an upgrade, they want to know.”
The tricky part is in finding time for education, which can be extremely difficult given providers’ hectic schedules. Hess’ strategy, therefore, is to offer as many variations as possible, from live and virtual classes to webinars, with the caveat that hands-on time is a must. “We need to ensure people get that hands-on instruction,” both before and after a change is introduced, she said, adding that leaders should leverage rounding to obtain feedback and escalate any problems.
The key to creating this type of culture, according to Hess, is in fostering collaboration across departments. “With any technology that touches clinicians, we need to be involved early on with our IT partners,” starting with the vendor selection process. “We need to make sure the technology meets our needs – and fits into the nursing strategic plan,” she said.
Doing so can go a long way toward successfully driving adoption and ensuring the organization as a whole is headed “in the right direction.”
It can also help organizations stay aligned with the ultimate objective: improving care. As more ‘shiny objects’ are introduced to the mix, nurses can become understandably concerned about how AI tools can jeopardize the patient relationship.
“We don’t want to lose that human connection,” said Hess. “We have to be able to maintain that clinical judgement and keep that human in the loop; we don’t want AI to override that.”
That’s where CNIOs and other leaders play a crucial role in helping to vet technologies and ensure they’re solving problems rather than making a splash, noted Freeman.
“We need to stop being dazzled by things like ambient listening. I don’t know if it’s worth the squeeze or where we should be focusing,” she said. “That’s what informatics leads need to be looking at.
Freeman’s hope, as the industry continues to progress at lightning speed, is for nurses and nursing leaders to capitalize on the opportunity to make their voices heard and help shape the future of the profession. “Sometimes in nursing, we don’t think big. We tend to think in a very structured way; that’s what makes us good at bedside care. I want to enable nurses to think out of the box,” especially when it comes to how AI is shaping healthcare.
Hess concurred, noting that it’s critical not to downplay the enormous impact nurses can have. “At the end of the day, we’re the last step between the patient and their care.”
Rebecca Freeman, VP of Healthcare Informatics and CNIO, The University of Vermont Health Network and Sherri Hess, CNIO, HCA Healthcare, are co-chairing 229 Project’s inaugural CNIO Summit, June 18-20, 2026 in Napa, Calif.
More than three years ago, Jefferson Health launched an initiative to help fill vacant shifts while decreasing reliance on costly travel nurses. The idea, according to Andrew Thum (AVP, Nursing Operations), was to “leverage internal resources that could fill the demand.”
Since then, the Philadelphia-based system has reduced its use of agency nurses by 75 percent. But the Nursing SEAL Team program has accomplished more than that; it has generated spikes in engagement and satisfaction among nurses, and enabled teams to more proactively manage staffing challenges.
“It’s helping us understand where the needs are so that we know in advance where we can have the most impact,” noted Thum.
Recently, he and Daniel Hudson (SVP, Nursing Operations and CNO, Ambulatory Nursing) shared their story with This Week Health, including why the program was conceived to how it’s constructed, and discussed both the results they’ve seen so far, and the effect they hope it will have on healthcare.
Daniel Hudson
The obvious catalyst of an initiative like the SEAL program is the nursing shortage – a problem that has existed for years but was exacerbated by Covid. Filling those roles, as leaders learned, required more than a competitive salary; increasingly, nursing candidates craved flexibility. “The newer generations in the workforce had different expectations around work and life,” said Hudson.
The other motivating factor – one that’s equally significant – is the “unsustainable” cost of temporary labor such as traveling nurses, which run around $120 to $130 per hour. “We had to do something,” he noted, particularly given the fact that Jefferson spanned 16 hospitals at the time (it now has 32 hospitals after a merger with Lehigh Valley Health Network).
The solution? Create a flex team that could serve a geographically dispersed network without having to incur travel and lodging expenses.
Of course, there were some questions that had to be addressed. “We needed to think about the frequency and cadence of deploying resources that were beneficial to us as an organization, while also keeping in mind the well-being and fatigue management of our people,” Hudson said. “How are we using the technology that we have to know how many resources we need, and when to move them?”
Part of that comes down to having the right framework, which starts with governance.
According to Hudson, there are two structures in place, each representing different facets of nursing leadership. Through these groups, they’re able to solicit feedback from regional CNOs and share information before making decisions, which helps build alignment.
It also provides a framework to review data, said Thum. “That structure helps to inform our procedures so that our staffing offices are functioning in the same standard, best-practice way and leveraging the technology and tools that we have across the system.”
Having consistent scheduling and payroll tools, he added, is a “foundational piece” in building and maintaining a successful staffing initiative. “Without that, it isn’t possible.”
Andrew Thum
On the other hand, with a solid structure in place, Jefferson’s teams can analyze data to identify the most significant gaps. “Our core teams build their schedules on every unit at every hospital across the health system,” he said. Once those are published, “we can then see where the needs are greatest, and deploy the SEAL nurses into those units.”
They’re also able to detect high rates of turnover, and adjust the numbers based on those findings. In that respect, “we’re still being proactive, because staffing is so dynamic and can change drastically,” Thum stated. “Especially at some of our smaller hospitals, where one vacancy can be the difference in a unit’s ability to provide safe care.”
To that end, Jefferson also utilizes local resources for unexpected absences (for example, calling in sick). But the ultimate objective is to think long-term, he reiterated. “Our goal is to use tools like our scheduling system, along with feedback from unit leaders, to forecast vacancies so that we understand in advance where we can be most impactful.”
