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Reid Stephan: (Intro) people aren't wanting tools that look smart. They want tools that are simple. They don't want AI to take over. They want it to get out of the way and just get to work.

Bill Russell: My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of This Week Health, where we are dedicated to transforming healthcare one connection at a time. Our keynote show is designed to share conference level value with you every week.

Now, let's jump right into the episode.

(Main) All right. It's keynote, and today I'm joined by Reid Stephan with St. Luke's in Boise, Idaho. Reid, welcome back to the show.

Reid Stephan: Good to see you, Bill. Happy to be here from Boise, as you know. One of the top two places in the US to live. It's either one or two depending on your source. The other one is Naples, Florida.

Reid Stephan: I have no idea. I think it's, you know, like you'll talk about something and then the AI around you like hears it and then you start to get surface.

Those articles. I think it must be that,

Bill Russell: You know, I have conspiracy theorist friends who say that they believe your phone's listening to you at all times. 'cause they'll have like a conversation with somebody. Like about trampolines and then all of a sudden everything in their search starts showing trampolines to them.

Do you buy into some of those conspiracy theories?

Reid Stephan: I don't think it's a conspiracy. I think that is the model world we live in and people are listening and targeting the advertising. And so I think it's, if you think that's a coincidence

Bill Russell: The surveillance state is a real, real

Reid Stephan: thing. I think they're trying to make our life easier.

Bill Russell: You know, your you have a cybersecurity background. I mean, that's your sort of, your chops coming into this role.

Like HP was big where, you know, you could turn the wheel but you would never know for a long time if. The direction you wanted. So it was really kind of a sweet spot in terms of the size and scale to do something meaningful, but to also see the results kind of near real time to know if what you were doing was working or not.

Bill Russell: it's interesting 'cause my, daughter-in-law, I guess what you'd call her, my son's wife, daughter-in-law was in town and she was sharing with

Reid Stephan: bonus daughter, we call on our side

Bill Russell: bonus daughter. Yep. She was sharing with me the breach notification that she got from her payer and essentially their payer was sending PHI to Google Analytics and they had to notify her of that.

But I, I've not found that patients are aware of what's even going on for the most part.

Reid Stephan: not just in healthcare. I think in pretty much any aspect of their life, and there was that Netflix documentary a while ago. Basically these tools we use that are free, they're like, if you don't know what the product is, like you product,

Bill Russell: you're the product, we are collecting your information and someone wants it.

here's where I wanna start. 'cause if people want your background, we've done a couple interviews on here and you're also part of our TownHall host. And so you interview people. In fact, I reached out to Spencer Dorn to have him on the show, and he said, oh, I'm sorry. I'm, I'm already booked on your show with Ried.

I'm like, yeah I finally beat you to something,

Reid Stephan: I'm gonna take that as a win.

Bill Russell: I said you talked to Reid first and I'll get, I'll grab you over the summer and then we'll compare the, the two. So you've been doing some interviews. What what are some of the interesting interviews that you've done?

And they use that data to introduce things like the guardian cap that you see now in the preseason And they saw meaningful, positive change in the number of concussions and even other injuries through the use of just mining the data that they had access to.

And I just thought there were some really interesting healthcare applications that we could glean from that. And she just did an incredible job connecting what she was doing and then sharing how you might think about that as a healthcare CIO.

Bill Russell: I wonder, do they have like an injury dashboard where they have all the diagnosis and you know, cause and all that other stuff and they're essentially mining that data as any data scientists would.

Data that you have tracked there. So they had to do a lot of groundwork to make sure that the teams felt that if we're gonna participate in this, yes, player safety is of paramount importance to us, but we also have to make sure that some other team's not going to use this for a competitive advantage.

And so maybe that doesn't map apples to apples to healthcare, but we certainly have areas where we need to secure our data. And if you've got different systems in the same area competing, if they're gonna share data to make the community better, they also wanna make sure they're not gonna be disadvantaged in their operations.

