An evolving healthcare landscape means the CIO's role is changing. A new HealthLeaders Exchange will take a look at this new hierarchy, where collaboration is the key.
The healthcare C-Suite is evolving, and no position better encapsulates these changes than the CIO. Once considered solely a technology-based role, focusing on EMR adoption and integration, the CIO – be it the chief information or innovation officer (or both) – is assuming more strategic and management duties as the industry embraces new concepts like digital health and transformation.
"Because of those disruptions and because of that focus, now you're a force-multiplier," Aaron Miri, MBA, FCHIME, CHCIO, Baptist Health Jacksonville's EVP and Chief Digital & Information Officer, said during a CHIME CIO panel at VIVE 25 this past spring in Nashville. "It changed the lexicon of CIOs to be talking more like a CFO, or a COO, or a Chief Human Resources Officer."
"I spend part of my day looking at recruitment, part of my day looking at P&L [profit and loss], part of my day looking at futuristic digital transformations and what we can do [to be] disruptive, as well as strategically, where are we going as a health system," he added.
Indeed, while the EMR/EHR still occupies a large chunk of C-Suite time and effort, the onset of new technologies like digital health, virtual care and AI
In a 2024 study supported by surveys of 51 executives from 33 health systems, the National Institutes of Health summarized the newly evolving CIO as having three roles:
Enabling strategic change and transformation;
Developing technology and leadership talent; and
Driving organizational culture.
"As healthcare continues to evolve, the role of the CIO is expected to expand further, requiring a blend of technical and strategic business skills," the article, written by researchers at the Georgetown University Department of Health Management Policy and the University of Alabama at Birmingham', concluded. "This evolution presents opportunities for health systems to enhance their leadership development programs, preparing leaders for the complexities of the contemporary health system sector."
In addition, healthcare leadership is not only redefining the CIO but in some cases reorganizing the C-Suite, either due to budget concerns or the changing face of healthcare transformation. Chief strategy and partnership officers are helping to address disruptors and extend the healthcare organization's traditional footprint, while chief digital health and transformation officers are handling the growing integration of technology in patient care, especially as healthcare moves out of the hospital and into the home. Some organizations are even carving out a leadership role for AI development and management, with the idea that this technology requires full-time stewardship.
At the VIVE panel, Tessa Springman, SVP and chief information / digital health officer at LifeBridge Health, noted she's become more of an educator and facilitator.
"I am the person who is the glue in the organization," she said. "I am constantly educating my peers on what their peers are doing."
"I spend most of my day thinking about, OK, how am I going to improve this business function, how are we going to partner to make this improvement, and will technology help that particular function or not?" she added.
The gist of this evolution is that the CIO is being called upon to work more closely with others in the executive chain, particularly as new programs and strategies require input from a wide variety of sources, including the CFO, the CMO, the CNO, and even the CEO. The top job description of the future may well be "works well with others."
To address this shifting role, HealthLeaders is launching a new Exchange aimed at bringing together top CIOs, chief digital health officers, chief transformation officers and others to network and discuss how technology strategy is changing their roles.
This week’s The Winning Edge panel set the stage for AI in clinical support, from compiling a better patient record to identifying the care gaps in population health.
Clinical care is the next big thing for AI integration, and healthcare leaders have a lot of ideas about how the technology can be used.
In this week’s The Winning Edge, sponsored by Lightbeam Health Solutions, Michael Wells, president of OSF HealthCare’s Saint Francis Medical Center in Illinois, and Ishani Ved, MHA, CPHQ, FHELA, director of transformational population health and outcomes for Saint Peter’s Healthcare System in New Jersey, explained how AI is slowly and carefully being used to help with care management.
Ved noted the benefits to population health, particularly in gathering and assessing data from disparate and siloed sources to understand the social determinants of health that are keeping underserved populations from accessing the care they need. And Wells pointed to the possibilities in improving inpatient care, from capturing conversations in the hospital room to improving the patient’s medical record, even monitoring patients when no one else is in the room.
Both said the key to using AI in clinical care is ensuring that the data used in AI programs is up to date and reliable, and that means good governance and continuous monitoring. It also means making the entire process transparent, and helping doctors and nurses understand how AI will improve their workflows and give them more time to spend with their patients.
