Latest / Becker’s Healthcare Podcast / Trust by Design: How Voluntary Accreditation is Shaping Responsible Healthcare AI
Transcript
- 0:00Hi, everyone. This is Lucas Voss with Becker's
- 0:02Healthcare. Thanks so much for tuning in to
- 0:03the Becker's Healthcare podcast series. It's fantastic to
- 0:06have you. Today, we're talking about how voluntary
- 0:09accreditation
- 0:10is shaping
- 0:11responsible health care AI, and I'm so excited
- 0:14to welcome doctor Sean Griffin. He's the CEO
- 0:17of Eurac. You know, his career spans clinical
- 0:19practice, MOC, group leadership, and innovation in care
- 0:21delivery. After years of practice, doctor Griffin stepped
- 0:24into that CEO role to broaden his impact,
- 0:27bringing his experience beyond the exam room to
- 0:29help advance quality, accountability, and innovation across the
- 0:32country and the world. At York, he focuses
- 0:34on strengthening and evolving accreditation programs, influencing policy
- 0:38in and building a culture that supports both
- 0:40high standards
- 0:42and meaningful growth for his team. Doctor Griffin,
- 0:45I'm so excited to have you. Welcome to
- 0:46the podcast.
- 0:47Thank you very much, Lucas. I'm looking forward
- 0:49to this discussion.
- 0:50Yes. We have lots to talk about.
- 0:53AI is being adopted very rapidly,
- 0:56across many different disciplines, clinical administrative,
- 0:59pace patient facing workflows.
- 1:02But a lot of leaders, even though it's
- 1:03being adopted, are saying they're unsure how to
- 1:05evaluate risk, transparency,
- 1:07accountability,
- 1:08a lot of different factors.
- 1:10What gap did you see in the market,
- 1:12and how does the Healthcare AI accreditation address
- 1:15that specific need?
- 1:17Well, I'm fortunate in that I was a
- 1:19chief medical information officer for a couple decades
- 1:21back when I was in clinical practice and
- 1:23working as part of health systems.
- 1:24And when you're a CMIO,
- 1:27you get used to technology rolling in and
- 1:29you have rollout plans and training plans and
- 1:31all those sort of things.
- 1:33And AI really is
- 1:35similar to some of those things, but it's
- 1:37different also. And so what we were looking
- 1:39at is we're we're very involved in the
- 1:41policy, level in Washington, DC and in in
- 1:43guiding policy. You know, we've been around for
- 1:46three and a half decades. We do all
- 1:47this work in quality.
- 1:48And what I was seeing was I was
- 1:50seeing this come in,
- 1:51into healthcare. And actually, I spoke on AI
- 1:54in healthcare back in 2018
- 1:56to a bunch of chief medical information officers
- 1:58who were were early on in their careers.
- 2:00And back in 2018,
- 2:01it was mainly being done with PowerPoint slides
- 2:04because there really wasn't much meat underneath those
- 2:06PowerPoint slides. It was being used for funding
- 2:08and talk about, you know, sort of robot
- 2:10maids and flying cars and AI and healthcare.
- 2:13But over the past few years, what we
- 2:15saw was we saw that there was more
- 2:17of this rolling in and it was being
- 2:19being sold. And if you went to a
- 2:20a big technology and healthcare
- 2:22sort of meeting, the vendors were switching over
- 2:25from being EMR vendors to being AI vendors.
- 2:27And AI was in everything. It was the
- 2:29sprinkles on top of every piece of technology.
- 2:31They're talking more and more about AI.
- 2:33And what I was hearing from my my
- 2:35friends who are still in practice in the
- 2:36organizations that we work with was
- 2:39we we need some guardrails on this, that
- 2:41this is moving faster than regulation is keeping
- 2:43up, and we can't tell the good guys
- 2:46from the bad guys.
- 2:47And, accreditation
- 2:49has a history of helping you tell the
- 2:50good guys from the bad guys. I describe
- 2:53accreditation as like being a quality auditor.
