Latest / Becker’s Healthcare Podcast / Using AI and Operational Strategy to Transform Care Delivery with Dr. Salim Hayek

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Using AI and Operational Strategy to Transform Care Delivery with Dr. Salim Hayek · Becker’s Healthcare Podcast

0:02
The most important health care decisions don't happen
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in isolation.
0:06
They happen when leaders come together.
0:08
Becker's sixteenth annual meeting brings together more than
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3,500
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hospital and health system executives this April in
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Chicago.
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With 800 speakers from Ascension, Cleveland Clinic, CommonSpirit
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and more, the conversations get real. Leaders will
0:23
share how their scenario planning for policy shifts,
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breaking through value based care barriers and building
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clinical teams that translate new ideas into real
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world care.
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Join top decision makers in the room April
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13 through the sixteenth.
0:37
For the agenda and event details, visit beckers
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0:45
This is Laura Dirda with the Rutgers Healthcare
0:47
podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by
0:49
doctor Celine Hayek, chair of the department of
0:52
internal medicine and chief transformation officer at the
0:55
University of Texas medical branch. Doctor Hayek, it's
0:57
a pleasure to have you on the podcast
0:59
today. Thank you for having me, Nora.
1:01
Now I'm excited for our conversation because I
1:03
know there's so much happening in health care,
1:05
and it's truly a a fantastic time to
1:07
be in this space, so transformational
1:09
in in a lot of, you know, technology
1:11
as well as new opportunities in in care
1:13
delivery models. But before we dive in, can
1:15
you tell us just a little bit more
1:16
about yourself and the organization?
1:19
Thanks again, Laura, for this opportunity.
1:21
So my name is, again, Salim Haik. I'm
1:23
a cardiovascular specialist,
1:25
in cardio oncology, which means I take care
1:27
of cancer patients.
1:29
I'm also a physician scientist. I joined
1:32
UTMB, and now it's been a couple years
1:35
from the University of Michigan where I was
1:37
director for the Franco Cardiovascular Center. And I've
1:40
joined UTMB as a chief transformation officer, and
1:43
I'm now the chair for the department of
1:44
internal medicine.
1:46
UTMB is, a truly special place. This is
1:50
a institution
1:51
with history.
1:53
It is the first medical school West Of
1:55
The Mississippi.
1:56
It has,
1:58
at its core, truly
2:00
a driven mission. Right? Care for the people
2:03
of Texas and its
2:04
and its history taking care of, you know,
2:07
underserved population, the indigent population,
2:10
really a big focus on research.
2:13
But in the in the past decade, there
2:15
has been a new focus
2:17
for the University of Texas medical branch and
2:19
its expansion and growth,
2:22
to be able to bring our services to
2:24
the people in Southeast Of Texas.
2:26
And so, I was very excited to join
2:29
UTMB as part of a new leadership team,
2:31
new president, new dean, new provost,
2:34
in this renewed mission to expand
2:37
and grow the University of Texas medical branch
2:40
and provide,
2:42
specialty services and primary care to the population
2:45
here in Texas.
2:47
That's fantastic to hear. And, you know, really
2:49
cool that you have that opportunity to care
2:50
for such an important population and and a
2:53
variety of people, within the community. So I'm
2:56
excited to learn more about that. And, you
2:58
know, to that point, can you tell us
2:59
about an important initiative that you led in
3:01
the last year? What did you do, and
3:03
what were the results?
3:05
One of the exciting parts
3:07
here to be part of UTMB and this,
3:10
growth story is that
3:12
it is a built project. Right? We are
3:16
not just not just recreating, but even creating
3:20
new processes,
3:22
new approaches to enable intentional
3:24
growth.
3:25
And what we mean by intentional growth
3:28
is not as much just capturing market share
3:30
and deploying physicians, but really addressing a lot
3:33
of the major challenges that health care faces
3:36
right now and will continue to face or
3:38
maybe face even more in in the future,
3:41
which is essentially the the financial challenges, the
3:43
unpredictability.
3:45
And so a lot of what we are
3:47
doing as we're growing
3:49
is
3:50
understanding
3:51
how can we
3:52
be more efficient,
3:54
but also provide the highest quality of care.
3:57
How can we differentiate ourselves
4:00
from our environment, from our competitors?
4:03
And what is what is it that UTMB
4:05
can provide that is unique?