What the data can also do is help identify variations in nursing practices across the system, which can “help inform opportunities for standardization, optimization, and best practices” he noted.
Of course, none of this can be done in isolation, according to Hudson. Along with nursing – which includes senior nursing executives as well as frontline managers – other key areas must be part of the discussion, including operations, finance, and legal. “You need all the right people building it together, you need a structure that supports decision-making, and you need accountability to measure progress and continually improve,” he said.
Tying all of this together, according to Hudson and Thum, is a multi-pronged strategy that revolves around three core premises.
“It’s not one thing alone that’s helped us to get where we are,” Hudson said. “It’s an integrated workforce strategy, and we’re going to continue to evolve that.”
It’s not just about making sure the right amount of nurses are available, but also that those nurses are engaged. Since the launch of the SEAL program, Jefferson has seen notable boosts in satisfaction, Thum noted.
The reason? It enables nurses to experience different environments – much like a traveling nurse does – while still reaping the benefits of being part of a system. “They feel a sense of belonging because they are Jefferson nurses,” he said. “As a result, they tend to be more reliable and are able to respond to situations more effectively. And our patients can expect to receive higher quality care.”
The initiative has also yielded another critical benefit: mentorship. In some of Jefferson’s units, as many as 75 percent of nurses have less than two years of experience, according to Hudson. That’s where SEAL nurses come in.
“When we have experienced nurses in a unit for six weeks, that’s invaluable,” he said. “They’re bringing that mentoring and support along with clinical knowledge. That’s really important, and it has been so advantageous for us.”
Since the program’s inception, Jefferson’s leaders believe it has lived up to the ‘SEAL’ moniker, providing “an elite team that is highly skilled and can be dropped into any situation and perform at a high level of expertise,” Thum noted. “That’s exactly what this team is. We can move them to the hospital of greatest need and expect the same level of expert nursing care.”
As the healthcare industry continues to evolve at a dizzying pace, leadership roles must keep pace, and the CNIO position is no exception.
“The nature of the role is becoming more and more strategic,” said Wendy Kerschner, Senior Associate, Healthcare & Information Technology Practice, WittKieffer. “As we go from focusing mostly on the EHR to now dealing with all of the other smart technologies needed to improve care delivery, it requires executive-level skills” to navigate the people and process aspects.
Whereas in the past, nursing informaticists were often “relegated to training” when a major initiative was happening, now they’ve taken on a more strategic function, according to her colleague Zach Durst, Principle, IT Practice. “Now it’s change management. It’s driving digital innovation across an organization. It’s analytics, quality metrics, and population health.”
The CNIO position, which had “unnecessarily been limited” in many organizations, “has become as expansive as the CMIO role.”
Zach Durst
The primary reason? “CNIOs can be instrumental change agents in addressing the myriad challenges nurses and other clinicians face,” noted a WittKieffer report. As informatics and technology are continuously woven through strategic plans, the need for a nursing informatics representative who can facilitate integration and lead consensus will only increase.
The position, according to the authors, “brings an invaluable perspective and fills an indispensable function of identifying solutions and leading change based on patient care and clinicians’ feedback and concerns.”
And, importantly, the CNIO acts as a bridge between nursing practice and technology, ensuring needs are being met on both sides so that systems can be utilized safely and effectively. That “bridge,” however, “has gotten a lot wider,” said Durst. “You need the ability to translate at every level of the organization, from the board level down to the frontline nursing staff.”
At the same time, added Kerschner, it’s important for CNIOs to possess “outstanding project management skills, political savvy, communication skills, and change competencies,” along with a forward-thinking mentality.
It’s a significant departure from the original job requirement. And in fact, HIMSS announced a revised description in 2025 “to reflect the evolving leadership, innovation, and digital transformation happening across nursing informatics.”
Wendy Kerschner
The update, which incorporates results from the HIMSS Nursing Informatics Workforce Survey, aimed to ensure the CNIO role “remains aligned with modern healthcare priorities, promoting data-driven care, enhancing patient safety and driving operational excellence.”
So what exactly does this mean for the CNIO? How is the job changing, and how are CNIOs viewed by others in the organization?
According to Durst, it starts with technology, which is becoming increasingly pervasive in healthcare. “Everything that operates in the health system, from the heart monitor to IoT devices to unified communications, it all comes back to technology,” he said. Because nurses are so close to patient care – and by extension, technology, “You need that nursing voice at the leadership table.”
Health systems appear to agree, as CNIO and equivalent roles (such as Chief Clinical Information Officer) have become more prevalent, particularly in larger organizations. “It’s not the norm yet for every organization to have a CNIO, but the trend is heading in that direction,” he noted.
In terms of reporting structure, there is still a great deal of variety. “We’re seeing that most CNIOs report to the CIO or equivalent, oftentimes with a dotted line to the CNO,” he said, while some answer directly to the CNO.
Increasingly, however, “we’re seeing it as a dyad partner to the CMIO, recognizing the importance of the nursing voice in informatics, technology, and digital optimization as being more hand-in-hand with the CMIO,” Durst noted. “Whereas in the past, nursing informatics was at the director level, sitting under a CMIO or applications. And so, we think that’s really a positive sign.”
So what are health systems looking for?
