As artificial intelligence saturates the vendor market and board expectations rise, most health system CFOs face pressures to evaluate investments quickly while protecting margins that recovered from the pandemic but remain thin. Caswell Samms, executive vice president and CFO at Jacksonville, Fla.-based Nemours Children’s Health, has a plan to cut through the noise.
“There’s a lot happening around artificial intelligence. It’s the new sliced bread,” he said during an interview with “Becker’s Healthcare Podcast.” “How do we put that into our revenue cycle operations into supporting our clinical team members using it from an analytical perspective. But at the same time, making sure that as an organization, we are responsible and maintaining our trust, safety, and quality.”
That balance between capability and responsibility is structured at Nemours. The system has a defined AI governance plan and the underlying filter runs across all investment categories.
“I think as Nemours, as a leadership team, we remain focused on operational excellence, making sure that we remain grounded in our strategic focus,” Mr. Samms said. “So I think as long as we remain aligned and know that the ultimate goal is improving the patient experience, optimizing our ability to enhance things for our workforce, and making sure that no matter what we make an investment in, it has a positive outcome on our patients’ families, and we’re doing the right thing, by our associates.”
Nemours serves children across Delaware, Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland through hospitals, specialty networks, primary care practices and a research and academic enterprise, with a mission centered on creating the healthiest generation of children. The mission can’t happen without the right strategic investments and in an environment where every dollar counts, CFOs can sometimes feel imbalanced. Not Mr. Samms.
“I’m never concerned about making the right investment,” he said.
Mr. Samms cited program-level growth as evidence the strategy is being executed with discipline.
“Whether it’s investing in our fetal program that we have here in the Delaware Valley market or investing in our growth in oncology in the Central Florida market and creating, and optimizing access and patient care in North Florida, these are things that I think remain important to us at Nemours and I’m significantly proud of for us,” he said.
The investments reflect a broader access strategy. Mr. Samms described a collaboration with Publix in Central Florida as part of Nemours’ effort to reach families through commercial channels they already use, and he said access for patients regardless of their financial circumstances is a core organizing principle for the system.
“Obviously, we try to balance our operational discipline and our strategic investments as we all do, as health care institutions, but making sure that those investments improve outcome, expand access, enhance the patient and family experience, and continue to make sure that whatever we do, it positions Nemours for long term success,” Mr. Samms said.
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