- 2:55We we we step in and we say
- 2:57we're gonna check behind the scenes and we're
- 2:59gonna tell you that they're doing things right.
- 3:01And not just the, oh, they say they're
- 3:03doing it right, but we're actually gonna make
- 3:04sure that they're doing it right. And so,
- 3:07we went to our board, and our board
- 3:08is a mix of stakeholders, everything from doctors
- 3:11to nurses to health plans to pharmacies
- 3:14to all these different groups. And we said,
- 3:16we're very concerned about this technology outrunning the
- 3:18rules
- 3:19and putting both patients and providers in a
- 3:22dangerous place where they don't know,
- 3:24what to trust. They're not trained on it.
- 3:26They don't understand the risk.
- 3:29And honestly, we saw some bad actors who
- 3:31were coming to the table with tools that
- 3:33weren't fully baked and weren't trustworthy.
- 3:36And so we said, you know, we think
- 3:38this needs some independent oversight.
- 3:41We looked at what was going on, and
- 3:42honestly, there's 200 best practices out there,
- 3:46and best practice organizations and recommendations and all
- 3:49these sort of things. And oddly enough, they
- 3:50don't all agree on anything.
- 3:52But we said is is best practices saying
- 3:54you're following best practices
- 3:56is like saying you're gonna make a New
- 3:58Year's resolution. It's like, we're we're gonna do
- 4:00our best. And it's like, you know, in
- 4:01in in health care, just doing our best
- 4:03has never been good enough. So we said,
- 4:06we're willing to take
- 4:07our reputation and our integrity that we've built
- 4:10over decades
- 4:11and and step into this space.
- 4:13So, we we we built a program. We
- 4:15we got stakeholders, an open call for stakeholders
- 4:18to come together.
- 4:19And, we had some great minds around around,
- 4:22the table contributing to this. We had academic
- 4:25medical centers. We had practicing physicians. We had
- 4:27lawyers.
- 4:28We had ethicists.
- 4:30We had,
- 4:31pharmaceutical
- 4:32companies.
- 4:33And when we got them together, we were
- 4:35planning on doing a program around users of
- 4:38AI. So an accreditation program to protect the
- 4:40users of AI.
- 4:42And when we got that group together,
- 4:44they said, well, yes. We need that. We
- 4:46desperately need that. There there are no regulations
- 4:49right now guiding this on a a national
- 4:50basis.
- 4:51But we also need one for the developers
- 4:54because
- 4:55we're looking at the developers and we can't
- 4:57tell whether they know what they're doing or
- 4:58not before they start trying to sell to
- 5:00us. And so they were sort of looking
- 5:02for, can somebody check behind the scenes before
- 5:04it even shows up at our door,
- 5:06to to make sure that the vendors are
- 5:08doing it right? So that's what we stepped
- 5:10into. We developed that program. We rolled it
- 5:12out last year. It's the first
- 5:14AI and health care accreditation program.
- 5:16It's designed one module for users, one module
- 5:19for developers,
- 5:20and it's been very positively responded to. It
- 5:23took off faster than any program we've launched
- 5:25in about the seven years I've been here,
- 5:27and we've got good feedback on it. We've
- 5:29got regulators who want to know more about
- 5:30it because they're looking at how they can
- 5:32approach it. We've got big healthcare organizations who
- 5:35are looking at it because they're like, we're
- 5:37we're tired of just saying we're following best
- 5:39practice. We think this needs to be verified
- 5:41and trustworthy.
- 5:42And we're hearing from from users who are
- 5:44like, you know, all of a sudden I've
- 5:45got this AI tool which has been stuffed
- 5:47into my EMR. I had no training on
- 5:49it. I don't know about the data privacy.
- 5:52We hear all these horror stories about risk
- 5:54and bias and hallucinations
- 5:56and those sort of things. And so, we
- 5:58just we wanted to put some guardrails up,
- 6:00and that's what our program is.