So just, you know, really interesting that we have a lot of shared challenges we're all facing regardless of industry.

Bill Russell: I have these conversations from time to time where I'm trying to explain to people the life of a CIO and Again, you have no prep for this whatsoever. I'm just throwing this at you.

Reid Stephan: Yeah, my favorite day and I say this like not in jest at all and my team makes fun of me, but it's Monday and like sometimes I call it Mon-yay.

And it's just the work we do, the mission is so compelling for me. I love what I do. I love who I do it with. I love why we do it. I always start my day early. Like, I can't always control kind of how my day wraps up, but I can always control, for the most part when my day starts. So I like to get an early start, beat the commute rush.

I mean, believe it or not, we have, you know, traffic here in Boise Idaho. Oh

Bill Russell: yeah. We sent all those people from California.

Reid Stephan: That's right. That's right. And they're welcome. Let's just be clear about that. So I like to kind of just start my day Monday. Looking at the week ahead, getting excited about the meetings that are gonna happen.

I know her and her team. They're up at night. They're worried about that. I don't worry about is Epic going to be running the next morning when we have our quarterly upgrade? Is it going go smoothly? I have hundreds of people across teams that focus on that day in and day out. If I was worried about those things,

losing sleep, trying to like lean in and offer advice. I would offer minimal value because I am no longer an SME in any of those spaces. And as a CIO you have to get comfortable, especially if you've come up through a technology kind of background. At some point you mentally have to pivot and accept the fact that I am more of a generalized administrator and there's value in that.

Have we given them the right training? Do they feel supported and celebrated in the work they do? Do they feel safe? Do they feel like they can take reasonable risk in the work they do and learn from that and then not have retaliation based on those learnings that transpire? So I spend a lot of time you know, you can call it rounding. I have these CIO small group meetings every other week. Where I carve out, you know, 15, 20 folks and we just meet for an hour and it's just open forum. You know, how are you doing? What's on your mind? What concerns you? And so that's, I am in the people business and so week to week I'm focused on how can I best support all the people that are kind of in my sphere of influence, my department, colleagues across the system.

Bill Russell: One of the things I, I find interesting is just the breadth of things that you're required to speak into. Yeah.

Like, so, so you had your system-wide meeting yesterday. I would imagine you ended up, because technology touches all of those aspects. There's an awful lot that they're looking across the table going. Is Epic gonna do that or, yeah. Can we, you know, they're sort of looking over, sometimes they're looking over you for permission.

Like, do we have enough resources to do that? Sometimes they're looking over at you to say. Isn't there a better way to do this? I mean, yeah. Did you find that yesterday?

Reid Stephan: Yeah. And even our keynote speaker that they brought in an external gentleman like AI is just a theme in every industry and conversation now.

I kind of minded approach. And so not to worry about the machines taking over, but the reality of the machines letting us actually connect more deeply and effectively human to human. that's how we think about AI as well.

Bill Russell: You started me down a path. So I'm gonna give you pairs of things I would love to hear you comment on the tension between these two things and how you balance them.

So, innovation versus let's say reliability or stability?

Like it could be, but that's not, in my experience, innovation I've been involved in is doing things that maybe we've never done before. And that may seem relatively mundane or basic to others, but can be truly transformational in what they offer to your organization or to your system. So like I really value incremental innovation that kind of then builds foundational cornerstones that you can then start to layer and build even more layers onto,

Bill Russell: standardization versus personalization.

Reid Stephan: You know, it's funny 'cause standardization, there's such a visceral reaction to that phrase, but we wouldn't

Bill Russell: be able to function

Reid Stephan: without it. Yeah. I've been in meetings where it's like, well we can't use that word because then it gets equated to cookbook medicine. Or, you know, you're gonna prescribe how I work and not rely on my expertise or my intuition.

