Latest / Becker’s Healthcare Podcast / How Health Systems Can Validate ROI and Successfully Scale Ambient AI Solutions from Pilot Programs to Enterprise-Wide Impact

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How Health Systems Can Validate ROI and Successfully Scale Ambient AI Solutions from Pilot Programs to Enterprise-Wide Impact · Becker’s Healthcare Podcast

• 0:00
  Hi, everyone. This is Lucas Voss with Becker's
• 0:02
  Healthcare. Thanks so much for tuning in to
• 0:04
  the Becker's Healthcare podcast series. It's great to
• 0:07
  have you. Today, we're talking about how health
• 0:09
  systems
• 0:10
  can validate ROI and successfully
• 0:12
  scale Ambient AI solutions from pilot programs to
• 0:16
  enterprise wide impact.
• 0:19
  And joining me for today's discussion, very excited
• 0:21
  to have him, is Mac Border, revenue cycle
• 0:23
  management and business solutions research director at Klas
• 0:26
  Research, and Josh Margulies,
• 0:28
  VP of brand advocacy at Suki dot ai.
• 0:32
  Josh and Mac, it's so great to have
• 0:34
  you both. Thanks so much for taking some
• 0:35
  time to be here.
• 0:37
  Thanks for having us, Lucas. This is great.
• 0:39
  Yeah. Glad to be here.
• 0:41
  Absolutely. Mac, I wanna start us off with
• 0:43
  you,
• 0:44
  again, classes
• 0:45
  known around the health care space for that
• 0:49
  research,
• 0:49
  trusted independent voice, specifically in health care IT,
• 0:53
  obviously.
• 0:54
  I wanna know why third party ROI validation
• 0:58
  is so important right now, especially when we're
• 1:01
  looking at this crowded ambient AR market.
• 1:05
  Yeah. It's a great question, Lucas. And frankly,
• 1:07
  it's the question I get asked probably the
• 1:09
  most in the last six months or so,
• 1:11
  six to eight months, from CMIOs, CIOs, but
• 1:14
  also, of course, CFOs who are probably the
• 1:16
  most concerned with the fiduciary aspect of, you
• 1:18
  know, any implementation.
• 1:20
  They're all asking the same thing. We understand
• 1:22
  that the AmbienteI,
• 1:24
  at this point, it's relatively understood in it.
• 1:26
  The the adoption is very positive.
• 1:29
  The,
• 1:30
  reception from clinician users, physician users are very
• 1:32
  positive, very high, and we can talk about
• 1:34
  some of those those reasons in a moment.
• 1:36
  But, generally, that's understood.
• 1:38
  What is less understood and is just as
• 1:40
  important is what are the financial, operational, clinical,
• 1:44
  and patient benefits
• 1:46
  where we can draw that causative and correlative
• 1:48
  link correlative link between the adoption of these
• 1:51
  tools, the implementation of them properly,
• 1:53
  and the ROI. Like, what can we draw
• 1:55
  and what are the specifics about it? So
• 1:57
  that's one of the number one things that
• 1:59
  I'm being asked about at class. And so
• 2:01
  this study with Suki, which was again with,
• 2:04
  McLeod Health, FMOL Health, and Rush University
• 2:07
  was so essential because it gives you the
• 2:10
  perspective across
• 2:11
  very different health systems, but very strong health
• 2:14
  systems. All of these teams are excellent organizations,
• 2:17
  already performing and doing well.
• 2:18
  And to be able to see what they're
• 2:20
  doing from good to great, I think that
• 2:21
  was, one of the one of the key
• 2:23
  findings of the study that we were trying
• 2:25
  to put together.
• 2:26
  And it's so crucial be because it informs
• 2:28
  future strategy. It it makes it has such
• 2:31
  an impact on the future of these organizations.
• 2:33
  And I I do wanna go into a
• 2:34
  little bit more detail
• 2:36
  on this recent research you've mentioned. Again, there's
• 2:38
  some striking numbers in there. 65% reduction in
• 2:40
  after hours documentation time, over a thousand dollars
• 2:43
  in monthly revenue lift per provider.
• 2:46
  And, Josh, I'll I'll start off with you
• 2:48
  on this one. What surprised you most when
• 2:51
  you looked at those findings across FMLA Health,
• 2:53
  McLeod Health, and Rush University?