As the position has risen in prominence, the qualities that are most valued in the search process have certainly evolved, noted Kerschner. “When we’re speaking with clients and they’re deciding which candidates are going to move forward, things like communication skills and change management are tipping the scales,” she said. The ability to relate to stakeholders from different areas and “distill complex topics in a thoughtful manner” is highly valued.
But while the skillset has been established, questions remain around how candidates can build those skills. “It’s not a matter of getting an Epic certification,” said Kerschner. “There isn’t a clear roadmap.”
Durst agreed, noting that because the CNIO is still relatively novel, “the pipeline isn’t as formalized” for establishing a leadership skillset in nursing IT. The best avenues, they’ve found, are seeking out both informal and formal mentors in nursing, as well as technology, operations, and other areas, and leveraging professional associations such as AMIA.
“A lot of it comes down to learning by doing,” said Kerschner.
The development piece will become increasingly important as advanced analytics continues to infiltrate the healthcare space. “The CNIO needs to be the voice for nursing within the AI strategy,” she noted, and take the lead on “where to invest, how to integrate all of those tools and how they will interact with the overall stack and workflows.”
Added Durst, “organizations are going to need that voice when it comes to governance, data acquisition and utilization, and implementation, because any AI tool is going to affect workflow, and that workflow is going to impact every clinician across the environment.”
As a result, CNIOs will be looked up to help ease the transition for users, which Kerschner views as a natural progression of a position that has already evolved so much. “The role has expanded. It’s about building relationships, identifying new technologies, and being a leader within the organization,” she said. CNIOs, now more than ever, “must be results-driven, and be ready to measure and articulate successes.”
Zach agreed, noting that CNIOs have risen to the point where they are “inherently part of everything, from road-mapping to the execution around it,” he noted. “That's where the executive skillset comes in. You’re figuring out how things are going to get done, and getting them done.”
Healthcare organizations are experiencing exponential growth, and Texas Health Resources (THR) is no exception. The faith-based system – which provides care across 16 counties through 29 hospitals – is expanding, with plans for a new patient tower in Plano and a 12-story hospital in McKinney.
And that’s just the physical footprint.
The other major growth factor for THR, according to Joey Sudomir, involves advanced AI, which he believes can “allow us to grow the physical or virtual offerings to patients without actually having to increase the staff.”
Of course, doing so requires a solid execution strategy that prioritizes governance, and a commitment to making the right decisions for the organization, he explained during a recent interview with This Week Health.
Joey Sudomir
That strategy starts with identifying and implementing tools that meet the most pressing needs. For instance, they recently rolled out generative AI for chart summaries, which can be used to quickly create reports. The results, he noted, have been overwhelming positive. “We’re seeing efficiency improvements, which has been great.”
What they want to avoid is introducing too much change at once – not an easy task in today’s environment. “The pace at which Epic has started deploying over the last year has taken off,” he noted. The challenge for leadership is to “keep up with what they’re making available,” while still staying true to the goals and timeframes they’ve established.
One of those involves ambient listening, which has been live in physician clinics and urgent care for more than two years. The technology has garnered positive feedback for its ability to automate transcription and documentation, enabling providers to focus more on patient interactions. “We’re deploying tools that are helping people to their jobs,” Sudomir stated.
The next destination for ambient is most likely nursing, for which they’ll partner with Nuance. “There’s a lot of conversation about moving to a more mobile nature with nurses,” he said, adding that Epic’s Rover, a mobile app for nursing, will also be in the mix. “This completely changes the paradigm of a nurse’s interaction in the patient room. We plan to go full force on this.”
That’s where AI governance plays a significant role. To that end, they’ve developed a system-level program tasked with evaluating, reviewing, and overseeing use cases. As THR’s strategy matures to include “quicker, more agile deployments,” the strategy will continue to morph.
Also critical is the education and messaging piece, which can get lost in the shuffle. “We share our philosophies and blueprints in meetings, but then people don’t hear about it again for a couple of months, so it’s just not sticking,” he said. And while training modules and microsites can play a role in disseminating knowledge, what he really wants is for messaging to become “hardwired” into the fabric. “We need to start empowering from leadership down: what’s our messaging? How can we provide the right opportunities to apply AI within the business functions? We need to lean into that.”
One way is through executive forums, which can be utilized to convey positive messaging and address common doubts. “People are concerned for the future,” Sudomir said. “How does this impact me and my job? We need to convey that although we’re doing some things with automation, it’s automation with a human in the loop. We can automate tasks, but you still have the final button to push.”
Another key component of the organization’s AI ideology is the decision to leverage existing tools – particularly from Epic – rather than producing their own.
“We’re not going to be a development shop,” he said. “There are very few provider organizations that should be doing development,” outside of systems like Mayo Clinic, Intermountain, Providence, and UPMC that have built innovation arms and established a solid infrastructure. “For us, it makes more sense to take a partner and package-solution approach.”
It’s a strategy that has served the organization well in other areas as well, according to Sudomir, who noted that while AI may be “front and center,” it’s only a piece (albeit a large one) of the pie. In 2026, Texas Health is also reviewing the application portfolio suite, exploring the hospital room of the future, and going live with Epic’s Beaker module, along with “basic blocking and tackling” required to support patient care in a secure and efficient way.
And that, he has learned, means transitioning away from long-term strategic plans and embracing “smaller sprints” to ensure the strategy reflects the rapidly evolving landscape. “Things have changed so much in the past decade,” he noted. “By the time you’re in year 7 of a 10-year plan, it just doesn’t make sense, and so we’re now targeting more like a three-year plan.”
