Beacon Health Pursues Innovation Through New EHR Platform

Stacey Johnston, the health system’s Chief Information and Digital Execution Officer, says new AI projects still need to prove financial value first.

For Stacey Johnston, finding the right AI tools to fit into the Beacon Health portfolio isn’t about chasing the newest innovation, it’s about playing the long game. Much like a chess match, a solution that delivers value today for a specific use case may eventually give way to something more powerful as the organization’s digital strategy evolves.

That deliberate mindset shapes how Beacon Health evaluates and deploys emerging technologies, particularly AI.

“We’re not implementing technology for technology’s sake, and the same thing holds true for AI: Don’t implement AI for AI’s sake,” she says. We want solutions that work and to be on the cutting edge with our EHR, Johnston told us.

Johnston, MD, MHA, CHCIO, has been Beacon Health’s Chief Information and Digital Execution Officer since October 2024. Prior to that, she was at Jacksonville-based Baptist Health, where she served as CMIO, then VP and Epic Program Executive, then Chief Applications Officer.

New Location, New Platform

Now, moving from Florida to Indiana is one thing, but moving from an Epic platform to an Oracle platform is something else. Johnston says she was up to the challenge, especially as Beacon Health was “doubling down” on its partnership and becoming one of the first health systems in the country to sign on for Oracle’s new EHR.

“Beacon has been great at the blocking and tackling of the technology, the infrastructure, the security,” she says. “All those were great, but what they really needed was the vision of where do we go from here and how do you become a digital first organization?”

Johnston says the new EHR platform will be phased in slowly at Beacon Health through the year, with the health system beta-testing certain AI tools. At the same time, she says, the health system is looking elsewhere for AI tools that might not be in the Oracle toolbox just yet, and taking advantage of Oracle’s open platform to integrate.

Stacey Johnston, MD, MHA, CHCIO, Chief Information and Digital Execution Officer at Beacon Health. Photo courtesy Beacon Health.

“I think we’re doing pockets of greatness,” she points out. “We’re doing some really great things in the digital front door space and using AI.”

But each new tool has to have a solid ROI. Anything outside the Oracle toolbox comes with licensing fees that have to be figured into the equation.

“You have to prove ROI with everything now,” she says, and that still means first defining financial value.

“If it has a provable ROI, then we will implement it and monitor for a year with the idea that if it's not then actually proving that it's giving us the ROI that we anticipate, either through reduced resources needed or through increased revenue, then we will look at our adoption rates,” she says. “Is it because we're not fully adopting it? Is it because we need additional training, additional workflows, or is it truly just not being used and it's not meeting our needs? Do we turn it off?”

Sometimes that answer is yes.

“You have to be very deliberate with these AI agents [and] turn them off when you no longer need them,” she says.

Still A Financial Game

Johnston says she has a “push-pull” relationship with the CFO on AI projects, and that’s because AI has to first prove itself financially, either by boosting revenues or reducing resource needs. She brought on board a Director of AI and Transformational Technologies to help with planning, and the health system has an AI governance council to oversee monitoring and guidelines. Still, very few projects will forward at this point if the cost outweighs the projected ROI.

That includes ambient AI. Johnston says clinicians using ambient AI capture on average $10,000 more per year, through better documentation (they’ve cut the time spent in the EHR from seven minutes to less than three minutes) and charge capture. This bolsters the value that AI has shown in reducing stress and burnout.

Beyond AI, Johnston says the biggest challenge she’s faced in introducing new technology is standardization. It’s an issue every health system faces, as clinicians often have their own way of doing things that they cling to because it works for them. Adding something that changes their workflows has to come with a good dose of change management.

“You need to explain the changes, move the needle forward a little bit and build trust with clinicians,” she says. That includes making sure that clinicians from all 10 hospitals in the health system are part of that process, so that no one feels sidelined.

Johnston says she also wants to go one step further than Beacon Health’s “One Beacon One Record” approach, which focuses on establishing one medical record for every patient. That approach should also work for workflows.

 “A patient should be able to go to any clinic and receive the same type of care through the electronic interface,” she says.