Latest / Becker’s Healthcare Digital Health + Health IT / Richard Zane, MD, Chief Medical Officer and Chief Innovation Officer at UCHealth

Transcript

Richard Zane, MD, Chief Medical Officer and Chief Innovation Officer at UCHealth · Becker’s Healthcare Digital Health + Health IT

• 0:02
  At athenahealth,
• 0:03
  we know your ambulatory practice wants healthier, a
• 0:06
  healthier business, healthier care teams, and healthier patients.
• 0:10
  But the complexities of modern health care tech
• 0:12
  make it hard for you and your care
• 0:14
  teams to focus on what matters
• 0:16
  most? That's where athenahealth can help. Our AI
• 0:19
  native all in one solutions reduce administrative burdens,
• 0:22
  streamline billing and payments, and deliver critical insights
• 0:25
  when clinicians need it most. That means fewer
• 0:28
  clicks, more time for patients, and stronger bottom
• 0:31
  lines.
• 0:32
  Practicing medicine is complex, but running a practice
• 0:35
  can be that much simpler with athenahealth.
• 0:38
  See how simpler is healthier@athenahealth.com.
• 0:43
  Hello, everyone. This is Scott King with the
• 0:45
  Becker's Healthcare podcast.
• 0:47
  Thrilled today to be joined by very special
• 0:49
  guest, doctor Richard Zane, chief medical officer and
• 0:52
  chief innovation officer with UCHealth. Doctor Zane, how
• 0:55
  are you doing today?
• 0:56
  I am awesome. Thank you for having me.
• 0:58
  Thanks so much for joining us. I know
• 1:00
  we're gonna get into kind of a lot
• 1:01
  of big topics and issues in health care,
• 1:04
  today. But can you just tell us a
• 1:06
  little bit about your background, please, before we
• 1:07
  dive into some of those questions?
• 1:09
  Sure. I'd love to. I am an emergency
• 1:12
  physician, still practice. Until recently,
• 1:14
  I was the chair of the department of
• 1:16
  emergency medicine at the University of Colorado School
• 1:18
  of Medicine,
• 1:19
  and
• 1:20
  took on the role as chief innovation officer
• 1:22
  approximately seven years ago. And then recently,
• 1:26
  stepped down from my chair role, and I'm
• 1:28
  now the chief medical and chief innovation officer
• 1:30
  for UCHealth.
• 1:33
  So just from an operations standpoint, what what
• 1:36
  kind of day to day things
• 1:38
  do you not have to deal with now
• 1:39
  stepping down from from being a chair? What
• 1:41
  what what have you have you kind of
• 1:42
  been freed up from?
• 1:44
  As chair of an academic department, I had
• 1:47
  responsibility
• 1:48
  for
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  a faculty,
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  25 emergency departments, 27 urgent care centers,
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  and a large research and educational
• 1:59
  entity.
• 1:59
  Yeah. In that role, I participated in many
• 2:02
  of
• 2:03
  the initiatives and strategic priorities for the medical
• 2:06
  school. So, essentially, I don't do that anymore,
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  and I have oversight for
• 2:11
  a
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  system, and UCHealth is at 9 and a
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  half billion dollars, soon to be 15 hospital
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  system.
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  So I have oversight for quality and safety,
• 2:21
  clinical operations,
• 2:22
  as well as medical staff functions, And combined
• 2:25
  with my chief innovation officer role, which I
• 2:27
  think is really
• 2:29
  incredibly interesting to have both,
• 2:31
  can think about how best to deploy technology
• 2:35
  to innovate the point of care.
• 2:38
  That's certainly something that will keep you busy.
• 2:40
  Thanks a lot for sure that that background
• 2:43
  info and
• 2:44
  and info on your roles.
• 2:46
  Getting into some topics, what opportunities and headwinds
• 2:50
  do you have your eye on right now
• 2:51
  in health care?
• 2:53
  Well, the headwinds are pretty remarkable.
• 2:56
  And right now, it's it's both financial and
• 2:59
  regulatory.
• 3:00
  And I don't think I have to tell
• 3:01
  the audience what the financial headwinds are given
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  that we're on the twenty fourth day of
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  a government shutdown
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  and that
• 3:08
  hospitals and health care
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  are on the chopping block for every budgetary
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  initiative
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  in every municipality,
• 3:16
  state,
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  and federal,
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  and federal government.
• 3:20
  From a regulatory
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  Colorado has increased
• 3:31
  almost exponentially in the last decade,
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  So much so that we are routinely hiring
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  more and more people to simply deal with
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  the regulatory burden.
