Nuvance Health is partnering with a digital health company to monitor and manage care for patients at home who are dealing with cognitive issues, including dementia. The platform also allows providers to spot early signs of decline.
Many people use brain-stimulating activities, like crossword puzzles or quizzes, to get up to speed in the morning or stay alert during the day. Healthcare providers are now finding that these activities, delivered through a mobile device, can help them monitor and even treat patients at home.
At Nuvance Health, clinicians are integrating Neuroglee Connect into care management for patients at neurology and primary care practices across New York and Connecticut. The digital health interventions are designed for patients with mild cognitive impairment and early-stage dementia.
“I'd like them to take ownership of their healthcare,” says Paul Wright, SVP and system chair of the Neuroscience Institute at Nuvance Health and the John and Joanne Patrick Endowed Chair for Advanced Technology in Neuroscience. “This begins their adoption of [the concept of] ‘This is your body, this is your mind, this is your health, and … being healthy is an active process.’ So I'd like them to be engaged and active.”
Digital health tools are gaining momentum with healthcare organizations thanks to the prevalence of mobile health devices in the home. Paired with remote patient monitoring programs, they offer care providers an easy portal to the patient beyond the regularly scheduled six-month checkups in the doctor’s office. Clinicians can draw patient data from these platforms to monitor health outcomes like medication adherence and effectiveness and moods.
With Neuroglee Connect, Wright is looking for a connection to his patients.
“I want to see that there is engagement,” he says. “That's because if you're not, if you're doing this and you're not engaged, then it's not meaningful.”
Through that engagement, which can include games, education, memory compensation, reminiscence and health and wellness activities, Wright says he can monitor patients’ cognitive abilities, even spotting declines or other concerning trends before either the patients or their caregivers notice any differences.
“We have the capabilities now to predict people who are not going to be doing well,” Wright says.
The platform also includes resources and education for caregivers, including support for managing anxiety and stress. Wright says these platforms not only allow the care team to include friends and family—who often see things before doctors or nurses do—but also give them the support they need.
Describing this technology as a platform isn’t unintentional. Digital health tools are part of a much larger care pathway, and the ability to have patients and caregivers access them at the time and place of their choosing (most often the home) gives providers a platform to manage and coordinate care that goes well beyond one app.
Forward-thinking healthcare leaders are using these platforms to develop remote patient monitoring programs that can track a wide variety of patient data in the home, which in turn can impact care management plans. Based on that data, clinicians can adjust, prescribe or discontinue prescribed medications, add educational or wellness resources, even schedule in-person checkups or specialist consults.
Wright says Neuroglee Connect also allows Nuvance to give its primary care providers more opportunities to care for patients they would otherwise send to specialists, like neurologists. Those specialists are in short supply and high demand, he notes, so the more opportunities to have PCPs handle some of the care, the better.
“We're able to, by going through primary care, deliver care to more people normally who would never have accessed it,” he adds.
The Washington-based health system is reorganizing its leadership under new CEO Erik Wexler, and is putting Sara Vaezy in charge of AI strategy, digital health, innovation and sustainable partnerships.
Providence is restructuring its executive leadership and creating an Office of Transformation to oversee, among other things, AI strategy.
"To serve our communities today and into the future, we are organizing our system executive leadership team to ensure we are well-positioned to support our local ministries and advance our strategic priorities," Providence President and CEO Erik Wexler said in a press release.
With the announcement, the Washington-based health system joins scores of healthcare organizations that are singling out AI for C-level governance, either by creating an AI executive or adding those responsibilities to the chief innovation, chief transformation or chief digital health officer’s role.
Wexler stepped into the CEO’s role earlier this month, and the health system is looking for a chief information officer, a position now held on an interim basis by Ivette de Rubin.
Sara Vaezy, currently the EVP, chief strategy and digital officer, will become the chief transformation officer. She’ll focus on “the responsible adoption of AI, developing next-generation innovations, and forging partnerships to scale sustainable technology solutions,” as well as digital care and marketing.
