Hospitals and health systems are reimagining what it means to operate at the top of their digital and clinical capacity.
As technology reshapes every layer of the healthcare enterprise — from administrative workflows to patient experience — leaders face a pressing question: how do they leverage automation and AI to empower people?
“We’ve had good recruiting years for the past couple, but how do we keep that going forward? Here at Duke, we have a sole focus on it. We have a chief digital officer, Jeff Ferranti, MD, who is just fabulous. But how does our workforce look in the future? We don’t want to leave people behind,” said Lisa Goodlett, senior vice president, CFO and treasurer of Duke Health, during an interview with the “Becker’s Healthcare Podcast.”
The technology is transforming every job within the healthcare system, starting with administrative positions. Generative AI can automate repetitive tasks and has strong use cases in operations, revenue cycle management and administration. But that doesn’t mean all health systems are cutting personnel; instead, they’re reassigning roles and upskilling the workforce to prepare for a more AI-driven future.
“We’re deeply committed to our economic mobility program, so we may not need someone to check you in and we can have a kiosk or pre-check with all the automation that we’ve deployed there. But how do we take that workforce and train them to do other roles within the health system?” said Ms. Goodlett.
Automation mixed with patient experience is becoming a powerful tool for health systems, which have more data than ever about where their patients are located and how they can deploy technology to expand access to care.
“There shouldn’t be any boundaries to healthcare. You should be able to come into the brick and mortar system when you need it,” she said. “If you think about it, it’s like getting on the monorail system at Disney World. How can you get on the monorail and then stop off at the right destination?”
The Disney monorail can take you wherever you want to go; that’s like the digital platform guiding patients to the right spot. They should be able to manage their digital experience over the phone and seamlessly gain access to services they need, and then be directed to the right stops along the way. They might go to Disney World proper – the main campus hospital – or Epcot – the surgery center. And then they can go back and forth without any extra hassle.
“We’ve got to think about how we’re in the right place at the right time to give the right care and also that preventative medicine that can happen with precision genetics,” said Ms. Goodlett. “That gets into how you partner and it takes a lot of energy to fund the computing systems that we’re going to need in the future. How can we partner with someone out of the industry to get what we need to run our care algorithms and help us make decisions?”
Health systems, and academic systems in particular, are seeking new and creative funding mechanisms as they see traditional sources drying up.
“There’s a lot of private equity money out there. How does it get tapped into?” said Ms. Goodlett. “There’s a need for returns from retirement plans. That’s somewhat similar to a bond market, but how do you take in a capital partner who’s passive because they may not know healthcare. Learn what you can from them and create some kind of new dynamic way to interface with patients and meet them where they need to be.”
Partnerships are essential and happening quickly. Ms. Goodlett and her team are looking for agile and nimble companies to accelerate their digital transformation. The health system has partnered with an outside company to make sure they’ve got the electricity needed to run a computerized environment with AI generation, prizing stability and financial wherewithal in the final partnership decision.
“Long gone are the days when we have two years to think about and deploy something,” she said. “We’ve got to be much more nimble. Who’s the best in the space? Who can we influence and design with? We have a part of ourselves that we call BlueTech, and that’s really how we invest. We’ll take a percentage of the equity, and then how do we deploy and use resources commonly together to create small and up and coming companies.”