• 3:42
  How is that hiring process going for you
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  and your system?
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  Are you filling those roles that you need
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  to fill right away? Is it is it
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  kinda drag dragging on a little bit?
• 3:52
  Well, it depends on what it is and
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  what it's for. It's it's difficult because as
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  you know, local legislatures and local governments
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  can,
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  pivot, and it's hard to anticipate what the
• 4:02
  next thing is going to be.
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  So we have generalists, and then,
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  hopefully, we'll talk about this. But
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  we try as best we can to administrate
• 4:13
  to automate administrative functions.
• 4:15
  And so we have a combination of thinking
• 4:17
  about how we can automate administrative functions, what
• 4:20
  roles we do need
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  to
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  meet the regulatory burdens, and what those regulatory
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  burdens are gonna do to our ability to
• 4:27
  deliver care.
• 4:30
  Yeah. Yeah. There's certainly you you mentioned, going
• 4:32
  back to the headwinds, kind of, you know,
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  a lot that you're dealing with. I know
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  a lot of systems are overall. Some are,
• 4:38
  you know, specific to a certain region. Some
• 4:40
  are can be specific to even a a
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  certain system.
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  In terms of just kind of the overall
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  headwinds, do do you think it's one of
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  the toughest times you've seen to to have
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  so many challenges to deal with in health
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  care, or do you kinda look at it
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  as, you know, that just presents a lot
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  of solutions that we can that we can,
• 4:56
  give to our community?
• 4:58
  It's probably yes. And,
• 5:00
  I don't think anything can compete compete for,
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  challenges like the first year or the entirety
• 5:07
  of the pandemic.
• 5:09
  So compared to being in a pandemic,
• 5:11
  things seem more quiescent.
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  But compared to,
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  decades previous,
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  it seems as though this is the most
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  challenging time in health care, certainly from a
• 5:22
  hospital system perspective
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  and certainly from an academic perspective.
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  You mentioned having to do a lot of
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  hiring currently.
• 5:31
  How else are you thinking about adding growth
• 5:34
  and value to your organization?
• 5:36
  Well, right now, we're thinking about
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  how we meet patients where they are.
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  So thinking about
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  whether or not we need to have incremental
• 5:46
  bricks and mortar,
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  what that is. As you know, for hospital
• 5:50
  systems, the majority of the business has shifted
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  or is shifting
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  from inpatient to to outpatient.
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  And that sometimes is simply a regulatory definition.
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  And frequently, it's an evolution of technology and
• 6:03
  science to allow things to be done in
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  an outpatient environment. So we think about how
• 6:07
  we can virtualize care, how we can make
• 6:10
  synchronous
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  care asynchronous,
• 6:13
  how we can digitize care,
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  how we can bring technology to the point
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  of care. So we really think about how
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  we're gonna meet patients where they are,
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  and that's both from a digital perspective, a
• 6:24
  virtual perspective, and a
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  mortar perspective.
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  What's
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  one risk or investment
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  worth making this year
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  for your system?
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  So if you do a search, however it
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  is that you search,
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  on what
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  health systems are working on,
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  AI is gonna come up 14 out of
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  the top 15 things.
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  And it seems as though it's AI, AI,
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  AI, AI all the time.
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  The reality is that in health care,
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  or really in any industry, if you ask
• 6:58
  10 people what they mean by AI, you're
• 7:00
  gonna get 14 different definitions.
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  The reality is for us that we've been
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  doing AI,
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  for the last decade plus. So we think
• 7:09
  about AI as
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  rules based logic, machine learning, computational linguistics,
• 7:15
  lots of different things, including,
• 7:18
  generative AI, which is what I think people
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  are referring to. So
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  we are thinking about how we can take
• 7:26
  technology,
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  information, and intelligence,
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  including AI,
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  and decrease
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  the administrative burden on humans,
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  to increase our ability to force multiply,
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  and that's on every level, whether it's at
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  the point of care,
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  whether it's
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  customer facing,
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  or administrative automation on the back end.
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  Kind of sticking with technology, where do you
• 7:55
  see the best opportunities for growth
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  in the future?
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  Broadly, it's intelligence.
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  So it's it's automating,
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  human tasks so that we can allow humans
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  to do what only humans can do, which
• 8:08
  is adjudication,
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  and, you know, certainly procedures.
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  So that is where I think we're in
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  an exponential time. It's really exciting. It's great
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  for patients. It's created,
• 8:21
  regulatory hurdles and financial hurdles.
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  But at the end of the day, it's
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  the right thing to do, and it's the
• 8:26
  best thing for our patients.
