To make serious change in healthcare deliver, Providence St. Joseph Health executives are focusing on modernizing activities and processes.
Earlier this month the Renton, Wash.-based health system announced it was teaming up with Microsoft to build a "hospital of the future." This is just one of many initiatives Providence St. Joseph has to improve healthcare.
Executive Vice President and CIO B.J. Moore, Executive Vice President and Chief Digital and Innovation Officer Aaron Martin, and Senior Vice President and Head of Corporate Development Wasif Rasheed, are among the executives leading the technology push at Providence St. Joseph.
Below, the three explain the health system's inspiration behind its technology-based hospital and what it's done to improve the patient experience.
Editor's note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: Providence St. Joseph announced partnerships with Microsoft to develop a "hospital of the future." What inspired this collaboration and what are your plans for the hospital?
Wasif Rasheed: Ambulatory care has seen significant innovation in recent years, yet these are simpler sites of care. Acute care is far more complex and costly, and investments in hospitals are expected to last 30 to 40 years. We realized that if we wanted to drive meaningful change in care delivery, we needed to address the hospital and modernize activities that account for significant chunks of our caregivers’ time. Partnering with Microsoft reflects our commitment to best serve consumers and enable our caregivers by developing and incorporating new technologies to drive a step change in the quality, experience, and efficiency of our hospitals. We have not set preconceived notions on what the hospital should be; instead, we plan to bring together the best thinking from care delivery, from technology, and from the patient perspective to decide what would work best.
Q: What has been one innovation that you implemented to improve patient experience?
Aaron Martin: Providence’s Digital Innovation Group developed a digital platform that delivers quick, convenient, digital access to care. Over the past three years, the platform has introduced Providence to hundreds of thousands of new patients who want same-day care in-person at a clinic, remotely through virtual visit, or a house call. The platform reduces friction for patients in seeking and receiving care while delivering superior economics to the health system. We’re now partnering with other health systems to expand the platform beyond Providence.
Q: If you could solve one health IT challenge/headache overnight, what would it be and why?
B.J. Moore: Providence St Joseph Health has grown through acquisitions, so we have 10-plus electronic health systems, duplicate patient records, etc. If we could solve this one problem, having a single comprehensive health record across our health system, we could focus on seamless patient experiences, advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence scenarios for proactive health management, focus on improved caregiver productivity and insight.