As Danielle Bergman, MSN, APRN, FNP-BC, AVP of clinical development at Lightbeam Health, noted, AI has the opportunity to take a lot of time-consuming and administrative tasks off the provider’s “mental bandwidth” and help them focus on patient care.
Here’s the YouTube presentation of Tuesday’s webinar.
This week’s Winning Edge webinar focused on the benefits and challenges of adding AI to clinical care pathways
After seeing success with AI in back-end operations and the revenue cycle, healthcare executives are eager to see how the technology can benefit clinical care.
But as the executives in this week’s The Winning Edge webinar, sponsored by Lightbeam Health Solutions, pointed out, there are a lot more checks and balances in play when patient care is affected. The data used in these programs has to be reliable and up-to-date, requiring strong governance and continuous monitoring. And both providers and patients have to confident that AI is being used to make things easier.
That said, Michael Wells, president of OSF Healthcare’s Saint Francis Medical Center; Ishani Ved, MHA, CPHQ, FHELA, director of transformational population health outcomes at Saint Peter’s Healthcare System; and Danielle Bergman, MSN, APRN, FNP-BC, AVP of clinical development at Lightbeam Health noted, there are key pain points in clinical care – both inside and outside the hospital – that AI can address.
Here are three ideas. Also read today’s wrap-up in HealthLeaders and check back tomorrow for the YouTube video of Tuesday’s webinar.
Drowning in data? Healthcare teams use AI to turn information into impact.
AI is moving into the healthcare management at a rapid pace, as healthcare executives look for ways to apply the technology to care pathways both inside and outside the hospital room.
In this week’s The Winning Edge webinar, sponsored by Lightbeam Health Solutions, executives from Saint Peter’s Healthcare System in New Jersey and OSF HealthCare in Illinois discussed how they’re using AI to improve care delivery. This includes:
Using the technology to draw from disparate and often siloed data sources and create a complete patient care record for nurses and doctors, giving them ideas on future treatments and improving handoffs to other care team members;
Using ambient technology to record conversations between patients and their care team in the hospital room, sifting through the details to enter relevant data into the EMR; and
Integrating AI with video technology to monitor patients, especially when no one else is in the room, reducing patient falls and alerting care team members if someone shows signs of physical or mental distress.
Michael Wells, president of OSF HealthCare’s Saint Francis Medical Center, says the technology, while still in its earlier stages in clinical care, offers opportunities for care teams to gather and process large amounts of data more quickly, helping to fine-tune nursing workflows and improve bedside care.
Ishani Ved, MHA, CPHQ, FHELA, director of transformational population health and outcomes at New Jersey-based Saint Peter’s, sees the benefits from a population health angle. AI, she says, can address care gaps caused by social determinants of health, giving providers insights into barriers and offering recommendations on care pathways.
For example, she says, AI might better identify patients who have transportation problems and need help getting to and from the hospital or doctor’s office. Or the technology could identify environmental hazards for patients with chronic conditions, such as air quality concerns for those with asthma or COPD, and help clinicians devise care plans that can address those hazards.
The key, both executives said, is in integrating the technology with current workflows and giving clinicians the support and education they need to use AI. That might mean pointing out to reluctant doctors and nurses how AI gives them important data and insights at the point of care, or, as Wells pointed out, sometimes reining in over-enthusiastic clinicians who have seen how AI works and want to move more quickly than standards or guidelines dictate.
As Danielle Bergman, MSN, APRN, FNP-BC, AVP of clinical development at Lightbeam Health Solutions, noted, AI has the potential to “offload mental bandwidth” for clinicians, allowing them to prioritize their time, giving them the tools to know what actions to take, enabling them to see which patients need more attention sooner, and identifying at-risk populations and events.
Transparency, Reliability, And That Ever-Elusive ROI
In care management, AI tools are only as good as the data they use. And that means making sure governance and continuous monitoring have high priority.
For Ved, that means making sure AI tools are kept up to date with the latest data, so that the insights they provide accurately reflect the populations they’re addressing. Health system and hospital leaders not only need to check the data (or, if working with a vendor, meet often to discuss data quality) but ensure that both patients and clinicians see that transparency.