- 6:03How do those standards then if you wanna
- 6:04talk a little bit about some of those
- 6:06core pillars, right, of the program in itself,
- 6:08and then you you just mentioned some of
- 6:10those standards involve just an individual looking at,
- 6:12okay, how am I actually
- 6:14using AI on a daily basis? But how
- 6:16do those standards then translate
- 6:18into those safeguards in practice, both clinically and
- 6:21operationally?
- 6:22Okay. Well, in any program that we do,
- 6:24and we have over 40 different programs that
- 6:26we do in healthcare, there are some things
- 6:28we call the foundational focus areas. Foundational focus
- 6:30areas are sort of those core quality
- 6:33structures that any organization should have if it's
- 6:35going to be in healthcare. It's things like
- 6:37regulatory compliance,
- 6:39regulatory monitoring. When the laws change, are you
- 6:42going to catch those things? It's about
- 6:44statements of work, contracting,
- 6:47data protection,
- 6:48privacy protection.
- 6:50We actually,
- 6:52scalability.
- 6:52You know, I'd hate to deploy a tool
- 6:54into my system that that couldn't keep up
- 6:57with growth. You know, I I don't wanna
- 6:58have a server crash and all of a
- 7:00sudden my doctors can't get recommendations for what
- 7:02they should be doing, those sort of
- 7:04things. So we we have those sort of
- 7:06foundational focus areas. Are the people who are
- 7:08doing it qualified to do it?
- 7:10Things that just make common sense, but we
- 7:12actually check those things because we say you
- 7:14can't assume those things are being checked.
- 7:16A code of ethical conduct for both the
- 7:19developers and the users. Have they actually looked
- 7:21at this from an ethical standpoint?
- 7:23Have they looked at it from a technical
- 7:24standpoint? Have they looked at it from a
- 7:26clinical standpoint?
- 7:27Sadly enough, there are some AI tools which
- 7:29are being rolled out which really don't have
- 7:31clinicians involved in their development.
- 7:33So I've heard of physicians who say, I
- 7:35just got given this new tool to use
- 7:37for patient email responses and it doesn't have
- 7:40a medical
- 7:41dictionary
- 7:42to make sure that the words are the
- 7:43right words that are supposed to be used.
- 7:45It has a technical dictionary, but not a
- 7:47medical dictionary.
- 7:48And that's just a case of, you know,
- 7:50where things may work great over in finance,
- 7:53but when you're going to bring them into
- 7:54the clinical world, we actually have a higher
- 7:56standard that we expect people to follow.
- 7:59So so we have all those foundational focus
- 8:01areas, which which go into either program, whether
- 8:03a user or a developer.
- 8:05And and be honest, there's some organizations that
- 8:06are doing both. I mean, I've heard of
- 8:08big hospital systems where they say they have
- 8:10over a thousand AI tools that they're deploying.
- 8:13And if if we said they have a
- 8:14thousand drugs that they're developing and using on
- 8:16patients, we'd go, maybe somebody outside the organization
- 8:19needs to be looking at these things.
- 8:21But, in AI, you can have, you know,
- 8:23six guys in a garage write a bunch
- 8:25of code, and all of a sudden you
- 8:26have a tool that'll be showing up at
- 8:27your your next vendor
- 8:29fair. Yeah. Absolutely.
- 8:31And, again, we know that part of the
- 8:32issue as you've mentioned before, there there's not
- 8:34a lot of regulation
- 8:35around it. No. The the garage guys can
- 8:39develop their tool, bring it to market, and
- 8:41then effectively sell it to health care. Right?
- 8:44That's a part of the process right now.
- 8:46How does then voluntary accreditation differ from regulation
- 8:51in the context of health care AI? And
- 8:53why is that
- 8:54distinction so important, especially now
- 8:57when we have the guys in the garage
- 8:59developing these AI tools? Yeah. So so AI
- 9:03under the previous administration, AI was had some
- 9:06constraints on it.