It’s a dramatic shift from what was once considered the standard, but for CIOs, change has become a constant. The role itself is no exception, according to Sudomir, who has held the title since 2015. “It has evolved from someone you rarely see or hear from, to a trusted business partner; someone who sits in on executive decision-making meetings.”
The catalyst – or at least, the primary catalyst – for the shift? Meaningful Use, which he referred to “the first true technology revolution in the healthcare provider space. It completely flipped how we think about technology as leaders. In my opinion, we’re sitting on the precipice of potentially the second with AI.”
As with Meaningful Use, the shift toward AI is forcing CIOs to step out of traditional boundaries and embrace new skills. Now, “it’s really more about business acumen and understanding how to apply technology to achieve results on the business side,” he said. “It's been a crazy evolution of our role.”
And it’s not going to stop anytime soon, according to Sudomir, who believes that going forward, more CIOs will come from the operational and project management worlds, “where they see more business in action,” and consequently, can provide a broader perspective.
Finally, it’s important not to underestimate other key leadership attributes. “You have to be interested in learning and rolling with the changing pace of technology and the new opportunities created by AI,” he said. “But on the flip side, you can’t be a dreamer, because dreamers don’t have to live off a checkbook. You have to be practical. There is so much information, so many tools, and so many people coming at you, and you have to be able to manage all of that. This is still a cost-constrained activity; you have to find that balance between inquisitiveness and practicality.”
For Houston Methodist, the idea of designing a fully integrated smart hospital was extremely exciting. Not just for the facility itself, which is equipped with advanced AI, voice-activated smart rooms and other innovations, but also what it meant for the entire 9-hospital system.
“We saw a unique opportunity to build a hospital from the ground up with technologies that had already been proven” in Houston Methodist’s existing hospitals, by those on front lines, said Michelle Stansbury, Associate Chief Innovation Officer and VP of IT Applications.
Cypress Hospital presented “an opportunity to put it all together,” according to Roberta Schwartz, EVP and Chief Innovation Officer. Indeed, when the 100-bed facility opened on March 17, 2025, staff were able to hit the ground running because of the groundwork that had been put in place, and the strategic way in which it happened.
Recently, Schwartz and Stansbury spoke with This Week Health about Houston Methodist’s journey, sharing insights on the ambitious vision that was laid out, and how their teams were able to execute on it.
Roberta Schwartz
It started, as many initiatives do, with a simple question: What do we want in a new hospital? An opportunity to build in innovation from the ground up doesn’t come along often, noted Stansbury. And so, they developed a 12-step framework identifying the overarching themes, one of which was to design for the technologies and capabilities of tomorrow.
“We wanted to be able to think about what’s coming down the pike in the future and put that infrastructure in,” said Schwartz. It was also about building an infrastructure that “we won’t have to change for the next 10 years, making sure every plug and piece is there so that it works from the moment we walk into a room. That’s what Cypress was designed for.”
What won’t have to happen, ideally, is the retrofitting her teams had to do to install MyChart Bedside TVs at Houston Methodist’s existing hospitals. After the technology had been seamlessly integrated in the new hospital, leaders didn’t expect it to be a big lift in other places – not realizing that steps had been taken to bring up “almost a special network for Cypress,” Schwartz added. “We figured out that they had gone around the infrastructure to bring it up. And so, when we wanted to scale it, we had to stop and say, ‘what did we do?’”
They needed to find a way to run MyChart Bedside on the Epic app. That’s where another critical component comes into play: vendor partnerships. And it wasn’t going to happen through a video call. “I’ve been in IT long enough to know that wouldn’t work,” said Schwartz. “We needed to do something quickly.”
What Houston Methodist needed was partners in the room, working side by side with developers to incorporate changes in real-time. “We could walk right over to our inpatient room of the future, which we have within our tech hub, and try it out. Did it work? Did it not work? Because if you’re just trying to get a vendor to make one change, it could be a week before you try it out. This was happening in hours. It was amazing to see.”
With the issues resolved, patients were able to realize the benefits of MyChart Bedside, including real-time access to care team information, schedules, medication lists, test results, and educational materials. For staff, it helps facilitate direct communication for non-urgent needs and enable virtual visits.
Michelle Stansbury
Although Stansbury was impressed with the results, she wasn’t surprised. “That’s what happens when you get a group of smart individuals together and say, ‘here’s what we need. How can we make it happen?’” she noted. “If you get everybody together, you’ll see the magic that can happen.”
The reality, however, is that managing change is much more about people and processes than the technology itself. If people aren’t fully on board, the magic simply won’t work. Therefore, a change as potentially impactful as replacing whiteboards with digital tools must be navigated carefully, according to Stansbury.
And it starts with face-to-face conversations. “We sat down with the nurses and said, ‘We know you’re used to whiteboards, but you need to switch to this solution to be able to talk with patients.’” Having those discussions “helped us to drive what we need to change and look at how we train nurses going forward,” she said.
With virtual nursing, Houston Methodist created a “widgetized” approach where users could click on icons to access different functions such as admission, discharge, and checking meds, according to Schwartz. The reported time savings have been so significant that Cypress is calling for a model in which virtual nurses become part of the care team on the floor.
“As you look at our strategies, we’re putting more control in the hands of the patient, whether it’s scheduling, registration, or other areas,” she said. “They’re interacting with us differently, and we need to be ready.”