Among other moves, Prub “PK” Khurana, currently chief strategy officer for care delivery, will become chief strategy and growth officer, also overseeing the health system’s technology center in Hyderabad, India. Susan Huang, currently chief executive for the Providence Clinical Network, will add the title of chief physician executive.
As a result of the changes, which take effect February 1, Chief Clinical Officer Hoda Asmar is leaving the health system.
Allina Health is using technology and new ideas to reduce the time a patient spends in the hospital. They're seeing improved outcomes, reduced costs and more capacity to treat patients who need to be hospitalized.
One of the key metrics in clinical care is patient length of stay (LOS), traditionally defined as the time between a patient's admittance and discharge from a hospital. LOS is a critical factor in everything from reimbursement and accreditation to patient satisfaction and clinical outcomes.
New technologies like AI and concepts like remote patient monitoring (RPM) and Hospital at Home are helping healthcare executives gain a better understanding of LOS, and in turn they're reducing costs and improving care management.
"We usually think about length of stay as an inpatient issue, but it really isn't," says Hsieng Su, SVP and Chief Medical Executive at Allina Health. The Minnesota-based health system has seen double-digit reductions in average LOS by improving care coordination between its 12 hospitals and various care sites, improving outcomes and opening up beds for new patients.
The key, Su says, is to understand the relationship between hospitals and other care sites, like skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), rehab centers and even the home, and developing a care management plan for the patient that makes the best use of those sites, rather than adhering to old protocols or patterns. That means collecting and analyzing data on the patient and various sites of care outside the hospital and finding the best care pathway.
"This needs to be a very deliberate and focused strategy," she says.
While the LOS issue reached its peak with the pandemic, when hospitals were swamped with patients and struggling to find places to care for them, its roots go much farther back, to when healthcare organizations began setting expectations on how long a patient would have to be in a hospital to receive treatment for certain health concerns. Arrayed against those expectations were the costs of keeping a patient in the hospital and the amount that a health plan or payer would pay for that care.
Nowadays, those assumptions are being upended. Patients can be admitted to a hospital for surgery and discharged within a day to another care site. Healthcare organizations are using RPM and telehealth to monitor patients at home (or another facility) who might otherwise spend an extra day or two in the hospital.
That's why it's critical for healthcare executives to have a clear understanding of their options to the inpatient stay.
Su says the push to develop a better LOS strategy came out of the COVID-19 pandemic, when inpatient beds were at a premium and more than 100 patients each day were ready to be discharged, but hospital staff couldn't find the right facility to take them.
"They couldn't deliver care, so we were just hosting them while they were waiting," she says. "And that is not satisfactory for our patients or our community."
Allina launched a partnership with Navvis to reduce those bottlenecks and backlogs through improvements in "patient throughput". In the first 12 months of that partnership, the health system was able to reduce average LOS for discharge to an SNF by 1.61 days and by .89 days for discharge to a home health program. The health system also saw reductions in ALOS to hospice care and LTACH facilities.
This, in turn, enabled the health system to free up 25,000 days of capacity, or room for an additional 5,000 patients.
"Nobody really wants to be in a hospital unnecessarily," Su points out. So it's in the best interests of both the patient and the health system to find the right resources to reduce that LOS.
She says traditional care huddles have focused on clinical care, but now the conversations are more holistic, centered on what the patient wants as well as needs. Care managers and social workers are incorporated into the conversations, and plans are to add caregivers and even family members.
"This is a very clear conversation," she says, about the patient's care journey, with data to back up the various care pathways. For example, she says, a patient admitted with pneumonia should be hospitalized for three to five days depending on current protocols, but that LOS can change depending on factors like the patient's response to treatment, availability of rehab beds or even the hospital's ability to use RPM or telehealth to care for that patient at home.
That includes asking hard questions about the alternatives.
"I'm seeing in so many programs now that in many cases, these clinical programs don't really think about what happens in the home when these things move to the homes," Su says. "They have to be thought out."
