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I’ve been preparing for our inaugural Digital Health Care Forum here at Newsweek, so naturally, I’ve had digital transformation on the brain.
“Digital transformation” is one of those buzz phrases that I constantly hear in conversations with health care executives—and I understand why. Although the terms are loosely defined, they evoke consistent, polished images that health systems want to be associated with: cutting-edge technology, efficient systems, the elimination of whirring fax machines and messy handwriting.
A digitally transformed hospital will be quieter, smoother, more effective. But there’s a reason that hospital officials tend to say, “We’re in the midst of a digital transformation,” and not, “We’ve completed our digital transformation.” Modernization isn’t a box that can be checked. It’s a moving target.
Lately, the federal government has announced multiple initiatives that aim at a techier health care system. Updates to the prior authorization process will require health plans to standardize electronic submissions. The DOJ, FBI and HHS intend to collaborate on a “health care data fusion center” to better identify and prosecute fraudsters. And in MedPAC’s June report to Congress, the commission recommended better data collection to improve the accuracy of Medicare payment rates.
These are all positive steps in theory, but in practice, there’s likely going to be a learning curve. This week, the assistant secretary for technology policy’s office released a data brief reflecting on the CDC’s Public Health Data Strategy. Beginning in 2022, certain hospitals were required to submit data related to various public health care metrics, including immunization registries and syndromic surveillance.
The data suggests that it hasn’t been an easy process for health care providers. In 2024, more than 8 in 10 hospitals reported at least one challenge with electronic public health reporting. The most common complaint—filed by 55 percent of hospitals—was the technical complexity of interfaces, transmission or submission processes.
That’s why many health care leaders are taking digital transformation slow. Technology promises speed, but if platforms aren’t easy to use and tailored to specific needs, they can have paradoxical effects.
Kristin Myers, Northwell Health’s inaugural chief digital officer, articulated this well during our conversation about AI governance this week.
“AI has so much potential, and we’re really in the beginning years of being able to see that potential,” she said. “We want to be able to elevate the patient, clinician and workforce experience, and just drive a more connected health care ecosystem. The key to it all is being able to scale AI across a health system, but to do that, you really need AI governance and structure and an intent process.”
I’m excited to gather more than 100 health care executives in our New York City office for the Digital Health Care Forum on September 16, when we’ll dedicate a whole day to those intent processes, the “hows” behind the “whys.” We’re gathering some of the industry’s top voices on AI, tech and innovation, including Dr. Daniel Yang, Kaiser Permanente’s head of AI, and Aneesh Chopra, the first chief technology officer of the United States. View our agenda and register to join us here.
You don’t have to wait until September to let me know how your organization is approaching digital transformation. Email me at [email protected]. I’d love to hear from you!
Essential Reading
- Teladoc Health is offering free non-emergency care to Texans affected by severe floods, CW33 reported. The telehealth provider can diagnose and treat general medical conditions like colds, flu symptoms and sinus infections, and it can prescribe medications and issue refills. Texans can access the service at no cost by calling Teladoc Health’s Natural Disaster Hotline at 855-225-5032. On Tuesday, HHS Secretary Kennedy declared a Public Health Emergency in the state of Texas. Read more about the record-breaking flooding of the Guadalupe River here.
- The DOJ recently delivered the results of Operation Gold Rush, the largest health care fraud bust in national history led by HHS’ Office of the Inspector General. Mark Lee Greenblatt, former inspector general for the U.S. Department of the Interior, breaks down the scheme in this op-ed for Newsweek.
- Yale New Haven Health is offering voluntary retirement packages to long-serving employees, according to documents obtained by the Connecticut Insider. The packages contain continued salary payments equal to two weeks of pay per completed year of service, up to 28 weeks. They also include subsidies to health care benefits and higher payouts for unused PTO. The decision was motivated by “significant financial and operational challenges,” health system officials said.
- The NIH is implementing caps on allowable publication costs for scientific research, per a news release shared with Newsweek. Beginning in FY 2026, the agency will limit “unreasonably high article processing charges that [have] placed undue financial pressure on researchers and funders,” NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya said. Read more about the challenges facing disease researchers here.
Pulse Check
Yesterday, St. Louis-based SSM Health announced a collaboration with Chamberlain University (one of the nation’s largest nursing schools, with 23 campuses across 17 states), designed to address clinical workforce shortages. Its new Aspiring Nurse Program offers tuition support with clinical experience at SSM Health’s facilities across Oklahoma. In exchange, students commit to join SSM Health after graduation.
The program is expected to add 400 new nurses to the health system’s ranks each year. Eventually, additional cohorts will be launched in St. Louis and Kansas City, Missouri, as well as in Illinois and Wisconsin.
For this week’s Pulse Check, I spoke with Steve Beard, chairman and CEO of Adtalem Global Education, Chamberlain University’s parent company, and a leading provider of health care education. Here’s what he told me about the new partnership with SSM, and what it means for the future of health care workforce education.
Editor’s Note: Some responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Steve, one of the benefits of this program is the ability to “tailor” nursing students’ education to the unique needs of SSM Health. Tell us more about that.
One of our hopes is that when our students do the clinical portions of their academic journey, they’re doing it in SSM facilities and getting to know the standard operating procedures of those SSM facilities. Over time, we expect to have SSM clinicians serve as adjunct faculty in our programs, where they’re able to help shape the academic experience of our students.