• 2:56
  Yeah. There's there's a couple things. I mean,
• 2:57
  I think the obvious ones are, you know,
• 3:00
  reduction in time and note and getting the
• 3:02
  the seven day note closure down, and and
• 3:04
  those things are are massive. But the the
• 3:06
  two that jump out to me are, one,
• 3:08
  the the revenue generated per clinician,
• 3:11
  because
• 3:12
  a lot of these health systems went into
• 3:15
  this this,
• 3:17
  pilot or this project
• 3:18
  just to try to help clinicians. Right? And
• 3:21
  I I know the CMIO really well at
• 3:24
  McLeod, doctor Frost, and he was like, you
• 3:26
  know, our goal is just to break even.
• 3:28
  That was our hope. Right? We wanted to
• 3:30
  improve the lives of clinicians. We wanna break
• 3:32
  even. And the fact that they can attribute,
• 3:34
  you know, somewhere between a thousand and $2,600
• 3:37
  a month per clinician
• 3:39
  is of additional ROI is just incredible. Right?
• 3:42
  It's really kind of the the un it
• 3:44
  was the unexpected
• 3:45
  benefit that that we love to see. The
• 3:48
  other side of that that I think I'm
• 3:50
  most excited about personally is the patient satisfaction
• 3:52
  numbers. So this was a really interesting one
• 3:55
  that they do patient satisfaction through a third
• 3:58
  party. And
• 3:59
  they said at best, when we make changes,
• 4:01
  we get a 1% bump in something. But
• 4:04
  they got a 6% increase in probably the
• 4:06
  two most important questions that are asked of
• 4:08
  patients. Do you trust your provider, and did
• 4:11
  you feel heard? Right? And those two things
• 4:13
  went up between five and a half and
• 4:14
  six and a half percent, and they said
• 4:16
  we've never seen that. In the history of
• 4:18
  doing these surveys, we've never seen that. And
• 4:20
  it just goes to show you the value
• 4:22
  of
• 4:23
  eye contact, the value of treating patients like
• 4:26
  humans. Right? And pay clinicians
• 4:29
  want
• 4:30
  to be eye to eye, knee to knee.
• 4:31
  It was always their goal. They they got
• 4:33
  into this profession as a calling because they
• 4:35
  care deeply about healing people, and all the
• 4:37
  administrative tasks took them away from that. And
• 4:40
  so it's so awesome to see that while
• 4:42
  this this tool was created for clinicians,
• 4:46
  the biggest outcome is not just clinicians, but
• 4:48
  it's patient care and patient satisfaction. And that
• 4:51
  that's super rewarding.
• 4:53
  Yeah. Again, it's that trickle down effect. Right?
• 4:55
  That Mac talked about it in in the
• 4:57
  beginning of our conversation here. Right? How important
• 4:59
  it is to be able to validate all
• 5:00
  of this and being able to to connect
• 5:02
  the dots to some of these things. Mac,
• 5:04
  I'd love to know too, was there anything
• 5:06
  that stuck out to you when you were
• 5:07
  looking at the numbers and the research?
• 5:10
  Yeah. For sure, Luis. So as we looked
• 5:11
  at the three different organizations, and again, they're
• 5:14
  all very different, all very excellent teams, but
• 5:17
  they came, at the pilots differently. They engaged
• 5:20
  their own teams internally differently.
• 5:22
  So anything that showed up across all three
• 5:25
  systems, that really stood out to me. And
• 5:27
  one of those beyond time savings, which all
• 5:29
  three organizations reported, we also saw improved documentation
• 5:32
  or coding uplift. So the improved E and
• 5:34
  M coding,
• 5:35
  people think again about the documentation being complete
• 5:38
  and accurate, and it needs to be not
• 5:40
  just for the most important thing, which is,
• 5:42
  again, patient outcomes ensuring
• 5:44
  we don't, miss misread something or give an
• 5:47
  order incorrectly for a medication. That's essential as
• 5:49
  we can all agree. We're all patients. We
• 5:51
  all understand that need. But I think the
• 5:53
  improvement in documentation and coding
• 5:56
  wasn't again, to to Josh's point, it maybe
• 5:58
  wasn't the top priority for a lot of
• 6:00
  these teams. But once they saw that impact,
• 6:02
  that downstream impact through the revenue cycle process
• 6:05
  and and all the way through to billing,
• 6:07
  it becomes then, wow, we can actually draw
• 6:10
  direct engagement here. And, again, all three teams,
• 6:13
  McCloud, Rush, FMOL,
• 6:14
  all reported
• 6:16
  improved documentation and coding uplift. So anything that
• 6:18
  stood out to me those those are couple
• 6:20
  of things that stood out to me. There
• 6:22
  were some other things as well if we
• 6:23
  had time, but I think really those were
• 6:25
  the two that you wanna see across all
• 6:27
  three very different systems.
