There’s no shortage of challenges in healthcare. And while they certainly range from one organization to the next, there is a common denominator.
“The cost of healthcare has to be better managed,” said Eric Smith, Chief Digital Officer at Memorial Hermann Health System. “The numbers are staggering.” Like any organization, they’re engaged in a number of initiatives to help “get a handle on that and try to reduce the cost of care.”
One of those measures, interestingly, has been the migration to Epic’s EHR and revenue cycle systems. Although it came with a hefty price tag upfront, he believes it can “definitely help us with managing our costs over time” and provide “better insight into overall patient health and wellness.”
Eric Smith
During a Keynote interview with Sarah Richardson, Smith shared more about the strategy his team utilized to transition to Epic – and the results they’ve seen so far, while also discussing AI’s critical role in supporting value-based care, and the need for a strong AI governance program.
Given the enormous lift required to implement Epic across 17 hospitals and more than 250 care delivery sites, Memorial Hermann opted for a two-phased approach. The core medical practices went live in May 2024, and the hospitals, imaging centers, and clinics kicked off in October. The optimizations, however, are just beginning.
“This touches all aspects of patient care – all of our employees, physicians, and affiliated providers,” Smith noted. “With any change of this magnitude, there are still some workflows we’re holistically getting used to across the board.”
To that end, his team has been “very prescriptive in the way we outlined our training,” taking a bold stance of “no training, no access,” he said. “That may sound harsh, but we wanted to make sure everybody had a baseline.” From there, they tracked users’ progress to ensure that training programs were hitting the necessary marks.
Another core component of education is at-the-elbow support, for which employed physicians partnered with specialists to offer guidance on the new system and provide answers to their questions. The goal, according to Smith, is to “make sure we have the right people in the right place, and watch our metrics to identify hot spots” and assign resources appropriately.
Of course, there’s another significant population that’s transitioning to a new platform: the patients. And so, his team stationed digital ambassadors within the facilities to help patients understand how to download and utilize the app. To date, Memorial Hermann has seen more than 200,000 downloads.
And while that’s significant, what’s even more promising is the positive feedback it has garnered. “It’s one thing to download the application and activate the account,” he said. “But it’s more important and it’s more telling when they’re actually engaging.” They are, according to the data, which find that patients are continually logging in and using features such as check-in and self-scheduling.
As a result, “they feel like they have a lot more information about their care,” Smith added. “We’ve made it easier for patients to engage with Memorial Hermann as a system, and with their providers.”
Moving toward an integrated system has also positioned the organization for its Road to Value strategy, which is focused on delivering high-quality care, reducing admissions, and more effectively managing chronic conditions. Artificial intelligence, according to Smith, plays a critical hand in that, particularly in terms of improving patient experience. “AI has the capacity, through different delivery mechanisms, whether it’s messaging, chatbots or voicebots, to maintain a higher level of touch and engagement.”
That capacity extends to redesigning clinical care, which has been a major area of focus across Memorial Hermann. “It’s the ability to use AI in a way that allows us to support care delivery – not by replacing what nurses and physicians do, but by acting as a companion for them.” Using tools like ChatGPT and advanced monitoring, providers can comb through data and produce a “quick summary on the fly,” Smith said. That way, “it feels like a more informed, but also a more personalized experience. There’s a huge opportunity there.”
Not just for higher satisfaction among patients, which is important, but also for physicians and nurses, who can leverage AI to help with administrative tasks – and consequently, enable them to operate at the top of their license. “If you talk to our nursing and physician staff, they’re pushing us and welcoming these capabilities, because they’re frustrated about the time they have to spend on basic follow-ups that can be done with digital tools,” he noted.
In order to do any of this effectively, however, leaders must have a strong AI governance strategy, Smith said. What also helps is a willingness to reach out to other organizations and learn from their experiences. One lesson learned? The importance of establishing a governance council that outlined processes and procedures for AI usage.
From there, the team created specialty work groups focused on clinical, consumer experience, and operations, each of which was assigned subject matter experts and paired with legal and privacy experts to “review different capabilities we might want to bring into the organization or pilot,” Smith said. In that way, “they essentially own the responsibility and the way that technology or AI will be used across the system, but they also act as advocates.”
Part of the work groups’ responsibility is to sift through the myriad announcements related to AI and identify those that warrant further research. “They’re able to determine which ones look valuable and bring those forward,” he noted. As a result, his team can focus on the core set of problems they’re looking to solve, and where AI might play a key role.
“That’s been our North star,” Smith said. “And along with that, making sure we demonstrate the ROI for this, because there are costs associated with these capabilities. Are we seeing a lift in efficiency? Are we able to scale with these tools? That’s the approach we’ve taken.”
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