So it doesn't mean we don't have any variation, but we can't have it be

irrational like there has to be a method and an approach to it. And that's where I think standardization of personalization can really kind of fit together. Hand in glove,

Bill Russell: I'm interviewing you. You're not interviewing me, so I will uh,

Reid Stephan: gonna ask you a question though, because I told you before we kind of started, I want to kind of flip the tables 'cause this should be a conversation.

So how would you, that last one, the the other thing you bring is like, you talk to a lot of people so you can kind of synthesize a lot of different ideas and good thinking and bad thinking, and maybe surface insights that benefit our community. So how do you think about standardization and personalization?

On the Amazon AWS page, like you can give it a little bit more memory and that, but there's six builds. Like, and then away you go. They're like, well, you know, we can't get down to that. Well, they did. They got down to, yeah. Eight. It is like we didn't, we've never pushed them to think from a standardized process and it was costing us countless man hours.

It's like, well, as a patient, I sort of want you to follow the peer reviewed study. The protocols mm-hmm. That have, that have been put forward. I'd rather not have you go. Well, let's see. I think we should go down this path. But on the flip side, you're with me you're looking at my entire medical record.

You might say, Hey. You know, the, the current approach is this, but I'm looking at this, and this. This is the part where it is art. And you go, I think you're a little different case, and I think we're gonna look at this a little differently. So that's how

I,

Reid Stephan: I think it's, you know, that resonates with me as well.

And there's certainly, just from an IT ops perspective, there's things that you're absolutely right, like there is no option but to standardize. Then we just have to understand that along the way, and that's maybe the science part of it, but especially as you dive into like precision medicine, that is all about like personalization for Yes.

Bill Russell: Yeah.

Reid Stephan: I have another question for you because you sparked a thought. We have to talk about AI, that's like a moral imperative I think in our, it's a

Bill Russell: moral, it's a moral imperative on any show now.

Got it.

Reid Stephan: So in the last month, I saw two different headlines both from our current and a former Microsoft CEO. So Saki Nadella speaking on a podcast and he said that you know, quote, roughly AI hasn't delivered much yet. And I think meant to be provocative and he kind of shares like you think we need to see much more economic value before he feels like it's delivered value.

And then you have Bill Gates in the same month on a show, says that within a decade AI is going to replace teachers and doctors. So like those kind of extreme positions. And I granted, like I understand that. They're meant to be provocative, and maybe they don't believe those is a hundred percent either of those gentlemen, but they're trying to like ignite conversation.

Kind of verify or add credence to either of those statements.

Bill Russell: So can I do a Ried here and say they're both correct? Yes. Okay. They are both correct. I love it in that Saki Nadella is right in that people don't know how to use AI yet, and I'm finding that more and I'm teaching my team how to use AI.

Yeah. To give you an example, I have a 20 page document on my company. It has all the details about my company. I throw it into one of the ai, I just upload the PDF. And I say you are a McKinsey consultant. We are looking for ways to serve the community better, better or grow or whatever. I'm like, you start asking me questions to clarify things, and it'll ask me questions.

And it gave me a couple of things and I'm like, that's interesting 'cause we were thinking about that very first one. Let's explore that idea together. I have found people don't know how to interact with AI yet to get the most out of it. And my son works for one of the big consulting firms and I sort of joked with him.

I'm like, I have a McKinsey consultant available to me at all times. Like, I would never contract for your services again. And with deep research, I can literally get, yeah, very detailed specific stuff about our industry. So I don't think people are using it right yet. On the Bill Gates side, there's a couple things that have happened probably in the last six months.

We don't like the fact that we ask it the same questions three times. It gives us three different answers. But as we start giving it more specific knowledge about our space, it becomes more I don't know, it just becomes more. Deterministic is the word I'm gonna use. The other was Google talked yesterday or Monday I think about agent to agent.

I think eventually you will have an MND trained doc in probably just about every specialty. That will be an ai specific thing that will as the backend have the ability to access all sorts of stuff. That is, you know, is the peer reviewed research more stuff than any doctor who currently practices in the country has access to?