• 6:29
  That to me stands out, and that becomes
• 6:31
  really impactful.
• 6:32
  It's that red through line for all of
• 6:34
  them, which is so crucial. Again, it shows
• 6:35
  the impact.
• 6:36
  It's clearly there. And, Josh, I I wanna
• 6:39
  talk a little bit more specifically about about
• 6:41
  Suki and and some of the achievements that
• 6:43
  that you've made here through throughout your time
• 6:45
  there. And and certainly, again, we see a
• 6:48
  lot of health systems
• 6:50
  running ambient AI pilots. Right? We know they're
• 6:53
  popular. Everybody's trying them.
• 6:55
  But, again, a lot of these organizations struggle
• 6:58
  to then actually say, okay. It's kinda worked,
• 7:01
  but there's really no enterprise wide
• 7:03
  business case or or scalable impact. Right? From
• 7:06
  Suki's perspective, from your perspective, right, how did
• 7:10
  Suki's customers then make that leap to say,
• 7:12
  okay. This is scalable. It's making an enterprise
• 7:14
  wide impact. And what did they do differently
• 7:17
  to get those outcomes?
• 7:19
  Yeah. It's a there's a lot, to unpack
• 7:22
  with that question. It's a it's a great
• 7:23
  question.
• 7:24
  I think there's a there's a couple things
• 7:26
  that that jump out to me.
• 7:29
  First, I think that one of the things
• 7:31
  I I've been most proud of with Suki
• 7:34
  is that we are very, very much a
• 7:37
  clinician first organization.
• 7:39
  Right? And and we show that in a
• 7:40
  lot of ways. One of which is we
• 7:42
  have an incredible customer success team that goes
• 7:44
  on-site
• 7:45
  that, you know, goes to the elbow of
• 7:47
  these people. Because what people don't realize is
• 7:49
  that you're not just giving them a new
• 7:51
  technology. This is change management. They're gonna change
• 7:54
  a little bit about the way that they
• 7:55
  practice, and that's hard. That's scary to clinicians.
• 7:58
  Most of them are allergic to change. Right?
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  And so you can't just hand them a
• 8:03
  technology, even if it's the best technology, and
• 8:05
  say, hey. Go use this. They'll push you
• 8:07
  away. Right? There's a great cartoon that I've
• 8:09
  seen, and it was like a a doctor
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  pushing a wheelbarrow
• 8:13
  up a hill
• 8:14
  with square wheels, and there's an inventor with
• 8:17
  the wheel, the actual circle wheel next to
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  him and be like, hey. I have this
• 8:20
  great tool. And And they're like, sorry. I'm
• 8:22
  too busy to look at that. Right? That's
• 8:24
  like clinicians when you'd come to, like, technology
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  because they've been overpromised and underdelivered
• 8:29
  for so long that they don't inherently trust.
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  And so the first thing is you have
• 8:34
  to work
• 8:35
  tirelessly with the clinicians. You have to build
• 8:37
  clinical champions. You have to build people willing
• 8:40
  to record a testimonial that they can share
• 8:42
  with the rest of their their their contacts
• 8:45
  in the organization.
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  You have to have strong support from leadership.