4:08
And so,
4:09
in part of as part of my role
4:11
as a chief transformation officer, you know, we
4:13
were coming in at a time where AI
4:15
is just launching.
4:18
And, you know, when when we think about
4:20
AI, we think of a lot of the
4:21
sexy, cool, you know, imaging image producing,
4:24
you know, the the the whole large language
4:26
model providing,
4:28
you know, like a chatbot's interaction with patients.
4:31
Some people even think of
4:33
AI,
4:34
from the perspective of, well, advancing diagnostics. Like,
4:38
we are these are the really big sexy
4:40
things. But I'll tell you, the major value
4:43
of AI
4:44
is into automate, you know, the less sexy
4:46
process. It's the back end process, the how
4:49
medicine works, how we
4:51
enable
4:52
our physicians, our staff to provide the best,
4:55
clinical care. And the way we do that
4:58
is leveraging AI to lift the administrative burden.
5:01
So a lot of that work, we're very
5:03
proud to be doing
5:05
and to enable a really much more nimble
5:07
and efficient
5:09
system to support our physicians.
5:11
I'd say if, I wanna amongst this big
5:14
title, right, lifting the burdens, making administration
5:17
more efficient,
5:18
ensuring the scope of our physician is, is
5:21
at its max,
5:23
one of the biggest initiatives is,
5:26
creating AI triage processes.
5:29
And so
5:31
in in the current state of American health
5:33
care, you know, it is estimated that about
5:34
40%
5:36
of the care that we provide in The
5:38
United States is low value care. In a
5:40
sense, I'll give you an example. You know,
5:41
a lot of people come back to their
5:43
clinicians just to get refills of medications.
5:45
I mean, you know, that's in a in
5:47
a world in which you have people waiting
5:49
weeks and months to see a specialist, yet
5:51
you have scheduled patients coming in for a
5:53
refill. Or, for example, a cardiologist might be,
5:56
you know, seeing someone for hypertension
5:58
for whereas hypertension could be easily addressed by
6:01
a primary care physician.
6:04
And so what we're doing now, what we've
6:06
built, this is unique to UTMB,
6:09
is,
6:10
AI referral triage that is automated that would
6:13
help direct
6:14
any referral, any patient coming into the system
6:17
to the right provider based on their urgency,
6:20
their complexity,
6:21
the the specific problem there that that needs
6:24
to be addressed. And so suddenly, we're prioritizing
6:28
patient that needs to be seen the most.
6:31
And not only that, we're getting them
6:33
to the right physician. So this is something
6:35
that we've built over the past year. We've
6:37
launched it.
6:39
We've launched it in certain areas
6:41
in, early early in January,
6:44
and we are so excited to see, some
6:46
immediate impact
6:48
in improvement of access and increase in complexity.
6:50
And we are rolling it out gradually,
6:53
for the rest of the department of medicine
6:55
and hopefully soon thereafter to the rest of
6:57
this this the institution.
6:59
I love that. I I think it's so
7:01
critical, as you mentioned, to have the AI
7:03
technology really working in spaces that can augment
7:06
the human workforce and make things more efficient,
7:08
effective, and and truly provide a better experience
7:11
across the board. And so that idea of
7:13
the AI, referral triage,
7:16
you know, is really cool, and it seems
7:18
like it's solving a a good number of
7:20
challenges at the same time. So when you're
7:22
putting together something like that and and really
7:24
innovating and figuring out where you want to,
7:27
devote your resources,
7:28
You know, how does that conversation start, and
7:31
and what does it look like to build
7:32
something internally like that?
7:34
Great question, Lauren. Here's here's the reality. Right?
7:36
And this is, again, a reality that all
7:38
of us are experiencing across the the health
7:40
care system.
7:42
Margins are getting thinner. If any if any
7:44
people are making significant margins, there are tremendous
7:47
unpredictability,
7:50
in terms of the regulatory and,
7:52
reimbursement
7:53
landscape.
7:55
Coupled with that, there's an aging population.
7:57
There's a huge need for medical care.
8:00
And so how can we address this challenge?
8:04
The answer
8:05
cannot be,
8:06
let's
8:07
put more doctors. Let's throw more more people
8:10
into the mix. Because the reality is we
8:12
don't have enough doctors. We don't have enough
8:14
APPs.
8:15
We don't have enough money to be paying
8:17
these people,
8:19
the way they need to be reimbursed. And,
8:21
again, I'm not talking or referring to your
8:22
TMB. I'm talking about really American health care
8:25
in general.