It’s not something they take lightly. Implementing any change into the complex healthcare system is going to be a big lift; for that reason, Houston Methodist’s leaders make it a point to carefully weigh every decision, especially around technology.
“We know that we have to get human behavior to change, and there’s so much involved in that,” said Stansbury. “And so we have to ask, what’s worth our time? We don’t do innovation for the newest, shiniest toy. We innovate to solve problems.”
One of those problems? Physician offices would get flooded with calls from patients six days after a procedure to find out if they had the green light to drive. The solution? Schedule automated text messages to go out on day six providing them with pertinent information, as well as contact information for follow-up questions.
The result? A 60 percent drop in phone calls and a boost in patient satisfaction, according to Schwartz. And all her team had to do was ask about the nature of calls coming into the office. “We said, ‘let’s put it in an automated message. It’s quick and no one has to intervene,” she said. “And we found that people really do like interacting with us via text.”
Although there’s certainly buzz around the use of conversational AI agents to send out communications, Houston Methodist is employing a careful approach before diving fully in.
“You have to weigh these technologies,” Schwartz emphasized. “The availability and the excitement doesn’t always translate financially. But now we’re seeing that these fields are starting to mature. Doctors are more comfortable doing things virtually.”
And now, they’re looking into having mobility techs on the floor who can do consultations, rather than having a physical therapist show up on the floor. “We’re looking at, what evaluations can we do on our wound care patients? Can we do them on the virtual highway? We’re starting to look more at all of that.”
For Houston Methodist, it’s not about what’s “new or hot,” but rather, what’s going to serve the organization and patient population, and what tools will mature into usability in the coming years.
“To me, that’s the exciting part,” said Stansbury. “When everyone starts to get engaged and see the benefits of the technology we’ve brought in.”
The idea of leveraging genetic data in healthcare isn’t new. It’s been more than two decades since the human genome was first mapped, and there’s been no shortage of groundbreaking discoveries in the ensuing years.
Everyday use, on the other hand, hasn’t quite made the leap – at least, not for most organizations.
But at Frederick Health, a 261-bed community hospital based in Maryland, clinicians are using genetic data to create personalized disease prevention and treatment plans, which is leading to a higher level of care. The catalyst, according to CIO Jackie Rice, is being able to integrate genetic information from different labs into the EHR and present it to physicians at the point of care.
When it was first introduced in 2021, she felt it had the potential to be a game-changer.
Sure enough, data gathered from the first two years of the Precision Medicine and Genetics program yielded impressive results: a 25-minute time savings for every genetic test ordered, and a 50 percent reduction in the number of steps in the genetic test results process.
Jackie Rice
“I believe that genomics will be part of routine care across all specialties in the very near future, and be as commonplace as vital signs and routine laboratory diagnostics,” she noted. “We’re going to get vital signs, lab work, and genetic testing, and use them to make specific medical decisions.”
Doing so, of course, requires a significant investment and a great deal of collaboration and legwork. Recently, This Week Health spoke with Jackie Rice and Patricia Rice, Clinical Director of Precision Medicine and Genetics at Frederick (not related) about how the program is structured, what’s required to successfully implement and maintain it, and the benefits it offers for both patients and providers.
The premise itself is simple: any physician at Frederick can order a genetic test from the EHR, receive the results as discrete data in patient charts, and access interpretation and guidance within their EHR. The ability to extract genetic data from multiple labs – and present it at the point of care – is a key component.
“Providers can’t spend time clicking out and going to yet another portal,” Jackie Rice noted. “I say this all the time, about everything we do; we have to put information into their workflow in order for it to be helpful.”
It also has to be presented in a language that primary care physicians – who don’t tend to have an extensive background in genomics – can easily understand. But when physicians are given reports that are 20-30 pages long and need to be scanned, that’s not the case. Not only does it take time away from face-to-face care, but it can also prevent them from finding critical information.
“A patient can be on a statin and it won’t do a thing for them,” she noted. However, if patients undergo genetic testing, it can help unlock potentially life-saving information, particularly when it comes to antidepressants. “Seventy-five percent of genetic information is on just a few genes.”
And with the right pillars in place, providers can access that critical data and take action.
One of those pillars, according to Pat Rice, is clinical decision support. With Frederick Health’s solution, providers can click on the genetics tab to learn what testing a patient has undergone, and gain access to discrete results that may contain critical pieces of information. For example, if a patient has a BRCA1 mutation, and then develops cancer, they may be eligible for a very effective, targeted therapy.
Patricia Rice
Having all that data in one place has also helped dramatically improve the ordering process, according to Pat Rice. “Before, we had to enter all of the demographic information, the ICD-10 codes and diagnostics – that could take 20 minutes. This has sped up the time for order entry while also enabling them to view results discreetly.”
And although time savings are important, what’s just as crucial is ensuring that both providers and patients comprehend the information being presented – and how to proceed with it. To that end, Frederick has focused heavily on education, Jackie Rice stated. When the program was first introduced, providers expressed concerns about being able to effectively communicate with patients about genetic data.
That’s where pharmacy navigators came in. “You have to have the right people in place,” she said. “I don’t think you can start this – have the labs, do the testing, and put it out there – if you don’t have someone who can review it all with the patient,” while also offering support to physicians.
As technologists, “our job is to make sure clinical providers have all the information they need upfront, and they don’t have to click 10 times to try to get it,” Jackie Rice noted. “We put in tools that can flag conditions and ensure information is being accessed by the right parties.
