Voices from VIVE: Thoughts on AI, equity, financial challenges, home hospital, and more

Several thousand healthcare leaders attended the ViVE digital health conference, and some of them shared their perspectives with Chief Healthcare Executive®.

Here are some excerpts from our conversations.

Dr. Reshma Gupta, chief of population health, University of California

“Health equity is something that's gotten a lot of attention nationally, and there's been quite a bit of pushback about thinking about it in that term. But as a chief of population health, I think of understanding our patient population, understanding their needs and then delivering the care to meet those needs.

“It’s just delivering good care. It's population health. It's our population and knowing how to do the best we can for them. And so if we're looking at demographic data, and we're looking at everyone's data in a uniform way, and not just looking at race and ethnicity alone, but also looking at things like rural resources in different communities, the distance patients travel to see us. All of those things are important to be able to advocate for everybody and make sure that whoever it is that needs additional support, we're able to try to bridge it.”

(Read more from our conversation with Dr. Gupta.)

Dr. Nolan Chang, executive vice president, The Permanente Federation

“Anytime there's a change, the question becomes like, what are we solving for? Is it incremental elements, or is it really looking at the foundational challenges that we're facing in reframing the problem and then applying the tool in a different way?

“Because I think it's really easy to just say, I'm going to use the tool to solve my existing problems and try to make my life easier. But if we're looking at the patients as a whole, what's really driving the utilization, I think there's an opportunity to use technology to augment what we're able to do and drive better outcomes.”

(Read more from our conversation with Dr. Chang.)

Dr. Shiv Sutaria, assistant chief medical information officer, Mass General Brigham Healthcare at Home

He discussed the extension of federal waivers for hospital-at-home programs into 2030.

“With this five-year extension, I think we're going to see a lot more health systems jumping into this program. And I think it's going to be a really unique and really innovative next four to five years, with a lot of people getting access to this care model. So I'm really looking forward to seeing how it grows across the country. And I'm also looking forward to, from a tech perspective, what some of our tech platforms are going to come out to support this platform, help health systems grow this program over the next five years.”

(Read more of our conversation with Dr. Sutaria.)

Erin Weber, chief policy & research officer, CAQH

“If every transaction today that was being done manually or through a portal was done electronically, the industry could save an additional $21 billion,” she says.

She notes that handling eligibility and benefits verification electronically would save $10 billion.

“That transaction, 96% of the time is electronic. It's only a 4% gap. But because the volume for eligibility is so high, because for each patient encounter, there's often three or four eligibility inquiries that are done … And so that drives up the cost of the transaction significantly. And so with that $10 billion, and claims, there’s a $3 billion gap … we can hit more than half of that $21 billion savings opportunity.”

(Read more from our conversation with Erin Weber.)

John Couris, president and CEO, Tampa General Hospital

“I'm optimistic, even with the headwinds that we're facing as an industry, because the people in healthcare are resilient. Processes are strong, people are committed to making a difference and improving. We have a very innovative industry. If you think about the people across our country and health systems. They're innovating and creating every single day. And they're gritty. They're tough, because healthcare is tough, so that when the headwinds present themselves, people use their innovative spirit, their ability as a team, to come together and solve the problem.”

(Read more from our conversation with John Couris.)