The pressure on health system leaders to move quickly on artificial intelligence has rarely been more acute. Vendor pipelines are full, board-level expectations are rising and new tools arrive weekly.
Liz Popwell, system vice president of strategy and international at Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health, is pushing back — not against AI adoption, but against the instinct to reach for a tool before defining a problem.
“We don’t use technology for technology’s sake, but we really lean in instead and ask questions. AI, for example — what problems are we trying to solve?” Ms. Popwell said in a recent “Becker’s Healthcare Podcast” interview. “Is it a staffing augmentation issue? Is it a patient access issue? Are we trying to improve our affordability and cost? And really looking at what problems that we’re seeking to solve as a healthcare ecosystem and using technology to support these fixes.”
The framing reflects a broader discipline CommonSpirit is applying as it integrates technology into operations: people, processes and technology evaluated together, with tools selected to fit existing workflows rather than layered onto them. Health systems across the country are increasingly moving toward long-term AI partnerships with established technology companies rather than assembling point solutions, a direction Ms. Popwell’s framework anticipates.
That shift extends beyond technology vendors. Ms. Popwell argues that health systems need to fundamentally rethink how they structure external relationships, moving away from transactional vendor arrangements toward deeper, longer integrations with payers, technology companies and other partners organized around shared goals.
“We as healthcare entities and healthcare providers need to be and continue to be better at our core business and form deeper, longer partnerships with payers, technology companies, and other groups rather than just simple vendor relationships,” she said. “Really integrate those partnerships so that we work together on shared goals and solutions in order to improve outcomes, looking at affordability and lowering cost, and making sure, most importantly, that we’re enhancing the patient experience.”
The end goal is not technology adoption measured by the number of tools deployed; it is smarter operations, defined as strategy, financial performance and operational processes working together rather than running in parallel.
“Strategy coming together with financial performance, coming together with operational processes and really galvanizing the organization that we serve, so that we can make sure systems don’t unnecessarily look at individual components, but they’re really looking at improving efficiency and effectiveness,” she said.
CommonSpirit, which has 137 hospitals across multiple states and regions, is in the middle of a significant operational integration push. The system is consolidating EHR platforms across its five regions and working through a national strategic plan that Ms. Popwell, who joined two years ago from Ascension, has helped develop.
The patient-centered model underpinning that strategy is itself a frame for how technology investments get evaluated. Services delivered through virtual care, home-based care and preventive channels need to work as a unified system and that integration is what large systems like CommonSpirit are positioned to deliver in ways that disconnected provider networks cannot.
“Systems like ours are really poised to connect patients to the entire healthcare system, and that system should act as one organization, not just a collection of assets or hospitals,” she said. “We use our shared data, our shared standards, processes across all the locations and where we provide care.”
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