Along with using pharmacy navigators, Pat Rice offered a few more helpful nuggets. First, “securing buy-in from the C-suite, ensuring they’re educated about precision medicine and the workflows and processes involved,” she said.
Second, creating not just a steering committee, but a “strong, passionate team,” with representatives from lab, oncology, IT, marketing, HR and other areas, to oversee the development and expansion of the initiative. “You need a team that’s really dedicated to this,” she added. “It’s not easy work, but it’s for a great cause.”
What organizations should not do, Jackie Rice cautioned, is expect immediate ROI, as it can be difficult to quantify. And so, rather than focusing on hard numbers, her team highlights what they call ‘Hearts and Minds stories’ that illustrate how genetic testing has led to improved outcomes, whether that means better treatments or earlier detection of a disease.
“This has been so beneficial to our community,” she said. “We’re so passionate about this, and we’re excited to see it grow.”
In the past few years, healthcare has seen an unprecedented amount of mergers and acquisitions, and 2026 promises to deliver more of the same, according to industry experts. And as this consolidation continues to shape strategic objectives, it’s becoming clear that how big or how quickly an organization expands is not as important as why it’s growing and the approach being used to navigate that growth.
For Deaconess, which has scaled up significantly since 2018, the objective is to “enable smaller hospitals to thrive while alleviating some of the access pressures on larger facilities," said Jared Antczak. “We’re investing in communities and hospitals, recruiting providers, and establishing new service lines. It’s good for the patients, it’s good for smaller, local communities, and it’s good for Deaconess as a whole.”
“It’s a very different growth strategy than I’ve seen with other health systems,” he said, which tend to prioritize increased market share and revenue. Deaconess, on the other hand, “created a win-win strategy that allowed patients to receive care close to home.”
Jared Antczak
And in fact, it was that commitment that drove Antczak to accept the role of Chief Digital Transformation Officer in September 2024. “Their story around growth really caught my attention.”
Recently, he spoke with This Week Health about his journey so far, sharing insights on what it takes to successfully navigate M&A without crippling other areas of the organization, and the challenges facing rural healthcare facilities.
Those challenges can’t be overstated, noted Antczak. “We’re at a real inflection point as an industry. We’re experiencing some big dynamics and pressures,” particularly in terms of reimbursement changes, workforce shortages among physicians and nurses, and increasing demand brought on by the aging Baby Boomer population.
“All of these factors are hitting at the same time,” particularly in the rural health setting, where bed management has long been a sticking point. In Deaconess’ case, hospitals based in cities like Evansville, Ind. tend to hover at capacity, while critical access hospitals “struggle to remain financially viable.”
That’s where larger organizations can play a key role – by helping smaller facilities to thrive while enabling bigger facilities to take on higher acuity patients, according to Antczak. “It’s not growth for the sake of growth,” he said, noting that Deaconess isn’t afraid to turn down opportunities. “We want to be very intentional and look at opportunities that complement us as a growing system while helping to stabilize these communities. That’s the perspective we’ve taken when selecting opportunities to partner.”
A prime example is the recent addition of Hopkinsville, Ky.-based Jennie Stuart Health, which was part of an effort to strengthen physician recruitment and expand specialty services, while investing in technology, according to the organization. Sure enough, within four days of closing on the transaction, Jennie Stuart went live on Deaconess’ instance of Epic, and had begun to stabilize the revenue cycle. It showed, according to Antczak, “how nimble we’re able to move to get smaller hospitals operationally viable.”
The true challenge – something he believes has frustrated many systems – is figuring out how to provide balance and sustainability to newly acquired facilities while still advancing the overall organization. To that end, his team has developed a strategy: run, grow, transform.
“The pipeline isn’t slowing down. We need to grow and extend our capabilities into more communities,” he said. “We have to be able to run the business and support operations. We have to have rock solid, reliable, secure systems, and we have to optimize what we have.”
At the same time, they need to prioritize innovation. “We need to tap into technologies that have the potential to transform how we work and bring new capabilities to bear.”
And although it can be taxing at times, it’s critical to tackle these goals simultaneously, according to Antczak. “I’ve seen larger health systems go down a path where they experience growth and go through a period of optimization and stabilization, and then try to innovate,” he noted. “The challenge with that sequential model is that it takes a long time to get to innovation and transformation, and you end up missing out on opportunities.
Another is that once an organization reaches a point where it’s ready to transform, it has become “so big and complex that it becomes very difficult to transform and innovate at scale,” he said. “The risk we run, I think, is over-indexing on one of those at the expense of others. We can get so focused on running, growing, or transforming individually that we end up neglecting the other two. The reality is that we have to be able to do all three, simultaneously and effectively, finding the appropriate balance with dedicated teams and resources.”
Doing so, of course, isn’t going to be easy, and for many organizations will require a fundamental shift in thinking. Fortunately, this is nothing new for healthcare leaders.
“We have to adapt,” said Antczak. “The capabilities that continue to evolve at an exponential pace are prime opportunities to tap into to help enable and empower a lot of that transformation in terms of how we redefine roles and how we ultimately provide care at a higher quality and in a more sustainable way.”
For individuals with chronic diseases, the treatment options leave something to be desired. Put simply, “it isn’t working,” according to John Evans, VP of Digital Care, Sutter Health. “Most patients see their doctor a few times a year, if they’re lucky. Within that timeframe things can really go awry,” which can lead to increased complications and higher costs.