Both Ved and Wells noted that as AI integrates into clinical care, the idea that the technology must produce a financial return on investment will grow fuzzy. That’s because benefits like improved clinical outcomes, better workflows and reduced provider stress and burnout don’t always show clear monetary results. And that’s where the industry’s move towards value-based care will help develop new definitions of ROI.
Ved points out that population health isn’t always about profit but more about outcomes – it won’t make money for hospitals, but it will save money in reduced expenses, from better healthcare management that reduces adverse health events like ED visits and hospital stays, to more proactive care that curbs chronic and preventable health concerns.
Wells says AI improves efficiency, which has clear financial benefits when a health system or hospital can reduce hospital stays, opening up beds for more patients in need of care and enabling more timely procedures and surgeries. At the same time is frees up clinicians to be better caregivers, reducing the stress around repetitive administrative tasks and helping executives manage their workforce.
Both see AI developing into a clinical decision support tool, not only giving clinicians the date they need for helping to point them in the right direction on treatment. As well, it will give consumers the insight they need to live healthier lives, empowering them to make better decisions and to have more valuable interactions with their doctors and nurses.
AI is being developed in the inpatient space to improve clinical care. Here's what you need to know.
Many of the early wins for AI in healthcare have come in administrative tasks, where the technology can gather and assess large amounts of data faster and more efficiently than humans. Now that the technology has evolved, clinical leadership is turning its focus to care management.
Ai offers a number of opportunities to improve clinical care, from tracking conversations and compiling transcripts to developing care summaries, facilitating handoffs and even coordinating patient outreach and communications.
This week’s HealthLeaders Winning Edge panel, sponsored by Lightbeam Health Solutions, will explore how health systems and hospitals are developing AI to handle those tasks, giving clinicians better, more complete patient histories and more time to spend with them, rather than on a computer. The panel will also discuss the challenges to using AI in the clinical space, including securing clinician support, educating clinicians on how to use these tools and facilitating workflow changes.
This week’s panel consists of Michael Wells, president of OSF Healthcare’s Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, Illinois; Ishani Ved, MHA, CPHQ, FHELA, director of transformational population health and outcomes for Saint Peter’s Healthcare System in New Jersey; and Danielle Bergman, MSN, APRN, FNP-BC, AVP of clinical development for Lightbeam Health Solutions.
Tune in Tuesday at 1 p.m. ET to learn how AI is helping leading health systems and hospitals improve their care management strategies.
Virginia Mason Franciscan Health, part of the CommonSpirit Health network, is eliminating 116 jobs and revising its virtual care strategy following passage of the Washington state budget, which officials estimate will cost the hospital $30 million annually.
A Washington health system is cutting 116 employees, many of them in virtual care services, to remain “financially sustainable.”
Virginia Mason Franciscan Health, a Seattle-based, 1,500-bed health system affiliated with CommonSpirit Health, announced the job cuts, which will affect some 200 people in total and close an office in Tacoma, on Thursday. In a letter to the public, officials said the hospital is “realigning resources and improving operational efficiency.”
Officials cited “significant financial pressures” for the realignment, in particular a new Washington state budget that would add new taxes and reduce reimbursements for care provided to state and school employees. Officials said the changes are expected to cost the health system an additional $30 million a year.
“To protect access to care long term, we are realigning resources and improving operational efficiency,” the letter reads. “This includes transitioning several virtual services and administrative functions, which will impact approximately 200 team members. Affected employees have been notified and are receiving personalized support, including placement assistance and access to open roles within our organization.”
The impact of the 2025-27 budget, which was approved in April, is being felt by hospitals across Washington. It includes, among other things, $100 million in cuts per year to hospital payment rates in public and school employee healthcare contracts, a 1% reduction in Medicaid managed care organization contracts, and the elimination of several post-acute and long-term care programs.
On top of state cuts, health systems and hospitals are eyeing potential federal cuts to Medicare, as well as the September 30 expiration of several pandemic-era waivers that expanded the scope and coverage of telehealth services that receive Medicare reimbursement.
Telehealth advocates have warned that hospitals would curtail or even cancel virtual care programs and strategies if those waivers were not extended or made permanent.
The Nashville-based health system’s new chief digital & transformation officer says it’s her goal to create lasting relationships between the health system and its patients. And that begins with helping providers.
