Proper coordination between the data analytics and clinical teams is essential to bridge care gaps, says R. Hal Baker, senior vice president and chief digital and information officer at WellSpan Health.
AI-powered solutions are supporting clinicians and augmenting services for patients. Nuance Communications’ DAX Copilot can quickly generate notes using AI to reduce the administrative burden on clinicians. Baker hopes to expand the health system’s language translation services to reach more patients using generative AI capabilities.
“We’re hoping that AI will allow us to move faster,” he says.
WellSpan Health has also found that patients are more comfortable answering questions on social determinants of health, such as housing and access to food, through automated questionnaires. The emphasis on addressing care gaps requires a data infrastructure that ensures the health system is operating with “consistency and equity,” Baker says.
“The key to being equitable is asking the questions, being honest with yourself about what the data says and being committed to fixing it if there’s a problem,” he says.
HCA Healthcare Forges a Path Forward with Generative AI
HCA Healthcare, headquartered in Nashville, Tenn., launched its Department of Care Transformation and Innovation in 2021 to explore how it could automate caregivers’ workflows to make them more efficient and intelligent and improve critical decision-making, says Dr. Michael Schlosser, senior vice president of the department.
The health system’s digital transformation journey has included numerous tech partnerships. In August 2023, HCA Healthcare announced a collaboration with Google Cloud on its generative AI implementation to improve workflows on time-consuming tasks, including clinical documentation, so that providers can spend more time on patient care.
Patient handoffs were time-consuming, so nurses wanted to smooth the process in a pilot program. Google Cloud’s large language models (LLMs) allowed nurses to automate handoff report generation to save time. Clinicians had oversight over the AI tool.
Converting manual legacy processes into experimental work with AI has been slow but steady, and generative AI is not a panacea that can be added on top of a current system for dramatic results, Schlosser adds. “We have to do serious redesign and transformation work around how care is delivered for it to be receptive to transformational technology such as generative AI,” he says.