I, no, they have access to, but they just don't have in their head. That will happen in 10 years. Easily happen in 10 years. Where I'm gonna be talking to an AI MD. Or an AI oncologist and I might even be able to upload my my testing and that kinda stuff and it's gonna come back with very specific things I replace doctors is the wrong thing to say.

But augment doctors in a way that we can't even imagine today. Yeah, absolutely.

But AI it's being sold as magic so much now and this AI washing that's happening where it's more of a marketing exercise of, you know, saying, Hey, this is transformative AI. But really it's like. Really a basic rule-based logic kind of wrapped in a new ui and people are starting to call that out.

So I think that potentially is a threat then that AI, like the trust of it or the acceptance kind of arose because there's so much of the AI washing that's happening. I think we have to, in terms of adoption if it requires new training. It's going to be a barrier. I think the AI in the future, like should require no training, like it should

I mean, clinicians are not change resistant. I think we sometimes say that, and it's kind of a lazy response. We've thrown so much change

Bill Russell: at 'em. They've proven that they're not change resistance.

Reid Stephan: Yes. They're overwhelmed. They're drowning. So any added task, even a simple extra screen mouse click, it's the extra water that kind of breaks the dam.

So the AI of the future is going to have to really be out of the way, but doing the work it needs to do. Yeah. And require virtually no training.

Bill Russell: That's a really good point. Every model I show that has technology into the future. I always I try to put this line at the bottom that says, you know, that the technology will fade into the background.

In other words it's Star Trek, you know the computer? Yeah. well, star Trek, next generation, the computer actually crashes, but I don't remember in the original one that they had anything to that effect. And yeah, but they're just walking around the ship going Computer, yeah. Da.

And it is here's the phrase that you have to escape from, which is your EHR vendor announces they're sunsetting your platform in 18 months. Now I know you're on Epic, and I know every time I say something like this, people look at me like that'll never happen. Let's just assume it does.

Reid Stephan: I might monologue here for a bit because it's one, I'm glad you're kind of surfacing these questions because it's a real thing and maybe the Epic model or the epic example, people are like, oh, that'll never happen. Well, let's just look back maybe historically like folks that, you know, with the Broadcom acquisition and like just some of the pain then that happens when you kind of put all your eggs in one basket.

And it's not just that like the EHRs and we're an epic shop, but I think this is not unique to Epic. It's not that they're just hard to integrate with, but I think in many instances, like they're actively hostile to it. And so I've been telling my team lately like three things can be true at once.

Epic can be a phenomenal partner, which they are. They can produce and create what I think is the best EHR that exists in the world today. And I believe that's true. But they can also produce software that is in a lot of instances, just average, especially when it comes to the user experience in that design.

The strength of that partnership and that genuine desire they have to improve healthcare. I think sometimes we settle in for a good enough mindset when excellence is within reach. So for example if A CIO asks their internal like epic team analyst, like, Hey, let me see the roadmap and what that team gives them is the epic Verona roadmap.

That's a problem. Like, that's not strategy, that's vendor alignment. kind of dressed up as vision. And so I just we have a guiding principle that's not unique to us, which is epic first, and I get it. If Epic can do something or it's on their near term roadmap we wanna look there first.

However, and this gets to the point you're raising, like, what if 80% isn't good enough? Or what if the Epic solution technically checks all the boxes? But the user experience frustrates clinicians. It requires training or doesn't even really solve the problem you need to solve altogether. So we can't confuse integration with innovation, and I think sometimes we can allow functionality to be a substitute for usability.

So I think that to ward off the kind of doomsday scenario that you described. We can't wait for that mode. We can't wait for the EHR vendor to say, Hey, we're gonna sunset this, and then we're scrambling. Like today. I think as CIOs, as partners with Epic, we need to expect more and ask more of Epic.