Ask Anika Gardenhire about transformation, and she’ll bring up a concept that has only recently entered the healthcare lexicon: The idea of stickiness.
“[My] priorities are really building experiences for all of our different [patients] and making those experiences extremely sticky,” says Gardenhire, RN, CHCIO, Ardent Health’s new chief digital & transformation officer. And her goal, she says, is to “be able to have the type of trusted relationship across the [patient’s journey].”
That idea of stickiness, of enticing a consumer to continue to visit Ardent Health and develop loyalty to the Nashville-based 30-hospital for-profit network, is quickly becoming a catchphrase for many healthcare organizations these days. No longer can a hospital sit back and wait for patients for waltz through the front door; hospital leaders need to be proactive, reaching out to people and meeting them where they need or want their care, creating a sense of partnership.
It's not an easy path to follow at a time when healthcare services can be accessed via telehealth networks, or by visiting retail health centers, or even ordered through Amazon, but that’s the nature of consumer-focused care. And health systems and hospitals are finding they have to embrace new ideas like stickiness to create the relationships they need to survive.
Gardenhire, who became Ardent Health’s first chief digital and information officer in 2023, had “information” replaced with “transformation” in her title this past March. The title change reflects a shift in the healthcare narrative toward value-based care, along with the idea that the industry needs to transform itself to meet consumer preferences.
That means, she says, making a connection with the consumer.
“I don’t think there will be a time where a mom looks through the legs and sees a robot delivering the baby,” she says. “That’s always a very human experience. But how do you surround the obstetrician with the right data and the right tools and the removal of tasks that don’t require the very unique art of building a human-to-human connection? Get all of those things out of the way of that connection happening.”
Anika Gardenhire, chief digital & transformation officer at Ardent Health. Photo courtesy Ardent Health.
That’s where the “digital” part of her title comes in. Gardenhire, who spent time as the AVP of digital transformation at Intermountain Healthcare and chief digital officer and chief customer experience officer at Centene before coming to Ardent Health, sees digital health technology as the framework around which the healthcare experience is created. That means giving both patient and provider the technology they need to make the encounter better, from online scheduling to remote monitoring to AI tools that reduce administrative tasks on both ends and smooth out clinical care.
This doesn’t mean using any and all technology at one’s disposal. Gardenhire says Ardent Health’s technology strategy has to be very purposeful and directed.
“If we want healthcare to be a very human experience, then you probably can’t put a lot of shiny baubles between the human connection,” she says. “You need to be thinking very intentionally about how you put technology in the background and … promote human connection.”
For example, Gardenhire says she’s fascinated by what she calls “calm technologies.” They’re the tools that sit in the background, quietly gathering and assessing data (such as the doctor-patient conversation) and enriching care management without standing between the doctor and patient or disrupting the experience.
She also feels that innovation and transformation should have a destination, rather than being a continuous, even incremental, process.
“Sometimes we can get into a place where we’re trickling in transformation and nobody actually knows when to click into it,” she says. “I think that’s really dangerous, especially in our clinical spaces. [We need to] be very clear about this transformation. This is the ‘from’ and the ‘to,’ and we won’t be ‘ing’ing forever.”
In other words, tell your clinicians what you’re doing, and give them ownership over the transformation process.
“At the end of the day it has to be clinician-led transformation,” she says.
Gardenhire sees a lot of opportunities for healthcare innovation, from the supply chain to the hospital room of tomorrow. She anticipates more clinical uses for consumer tech, especially is the industry develops smaller, lighter and more nimble tools that can reliable and securely capture data. And as telehealth and virtual care gather momentum, the idea of transporting a patient from one hospital to another will become as quaint as the rotary phone.
In fact, Gardenhire sees the home as the next big care site, enhanced with technology that can gather daily information, capture social determinants of health, interact with users and connect with care providers.
There will come a time, she says, “when you can actually see that person at home, surrounded by the things they need to care for them and [for them to] manage their chronic diseases, but which allows them to still move through their house and walk their dog down the street, all while they’re monitoring themselves. Or [you’ll have technology] that allows a child with asthma to be monitored during the night and not have to wake up because we can raise the humidity in the room or release a nebulizer without sleep being disrupted.”