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  Like, one of the the through lines for
• 8:50
  these three organizations, Rush, McLeod,
• 8:53
  and FML, amazing, amazing leadership team. The CMIOs,
• 8:57
  the CIOs, the CTOs, like, they were fully
• 9:00
  invested, fully fully on board. It started at
• 9:02
  the top, and it trickled down through the
• 9:04
  organization, and you can't replicate that. Right? Like,
• 9:06
  that's really hard. The thing that I the
• 9:08
  other thing I think that sets, you know,
• 9:11
  Suki apart a little bit is that we
• 9:12
  never consider ourselves a vendor. And maybe this
• 9:14
  is a cheesy line, but, like, we genuinely
• 9:17
  partner with these health systems to be their
• 9:20
  AI partner for the next five years. Our
• 9:22
  goal is not to sell them an AmbientScribe
• 9:24
  or Ambient AI. That wasn't what we were
• 9:26
  ever building. We were always building an Ambient,
• 9:29
  AI assistant that would help them in all
• 9:32
  different types of,
• 9:34
  administrative tasks. And so when we were pitching
• 9:37
  to them, it wasn't like, hey. Here's our
• 9:39
  point solution. You should adopt it. It was,
• 9:41
  you're gonna need an AI partner that sits
• 9:44
  at the absolute, like, bleeding edge of tech
• 9:46
  and health care, and we can be that
• 9:48
  partner with you starting with Ambien
• 9:51
  AI, moving to rev cycle, you know, assisted
• 9:53
  rev cycle, moving to clinical decision support and
• 9:57
  things like that because that's where AI is
• 9:59
  going. And so I think we tried to
• 10:01
  paint a bigger vision than just sell them
• 10:03
  what they were looking for that day. And
• 10:05
  I think that helped get kind of buy
• 10:07
  in and belief that we weren't gonna be
• 10:09
  just today's solution. We were gonna be their
• 10:11
  partner as this kind of AI world explodes
• 10:14
  over the next five years.
• 10:16
  Mac, I wanna turn this around a little
• 10:18
  bit too because, again, Josh just spoke about
• 10:20
  the importance of that partnership piece. Right? From
• 10:23
  classes perspective, from your perspective, from a research
• 10:26
  perspective, right, what questions should health systems be
• 10:30
  asking them?
• 10:31
  We should be asking partners that most of
• 10:33
  them aren't asking.
• 10:35
  You know, one of the things that hindsight
• 10:37
  is twenty twenty is one of my favorite
• 10:39
  phrases. Right? It's easy to look back and
• 10:41
  say, well, we should have done this or
• 10:42
  we could have done that. That's where I
• 10:44
  I hope class comes in because we aggregate
• 10:46
  the real and then try to provide that
• 10:48
  back, and that's exactly what this ROI state
• 10:50
  is trying to do. Right? And our other
• 10:52
  research is to say, k. This is what
• 10:53
  other teams have done. Here's the mistakes
• 10:56
  that may have been made or here's the
• 10:57
  missteps, let's say, and I think in good
• 10:59
  faith. But at the same time, we we
• 11:01
  also need to validate the positive. So, a
• 11:03
  couple of just quick thoughts there. As you're
• 11:06
  assessing working with any organization or vendor, you
• 11:09
  need to look at them from a long
• 11:10
  term perspective.
• 11:12
  Are they are they a partner? And, Josh,
• 11:14
  you talked about this earlier. We've seen this
• 11:16
  with Suki's data.
• 11:17
  People view Suki as a partner. There are
• 11:19
  other teams, obviously. This is a very crowded
• 11:21
  marketplace, so to speak. There's,
• 11:23
  freemium solutions. There's other solutions from large
• 11:27
  organizations, etcetera.
• 11:29
  EHRs are introducing different technologies. And so as
• 11:32
  you're looking at,
• 11:33
  the teams you're engaging with, you need to
• 11:35
  be looking at the long term play. Who
• 11:38
  is really articulating a clear roadmap?
• 11:40
  Who is has a beyond the note functionalities?
• 11:44
  Who's kinda coming to you and saying, we're
• 11:46
  not just here for you today, we're here
• 11:48
  for you tomorrow and the future. And I
• 11:50
  think that that is something that a lot
• 11:51
  of teams are aware of, but it's hard
• 11:53
  to kinda filter that out. So ask hard
• 11:55
  questions. Ask the teams that you're engaging with.
• 11:58
  Where are you today? Great. What the we
• 12:00
  wanna talk with the reference customer. We'll go
• 12:02
  to class or other sources and get our
• 12:04
  data. But where are you going? And make
• 12:06
  sure that you are aligned
• 12:08
  with that vision because where the vendor wants
• 12:10
  to go may not be where you want
• 12:11
  to go or may not be as helpful
• 12:13
  for you. So I think that that groundwork
• 12:15
  is so that groundwork
• 12:17
  has to be developed
• 12:19
  so that as you move forward together, you
• 12:21
  have better outcomes and you have realistic time
• 12:23
  frames for deliverables, things like that. One other
• 12:26
  quick thing I'll share and and Josh, you
• 12:27
  touched on this a little bit. I think
• 12:29
  it's absolutely essential as well as you're looking
• 12:31
  at piloting a solution and scaling a solution.
