Denver Health is intentionally avoiding operating on the “bleeding edge of AI deployment,” Daniel Kortsch, MD, associate chief of AI and digital health for Denver Health, told Becker’s.
“As a safety-net organization, we have to use our resources carefully. We can’t afford large numbers of failures or extremely resource-intensive development efforts,” he said.
Instead, Denver Health is choosing to follow closely behind organizations and vendors that have already developed and validated AI tools. The health system spends significant time conducting market analyses, speaking with peers, evaluating vendors and researching what has and hasn’t worked elsewhere before moving forward with deployments.
“Once we see proven value and clear user demand, we can deploy them effectively,” Dr. Kortsch said.
For example, Denver Health has focused on staying closely aligned with Epic’s development roadmap, investing heavily in maintaining an up-to-date EHR environment. As Epic rolls out new AI and workflow optimization tools, the health system rapidly evaluates and implements those that demonstrate clear operational value and efficiency gains.
Rather than relying on a separate innovation team to dictate adoption decisions, Denver Health uses its existing operational and clinical teams to evaluate which tools are most valuable within their workflows.
“We allow the teams themselves to approve the implementation, and we centrally assist them in evaluating and implementing it,” Dr. Kortsch said.
He said the approach helps staff members closest to the workflows guide adoption decisions.
“Different teams naturally have different expectations around trust and safety, so evaluations vary somewhat by use case, but overall we’re seeing strong adoption across multiple areas,” he said.
Denver Health is also working closely with staff members to determine which AI products and solutions would bring the greatest value to the organization.
“I can’t personally be the bottleneck for every AI decision. Instead, we try to empower the teams who see value in these tools,” Dr. Kortsch said. “We come alongside them and say, ‘If you’re excited about this solution, let’s evaluate it together and determine whether it makes sense for Denver Health.’”
Those conversations have helped shape the health system’s AI strategy. In the last quarter alone, Denver Health’s AI deployments increased by roughly 20%, with projects moving from development into pilot phases and from pilot phases into live deployment.
“That’s where I’m finding the greatest value: supporting staff members who are closest to the workflows and helping the organization manage the broader challenge of AI adoption,” Dr. Kortsch said.
Still, challenges remain.
One ongoing question for Denver Health is whether AI tools that benefit smaller groups of users are worth supporting long term.
“Even if adoption is limited, the impact on that particular group may still justify the investment,” Dr. Kortsch said.
In one instance, Denver Health saw a significant increase in adoption for a tool it had been using over the past several months after the development team updated the platform.
“AI is only going to get smarter,” Dr. Kortsch said. “As these models improve, we may see adoption increase because the outputs become more useful and workflows become more refined.”
Looking ahead to the next 12 to 18 months, Dr. Kortsch said he is most excited about AI’s potential to remove “busy work” for healthcare staff and help employees extend their capabilities across the organization.
“I describe it as ‘standing on a stool of AI,’” he said. “AI gives us the ability to reach slightly higher, work more effectively and move into areas we may not have been able to before because we now have additional support.”
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