8:26
And so when you think about
8:28
what do we need to do that can
8:30
be sustainable
8:31
is rethinking
8:33
how we currently do things, taking our current
8:36
workforce
8:37
and making them more efficient. And this is
8:39
where and efficient is not just in the
8:42
number of patients seen,
8:44
but having them seen the right having the
8:46
right patients seen at the right time by
8:49
the right provider.
8:51
And so,
8:52
this is this is a lot of how
8:54
our thinking has gone into this and how
8:56
do we we devise this. We looked at,
8:57
okay,
8:58
how do we transform our current workforce
9:01
into being more effective? And I think that
9:03
is the question that everybody should be asking,
9:06
because there is tremendous
9:09
opportunities, but in that data that showed the
9:12
significant amount of low value care that is
9:14
being provided.
9:15
Now how do we how do we go
9:17
about doing this?
9:18
The most important is is the vision. Right?
9:21
I am someone who is technologically savvy, so
9:24
I I'm, you know, I've always been kind
9:26
of the tech tech geek as a kid
9:28
growing up, and and now you can imagine
9:31
this world, this environment, how excited I am
9:33
to be to be living in this day
9:34
and age. And so with all the tools
9:36
and all the toys that are available to
9:38
us. So, you know, I I I know
9:40
enough to be dangerous, let's say, and when
9:41
it comes to that field, but I'm not
9:43
a computer scientist. I'm a physician. I do
9:45
this to care for patient.
9:47
But I've always
9:48
I've always wanted to leverage technology to help
9:52
improve how I take care of patients. So
9:54
with that, vision comes first.
9:57
Second, you need, again, the technical support, and
10:00
I'm very proud and excited to to to
10:02
to say that UTMB, we have a great
10:05
slew of engineers, of physician,
10:08
you know, I would say physician technologists. Right?
10:11
We talk about physician scientists, but now I
10:13
think we need to talk about physician technologists,
10:16
right, who have that interest and that we
10:19
consolidate it together into
10:21
what I call the AI center. So we
10:23
now have a UTMB and AI center
10:26
that comprises of these stakeholders.
10:28
And what we do is that we build
10:30
our own product, so that's a big part
10:31
of that.
10:33
But most importantly,
10:34
we also partner with
10:36
specific
10:37
companies. So we have an evaluative process in
10:41
which,
10:42
we have companies come and present
10:44
to us their products,
10:46
and we gauge their the potential for collaboration,
10:49
the potential for building together.
10:52
And it's done, again, in a very strategic
10:54
way based on that initial vision that I
10:56
that I set forward. Is that how do
10:59
we, again, lift the burdens
11:01
from our physicians, from our administer
11:04
administrative staff? How do we make our current
11:06
workforce more effective?
11:08
And how do we generate more value for
11:10
the patient and for the institution.
11:12
And based on that vision,
11:14
we've again focused our own engineers
11:17
and our partnership
11:18
with industry
11:20
to create these products as we, that we're
11:22
that that we're deploying here at UTMB.
11:26
I love it. That's amazing to hear. And,
11:27
you know, really cool that you've got that
11:29
type of,
11:30
innovation pipeline within the teams that you have,
11:33
both on the clinical side as well as
11:35
the technology side,
11:36
and putting that together,
11:38
is so amazing. So I I love the
11:40
way you talked about problem solving too. I
11:42
think there's so many, challenges within the health
11:44
care world today, but seeing where you can
11:46
generate the most value makes a ton of
11:48
sense. And, you know, to that point,
11:50
in looking ahead for the next year or
11:52
so, what are some of the big priorities
11:53
and headwinds that you're focused on for 2026?
11:57
So as as you move forward to 2026,
12:01
there's a lot of regulatory uncertainties.
12:03
Right? I think uncertainty
12:05
is the major headline across,
12:09
across health system. I was just at the
12:11
meeting of the Association of Professors of Medicine
12:13
in Scottsdale,
12:14
and, that was the biggest keyword. Right? Uncertainty,
12:19
for the future.
12:20
And I think the way the way we
12:22
challenge that is, again, going back to what
12:24
I mentioned earlier, you know, making sure the
12:26
foundation that we have is solid and robust.
12:29
And
12:30
so, again, while, you know, as builders, as
12:33
leaders, we always wanna we're excited to have
12:35
a new building, have a new fancy program
12:37
with a new name.