“When you imagine all of those things coming together that we’ve built out – not only the applications and not only the cool technology but also the infrastructure,” she concludes. “I think it’s a really awesome time to be in this space.”
A new survey finds that home health agencies are abandoning virtual care due to complexity and a lack of reimbursement. This could hinder efforts by healthcare leaders to extend more hospital services into the home.
Home health agencies embraced telehealth during the COVID pandemic to support patient care, but a growing number are giving up on virtual care, saying it’s too complicated for their patients and unsustainable.
That’s the key takeaway from a study commissioned by the National Institute on Aging and conducted by the University of California, Irvine, and several other universities. Conducted between 2023 and 2024 of roughly 260 home health agencies, it places blame for the drop-off on a lack of Medicare reimbursement, and raises questions about whether home-based care programs can support telehealth at a time when health systems and hospitals are moving more services to the home.
“Our findings suggest that without [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] reimbursement, many agencies may abandon telehealth, potentially missing opportunities to improve care and manage costs as home health demand skyrockets,” Dana Mukamel, a UC Irvine Distinguished Professor of Medicine and corresponding author for the study, said in a press release.
According to the study, published online in Health Services Research, telehealth adoption among home health agencies stood at roughly 23% in 2019, then surged to 65% in 2021, during the height of the pandemic. By 2024, however, 19% of those organizations had opted to discontinue virtual care, due to a lack of Medicare reimbursement and concerns about sustainability.
On a side note, one-third of all the home health agencies responding to the survey haven’t embraced telehealth at all, saying it’s inappropriate for their hands-on model of care. The study was tilted toward organizations that focus on elderly patients, especially those dealing with dementia-related health concerns.
“These patterns suggest that COVID-19 disrupted telehealth’s natural diffusion into home healthcare, which was gaining traction pre-pandemic,” the press release points out. “The study posits that without the pandemic, telehealth might have continued spreading as agencies recognized its benefits. However, the lack of reimbursement and perceptions of telehealth’s limitations for older adults pose barriers to sustained use.”
The study raises two important points.
First, many surveys have shown a decline in telehealth adoption after the pandemic, the inevitable result of patients wanting to get back in front of their doctors after relying almost exclusively on video visits. Telehealth advocates say this pendulum effect should wear off as both providers and patients understand the value of virtual visits and work toward a hybrid strategy that mixes in-person care and telehealth.
The monkey wrench in the works here is reimbursement. Federal and state lawmakers enacted a number of waivers during the pandemic to ease restrictions on telehealth use and boost coverage. While some states have moved to make pandemic-era conditions permanent, the federal waivers are set to end this fall. Many advocates fear that without those waivers, particularly those having to do with Medicare reimbursement, healthcare organizations will scale back their telehealth programs.
Second, there’s the pesky little fact that America’s population is aging, with a large chunk set to hit retirement age soon, and they’re healthier than their predecessors and looking to stay at home and out of the nursing home or assisted living center. The healthcare industry isn’t ready to handle that extra workload – it’s already struggling with workforce shortages and questionable costs. Telehealth offers a channel for providing care to this population while reducing the stress on providers.
While aligning federal policy to improve telehealth reimbursement is a critical piece to telehealth strategy moving forward, the home healthcare industry also needs to rally around virtual care tools and platforms that are effective and intuitive. With health systems and hospitals looking to extend their services into the home, through remote patient monitoring, Hospital at Home and other strategies, they’ll need support from the home health industry to make those services effective and sustainable.
The New Jersey health system is rolling out two new vehicles this summer as part of its Eat Well program, which connects patients to nutritious food and other resources.
The Food is Medicine movement suggests that people who eat nutritious meals will see better health outcomes, and that proper nutrition should be a part of the care plan. The challenge for healthcare innovators lies in connecting patients to the foods they should be buying and preparing.
Virtua Health has been addressing that issue since 2017 with its Eat Well program, which began with a mobile farmer's market and two brick-and-mortar 'Food Farmacies,' where patients could get food 'prescribed' by their primary care providers and access resources on nutrition.
More recently, the New Jersey-based health system has gone mobile, bringing food to those who can't easily get to the market or grocery store.