"We want to make sure they don't end up coming back to the hospital," she adds.
At the end of the day, Su says, Allina is reducing the time that patients spend in a hospital by giving them better options, and the health system is using technology to make sure those options are safe and effective. This reduces the cost of care, improves the patient's outcomes and outlook, and enables the hospital to care for more patients who need to occupy those inpatient beds.
Healthcare executives are calling on the Trump Administration to nullify a DEA proposal to create a special registration for virtual prescribing of controlled drugs, saying the proposed rule ‘would be a major setback.’
Healthcare executives who have lobbied the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to create a special registration for providers to prescribe controlled medications via telemedicine are now asking the Trump Administration to withdraw that proposed rule.
The 17-year wait for the registration, originally mandated in the Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act of 2008, seemingly came to fruition last week with the DEA’s proposed rule, unveiled in the last days of the Biden Administration. But those advocating for that rule quickly cried foul, saying the proposal is worse than no registration at all.
“Upon careful review of the DEA’s draft Special Registration for remote prescribing of controlled substances, we have serious concerns about the feasibility of this proposal,” Kyle Zebley, senior vice president of public policy for the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) and executive director of ATA Action, said in a press release issued on January 16—the second such press release issued by the ATA that day on the DEA’s proposal. “As written, the draft framework creates unworkable restrictions and could not be operationalized, which would be a major setback, should this become the final rule.As such, we implore President Trump to make it his urgent priority to withdraw this proposal immediately following his inauguration on January 20.”
“If allowed to become final, this would undo the important work President Trump put in place in 2020 with the waiver of the in-person requirement allowing for the remote prescribing of controlled substances,” Zebley continued. “We stand ready to work with President Trump and his incoming administration to make essential refinements, taking the time necessary and in consultation with key stakeholders, to create an appropriate and effective Special Registration that will protect the American people while allowing patients the care they so urgently need.”
In an analysis of the proposed rule, Nathan Beaver, a partner with the Foley & Lardner law firm, and Marika Miller, an associate with Foley & Lardner and a member of its telemedicine & digital health advisory team, said “widespread frustration” with the DEA’s efforts to craft a special registration over the past year make it unlikely that this proposed rule will be OK’d in its current form.
One of the biggest complaints is the requirement that providers qualifying for a special registration check their patient’s prescription history for the past year in state Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) before prescribing via telemedicine.
Providers would be required to check PDMPs in the state where the patient is located, the state where the provider is located, and any other PDMPs in states that have reciprocity agreements with either of the first two states. Three years after passage of the proposed DEA rule, that requirement would be expanded so that a provider would have to check PDMPs in every state.
Beaver and Miller wrote that the PDMP requirement “is seen as overly burdensome given the absence of a nationwide PDMP database—a burden the DEA continues to underestimate.”
In urging the Trump Administration to withdraw the DEA proposal, Zebley said advocates hope to work with the DEA on a new version of the special registration—something the DEA has avoided doing for years.
“This is often a life-or-death issue and has understandably been a lightning rod for public comment due to the extraordinary stakes involved,” he said in the press release. “The DEA must implement a permanent framework for remote prescribing of controlled substances that strikes the right balance, ensuring necessary access while safeguarding against diversion.”
The Memorial Hermann Health System is partnering with a digital health company to make sure patients undergoing cancer treatment have a care team around them at all times—especially at home.
Health systems looking to maximize care for patients undergoing cancer treatment are finding value in innovative partnerships that focus on care management and monitoring at home.
"At 3:00 in the morning when a patient is awake and afraid and has pain that they've never felt before, or a nausea that is unceasing, and they've maybe forgotten [to] take that medication, they can pick up the phone," says Sandra Miller, MHSM, RN, NE-BC, VP of the oncology service line at Houston's Memorial Hermann Health System. "They can call, they can talk to someone right away, who can then help them to deescalate and think clearly about what next steps would be."