• 12:34
  You've got to be really mindful of the
• 12:36
  milieu of the people that are part of
• 12:38
  that. That whether you're doing tranches of providers
• 12:41
  in different specialties
• 12:42
  and you're going live with different groups, make
• 12:44
  sure it's a healthy mix of
• 12:47
  excited people, technophiles, early adopters, volunteers, people at
• 12:50
  risk of burnout, people not at risk of
• 12:52
  burnout because that way you're gonna get a
• 12:54
  really fair holistic view of the actual impact
• 12:57
  of these tools as you pilot and then
• 12:59
  go to scale. So and and this is
• 13:01
  again something we saw through this study.
• 13:03
  McLeod and others, they look really closely at
• 13:05
  that for their own process, and I can
• 13:07
  say that those are some best that will
• 13:09
  set you for success. Just wanted to touch
• 13:11
  on on two of those things real quick.
• 13:13
  One,
• 13:14
  Mac, I think, you know, as you just
• 13:16
  mentioned,
• 13:17
  the who you choose kind of at each
• 13:20
  cohort,
• 13:21
  of the organization is is critically important.
• 13:24
  And I think, McLeod would go so far
• 13:26
  as to tell you they chose wrong at
• 13:28
  the beginning.
• 13:29
  Right? Because they actually only wanted to give
• 13:31
  this to their most efficient providers
• 13:34
  because they were the ones who
• 13:36
  kind of could earn it or whatever it
• 13:38
  was. Right? Or that that's who they thought
• 13:40
  would adopt it. But what's really interesting is
• 13:42
  that they found that there's no silver bullet.
• 13:44
  There's no there's no guarantee of who it'll
• 13:47
  work for and who it won't. It really
• 13:48
  is a a kind of a personal preference.
• 13:50
  And so you don't wanna be too specific
• 13:53
  about your your your core kind of test
• 13:55
  group. You wanna make sure you're testing it
• 13:57
  all throughout the organization to make sure that
• 13:59
  you're kind of seeing the the broader scope.
• 14:02
  The other thing that that I thought was
• 14:04
  interesting, Matt, that that you were touching on
• 14:08
  is what is it that the company or
• 14:10
  the partner is doing today and what are
• 14:12
  they not? And I bring this up because
• 14:14
  one of kind of the ethos of Suki
• 14:16
  has been to be very humble and be
• 14:18
  very transparent. Because in tech, there's nothing worse
• 14:21
  than overpromising and under delivering. And one of
• 14:23
  the things that I love about our founders,
• 14:24
  he'll go to a health system and say,
• 14:26
  hey. Here's where we are today.
• 14:29
  Here's where we're not today, but here's where
• 14:31
  we're going. And I think that that's kind
• 14:32
  of a breath of fresh air because there's
• 14:34
  a lot of people today saying, hey. We
• 14:36
  have nursing figured out.
• 14:38
  I call BS. They don't. Nursing is so
• 14:40
  difficult and so different from Ambient AI for
• 14:44
  clinicians,
• 14:45
  but everyone wants to say that they have
• 14:46
  it. We could say we have it, but
• 14:48
  we haven't gotten it all figured out. We're
• 14:50
  building it. We're partnering with teams. We're trying
• 14:53
  to get it to where it's as good
• 14:54
  as where it is for clinicians, but we
• 14:56
  won't overpromise that. And I think that's really
• 14:58
  critical in this space right now because AI
• 15:00
  is going so fast. People will believe anything
• 15:02
  you tell them.
• 15:04
  And I just wanted to tack onto that
• 15:05
  too because you both have talked about the
• 15:07
  partnership piece. And I think, again, as you've
• 15:08
  just said, because the space moves so fast,
• 15:12
  specifically around technology and AI, something that's true
• 15:15
  today might not be true
• 15:18
  again tomorrow. Right? So you need a partner,
• 15:20
  I feel like, that understands that and understands
• 15:22
  that it needs to move within the organization.
• 15:24
  Mac, you touched on that. It needs to
• 15:26
  be somebody that really knows, okay, this is
• 15:27
  how we're moving, which is so crucial.
• 15:30
  And, Josh, I I do wanna spend just
• 15:32
  a little bit more time on some of
• 15:33
  these challenges. Right? You you've touched on it
• 15:35
  just now, some of the challenges that organizations
• 15:38
  may be facing that do really wanna do
• 15:39
  this. They know this is beneficial. They know
• 15:41
  they need this right. They are doing it.