- 9:07There were some regulatory frameworks that were being
- 9:09thrown around
- 9:11at the federal level. And when we looked
- 9:12at that, we're like, okay, there are some
- 9:14guardrails that are being applied.
- 9:16And with the most recent change in the
- 9:18White House, they said we're concerned about holding
- 9:21AI back too much. And so they they
- 9:23suspended some of those executive orders and some
- 9:25of those rules.
- 9:26And whether those rules were great rules or
- 9:28terrible rules, they suspended those rules. And so
- 9:31now you've got sort of this vacuum at
- 9:32the federal level as to what are the
- 9:35rules going to be. You have states where
- 9:37they have, you're developing a patchwork of states
- 9:40where maybe Colorado is concerned about this and
- 9:42California is concerned about this. And my old
- 9:45home state of Iowa may not have any
- 9:47rules whatsoever.
- 9:48But if you're a developer, how do you
- 9:50sell into those markets when not every facility,
- 9:54respects state lines?
- 9:55When I used to practice, I was in
- 9:57St. Joseph, Missouri. And in St. Joe, I
- 9:59had patients who were from Kansas, from Missouri,
- 10:01from Iowa, from Nebraska.
- 10:03And it's really strange to think, well, wait
- 10:05a minute. They're from Iowa, so I can
- 10:06use this email tool,
- 10:09but their cousin is from Missouri. And so
- 10:11for their chemotherapy, I can't use this tool.
- 10:14And and that's not how medicine has tended
- 10:16to work. And so we looked at the
- 10:17regulations. I mean, you're still supposed to follow
- 10:20HIPAA. HIPAA has been around for a while.
- 10:22But the thing about AI is that AI
- 10:25changes.
- 10:26And so there are some particulars that can
- 10:29change when you're talking about an AI deployment.
- 10:32And what we say is it's really sad
- 10:34to think about it, but right now there's
- 10:35actually more regulatory oversight for the hospital cafeteria
- 10:39than there is for the hospital AI program.
- 10:43Absolutely. And again,
- 10:45the I think it's partially also because
- 10:47the word regulation comes with a lot of
- 10:50stigma around it, specifically for folks that want
- 10:52to move fast and that are we have
- 10:54to be cutting edge. We have to drive
- 10:57innovation
- 10:58across the enterprise. And then you say, oh,
- 11:00wait. Regulation.
- 11:02And that's it's a worry for a lot
- 11:04of folks. Again, that it slows innovation and
- 11:06adds friction in the
- 11:07AI process within an organization.
- 11:10From what you're seeing though, how can those
- 11:12responsible AI frame frameworks actually accelerate this process
- 11:16and help organizations
- 11:18then
- 11:19scale
- 11:20AI safely?
- 11:21Well, I I would say if if you
- 11:23look at f one drivers
- 11:24doing over 200 miles an hour in a
- 11:26car, they do wear a seat belt.
- 11:29You know, you you actually need some controls
- 11:32if you're gonna go fast.
- 11:34And when I think about regulation,
- 11:36the nice thing about accreditation is accreditation has
- 11:39been around for decades and accreditation
- 11:41actually has the ability to change and move
- 11:43along with a rapidly changing
- 11:46care environment.
- 11:48So, whereas I'll tell you right now in
- 11:50Washington, DC, it's difficult to pass any laws.
- 11:53There's just so much so many, so much
- 11:55tug of war going on in DC.