Those patients aren't necessarily calling the hospital. They're calling a care team employed by Reimagine Care, a Nashville-based company that focuses on cancer care services in the home. That team, which includes oncology nurses and advanced practitioners, enables patients to access care on-demand, while giving Memorial Hermann a platform on which to integrate its clinical team.
"It's a good model for this type of program because we know that cancer patients are terrified," Miller says. "Their levels of anxiety and depression are very high. They need a very strong support team … as an additional component to their family members and their clinical teams that see them regularly."
Partnerships like this are a crucial factor to improving care management and coordination at a time when health systems and hospitals are dealing with workforce shortages and inpatient care stresses and embracing concepts like remote patient monitoring (RPM) and home-based care. Through programs like collaborative or connected care, they can create programs around patients with complex care needs.
And they'll become more important as healthcare innovation leaders develop the Hospital at Home concept and look at improving care coordination for patient groups, such as those with chronic conditions.
Miller points out the partnership enables Memorial Hermann to focus on inpatient and acute care—care for which patients either need to be in a hospital or need to be seen by a clinician—while separating the tasks and services that fill up their workflows but could be handled by other members of the care team.
"It relieves the burden of late nights and overtime and late hours for providers and for nurses," she says.
Reimagine Care is one of dozens (if not more) of companies that have sprung up over the past two decades to tackle care management outside the hospital, offering 24/7 services and the ability to hand off to the hospital when the need is escalated.
The company's CEO, Dan Nardi, says Reimagine Care focuses on cancer care and targets a pervasive pain point for hospitals: Managing care outside the hospital or doctor's office and in between the visits. He cites research conducted in 2023 that found that 82% of patients want to be treated as much as possible at home, and more than 90% want to be able to connect with a member of their care team on demand, whenever they need to make that connection.
Without this type of partnership, a patient might call a doctor's office or hospital and find there's no one to talk to at that moment, and then they might decide to go to the Emergency Department.
The ER "is the last place they want to be," says Miller. She notes that in the year and a half that Memorial Hermann has worked with Reimagine Care, unplanned ER visits have dropped below the national average, while patient satisfaction has improved.
Miller says the platform is proving especially valuable to younger patients and those with families and jobs—patients who are balancing the demands of everyday life with their care routines and having little time to spend on trips to the doctor's office or ED beyond their scheduled visits.
And by creating a care team bolstered by Reimagine Care, Memorial Hermann is able to create room for more patients, especially those facing barriers to accessing care.
"This creates capacity for new patients," Miller says. "There are always patients waiting. There's always a wait time to see a new provider and we don't want patients to wait who have cancer. By being able to triage patients to home care or home support, we're able to see new patients who are waiting, who are sick, who need the attention and time of a medical oncologist. So creating capacity for new patients is paramount in this relationship."
Denials are a major pain point for revenue cycle leaders. Here’s how to manage—and perhaps even prevent—them.
In the latest installment of HealthLeaders’ The Winning Edge webinar series, Beth Carlson, VP of Revenue Cycle at WVU Medicine, explained how denials are impacting the entire health system, from RCM down through provider to patients. That’s why denials management, she says, requires a collaborative approach.
Carlson says she’s working with the financial, legal and clinician departments to not only better understand why denials happen and what to do when they happen, but to move upstream and identify how to prevent them in the first place. She’s also using new technology, like AI, to understand payer and provider trends and patient financial options and collaborate with payers to integrate clinical care pathways with payer policies.
Tune in below to hear how Carlson is addressing denials management.
Here's what RCM leaders should be doing to tackle this pervasive pain point
Payer denials are, to put it mildly, a pain. In this week’s The Winning Edge webinar on defeating denials, WVU Medicine’s Beth Carlson lays out the groundwork for an effective—and forward-thinking—denials management strategy.
The long-awaited proposal for a special registration would help providers with virtual treatment programs for addiction and behavioral health concerns. Critics, however, say the proposed rule isn't what they hoped it would be.
Healthcare providers will finally get a special registration to dispense controlled drugs via telemedicine, a kay part of virtual care treatment for patients in substance abuse and behavioral health treatment.