We also have a long history of developing specialty tracks at Chamberlain tied to specific disciplines, whether it’s oncology or home health care. Over time, as we come to better understand the priorities for SSM and the communities they serve, we can certainly think about tailoring our curriculum itself to better reflect the needs of SSM such that our students show up ready on day one. They’re familiar with the organization they’re going to work with. They’ve spent time in that environment. They understand the needs of the patient population of that community, which I think gives them a great affinity for SSM as a prospective employer and vice versa.
Why is it so valuable for a health system to have nurses that are loyal to their organization and have trained specifically within its boundaries, as opposed to travel nurses and other forms of contract/temporary labor?
One of the things we all learned during the pandemic is that the spot market for clinical talent—whether that’s contract or travel nursing—has a high degree of variability, both cost variability and outcome variability. Obviously, that’s a pain point for providers.
In addition, we’ve seen that there’s the risk of a high degree of turnover, particularly in the early years of employees’ experience with the system. Anything a provider can do to create a stickier relationship makes the system more successful, [for both] the employee and the employer. That reduces turnover and lowers the acquisition cost associated with identifying that employee which all [contributes] to the economic benefit of the system. But we also think it improves the performance and safety of the system, as you’re getting folks who know your system, know your hospital, know your clinicians and have a relationship with you.
Our proposition is, here’s a way to get involved with a future employee early in their academic career in a way that makes them easier to obtain, likely to perform better in your environment, and, in ways, that allow you to acquire them at a much less expensive proposition than you would in the spot market for talent. And we think across those three dimensions, this represents a whole new way of thinking about talent acquisition.
How does the tuition reimbursement model work to effectively generate that ROI for the health system?
We’ve experimented with this model for a long time. The way it works is, students come into nursing school in the way they would in [an] ordinary course, and most students are either borrowing to finance their education, or they’re doing a combination of loans plus self-pay and other resources.
What SSM does is in exchange for service commitment from that student, they actually begin to retire some of the indebtedness that the student has incurred as part of their academic journey. They’re basically exchanging that commitment to the system for that tuition reimbursement, and so they’re not delivering that value to the student until that student is delivering that value to them. And as it turns out, supplementing or offsetting the cost of attendance for nursing school is far less than the cost associated with current rates of turnover amongst those nursing workforces today. It’s actually a higher return to invest in a service commitment than it is to try to sustain the cost of consistent high turnover amongst your nursing population.
C-Suite Shuffles
- John R. Nickens IV will be the next president and CEO of Pheonix Children’s, taking the reins from Robert L. Meyer upon his retirement, no later than October. Nickens joins the Arizona health system from New Orleans, where he currently works as corporate president of hospitals for LCMC Health and CEO of its University Medical Center.
- Wellstar Health System has named Ketul Patel its next president and CEO, succeeding Candice Saunders, who announced her retirement in January. Patel currently serves as CEO of Virginia Mason Franciscan Health in Tacoma, Washington, and as president of CommonSpirit Health’s Pacific Northwest Region. He will join Marietta, Georgia-based Wellstar in late October.
- Sally Susman is departing her role as executive vice president and chief corporate affairs officer at Pfizer after 18 years with the organization. The company decided to integrate her job function into other areas of the business, according to a LinkedIn post from Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.Susman will remain on the board of The Pfizer Foundation and will also explore personal passions like mentoring and writing her next book, she said in her own LinkedIn update.
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Executive Edge
Dr. Heather Farley is the chief wellbeing officer at MUSC Health in Charleston, South Carolina. She’s a pioneer in the staff and care provider wellbeing space, having previously served as the chief wellness officer at ChristianaCare in the Northeast.
One of Farley’s main priorities is burnout reduction, she told me in a recent interview. She believes that to create real change, health systems should focus on reforming systems and workflows—not just teaching individual coping skills.
“You can’t take the canary out of the coal mine, teach it to be more resilient, shove it back in the same coal mine and expect it to survive,” Farley said. “You actually have to change the coal mine.”
Here’s what Farley told me about her work to “change the coal mine,” drive work efficiency and promote personal well-being at MUSC Health:
“One of the projects that we focused on in this past fiscal year was stress first aid. The stress first aid concept was initially born in the military. It was created to address a very high stakes, high-pressure environment, and to be able to assess where people are mentally and emotionally, and how they can provide that first aid for themselves and for one another. [Stress first aid] has now been adapted into health care, so we rolled out training for our teams.
“The idea behind stress first aid is not to make anybody a counselor or a therapist if they’re not already, but it’s really to give people the skills that they need to recognize when someone on their team is struggling, to respond effectively and then to get them connected with resources if they need that. It’s one of our system wide goals to get 30 percent of our leaders across the enterprise trained in stress first aid within the next year and ratchet it up from there.
“I’d also highlight [our] “getting rid of stupid stuff” programs. This one is borrowed from the [American Medical Association], and again, it’s that idea of getting rid of the non-value-added work and the pebbles in peoples’ shoes. We just hired a “getting rid of stupid stuff” manager, and we’re working together to create an infrastructure in our system to identify and remove those pebbles.
“One of the initial projects within that [initiative] was a meeting design package. There are a couple of components to it, but one is just creating that culture around efficient and effective meetings, where people are engaged and we’re not just [undergoing] death by meetings: removing the unnecessary meetings, shortening them to what you really need, making sure that only the people who really need to be there are there. We set the defaults of our meetings to 25 and 50 minutes rather than 30 and 60, so that you’re not on back-to-back-to-back Teams meetings without a break. This creates that opportunity for micro-breaks, which are so important for us to be able to function optimally and for our wellbeing.”
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