- 11:57But accreditation
- 11:58being voluntary,
- 12:00right now accreditation is being approached by people
- 12:03who say, we recognize there needs to be
- 12:05some other oversight on this, and we're gonna
- 12:07go for that. For my generation, it'd be
- 12:10the good housekeeping seal of approval. You know,
- 12:12for younger generations, gonna go for those Yelp
- 12:14reviews or whatever it is. But some somebody
- 12:16needs to be reviewing the safety and the
- 12:19efficacy
- 12:20of what's going on in health care AI
- 12:22in particular. We're not putting out an accreditation
- 12:24program for your bank's AI. We're saying health
- 12:27care is a different,
- 12:29different beast and it needs it needs a
- 12:31little bit of a collar at least so
- 12:33that people feel they can come and pet
- 12:35it.
- 12:36And it touches so many different people. We
- 12:39all are involved in health care. That's part
- 12:41of our lives. We have to be able
- 12:44to say, okay, there is regulation. There are
- 12:46some guardrails. There is that collar as you've
- 12:47mentioned to be able to control some of
- 12:49this. Yeah. I I do wanna come back
- 12:51to the the guys in the garage a
- 12:52little bit here because, again, it's I think
- 12:54it's an it's an important part of the
- 12:56conversation.
- 12:57Looking ahead, as we head into the rest
- 12:59of 2026
- 13:00and certainly
- 13:01beyond,
- 13:02how do you expect accreditation to influence that
- 13:05vendor selection and then also the competitive positioning
- 13:08and just in general the overall trust
- 13:11in health care AI?
- 13:13I I think there's a couple different places
- 13:15where where this can come in.
- 13:17I will tell you I've talked with hundreds
- 13:19of organizations
- 13:20and some of them have a very good
- 13:23governance and adoption framework that they use for
- 13:26their organization
- 13:27for any technology coming in. I actually used
- 13:29to chair the technology adoption committee at my
- 13:32hospital system,
- 13:33and so I'm familiar with that. And if
- 13:35you're going to buy a new CT scanner,
- 13:37one of the things that you do is
- 13:38you look at, you know, what's it to
- 13:40be used for, you know, who developed it,
- 13:42are they going to be in business next
- 13:43year, And then how do we bring it
- 13:45in? How do we train on it? Do
- 13:46we have the electrical hookups? Are our systems
- 13:48ready for it? And and and what's it
- 13:50going to do for us? And so I
- 13:53I think that what we're hearing is that
- 13:55people who are looking at vendors coming in
- 13:57from the outside
- 13:58have said, we really think that we should
- 14:00start writing in this idea of an accreditation
- 14:03for vendors before we will consider them as
- 14:05being part of the process.
- 14:07You know, it's sort of like a you
- 14:08know, if it's four guys in a garage,
- 14:11they could go out of business next week
- 14:12or mom could kick them out of the
- 14:14garage and then they suddenly don't even have
- 14:15an office.
- 14:16And so when it comes to AI tools,
- 14:18especially anything that influences
- 14:21patient care,
- 14:22patient care has always been a special trusted
- 14:25area. You know, we talk about evidence based
- 14:27medicine and and what's the research show and
- 14:29those sort of things. And AI is breaking
- 14:32some of those rules. And not only is
- 14:34it breaking some of those rules when it
- 14:35shows up, it's breaking some of those rules
- 14:37a week later when it might have changed
- 14:39a little bit. So for example, when we
- 14:41talk about AI programs, we say before you
- 14:44adopt an AI program, you should analyze it
- 14:46from a risk standpoint.
- 14:47What is the risk of the usage of
- 14:49this tool?
- 14:50If it's high risk, you have to keep
- 14:52a closer eye on it. If it's low
- 14:54risk,
- 14:55you know, you can you can check it
- 14:56every month or so, something like that, if
- 14:58it's not affecting patient care.
- 15:00Just to illustrate that point, one of the
- 15:02analogies that I use is think of anything
- 15:05you're asking AI to do in health care
- 15:07and imagine it's a person doing the same
- 15:09thing.
- 15:10Okay? So
- 15:12if if you went into the doctor's office
- 15:13today and they said,
- 15:15Larry, is going to come into the office
- 15:18into the exam room with you and he's
- 15:20going to write down everything that we say
- 15:21so that I don't have to write it
- 15:22all down. Are you okay with that?