• 8:29
  If you if you had to kinda look
• 8:30
  ahead and,
• 8:31
  you know, guess, you know, it'll take this
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  much time so we're not dealing with so
• 8:35
  many headwinds. When when do you kinda see
• 8:38
  that on the horizon?
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  I don't.
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  I mean, I don't envision,
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  a time
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  59 years old, and I don't think in
• 8:47
  my career,
• 8:49
  we will have
• 8:50
  an administrative simplification or a regulatory simplification in
• 8:53
  health care. There's some basic blocking and tackling
• 8:56
  things, which makes sense, and it has worked
• 8:58
  in every other industry
• 9:00
  that has not come to fruition in,
• 9:03
  health care. For instance,
• 9:05
  the FDA,
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  is antiquated in its approach and is not
• 9:09
  ready to deal with with AI.
• 9:12
  Hopefully, that'll change, probably not in my career.
• 9:16
  Same thing,
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  with
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  the CDC, the same thing with HHS and
• 9:21
  CMS.
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  We are
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  really have a regulatory entity that's based on
• 9:27
  nineteen nineties technology and nineteen nineties medicine.
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  So that is where I'm hopeful
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  that we get to streamlining.
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  But if you think about
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  what can be done
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  via technology,
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  there's really no reason
• 9:44
  that your primary care physician can't be in
• 9:46
  Albuquerque when you live
• 9:49
  in Austin, Texas.
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  There's no reason why you can't have
• 9:54
  different specialists, especially in some of the more
• 9:56
  cognitive based specialties,
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  across the country. But we still have the
• 10:00
  issue of
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  local,
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  credentialing, local licensing,
• 10:06
  insurance issues across state lines, those sorts of
• 10:08
  things. Don't does not make any sense.
• 10:12
  No. No. I agree. That's especially for just
• 10:14
  kind of routine
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  checkups and and things like that, certainly can
• 10:18
  it can be done virtually, and we've kind
• 10:19
  of already proven that. Well, think about even
• 10:22
  things that are not routine.
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  Think about some very complicated cancer care.
• 10:27
  So if you think about
• 10:29
  sub subspecialty
• 10:30
  cancer care, some of the diagnostics can be
• 10:33
  done locally.
• 10:34
  But having a sub subspecialist
• 10:37
  cancer specialist in a small town in a
• 10:40
  rural community is
• 10:42
  probably an a zero event.
• 10:45
  But by assimilating all those data, you can
• 10:48
  have centers of excellence
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  that can essentially guide local care. And that's
• 10:53
  what the what we should evolve or aspire
• 10:55
  to do.
• 10:57
  That's fascinating to think about. I hope we
• 10:59
  get there soon. Yeah. I think that present
• 11:00
  a lot of great solutions for issues patients
• 11:02
  have.
• 11:04
  Last question I wanna ask you, doctor Zane.
• 11:06
  How have you evolved as a leader in
• 11:07
  your career? Have I evolved as a leader?
• 11:09
  Yeah. As a leader. I think that
• 11:13
  my style has changed, and I've become more
• 11:16
  adaptable.
• 11:18
  I've had
• 11:19
  infinity annual reviews from
• 11:22
  my bosses who have always said that my
• 11:24
  impatience is a blessing and a curse.
• 11:27
  And I think that I've become more patient
• 11:29
  as a leader,
• 11:30
  but I've become more deliberate as well. So
• 11:33
  focusing
• 11:33
  more and more on execution
• 11:36
  and output
• 11:37
  and holding the people that work for me
• 11:39
  accountable in that same vein.
• 11:41
  Well, doctor Zane, thanks for joining us on
• 11:43
  the podcast today. I thought it was a
• 11:44
  great conversation. I look forward to working with
• 11:45
  you again soon. My pleasure. Thanks for the
• 11:47
  opportunity.
• 11:51
  At athena Health, we know your ambulatory practice
• 11:53
  wants healthier, a healthier business, healthier care teams,
• 11:57
  and healthier patients.
• 11:59
  But the complexities of modern healthcare tech make
• 12:01
  it hard for you and your care teams
• 12:03
  to focus on what matters most.
• 12:05
  That's where athena Health can help. Our AI
• 12:08
  native all in one solutions reduce administrative burdens,
• 12:11
  streamline billing and payments, and deliver critical insights
• 12:14
  when clinicians need it most. That means fewer
• 12:17
  clicks, more time for patients, and stronger bottom
• 12:20
  lines.
• 12:21
  Practicing medicine is complex, but running a practice
• 12:24
  can be that much simpler with athenahealth.
• 12:27
  See how simpler is healthier at athenahealth.com.