This past April, Virtua Health unveiled a new Eat Well Mobile Grocery Store, a 40-foot vehicle that visits neighborhoods where food insecurity is an issue. And the health system will soon be adding the Eat Well Mobile Food Farmacy, a mobile version of its brick-and-mortar program that will be dispatched to primary care locations where doctors are prescribing nutritious meals for selected patients.
Identifying the Barriers to Care
Stephanie Fendrick, Virtua's EVP and chief strategy officer, says non-profits traditionally use health needs assessments to gain a better understanding of the barriers to care faced by their patients.
"This assessment has consistently shown us that food insecurity is a top concern in our local community," she said. "So that really put it on our radar."
Stephanie Fendrick, EVP and Chief Strategy Officer for Virtua Health. Photo courtesy Virtua Health.
Fendrick says Eat Well was launched with the idea of giving primary care physicians a tool to address nutrition in care management, particularly for patients who are living with chronic issues. She says those doctors "are some of our biggest champions."
"Our physicians are acutely aware of the fact that it's hard to be healthy if you don't have access to healthy foods," she says. "They know that [with] many of the chronic diseases that they're facing every day, it's important that their patients have access to fresh fruits and vegetables and understand how to make a healthy meal, how to combine different ingredients to create those healthy meals."
The mobile program, Fendrick says, came from an understanding that food insecurity often goes hand-in-hand with transportation barriers. So instead of asking their patients to go to the market, Virtua Health is bringing the market to the patient.
"You can recommend all of that, but if you don't have access to the food, then how is someone going to change their lifestyle and incorporate [healthy eating] into their lifestyle?" she asks. "We felt that the mobile piece of it was important, to take food where people needed it,"
Virtua Health launched its first mobile grocery store in 2020, and April's rollout of a refurbished bus given to the health system by the New Jersey Transit Authority replaces the original bus, which was also a NJ Transit vehicle. A $1.5 million donation this year from the state of New Jersey paid for two vehicles (at $500,000 each), as well as renovations to the health system's distribution center, food and staff.
Fendrick says the mobile food program targets neighborhoods where food insecurity is high. The buses are parked at public locations like health centers, churches and senior housing complexes. Anyone in the neighborhood is welcome to shop at the bus, which offers nutritious foods at prices 40% to 50% lower than retail sites.
in some cases, Fendrick says, the food choices are tailored to the neighborhood's cultural identity. In Camden, for instance, roughly half of the population is Hispanic, so resources are offered in Spanish as well as English and certain foods are added to the bus.
"We're establishing trust with our community," she says.
Virtua Health has a fleet of six vehicles altogether, with three devoted to mobile programs such as pediatrics and cancer screenings. In some instances the health system will pair a food truck with another vehicle to offer multiple services in one location.
"We're really trying to wrap services around our patients to keep them healthy in their communities," Fendrick says.
Prescribing Food as a Part of the Care Plan
The Food Farmacy, meanwhile, is more focused. The program – which now consists of brick-and-mortar Food Farmacies in Camden and Mount Holly – enables primary care providers to prescribe certain food to patients who have food insecurity as well as a chronic condition like diabetes, high blood pressure or heart disease. The program gives patients free groceries that are "medically tailored" to their care plan, as well as access to nutrition counseling and other resources, for up to six months.
"Having access to certain healthy foods is great, but having the knowledge of what to do with them and how to use them to make healthy meals is also a very important part of the program," Fendrick points out.
The new mobile Food Farmacy will offer the same services, and will visit primary care offices (initially in Hammonton and Washington Township) where doctors are giving their patients prescriptions for the program.
According to Virtua executives, the outreach is showing positive results. The mobile grocery store program saw more than 7,500 transactions in 2024 and has grown year over year, while all of the Eat Well programs saw more than 47,000 transactions in 2024, an 8.6% increase over the previous year.
In addition, according to a survey of participants, 94% of customers to the mobile grocery store reported consuming more fruit and vegetables, and 88% say they've prepared more nutritious meals as a result.
Fendrick says this data is important, but the real test of the program's value will come over time, as the health system looks at clinical outcomes. For patients with chronic conditions, short-term details like weight loss, A1c levels and blood pressure will be charted. Over the long run, they'll be keeping track of health and wellness metrics and quality of life.
"That's taking us a little more time to get our arms around," she says. "Are we truly making an impact on their health outcomes?