- 15:24Well, it's a very natural question to say,
- 15:26well, who's Larry? You know, what's Larry's background?
- 15:29Was Larry, you know, picking up the recycling
- 15:31earlier today and he just happened to wander
- 15:33by, but he's got really nice handwriting, so
- 15:35this is fine? So so there's a credentialing
- 15:37analogy here for when you bring something into
- 15:40your system, is it trained? Is it qualified?
- 15:43Is it doing the job that you expect?
- 15:44And who's gonna keep an eye on it
- 15:46until you trust it?
- 15:48And we're saying the same things for AI.
- 15:50Our accreditation
- 15:51standards are actually out there on the web.
- 15:53You could look them up. You could go
- 15:55to our website, eurec.org.
- 15:57You could see what our standards are, what
- 15:58they talk about. And that gives you a
- 16:00really nice framework for what you should look
- 16:03for both in from your developers and also
- 16:05in your deployment.
- 16:07Now, the next step is,
- 16:09okay, we say we're gonna follow those things,
- 16:12but patients don't know to trust us. You
- 16:14know, providers don't know to trust us. They
- 16:16don't wanna be hung out to dry with
- 16:18liability from some tool that's not all the
- 16:20way baked or is the the four guys
- 16:22in the garage who developed it. The other
- 16:24thing is is that
- 16:25are we training as we roll these things
- 16:27out? I know that some of the the
- 16:28AI scribes have been rolled out to hundreds
- 16:32of thousands of users,
- 16:33and I'm not familiar with how much training
- 16:36they're getting on on those tools.
- 16:39Some organizations are doing a great job with
- 16:40it. Others are sort of like, oh, we
- 16:42put a new AI scribe into the EMR
- 16:44today. We want you to take a look
- 16:46at the notes and and, and use those
- 16:48for your notes going forward. And that's that's
- 16:50really not how we have done things when
- 16:52it comes to this. And and there's risks
- 16:54that pop up. There's there's horror stories of
- 16:56just terrible things. But there's also you know,
- 16:59I'm hearing from doctors these tools have been
- 17:01rolled out. And, yes, they're letting me pay
- 17:03attention to the patient in the exam room.
- 17:05But then that means after the exam room,
- 17:07I have to go read through all of
- 17:09the notes and make sure they got it
- 17:11right.
- 17:12Because a mistake in the record, it can
- 17:14be damaging to the patient in in ways
- 17:16you don't expect.
- 17:18Yeah. Well, doctor Griffin, I feel like we
- 17:20could talk for another hour. There's so much
- 17:22to as you've mentioned, there there's so much
- 17:24to talk about and and so many different
- 17:26aspects to this conversation. I wanna thank you
- 17:28for your time and for your insights. This
- 17:29was fantastic. Thanks for being here.
- 17:32Well, I appreciate the opportunity to talk a
- 17:33little bit about this, but, you know, take
- 17:35a look at our website. There will be
- 17:37other,
- 17:37AI programs that'll probably come out. We'll update
- 17:40this as need be, but, it's a it's
- 17:42a very sensitive area, and we're just offering
- 17:44to, to help organizations
- 17:46to to do it right to protect their
- 17:48patients and their providers. So thanks very much,
- 17:49Lucas. Absolutely. It's great to have you. At
- 17:51least talk to the guys in the garage.
- 17:53Don't just buy their product.
- 17:55Yes.
- 17:56The the guys in the garage,
- 17:58may may not be that much smarter,
- 18:00and you're you're you're letting risk into your
- 18:01organization if you don't check them out. Exactly.
- 18:04Well, doctor Griffin, thanks again for your time.
- 18:06We also want to thank our podcast sponsor,
- 18:07Eurek. You can tune in to more podcasts
- 18:09from Becker's Healthcare by visiting our podcast page
- 18:11at beckers hospital review
- 18:13dot com.