How WellSpan Health is using AI

When patients call WellSpan Health to schedule an appointment, they are greeted by the friendly voice of Ana.

Ana isn’t human. Ana is an AI agent that helps direct patients through the system, including scheduling appointments and fielding other requests. Ana also calls patients to set up cancer screenings.

WellSpan Health teamed with Hippocratic AI to launch Ana last year. So far, the health system is very encouraged by the results, says Kaitlyn Torrence, senior director of innovation for WellSpan.

“We've seen tremendous results with Ana so far in our access center,” Torrence told Chief Healthcare Executive in an interview at the HLTH conference in October. “As our patients are calling to schedule or we're calling you to engage in care.

“We've deployed Ana to help us not only kind of triage and solve patients problems, but also to help our existing access care team members to be able to practice at the top of their license and to remove some of the mundane, repetitive tasks from their workload, so that they can focus on engaging with our patients in new and deeper, meaningful ways.”

(See part of our conversation with Kaitlyn Torrence at HLTH. The story continues below.)

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WellSpan operates nine hospitals and more than 250 healthcare locations serving patients across central Pennsylvania, along with some patients in northern Maryland.

Ana also offers services to patients in Spanish, which is important since the central Pennsylvania region has a significant Latino population.

WellSpan has also been incorporating ambient documentation tools to help physicians. Powered by AI technology, ambient documentation solutions summarize physician appointments with patients, reducing the amount of time doctors are spending on documentation and enabling doctors to have face-to-face conversations with their patients.

So far, WellSpan has been testing ambient documentation with about 200 doctors, and the system is pleased with the results, Torrence says. WellSpan is planning to roll it out more widely next year, she says.

As WellSpan incorporates more AI technology into the system’s operations, Torrence says the system is thinking carefully about the patient experience.

“WellSpan is really a transformative and very innovation-forward system,” Torrence says.” So, at the heart of everything that we are doing, we are putting that patient really at the center and thinking, how do we design a better, more consumer centric experience for all of our patients and across our footprint? And so, that has led us to deploying early-stage AI and other technology solutions that enable us to engage and interact with our patients in new and enhanced ways.”

Even with the focus on patients, she says the health system is also looking at making life a little easier for its clinicians.

As Torrence says, WellSpan is constantly asking, “How do we help our providers to practice on the top of license through things like ambient technology, so that they can again focus on that patient communication and direct interaction, rather than typing away?”

Roxanna Gapstur, president and chief executive officer of WellSpan Health, told Chief Healthcare Executive® in a 2024 interview that AI is a key element in the organization’s strategies, with an eye on reducing burdens on clinicians.

“We're using AI here at WellSpan to help take work off our physicians and advanced practice nurses and providers,” Gapstur said in that interview.

With ambient tools, she said, “They're not spending as much time on their notes and on their documentation, which as you know, tends to be a real drain for people.”

WellSpan has also partnered with AIDOC, a health technology company, to utilize AI technology to assist radiologists. The health system is using AIDOC’s platform to help screen radiology scans of patients, detecting some abnormalities that warrant earlier intervention.

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