But we have to, I think, kind of evolve the mindset of it's only gonna be epic, and we're gonna let them develop everything and just adopt it as they go. This next leap in digital health, like these next 10 years we're kind of talking about they're not gonna come from simply following a vendor. It's gonna come by leading with clarity about what our users of patients really need, and then partnering with our EHR, but then also what are the things that we buy or build to really drive that experience we want, and to get us in a position then where we're not locked in, so that if a vendor does either go away or just completely pivot their approach, we're kind of left holding the bag.

Reid Stephan: Yeah.

Bill Russell: And it is, and it

Reid Stephan: happened like so quick, and it wasn't like this, you know, boiling a frog on water price increase. It was like, you know, from zero degrees to, you know, 500 degrees Fahrenheit, like overnight.

Like there was and, and no real concern it seems like with what That Impact was to the customer.

Bill Russell: Yeah. If I had stood up in front of CFOs and said the word VMware, like a year ago, they would've been like I have no idea what you're talking about. Nor should they know what we're talking about. Yeah.

But then all of a sudden, every CFO in the country's talking about VMware, if you're a vendor, if you're a partner, that's not what you want. You don't want every CFO to have your name on their lips. That's just a bad situation. Yeah. Man, I had other escape room things.

But you took so long with that one. I don

We, we trust them we want to align with them or make sense, but maybe we've kind of. Have advocated some critical thinking and decision making along the way that we need to reassess.

Bill Russell: Yeah I've been in rooms with vendors and with partners who they'll have a gripe session about Epic and I'll essentially say that I'm like, you know, the problem you have is that every one of your clients will tell you they're the best partner I have.

I have a, B, FF. I know their roadmap. I know what they're doing. They actually tell me what they're good at and what they're not good at like they don't hide it. They're like, Hey, this is new. Like if you want to be on the cutting edge, great. But just, you know, and we all know that like the first year epic release is something, it's okay, but within three years.

Reid Stephan: Exactly. And that's my thing. And, and, And you know, my last few minutes of comments, none of that is like, epic is bad.

And no, they are a great partner. They've earned our trust. Trust should never mean complacency. And I think that's the moment we're in is like, huh, I wonder if we've become maybe a little too complacent because the partnership and the trust is so strong.

Bill Russell: Well, I'll get you to comment on my current article series, which is about actually doing in-house development.

So here's your escape room. Okay. Team of yours just came to you and said, look, I think we have a low-code, no-code way. Of developing something. I need to hire at least three people. It's gonna cost us roughly half a million dollars a year to do this, but I believe we could drive a million in savings a year out of rev cycle.

Reid Stephan: Yeah. You know it, it's funny, I think I've evolved. I think if you would've asked me that a year ago, I'd have been like, no way. 'cause then I developed something and then the SMEs that built it, like they retire, they go somewhere else.

Then I've got this legacy thing that I've gotta figure out how to support. But I think The gains from AI and some of the efficiencies there I think have opened that door up in a way that maybe we've closed before, but also just like thinking through, you know, if that happens, if you blow code something internally and then the talent that wrote it, like leaves and you don't have like, you know, good code documentation and then dunno how to support it.

But to your point, I think we have to be much more open to those areas where. It's gonna make more sense for us to build it because we can do it faster and cheaper than we could have a year ago. But then to your point, let's learn from maybe the scars of the past and let's futureproof it. Like let's make sure that, you know, if we design something, it's not single threaded with one or two SMEs that we're then be holding on.

Like if they then leave or come and say, Hey, you've gotta pay me more, or, I'm not gonna do this anymore. So I think you can de-risk that approach, but I think absolutely that needs to be one of the, one of the tools in your toolkit going forward.

Bill Russell: Yeah. One of the things I found interesting is you can now take this code that they've given you and they leave the company and you can just run it through AI and say, yeah.

But I know enough to be dangerous. Now with ai, I like, I could see the patterns and I go, man, that doesn't look right. But I throw it into AI and I say. what's wrong with this code? And it goes well, the patterns are all wrong and you're not, you know, you're not creating modules. You're not, anyway, yeah.