12:39
That is not what is what is gonna
12:41
help us sustain ourselves. That is actually added
12:44
risk. It's there's a lot of excitement, and
12:46
it's great, and I would love to have
12:47
one day a fancy building with fancy tools.
12:50
But as as we as the in challenging
12:53
uncertainty, we gotta have a robust foundation to,
12:56
again,
12:57
address these headwinds.
12:59
Our major priorities
13:00
is to make sure Texans get the best
13:03
care and and timely care. And so we
13:05
have, as as with everybody else,
13:07
big access challenges.
13:09
And our a lot of our work is,
13:11
in AI is directly addressing,
13:14
these access challenges
13:16
through prioritizing
13:17
those that need to be seen,
13:19
earlier and increasing the value of our care.
13:22
That makes a ton of sense. And, you
13:24
know, I I think looking at, that idea
13:27
of uncertainty and especially,
13:29
the idea of risk in health care too,
13:32
of course, you know, trying to figure out
13:34
how to meet the challenges of the day
13:36
are critical, but when you are also wanting
13:38
to, like, grow for the future in an
13:40
uncertain time, how do you balance that and,
13:43
really just make sure everyone is focused on
13:45
the right things, at any given time?
13:48
That's a great question, Lauren. It's really distinguishing
13:51
between
13:54
derisking
13:56
certain activities.
13:57
Right?
13:58
Ensuring a foundation for growth
14:01
and then
14:03
actually
14:04
investing in that growth.
14:06
And so there's, you know, there's a mantra
14:08
that, you know, you should you can grow
14:09
yourself out of anything.
14:11
I don't think that's true in health care.
14:13
And, and the reason I I don't think
14:15
that's true is because the margins are so
14:17
thin,
14:18
right, in a sense that, you know and
14:20
whenever you're you're reliant on an environment that
14:22
is unstable
14:24
and you're investing significant dollars in growth,
14:27
And that growth really that is highly dependent
14:31
on the payer and reimbursement.
14:33
And
14:34
perhaps, for example, let's talk about research. I'm
14:36
a physician scientist. I wanna grow academics. That's
14:38
been one of my my greatest priorities.
14:41
Right? But how do I navigate the NIH
14:44
situation? How do I navigate what funding looks
14:46
in the future? So,
14:48
point is the first step is in establishing
14:51
what is the risk of the different
14:53
strategies or approaches,
14:55
right, that we wanna do.
14:57
The second step is before deciding to to
15:00
to invest and grow, do we have a
15:02
solid foundation?
15:04
And, again, when I say solid foundation is,
15:06
are our services
15:08
operating the way they should be? Are our
15:10
physicians deployed the way they should be? Do
15:13
we have
15:14
a situation in which our physicians trust leadership?
15:18
Right? Especially in times of change,
15:20
that trust component in academic health systems is
15:23
critical.
15:24
You know, health care and academia is rife
15:27
with distrust,
15:28
and,
15:30
I have invested heavily in establishing
15:33
a relationship of trust with our faculty so
15:35
that they know that change is coming
15:38
and that we are there not just to
15:40
support them, but that they're part of that
15:42
change. They're part of the planning. They're part
15:43
of the vision building, and they're part of
15:45
the execution.
15:46
And so,
15:47
that foundation is critical. And and although it's
15:50
not always the sexiest thing, I think it
15:52
is what is going to save us. And
15:55
then that was that's gonna what what is
15:57
going to allow us to then do
15:59
those exciting,
16:00
elements,
16:02
which is building new programs, building,
16:05
new subspecialties,
16:06
new tools, new gadgets that
16:08
that all comes after you've built a solid
16:10
foundation.
16:12
The foundation falters everything. Everything falters. Right?
16:16
Yeah. Yeah. No. In many programs. I mean,
16:18
we've seen that across the nation, programs that
16:20
are just faltering
16:22
because you have people leaving, you know, investment
16:25
that just haven't yielded the return their their
16:27
actual returns.
16:29
That's such a great point. And, you know,
16:31
it always important to remember and keep in
16:33
mind as you're looking at how, you wanna
16:35
move forward into the future.
16:37
You know, definitely don't wanna be one of
16:39
those programs that start struggling after a few
16:41
years just, you know, when the momentum
16:43
from the initial launch or whatnot,
16:46
wanes a bit. So I love that. What
16:48
do you think the hardest thing you'll have
16:50
to do in the coming year will be?