But the proposed rule, unveiled Wednesday by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and expected to be published on Friday, isn’t necessarily sitting well with telehealth advocates.
The proposed rule creates three tiers of providers who could prescribe controlled drugs. The first tier comprises clinicians wanting to prescribe Schedule III-V level drugs; the second would apply to specialists, such as pediatricians, psychiatrists and those in hospice or palliative care, who want to prescribe Schedule II drugs. The third tier would comprise clinicians wishing to prescribe Schedule II-V medications via telemedicine and would require that they register with the DEA through Form 224S.
“The rise of DTC online telemedicine platforms in recent years has further transformed healthcare delivery, but it has also introduced new challenges and heightened risks of diversion due to the remote nature of care delivery,” the DEA noted. “The proposed registration requirements for telemedicine-based prescribing and dispensing create a new business activity within DEA’s overarching registration framework, distinguishing it from the traditional modes of dispensing under a 21 U.S.C. 823(g) registration.”
Among the restrictions included in the proposed policy: Providers wishing to prescribe controlled medications via telemedicine must be located physically in the same state as their patients, and they must issue at least half of their prescriptions after in-person appointments.
In addition, providers seeking a special registration to virtually prescribe controlled substances must check prescription drug monitoring databases in all 50 states and U.S. territories (the one exception is buprenorphine, or Suboxone, for which providers would only have to check the database in the state where the patient is located). That provision would take effect three years after the proposed rule becomes law.
The DEA announcement comes after the agency extended a pandemic-era waiver three times that allowed providers to prescribe via telemedicine, and comes 17 years after the Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act of 2008 mandated that the agency create a special registration process.
Telehealth advocates, led by the American Telemedicine Association, and several lawmakers have criticized the DEA’s efforts for years, first for ignoring the mandate to create a special registration, then for proposing mandates that they say are restrictive or convoluted.
“It is clear that these updates carry significant implications for the telehealth community,” Kyle Zebley, the ATA’s senior vice president of public policy and executive director of the organization’s lobbying arm, ATA Action, said in a press release. “Early indications suggest the proposed rule includes elements that represent significant operational challenges. All stakeholders need time to carefully review this important proposal, which appears to incorporate valuable elements and other potentially unworkable restrictions that focus on maintaining compliance with patient verification, electronic recordkeeping, and ongoing monitoring.”
“We are pleased to see the DEA propose a special registration, as required by statute, to allow comprehensive medical care through telemedicine, including Schedule II medications,” the Alliance for Connected Care said in a release issued shortly after the DEA’s notice of proposed rulemaking. “These treatments are important in providing mental health, end-of-life care, substance use treatment, and many other services. Telemedicine has proven to be an effective tool in bridging the gap between patients and providers, reducing barriers to care, and supporting those most in need.”
“However, the alliance is very concerned to see language in the proposed rulemaking mandating what portion of patient care can be offered through telemedicine, as this is not an appropriate guardrail for a telehealth service,” the organization continued. “Similarly, restricting the geography in which telemedicine can be offered undermines the value of creating virtual access for those patients who need it most. Restricting access to telemedicine will lead to harsh consequences for many Americans relying on telehealth for mental health, substance use disorder, sleep disorders, terminal illness, and many other medical issues.”
The Foley & Lardner law firm, whose Telemedicine & Digital Health Industry team has long monitored the quest for a special registration, also panned the new proposal.
“The DEA published these rules, not because they were fully ready for implementation, but to ensure they were not abandoned by the incoming Trump administration,” Marika Miller, a telehealth and regulatory attorney with the firm, told STAT News. “The long-awaited special registration process falls flat with stakeholders, and it is anticipated that the associated rule will undergo yet another round of notice-and-comment rulemaking. Among other concerns, a key issue for stakeholders with both rules is the nationwide prescription drug monitoring program check requirement, a burden the DEA still appears to underestimate.”