The long run also means developing connections with the retail community and others to ensure a steady supply of food. Since the program's launch in 2017, more than $10 million in philanthropic donations have been invested in the program.
"We're looking for different types of partnerships and relationships to help keep this sustainable," Fendrick adds.
As for where the program goes from here, Fendrick says she wants to see steady growth for now, along with more education for both providers and patients about the value of good nutrition. She notes that Virtua Health sent one of its buses down to Atlantic City for a while at the request of the governor, and the program was such a success that a local provider is now running its own program there.
And of course, now that Virtua Health has a mobile farmer's market and grocery stores, could a food truck or two not be far behind?
A new tool assesses coronary inflammation, which is often overlooked in measuring the risk of a heart attack. One doctor says this test could detect problems years in advance and save lives.
An AI tool that can detect inflammation in the coronary artery could help clinicians diagnose heart disease much earlier, even decades before the patient shows any outward signs of distress.
CaRi-Heart Technology, developed by Connecticut-based Caristo Diagnostics, was recently given its own Category III CPT code by the American Medical Association’s CPT Editorial Panel, an important step in the path to adoption after FDA approval and, just as important, payer reimbursement. The technology has also shown promising results in trials conducted in 2024 at five National Health Service hospitals in the UK, where reports indicate more than half of patients analyzed by the AI tool had their treatments changed.
To clinicians, the tool could be a critical step forward in the diagnosis and treatment of heart disease, the leading cause of death in the country.
“Cardiology disease is very different than other diseases in terms of how we treat it,” says Stephen Bloom, MD, MSCCT, FASNC, FAHA, FACP, FACC, a cardiologist with Midwest Heart and Vascular Specialists in Overland Park, Kansas, part of the HCA Midwest Health System. “We do mammograms before people have breast cancer. We do colonoscopies before people have colon cancer. And then in cardiology, we wait until they have symptoms, and then we do our best to treat our patient, now with established disease. It doesn't even make sense.”
AI has the potential to analyze data from tests, such as a CT scan, more quickly and with more detail than the human eye. While traditional imaging can identify visible plaques that cause narrowing and blockages, the CaRi-Heart tool zeroes in on perivascular fat, or coronary inflammation, which is overlooked in assessing someone’s heart health.
And since acute MIs occur when non-calcified plaque ruptures, any method for detecting non-calcified plaque better and earlier would save lives.
“[AI] could actually look at each coronary [artery], each segment, if you break it down to three, and [it] can actually summarize not only how much calcified plaque you have, but also non-calcified vulnerable plaque, which has more of a tendency to rupture and cause a heart attack,” Bloom says.
Bloom notes that inflammation can be present in many diseases and measured by a blood test (c-reactive protein (CRP)). However, this blood test is not specific for the heart and less sensitive.
But with coronary CT with AI, clinicians can drill down further than they’ve been able to in the past. Bloom says doctors often use stress testing, but these tests only become positive for heart disease when the patient has a coronary blockage greater than 70%. This can create a false sense of security. Analyzing inflammation with plaque analysis from a CT could create a much better definition of a patient’s cardiac risks.
And it could be done long before any signs of heart disease are evident.
“We can take patients even before they have symptoms and diagnose whether or not they have early coronary disease and treat them with appropriate medication as well as a change in their diet [and] exercise,” Bloom says.
The challenge, as always with new technologies, is reimbursement. Most payers currently don’t cover tests like nuclear cardiac stress testing, MRI stress scans or even coronary CTs unless there are symptoms. Bloom is hoping that the results of the UK tests and the newly approved CPT code will prod payers to cover the CaRi-Heart test.
“The good thing is it’s simple [and] it’s painless and less expensive than nuclear and other tests like MRI, and so it could be the gatekeeper to reducing heart disease by finding it early and treating the patient in the early stages,” he says.
“The next five years will probably dramatically change the way we treat our patients with coronary disease,” Bloom adds, adding that plaque analysis from a CT has only been approved for reimbursement this past year. As more clinicians use these new tools with coronary CT and gather data on its effectiveness, they’ll build a better argument for coverage.
“We will be able to diagnose and treat coronary disease well before symptoms occur and finally reduce heart disease as the number one cause of death today ”.