• 15:44
  What are some of those biggest operational and
• 15:46
  change management challenges that they should be prepared
• 15:49
  for right now?
• 15:50
  So I'm gonna answer this in a little
• 15:52
  bit of a different way because what's interesting
• 15:55
  is I feel like almost everyone has tried
• 15:56
  it at this point. The problem is if
• 15:58
  you tried it two years ago, you might
• 15:59
  as well have not tried it because it's
• 16:01
  a completely different product. Right? And what I'm
• 16:03
  seeing is a lot of these health systems
• 16:05
  who tried it and it didn't take and
• 16:07
  it didn't work felt like,
• 16:09
  well, this isn't gonna work for us. The
• 16:11
  truth of the matter is the product has
• 16:13
  gone and gotten so much better. Think about
• 16:15
  it in your personal life. So two years
• 16:17
  ago, if I use ChatGPT, it was, like,
• 16:19
  for random things. Now I don't go a
• 16:22
  day without using ChatGPT or Claude or any
• 16:25
  of these things, and they become a part
• 16:26
  of your, like, lifeblood. You need them. But
• 16:28
  it wasn't like that two years ago. The
• 16:30
  software wasn't good enough. Right? So, yeah, did
• 16:32
  it show some benefits? Absolutely. But it wasn't
• 16:35
  where it is today. So part of it
• 16:36
  is overcoming
• 16:37
  this bias of, like, I tried it. It
• 16:39
  wasn't great. The other thing that I always
• 16:41
  try to be really clear is this is
• 16:42
  not a silver bullet. This isn't gonna all
• 16:44
  of a sudden make your clinicians
• 16:46
  super happy regardless of everything else out there.
• 16:49
  I think if people believe that this is,
• 16:51
  like, the perfect tool, then they're disappointed. But
• 16:53
  if you say, hey. I can save you
• 16:55
  30%
• 16:56
  of your time, or I can let you
• 16:58
  go home on time at the end of
• 16:59
  the day and spend time with your family,
• 17:01
  that's more realistic. And then they'll start to
• 17:03
  build on it, and they'll start to learn
• 17:04
  it, and they'll start to get more and
• 17:05
  more out of it. So I think being
• 17:07
  realistic about it is really important.
• 17:10
  Getting buy in from the right people because
• 17:12
  oftentimes,
• 17:13
  the the biggest challenge, right, and I think
• 17:15
  Mac talked about this with CFOs, is that
• 17:17
  the first question is how are we gonna
• 17:19
  pay for this?
• 17:20
  And if you go with how are we
• 17:21
  gonna pay for this, you're thinking of it
• 17:23
  as a cost center. The truth of the
• 17:25
  matter is this is a revenue driver,
• 17:27
  but it's not framed as a revenue driver
• 17:28
  because it's a new technology. Every new technology
• 17:31
  is kind of thought of as a as
• 17:33
  a cost.
• 17:34
  Right? But the truth is you almost can't
• 17:36
  not make money using Ambien AI, whether it's
• 17:38
  in seeing more patients, saving more clinicians,
• 17:41
  you know, whatever,
• 17:42
  having,
• 17:43
  you know, better patient satisfaction scores,
• 17:46
  improving coding.
• 17:48
  There's a million ways to make money, and
• 17:50
  the software price has gone down so significantly
• 17:53
  over the last two years that, like, it
• 17:55
  it should be a no brainer.
• 17:57
  But people still see the upfront cost. Right?
• 17:59
  And so getting them over that. One thing
• 18:01
  Suki did that I think was smart was
• 18:03
  we did utilization based pricing. So instead of
• 18:05
  charging for seat licenses like you get with
• 18:08
  a a DMO and things like that where
• 18:09
  it's hard because a $200, $300, if you
• 18:12
  wanna do that for the enterprise, nobody can
• 18:14
  afford that. We charge a very, very small
• 18:17
  amount on the upfront to turn the lights
• 18:18
  on, and then it's just you pay for
• 18:20
  what you use. Right? So if a clinician
• 18:22
  works one day a week, they use it
• 18:24
  20 times a month. It's not costing them
• 18:26
  very much. But if a clinician uses it
• 18:28
  every day, 30 times a day, there's it's
• 18:31
  it's cut it's it's capped at a certain
• 18:33
  number, so they're not spending a fortune either.