2 29 project. We focus a lot on the next generation training and whatnot. I'd love to hear a mentor story. So who has fundamentally changed your thinking as a mentor?

Reid Stephan: Well, I'm not gonna give you the satisfaction and say, bill Russell. No. Nor should you.

You've been a great mentor for me. it's, it's been fun these last kind of five years. Like historically, my approach was to go to a big event and kind of fill the name, what that big event is. And we, you know, you sit in rows and you kind of absorb information and you were, someone I was with said, you know, we are inspired in rows but we're transformed in circles.

And so what I've found really valuable is meaningful connection in smaller settings, like smaller events in your 2, 2 9 project is a great example of that kind of smaller event. Where you connect more authentically with people, you sit in circles sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally. And you get to know, you know, people outside of just their title.

I've

Bill Russell: witnessed the two of you going back and forth on a topic and I thought, man, that was. I wish I could have just turned on the recorder as you guys were going back and forth. It was, no, it was really good. It was really pragmatic.

He's really smart, which is,

Reid Stephan: yeah, and he's just, you know, we're wired the same way in, in some regards, but you know, he has different background than I do, and so it's just, it's. A couple things. Like there's times when I'll just, you know, text him, call him, send him an email with something that I'm thinking about or just like clearly struggling with, just to get perspective.

Sometimes it's cathartic reassurance, like comparative suffering is a real value proposition in this. But also sometimes I find I'll just, I've been with him enough now, like I'll be in a meeting and something will happen. I'll kind of feel myself reacting internally in a certain way and I'll be like, wait a minute, like.

So that's been just a real value in my life professionally and personally. And that's just one of many. But just the intentional connection with other colleagues, getting to know them, spending time together in smaller, intimate settings. I would recommend that to anybody. It's gonna make you better and it's gonna make your team better, and it's going to benefit the system or the hospital where you work.

Bill Russell: All right. I'm just gonna give you, this is gonna be rapid fire. Yep. As we go just real quick. Fast pace. Fast pace. I'm gonna name some emerging technologies and loved your unfiltered thoughts on this quantum computing.

Reid Stephan: Interesting. I've got smart people who I am saying I, you know, keep me informed of when this needs to be something that is a topic that I need to be prepared to talk to the board about.

Bill Russell: It's out there a little bit. Yep. Ambient clinical intelligence,

Reid Stephan: Game changer. You know, the AI if assist the AI scribe I think it's now reached the point of commodity.

If you talk about the intelligence of platform, the a coding aware kind of solution I think the utility from that, the return on investment is truly transformational.

Bill Russell: Health data exchange and maybe not an innovative whatever. I'm just curious. Quick thought on, on, on health data exchanges.

Reid Stephan: Misunderstood. So in our state, I've had leaders in our system say like, why do we still support the Idaho Health Data Exchange? Because we're on Epic St. Al's, which is the Trinity Shop, they're on Epic. You know, we've got community Connect, we've got other ways to exchange information, but the reality is that it's still.

Bill Russell: RPA,

Reid Stephan: Disrupted. I think that, you know, with the, what's already happened and then over the next year the things OpenAI is hinting at.

I think the vendors in that space, whether it's a UiPath or et cetera, whoever they're gonna have to really kind of reimagine what their value proposition is because I think you're gonna be able to do what you today maybe need a tool to do. You're not gonna need that tool in the future. You're on your own.

Bill Russell: I think the last question for me, and if you have another question for me, feel free to throw it out, but Yeah. I'm curious, Boise, Idaho. You've now interacted with a lot of different health systems. Are there things you hear that you go, you know what, our community's different.

We're gonna do that differently than say you would in an, in another area of the country.

Bill Russell: Yeah, I was kind of surprised you guys didn't go to the top of Idaho and then somebody said, oh, you realize there's a mountain range? I'm like, no, I, I didn't realize there's a mountain range. Like I was, how would I look at a map and see that mountain?

