As health systems race to adopt new AI capabilities, Walnut Creek, Calif.-based John Muir Health has found that one of the best ways to prepare its EHR for innovation is to avoid unnecessary customization.
The health system’s approach is to stay as close as possible to its EHR vendor’s standard configuration, a strategy Chief Medical Information Officer Priti Patel, MD, said has made it easier to adopt new functionality over time.
“After more than a decade on our current EHR, we have learned that customization creates long-term maintenance burdens and makes it harder to adopt future enhancements,” Dr. Patel told Becker’s. “The closer we stay to standard configuration, the easier it becomes to adopt the rapid pace of innovation coming from our EHR vendor.”
Dr. Patel said EHR optimization at John Muir Health is a shared effort among clinical informatics, IT and operational leaders. The teams conduct an annual review of the vendor’s product roadmap to evaluate new features and determine which initiatives best align with the organization’s priorities. Throughout the year, end users and business leaders can also submit optimization requests, which are reviewed through governance committees before being prioritized by executive leadership.
The health system weighs requests against its strategic priorities while also considering the availability of specialized IT resources, as analyst capacity varies across different areas of the EHR.
“For example, we may have limited resources available to support inpatient care-related initiatives while having greater capacity to support patient portal optimization,” Dr. Patel said. “As a result, timing and sequencing are influenced not only by strategic importance but also by the availability of the specific teams needed to execute the work.”
That standardized approach has also positioned John Muir Health to take advantage of AI-driven documentation capabilities. Rather than continuing to invest primarily in templates and other documentation shortcuts, the organization has shifted more of its optimization efforts toward AI tools that reduce clinicians’ documentation workload.
“AI is fundamentally different,” Dr. Patel said. “Rather than making documentation tools more efficient, it provides substantive documentation support and helps reduce manual work. It is one of the most significant improvements in clinical documentation that I have seen during my time working with EHRs.”
John Muir Health’s biggest optimization lever, and the one that has delivered the greatest return, has been its focus on EHR best-practice adoption programs. These programs, according to Dr. Patel, have given John Muir Health a framework for implementing best-practice functionality, strengthened the foundation of its EHR, and increased adoption of valuable capabilities.
“The biggest ROI has not come from any single feature,” she said. “It has come from building a strong EHR foundation that allows us to continuously benefit from innovations like AI delivered through the platform.”
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