That’s where digital devices can make an impact. But even those can be flawed. In fact, a 2024 JAMA article found that the vast majority of point-of-care solutions only effectively treat one condition, which is problematic given that most patients have multiple chronic conditions. Sometimes even 4 or 5, said Evans, which means they’re being asked to download multiple vendor apps.
At Sutter, “we wanted a unified experience for our patients that enabled them to submit data directly to the EHR,” Evans said. To that end, they partnered with Epic to launch Sutter Sync, an initiative designed to help patients proactively manage chronic conditions from the comfort of home. Through the use of proprietary devices, including a blood pressure cuff, scale, and glucometer, data are automatically transmitted to the MyChart app.
John Evans
In addition to reducing unnecessary hospital visits, Sutter Sync – the brainchild of Richard Milani, MD, Chief Clinical Innovation Officer – enables teams to more effectively monitor changes and identify abnormalities, which can lead to improved decision making. So far, it has yielded positive results. Since the initial launch in March 2025, starting with hypertension and pregnancy and eventually lipids in the fall, adoption has increased steadily, with more than 4,600 patients enrolled in the program. More importantly, feedback has been promising, with boosts being reported in patient satisfaction scores.
Perhaps the most significant factor in this success, according to Evans, is Sutter Sync’s multipronged strategy focusing on three key areas: monitoring, medication management, and education.
“That three-legged stool differentiates our program,” he said. And it starts with “making sure that whenever possible, we deploy remote patient monitoring devices so that we get a steady stream of data as opposed to highly episodic care.”
That ability to access real-time data and build intelligence on top of it “helps us stay much more in tune with our patients and respond more quickly when we see changes and put interventions in place,” Evans added.
The second piece involves monitoring done in close collaboration with pharmacists, which has proven to alleviate some of the burden on primary care physicians. “That really differentiates us,” he said. “We know that PCPs are a mile wide and an inch thick, and it's really hard to stay on top of all the conditions a patient may be managing.” This way, “we can make sure our pharmacists stay up to date on all of the protocols, and we’re able to provide medication management from a dedicated team.”
Last, and most certainly not least, is the education piece. Upon enrollment, patients are asked a series of questions to help identify goals and guide decision-making. What they found right away, according to Evans, is that a large percentage of patients living with hypertension, diabetes, and other conditions “don’t fully understand what the condition is or what led to it.” To help curb that, Sutter has opted to present information on diet, sleep, activities, and other factors in bite-sized chunks, using different types of media to accommodate different preferences. “The goal is for us to be a unified team working together to get patients on a healthier journey.”
Although they’re still on that journey, Sutter Sync has already established some solid best practices, which Evans shared below.
Sure enough, a year into the launch, “our initial results show that the program is working,” Evans said, noting that 79 percent of patients have shown clinical improvement according to HEDIS standards. And while Sutter is certainly thrilled with the outcome, the bar will continue to rise. “We’re proud of everything we’ve achieved, but we’re always looking for ways to improve.”
When Simon Nazarian joined City of Hope in September 2024, he saw an organization that was doing extraordinary work in caring for patients with cancer and diabetes. He also saw an opportunity to leverage emerging technologies to advance the digital ecosystem and propel City of Hope to the next level.
In his first year as Chief Digital and Technology Officer, that’s precisely what his team has done.
“Some of the world’s greatest research happens here,” Nazarian said during an interview with This Week Health. “Our goal, first and foremost, is to redefine and accelerate that research, which helps us improve care delivery and provide tools to the marketplace that folks are excited to adopt and utilize.”
Simon Nazarian
One of those tools is HopeLLM, a generative AI platform that combines multiple commercial and open-source models to assist physicians in summarizing patients’ medical histories, matching them with clinical trials, and extracting data for research. Through the platform, which was engineered and validated in-house, City of Hope is able to drive “more focused, personalized patient care,” while also easing the administrative burden on providers.
It’s a prime example of the leading-edge thinking that he believes will continue to solidify City of Hope’s reputation as a leader in the space. “Our bench to bedside is what distinguishes us,” Nazarian noted. “We have the ability to move quickly and fill gaps with innovation.”
What has made that possible is a concerted effort to “modernize the technology core and make sure we have a resilient foundation to fuel and enable our growth,” which started long before he arrived at City of Hope. “That’s really important.” Not only can it lead to cost and risk avoidance down the road, but having a solid base can position IT teams to be able to “take advantage of all the capabilities out there,” he said. “It’s about harnessing AI, automation, and digital workflows to empower the business and elevate patient care.”
Case in point? HopeLLM, which has created a clinical trials database that’s “streamlined for patient enrollment,” Nazarian noted. The “groundbreaking” model “accelerates research timelines and ensures that patients across the US have access to top-tier cancer treatment without needing to travel far.”
They aren’t stopping there, he said, adding that City of Hope plans to expand the database to grant even more patients access to lifesaving cellular therapies and other biomedical discoveries, including the well-renowned bone marrow transplant program.
And while the response from patients and families has certainly been encouraging, the true boon has been the buy-in from physicians, who have stopped his team in the hallways to thank them for “thousands of hours saved on chart summarization alone,” Nazarian added. Because City of Hope is a referral organization, patients can come with 10,000 or even 20,000 pages of medical history.
With HopeLLM, “we’re able to pull all of that together so that doctors can access it ahead of time, navigate it, and use natural language processing to interact with that information at the point of care.”