Reid Stephan: Uh, Yeah. It's like people say Idaho is actually like, it feels like three different states because you got North Idaho.

Little panhandle and they feel connected more to Washington. And maybe like Olympia, obviously Boise, Southwest, central Idaho is there, and then eastern Idaho, like they feel more connected I think, in some regards to Salt Lake. And so it's really interesting, like we're the southwest central Idaho thing.

Like, I'm not managing locations and staff across multiple states or across the entire country. So I think that makes it different in some ways, a little cleaner and easier.

Bill Russell: Is every one of your hospitals driving distance from where you're sitting?

Reid Stephan: Yeah. I could get in my car right now within two hours be either to our farthest east, farthest west, or farthest north location.

Bill Russell: Wow. Yeah. That's a little different. I had to fly from southern California to West Texas. Yeah. And if you wanna talk about different cultures.

Reid Stephan: Yeah. And it slowly changed our approach to like, you know, we just did a return to office approach as well and just kind of our mindset around that.

Is gonna be very different than a system that's spread across the country. Just different

Bill Russell: in the pandemic. Did you end up hiring across the country?

Reid Stephan: We have some Idaho and Oregon during that time where the only states that we get, we could hire into without exceptions. And for the most part, we have kept.

Like when you're receiving care, living in the area that you're actually working for, it makes a difference. Where if you're, you know, living in back east somewhere, working for St. Luke's in Idaho, the things happening here aren't gonna resonate or connect like they would if you're living here.

Bill Russell: That's great.

By the way I told you about the post, you know, your EHR vendor announces their sun setting. Yeah. My post on LinkedIn, it's 45 minutes old, cracks me up. West Wright has this to say, update my resume and let Judy know that I'm in play.

Like I was reading a couple of his comments and then one of his posts, and I thought, that's a really, he has a very good take on AI and a very practical take on ai. Yes.

Reid Stephan: Thought.

Bill Russell: Yeah, totally.

Reid Stephan: And that's what sparked my thought. And his thinking is maybe different than my kind of resting state thinking, and that to me is always a, so I'm like, okay.

That's what I want. Like, I don't wanna just talk to people that think the way I do because there's no, like, I'm probably wrong. So I'm just like doubling down on then maybe the wrong idea. And so he has, he'll post thoughts and I'm like, huh, I dunno if I'd see it that way. Like he did one last week where he referenced a kind of analysis of ambient listening and kind of the takeaway was like, yeah, really hasn't really provided much value.

Bill Russell: yeah, it's gonna be, might wanna ask them which ambient tools they're using and how they're integrated.

or maybe if you don't ask 'em, I'll ask them in in July when I talk to 'em.

Reid Stephan: Well, it's a good point because I, you know, as I talk to colleagues and who use different ambient vendors, the ones that are just doing the AI note scribing. I would agree. Then it's like, okay, it's not giving us back all this time that maybe we thought and there's really no ROI there and the vendor that we're using, like that's, it's giving us the time back.

But the ROI is there because the, it's coding aware kind of built in from the ground up and that's been the game changer.

Bill Russell: Yeah. Ried thank you again for your time. Appreciate you. And I look forward to the response why I decided to do a very different type of interview with you, so if people have comments, love to hear 'em.

Reid Stephan: Bill, anytime you wanna relocate to Boise, Idaho, like that would probably push it over and make it the number one, like across the board. That's probably the back and forth right now is just the Bill Russell effect. Yeah. So you are more than welcome.

As, as my, As my kids like to say, Bill's a celebrity amongst a very small group of people. I'm like, yeah, that's right. All right. Thanks Ried. Thanks

Reid Stephan: Bill.

Bill Russell: Thanks for listening to this week's keynote. If you found value, share it with a peer. It's a great chance to discuss and in some cases start a mentoring relationship. One way you can support the show is to subscribe and leave us a rating. it if you could do that. Thanks for listening. That's all for now..