• 18:35
  So either way, you're getting value out of
• 18:37
  it. And I think those are some of
• 18:38
  the ways you have to look at this
• 18:39
  and overcome the inherent challenges that are there.
• 18:42
  Yeah. Have the conversation. Right? Explain it to
• 18:45
  people, educate people, which is so crucial from
• 18:46
  a change management perspective.
• 18:48
  Mac and Josh, it's so fantastic to have
• 18:50
  you both on. What a great conversation. This
• 18:52
  is fantastic.
• 18:53
  Anything else you wanna share that that comes
• 18:55
  to mind that we haven't touched on? Anything
• 18:57
  else that you think might be important? Mac,
• 18:58
  I'll I'll start off with you.
• 19:00
  Just just the takeaway here is that, again,
• 19:03
  we and and Josh has talked about this
• 19:05
  a couple of times and so appreciate servicing
• 19:06
  this. Lucas, anyone who's listening, you've got to
• 19:09
  be looking closely, and I don't need to
• 19:11
  tell health systems this. Everybody's looking at their
• 19:14
  budgets. Right? Everyone's looking at cost.
• 19:17
  You framing this as a as a positive
• 19:20
  net generation across a lot of different areas,
• 19:22
  whether it's coding uplift, whether it's, again, patient
• 19:25
  pre voluntary patient increased visits, etcetera,
• 19:28
  work RBUs, dollar per, you know, dollars per
• 19:30
  clinician increase.
• 19:32
  Those are things that you need to be
• 19:33
  able to have and be armed with so
• 19:35
  that you can have those conversations as an
• 19:36
  organization with your CMI or CFO,
• 19:39
  as a leadership team and implementation team to
• 19:42
  make sure that you are going into this
• 19:43
  eyes wide open, expecting what it can do
• 19:45
  and just as importantly what it can't, but
• 19:47
  then to be able to have that validation,
• 19:49
  I think that's really critical. I the rush
• 19:51
  to
• 19:52
  me too, I've gotta have this also is
• 19:54
  is real, But doing it in a very
• 19:57
  deliberate way and looking at teams like Suki
• 19:59
  that have validated ROI,
• 20:01
  to me, is is
• 20:03
  worth the time, worth the time to review
• 20:04
  the report, worth the time to engage.
• 20:06
  Yeah. Josh, anything else to add here? Yeah.
• 20:09
  Just quickly. I mean, I think look under
• 20:10
  the hood. Right? Get under the hood of
• 20:12
  the the company that you're partnering with because
• 20:15
  this is not a one year partnership or
• 20:16
  a two year partnership. This is the next
• 20:18
  five to ten years. Right? Health systems
• 20:21
  are going to adopt AI en masse if
• 20:23
  they haven't already. I could bet all the
• 20:25
  money in in the world that it will
• 20:26
  happen because it has to happen. It's the
• 20:28
  only thing that can potentially
• 20:30
  help alleviate the crisis that we have of
• 20:33
  doctor shortages, right, and patient access. And so
• 20:36
  make sure that you're partnering with a company
• 20:39
  that has built an AI native product and
• 20:41
  isn't just bolting on
• 20:43
  additional tools that they can then sell. It's
• 20:45
  critical that the infrastructure of the company that
• 20:48
  you're partnering with is AI, and it's built
• 20:51
  for the future as opposed to what's available
• 20:53
  today.
• 20:54
  That would just be my recommendation because, you
• 20:56
  know, everyone says the same thing. Everybody states
• 20:59
  almost the same facts. It's impossible to stand
• 21:01
  out. But the the companies that really do
• 21:04
  their due diligence and get under the hood
• 21:05
  and understand the AI, they're the ones who
• 21:08
  are gonna be successful over the next few
• 21:10
  years.
• 21:11
  Josh and Mac, we certainly had round wheels
• 21:13
  on our wheelbarrow today. I don't feel like
• 21:15
  we have the square wheels on, so that's
• 21:17
  great. I wanna thank you both again for
• 21:18
  your insights today. We also want to thank
• 21:20
  our podcast sponsor, Suki, for bringing us together
• 21:23
  for this conversation.
• 21:24
  So great to have them. You can tune
• 21:26
  in to more podcasts from Becker's Healthcare by
• 21:28
  visiting our podcast page at beckershospitalreview.com.