Enabling this, however, required more than just the technology piece, he said, noting that change management – and particularly the education aspect – was a key focus. “We’ve made it a practice here to make sure the right training is taking place.”
The first step is getting clinicians involved early and seeking feedback. “You want to understand what exactly they want,” Nazarian said, advising leaders to “pay attention to net promoter scores and be agile so that you can iteratively continue to improve the product.”
The next is to be deliberate in how solutions are deployed, ensuring that each round of users is truly ready. “Oftentimes when they see their colleagues using something, they ask, ‘when are you rolling it out to us?’ But we need to make sure it doesn’t become shelfware.”
Finally, he urged colleagues to listen, especially when it comes to developing ideas or piloting solutions. “It’s one of our core values,” Nazarian noted. “We’ve learned that by listening, we’re able to uncover where innovation is really needed.”
The best source? Frontline staff. “They’re the ones who are doing the work. They can tell us what to innovate and where so that they can do things better, faster, cheaper at the point of care,” he said. Those who are closest to the patient can also provide key insights to improve diagnosis and early detection based on emerging patterns.
In fact, his team has a backlog of use cases for solutions – not just those that leverage AI and machine learning, but also traditional technologies. “Because we have an agile framework, we’re able to meet those demands. We’re not doing anything earth-shattering,” he continued. “We’re applying classic change management practices in a world of emerging technologies.”
As a result, City of Hope is able to help patients and caregivers more effectively navigate the care journey, through the life cycle of the disease and beyond.
“We want to continue to be part of their lives,” Nazarian said. “This gives us the opportunity to do that.”
In recent years, medical associations have thoroughly investigated the user experience for physicians, distributing surveys in hopes of identifying the most significant challenges. And while that data has helped illuminate issues on a broad level, it hasn’t necessarily provided the organization-specific details sought by leaders like James Blum, MD, Chief Health Information Officer at University of Iowa Health Care.
And so, Blum’s team conducted their own survey in 2023 and found that the number one pain point was external data integration – not surprising given that UI Health Care provides most of the tertiary and quaternary care for the state of Iowa, and serves as a referral center for specialized care. What that means, he noted, is “we get a lot of patients that we don’t know very well.”
James Blum, MD
To that end, they’ve been focused on finding ways to seamlessly integrate patient data into the system and present it to clinicians at the point of care, while also working to reduce the administrative burden. Recently, Blum spoke with This Week Health about the strategy his team is leveraging to “move the needle,” which involves not just deploying the right tools, but also providing the right structure and education to drive adoption.
UI Health Care’s first major step in that direction was implementing an ambient AI-documentation tool that was shown to reduce burnout significantly during a trial. “We recognized that the human was going to be out of the loop at some point – that this was the future,” he noted. “We were ready; we had a trial group aligned and we knew how we would do the bake-off.”
What they also had was a strict set of compliance requirements and a high level of expectations, which added a layer to the selection process. “We instantaneously recognized that almost no vendor at the time was going to meet our criteria,” Blum said, particularly when it came to data usage. Despite assurances that data would be de-identified, his team stood their ground, and eventually signed an agreement with Nabla. “They told us they didn’t need our data, and so, we were off to the races.”
Following the trial, the tool was deployed to physicians, non-physician providers, nursing, house staff, and trainees, garnering high adoption rates and validating the team’s decision to act quickly. “This was a case where perfection can be the enemy of good; we didn’t want that,” he added. “We went with good, and it’s been much better than that.”
Another big change they stared down was data integration – or more accurately, the lack thereof. “We still get a lot of information via fax,” which makes it “very difficult to put together a picture of patients,” he noted, and particularly those undergoing specialty surgery. “We need to make sure the patient can withstand the anesthetic and the recovery,” and that the right support services are in place.
The solution they chose? Evidently, a clinical data intelligence platform that, put simply, “takes all of the data in the EHR and converts it to information that is then usable for clinicians, and hopefully brings wisdom to the picture,” Blum said. The tool combs through the patient’s record and generates an automated problem list and summary of the last 24 hours, as well as the last clinical encounter with University of Iowa Health Care. In doing so, it helps save time, while also guiding the decision-making process.
Additionally, Evidently introduced a set of generative AI tools to help clinicians recognize comorbidities and document any steps that are taken. As a result, “it has helped us become more robust and has changed the way we practice,” said Blum.
That, he believes, should be the bar when it comes to any initiative – particularly one that introduces change.
For that reason, they’ve adopted a “very scientific approach to implementation” that establishes the right set of metrics. “If it can withstand peer review in a publication, it can withstand your CFO,” he noted. “That tends to be our approach, along with making sure we know the expected and desired outcomes prior to any intervention.”
From there, he provided a few more nuggets of wisdom for organizations that are considering AI-driven technologies.
“We’ve been successful with both of these technologies,” Blum said, noting that as many as 80 percent of providers have created accounts for at least one of two, and about 60 percent are using them regularly. The determining factors? “Making it available and making it simple,” he noted, and not forcing it on anyone.
“We made a commitment to this, and I think it’s going to be a huge win. I think ultimately, we’re going to get to the point where doctors can, once again, just be doctors,” he noted. “They can go in and talk to the patient without having to write a comprehensive note. It’ll be written for them and they’ll have information presented in a sensible fashion.”
And that, in time, will help “bring back the joy of medicine.”
© Copyright 2024 Health Lyrics All rights reserved