16:52
You know, the honest answer is I don't
16:54
know. Right?
16:56
And the reason I don't know, it's because
16:58
of the uncertainty that exists.
17:01
What I'm hoping
17:03
well, what I anticipate the hardest thing will
17:05
be is having to make decisions between,
17:08
you know, where to invest,
17:10
right, where to grow,
17:12
or, you know, where to cut.
17:14
And so
17:16
every idea is often in medicine, right, you
17:19
get a lot of fantastic ideas.
17:21
And here's the reality. We can't execute them
17:24
all, and that's my point when we talk
17:25
about derisking, prioritization,
17:27
foundation building.
17:29
And so these are decisions that are not
17:31
easy. Right? Because we're we don't work in
17:33
isolation in academic health care. There are multiple
17:35
stakeholders, many leaders,
17:38
many people with fantastic ideas,
17:40
and we need to we need to decide
17:42
on what what is what is our next
17:44
step. And these are often difficult decisions
17:47
difficult decisions. But what makes it even more
17:49
difficult
17:50
is the uncertainty that lies ahead. And, thus,
17:53
again, my emphasis on foundation building,
17:56
and making sure that our foundation is strong
17:58
enough to resist any any of those,
18:02
challenges,
18:03
ahead.
18:04
I love that. You know? And I I
18:06
think that, kind of difficulty and the challenge
18:08
in making those decisions and understanding
18:11
or trying to figure out, you know, what's
18:12
gonna be the right thing today, to build
18:15
a stronger tomorrow,
18:17
is no easy task. And so I I
18:18
think, having that foundation, as you mentioned, is
18:21
critical and then continuing to build from there
18:23
and and staying nimble,
18:25
depending on, you know, what could happen. It's,
18:28
any kind of
18:29
number of things could be, on board for
18:31
the rest of the year, but it's just,
18:33
you know, fascinating to have that type of
18:34
leadership and the structure within the organization to
18:37
respond to it. And, you know, obviously, we
18:40
don't have a crystal ball, but,
18:42
as of now, I guess, where are some
18:44
of the areas that you are most strongly
18:46
considering additional growth, or how are you looking
18:49
at,
18:50
success in the next year or so with,
18:52
within the health system?
18:54
Laura, just just to add to your point,
18:56
it is impossible to predict how things are
18:59
gonna look
19:00
even within five years.
19:02
I mean, anybody who is into the AI
19:04
space
19:05
realizes that the momentum
19:08
and the the rapid development of that technology
19:11
is at a pace that just makes
19:13
the subsequent impact or even the side effects
19:16
of it completely
19:18
unpredictable.
19:19
And and so that is
19:21
both exciting but scary at the same time.
19:25
So
19:26
so it's it's extremely difficult to predict. Now
19:29
in terms of our short term growth, so
19:31
so you're asking me what what what do
19:33
I what am I looking forward in a
19:35
year? What I'm looking forward in a year
19:37
is a significant return on investment
19:40
on our
19:42
development of the AI referral triage, and we
19:44
wanna see improvement in access. We wanna see
19:46
the sickest patients get seen first and get
19:49
the care that we need. We wanna see
19:51
the right downstream utilization. We wanna
19:54
see surgeons busy doing what they do best
19:57
and our specialists
19:59
seeing the right patients,
20:01
while our primary care
20:03
providers
20:04
continuing
20:05
holding the line in terms of the foundation,
20:08
of care for these folks.
20:10
And so,
20:11
I'm very excited to I'm excited to see
20:14
what kind of impact
20:16
will that
20:17
will these,
20:18
strategies,
20:19
deliver to us because
20:21
this is not a long term impact tool.
20:23
It will impact us on the short term
20:26
as well as the long term, but,
20:29
it will have an immediate
20:31
short term impact, and I'm very excited to
20:32
see what it's gonna look like.
20:35
I love that. Doctor Hayek, thank you so
20:36
much for joining us on the podcast today.
20:38
This has been such a fantastic conversation, you
20:41
know, truly valuable to understand your perspective and
20:43
all the things that you're working on right
20:45
now, and we'll be excited to continue this
20:47
conversation as well at the annual meeting. I
20:48
know you'll be speaking there, and so it'll
20:50
be great to connect with you and and
20:52
see you at that point, in a couple
20:54
weeks. So, again, appreciate your time today and
20:56
look forward to staying in touch. My pleasure,
20:59
Laura. Great to see you too.