The proposed rule, which will now face public comments through March 15, isn’t guaranteed. The incoming Trump Administration, which hasn’t yet named someone to lead the DEA, could drop or ignore the rule, reinstating the policy in place prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In HealthLeaders' latest The Winning Edge webinar, WVU Medicine’s Beth Carlson explains how revenue cycle management leaders can improve denials management to not only prompt better and quicker resolutions, but reduce denials before they even occur.
Denials are a key pain point for revenue cycle leaders, and a problem that affects the entire organization, from patients on through to providers. But today’s RCM executives don’t have to go it alone in addressing this problem.
Through collaboration with other departments, such as clinical, and the use of technology like AI, RCM leaders can move upstream and proactively address denials even before they occur. They can also better prepare for when denials do occur, and work with payers to understand and improve the process, reducing expensive and time-consuming appeals and ensuring that patients receive the care they need.
In this week’s HealthLeaders The Winning Edge webinar for defeating denials, Beth Carlson, VP of Revenue Cycle at WVU Medicine, explains how today’s RCM departments aren’t just a back-office function of the healthcare enterprise, and that they’re much more involved in helping patients get the care they need by addressing and improving denials.
To fully embrace this strategy, Carlson offers three pieces of advice:
Establish a Strong Denials Management Process. Create a framework not only for addressing denials, she says, but also understanding why they happen and how they might be avoided. Study payers to understand when and why they issue denials, even spotting trends with certain payers and delaying tactics; work with providers to examine medical necessity and care pathways, helping them to understand when a certain procedure or process might go against a payer’s policies; and even work with patients so that they understand their benefits and options for care.
When denials do occur, start with a root cause analysis to understand all the factors of that particular denial, and be ready to to establish a “triage escalation capability” if a denial is particularly complex. Make sure service lines—clinical, financial, legal—review them as well, so that everyone understands why they happened.
Collaboration is Key. RCM can’t happen in a vacuum any more, Carlson says. It’s crucial that RCM leaders work with other departments to both understand denials and address them after they happen.
Working with clinicians will help both RCM staff and clinicians to better understand how denials happen. Clinicians can then develop care pathways for their patients that steer clear of procedures that would be denied by payers, and RCM staff can identify and work with clinicians who cause frequent denials. In addition, there are occasions when a doctor can prove to RCM leaders and even a payer that a certain policy isn’t working, and can help to have that payer change the policy to reduce denials.
Looping in the legal department is important as well. They can help RCM leaders develop strategies to speed up the denial resolution process, including understanding when a case is too complex to pursue.
And finally, working with patients at the earliest point in the healthcare journey—before the patient even comes into the hospital—can benefit everyone. Educating patients on their financial responsibilities, health plan coverage and other details of the care experience can reduce the chances of an unexpected or surprising cost down the road. This also gives RCM leaders and staff and opportunity to better understand the patient’s care journey, and to work with patients on a care plan that synchs with their insurance coverage and policies and reducing the chances of a denial.
It's All About the Data. As with almost any facet of the healthcare enterprise, data is the key to improved performance and outcomes, and with today’s technology (especially AI), there are many more opportunities to access, manage and find value in data. With denials, this means gathering all the necessary information ahead of time on payers, providers and patients.
Carlson says RCM leaders need to understand the data and how they can use it—and how to use AI tools to get the most out of that information. They can better understand payer policies and trends, identify coding mistakes and opportunities, and gain insight into provider tendencies and care pathways that lead to denials.
That data comes in handy when dealing with payers as well. RCM leaders who are armed with the right information can not only smooth the denial resolution process, but work with payers to identify improvements (in either provider practices or payer policies) that can reduce denials and improve patient care and outcomes.
Are consumers having an 'I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more' moment?
What’s keeping healthcare innovation executives up at night?
Many challenges. But one of the chief concerns is the potential (or perhaps the threat) of an empowered consumer, armed with their own health data and demanding AI-enabled care at the time and place of their choosing.
