Today in health, it, how AI is changing the hospital finance executives role. My name is bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and create, or this week health I set of channels and events. Dedicated to transform healthcare. One connection at a time. We want to thank our show sponsors.

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This article is from H F M a healthcare financial management association. And it's a great little discussion focuses in on what scripts is doing. And the title of it is how AI is about to change healthcare. AI is going to transform the way hospital, finance executives do their jobs. All right.

Let me give you a couple of excerpts. For example, for executives who have lived through the marketing of such technology developments as big data, the cloud and the internet of things, the prospect of taking on the latest hot concept, AI might not be appealing. But ignoring AI and all its variations may be a mistake, although there's a different technology solutions being sold under the name, AI robotic process automation and machine learning being too. The important things to know are the problem. Needing to be solved and whether the technology solves or mitigates the problem, there are more established techniques also may assist with the adoption of a form of AI that is attracting so much attention to the large language model of which one prominent example has a commercial name, chat GPT. So some hospitals already have begun using LLM scripts, health.

San Diego has taken the first steps in implementing the approach in August. The health system started testing a tool that drafts a response to patient inquiries. And about a year and a half ago, scripts began using another large language tool. That turns a physician patient conversation into a medical progress note. Both have produced promising results.

We're continuing to learn through the implementation, how to help improve the experience overall, most importantly, for the patient and the members. Of the care team said Shane Thielemann corporate, senior vice president and CIO for scripts. If we can take some of the administrative burden off of the physician and the members of the care team, we can speed up the cycle time. To when a patient gets a response, scripts, executives are looking ahead at ways the technology can be applied in both clinical and nonclinical ways. And like many, they believe it will be transformational. Let's see another quote.

When I sat down and used catchy PT for the first time, I got a sense that I've gotten since I first played with the internet way back in the nineties said David wetherholt MD chief medical information officer for ambulatory systems at Scripps health. And. An internal medicine physician at Scripps clinic Anderson medical pavilion in lawyer. This is a game changer. There are a number of ways that those changes will affect the revenue cycle among the potential future applications that we see for revenue cycle specifically is the opportunity to summarize a lot of the data and information that's necessary to generate charges and support, accurate coding.

Moving forward. The woman said, using an LLM that can comb a patient record and sense keywords through prompts that a business leader would be able to identify the provider can drive the coders. To the information that is going to be most useful to them to generate the codes and get the claims out the door.

Thielemann said that all health systems are in a position to adopt. Chats GPT like applications and there's considerable confusion. About when and how to use AI and nonclinical areas and what kind of ROI CFOs can expect. Over the next decade, organizations will need an AI strategy. In revenue cycle and the sooner you start. The very mature use cases like RPA and better said Brett Anderson, principal of charges. It's good to develop an organizational muscle memory so you can be prepared to evaluate options in the future. And he goes on and there's much more things.

They give six tips for deploying AI in revenue cycle. Number one, define your why. This is a good list to find your why. What problem are you trying to solve is so important with these AI projects. There's so much hype around them to make sure you're defining your why. 'cause you're gonna want to measure, are we actually achieving our why?

So you've got to start there. Look at your native system, does functionality already exists within the electronic health record to solve the problem? Some EHR may include forms of AI. Absolutely. That it's being built in every day as we speak. So even, but even if you have a. EHR first strategy. It's important to note the maturity of those things. The focus of the EHR organization on really progressing. The functionality further and what you're giving up by waiting for the EHR provider to get there. So again, if they have it and they're progressing it by all means EHR first. If. It's going to be a while.

If it's on the roadmap, if it's not a focus area and you're just spinning cycles, waiting for them to do something, that might be a mistake. So to find your why look at your native systems, number three, evaluate vendors. If a vendor per. Refers to a solution as AI. What does that actually mean? For example, is it RPA ML or NLP? It's important to know what all those acronyms mean. And will that technology solve the problem at hand?

If so, how is it going to do that? Number four, gauge how much human input is required to promote a positive ROI. Does the organization have the right type of internal expertise to train the solution? Also when software updates occurred, does the vendor ensure all historical ML is maintained? If so, how. Next Ash asked for references.

Absolutely. I, this is like that's basics. If you're going to go to buy new technology, ask for references. What other organizations have used the technology and how, what ROI have they seen in Y. And then finally focus on change management, help RCM staff understand how technology can elevate, not necessarily replace them. And I'm finding that to be. The most important thing that leadership can do. Is. First of all understanding themselves, how AI is going to impact. Whatever area they're bringing it into and then communicating that effectively. And what I'm telling my team over and over again is we are going to automate where we can.

We are going to use. AI tools wherever we can. And we are going to do that, to take these. Lower level tasks off their plates so that we can have them focus on higher order items that can progress us even further. In our mission. There are things that AI automation. No matter what form of AI, by the way. Or automation, it can only take us so far today.

Now it will continue to evolve and move further and further down the road. But there are things that only a human can do. Let's keep elevating our human capital to address those very challenging things. So anyway, good six tips to find your why look at your native systems. Elevate vendor are evaluated vendors gauge how much human input is required to promote a positive ROI.

Ask for references. Focus on change management. I'm impressed with scripts. I've talked to, to to both these guys, actually, she ain't the old man and Dr. Wetherholt before about some of the ways they approach technology and they really do identify that why first they identify what's the problem they're trying to solve.

They put a series of metrics around it before they start a project and then make sure that they measure those projects or. Those are the, that, that progress. So that E before, during the project and after the project, so few organizations follow through and measure the after did we receive the benefit that we thought we were going to receive?

And I liked the way they do it again. HFMA. Healthcare from a financial management association, good article, how AI is about to change. And if you want to find it, you don't even have to go to HFMA. You can just go to our website. Go to news and how AI is about to change healthcare is right there on that first page. That's it. That's all for today. It's Tuesday. It's a it's chime fall forum week. So lot going on. We will see how things progress, but that's all for today. Don't forget to share this podcast with a friend or colleague, keep the conversation going. We want to thank our channel sponsors who are investing in our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders. Short test artists.

I parlance certified health, notable and 📍 service. Now check them out at this week, health. Dot com slash today. Thanks for listening. That's all for now.