Health system executives like Chang, Highmark Health President and CEO David Holmberg and ChristianaCare President and CEO Janice Nevin, MD, MPH, were on hand Wednesday at the CES 2025 Digital Health Summit to gain some insight into the latest in consumer technology, but to understand how that will affect the healthcare industry. And their prime focus was on their patients’ dissatisfaction with the state of healthcare.
“We’ve got to move things forward,” said Holmberg, “and find a way to meet people to treat people where they’re at (and to) treat people as consumers.”
That’s a tough task for a healthcare industry that, Nevin pointed out, “isn’t traditionally very adventurous,” and which has taken decades just to get doctors and nurses on the same page. But the industry as a whole is in crisis, buffeted by workforce shortages, quality and cost concerns and a growing number of disruptors looking to replace the traditional care routine. Healthcare leaders need to recognize the driving forces shaping the industry and adapt to those changes.
CES offers those executives an opportunity to see where consumer technology is headed, and to understand the new ideas that are driving change. Alongside the ever-growing digital health space in the Venetian’s exhibit hall was an even-faster-growing space dedicated to the smart home. Combined, those platforms showcased a future where consumers will have more data on their environment and their health at their disposal, alongside more tools to track, analyze and improve their life journey.
Holmberg, taking note of those new technologies, said healthcare needs to “innovate its way out of” the mess it’s in. That means creating, fostering and embracing scalable tools and technologies that can take healthcare out of the hospital and doctor’s office and into the home.
Healthcare leaders are under pressure to improve the consumer experience, and they’re using tools like virtual care and digital health to improve care delivery. Those tools also aim to improve provider workflows and tackle the ongoing epidemic of stress and burnout that are contributing to declining workforces.
AI will in many cases shape that environment, and it’s being seen as a critical part of the healthcare journey as well—for both consumers and providers. Some see a future where AI could replace the doctor or nurse, while others say the technology will assist providers in making the best use of data.
Nevin, taking note of the healthcare industry’s reluctance to embrace change, said she’s worried “that we’re going to lose this moment in time.” She called on the industry to do a better job at collaborating, sharing ideas and data and knocking down the silos that create care gaps and frustrate consumers.
“We tend to point the finger at each other” she noted, rather than working with each other.
Not everyone agreed on the need for collaboration. Eli Lilly And Co. CIO Diogo Rau noted that competition might be a good thing.
“There has been a lot of collaboration in the industry that has worked against consumers rather than for consumers,” he pointed out, drawing applause from the packed audience. “I want to see more competition there to bring down the cost of medicine and the amount of healthcare.”
When asked about the future of healthcare, Rau envisioned an industry focused more on prevention and wellness that proactively treating diseases. Holberg envisioned an industry able to manage the incredible amounts of data coming in and creating care maps for consumers. And Nevin saw smaller, more focused hospitals, fewer hospital beds and an industry focused on meeting consumers where they want to be met.
But will the industry move fast enough in that direction to placate a growing consumer population—especially seniors and those with chronic care needs—that’s dissatisfied with the current state of care? Will consumers demand change?
At a separate panel on the future of AI that included Chang, Stephen Klasko, a former president and CEO at Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health who’s now an executive in residence with General Catalyst, said he’s surprised that consumers haven’t yet had a “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more” moment.
“My car gets better care than I do,” he quipped.
And that’s where AI might move the needle. But the industry has to overcome its concerns and move forward quickly.
Chang, noting the lack of healthcare providers in the audience and at CES in general, said the industry needs to embrace AI, rather than worry about the potential for mistakes or overuse.
“AI can absolutely be the equalizer,” he said. But “it pains me how much resources are being wasted because we’re [looking to solve] the wrong problems.”
“One of the biggest threats that we have is misunderstanding the technology,” added Jake Leach, Dexcom’s Chief Operating Officer.
Laura Adams, RN, a senior advisor for the National Academy of Medicine, part of Kaiser Permanente’s Institute for Health Policy, said the healthcare industry is nearing a tipping point where consumers will have more experience with AI than their doctors and nurses. Healthcare providers need to keep up, she said.
“The revolution is very much underway,” she added.
