Julie Smith, Corporate IT Director Clinical Applications and Support at Baptist Health Care, discusses alleviating clinician burden with GenAI tool “CASI” (Corporate IT Director Clinical Applications and Support).
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(00:04):
We're here today with JulieSmith, the corporate IT director
of clinical applications andsupport about this health care
for those who don't know aboutthis.
Healthcare is headquartered inPensacola, FL and comprises 3
hospitals, four medical parks, acomplex network of primary care
and specialty clinic practices,and an Institute for Orthopedics
and Sports Medicine.
(00:25):
We have an interesting topic todiscuss today.
We're going to be discussingalleviating clinician burden
with the creation of help deskdesk tickets that leverages Gen
AI technology.
So Julie, thanks for joining us.
And please, let's dive right in.
(00:46):
Tell me a little bit aboutCassie.
Cassie.
Cassie is our newest teammember.
I always ask people if we canintroduce them to Cassie.
Cassie stands for the clinicalapplication support interactive
bot, so she is she is calledCassie by those of us who know
her well.
(01:07):
And tell me about the genesis ofCassidy.
What was going on about thishealth care prior to the
introduction of this Gen AItool?
And what were some of theproblems that (Baptist
healthcare was facing?
So we had when we implementedour current EHR, we had
(01:28):
contracted for a third party EHRsupport vendor for help desk
specifically for their product.
There's.
And as we were watching the Slasand getting the reports every
month that comes in, what Inoticed is that I was seeing
whole times of two and threeminutes and you know Max wait
(01:49):
times and and then how long itwas taking to get some of those
tickets even opened, right.
And we all know that ourclinicians, their focus is not
on calling the help desk.
It's not on trying to resolve aproblem that they're having,
it's all about the patient careand they have more work than
they usually need.
It.
(02:09):
And so I started thinking abouthow can we take that off of
E.
their plate?
I've been looking at reductionof burden.
Overall, I think most healthcaresystems have, but that was one
that I really wanted to tackleand take away.
So that was really where it allstarted.
Got it.
And just so our listeners areclear, these help desk tickets
(02:31):
are with clinicians requestingsupport within their electronic
health record, which is epic.
So there's some kind of issuethat is either requiring
immediate assistance for patientcare or they can't close out an
issue and they'd be waiting onthe phone with the patient in
the room.
UM for sometimes you said 3minutes or somebody to get on
(02:53):
the phone and just listen towhat the issue is and it would
take even longer to resolvethese issues, correct?
Brought.
I'll correct one thing.
We're not on epic.
We are on Altera sunrisethroughout our enterprise, but
Terrorist.
otherwise yes and and they maymay or may not be with a patient
Turner.
when they're making those calls.
Sometimes it's an educationquestion.
(03:14):
They just need to know how toget past a step that they're
working on, and sometimes theymight get an error.
So it does kind of just stoptheir workflow and it's tracks.
Right.
OK, so you have an issue andthen you know your team comes
around and says, well, there'sthere's, uh, you, you partner
with Microsoft 365 and you haveyou've learned about copied
(03:34):
studio and you have some ideasabout how Gen AI could augment
the internal help desk and moveaway from a vendor help desk.
Can you talk about the workflowwith the vendor help desk and
how you propose to make this abudget neutral request to
leadership so that you may mightbe amenable to this suggestion.
Would be happy to also mentionthe fact that you at first our
(03:58):
first thought wasn't.
Ohh well we have Microsoft andwe can use to copilot studio.
Umm.
That would have been so muchfaster and easier if we had
gotten to the solution thatquickly, but really it was
trying to find out.
Asking ourselves, havingconversations.
What is the fastest way and thefastest way?
Was they just need to give you acouple of pieces of information.
(04:21):
How can you get a hold of me andwhat the problem is?
And then just keep moving andthat's where the thought of the
Umm.
bot came on.
As you mentioned, we wanted todo, we needed to do a been to a
budget neutral approach.
I mean, we all see that inhealthcare and and have for
several years.
How critical it is to managethat budget?
So I wanted to start by lookingat our current vendors and did
(04:45):
they have something that theycould help us with as you
mentioned, of course we haveMicrosoft 365 and so we took a
look at what they had to offerand then we also had to
understand well if our ourproviders are still calling a
third party service desk outsideof our walls then is the chat
Yeah.
(05:07):
bot going to do as much good aswe'd hoped and we came to the
solution that it's not we wannabring that clinical service desk
actually back in house.
And we can talk a little bitabout that as well.
That's in the complement toCassie.
But then we took a look at howcan we build this copilot studio
(05:30):
bot?
And we went to the vendorvendors are supposed to be our
partners.
How can we do what we need to doin the most efficient manner and
we were looking for somebody whocould partner with us and help
Well.
build the bot because we wantedto roll this out and in full
from the beginning, making surethat we skipped any hiccups when
(05:52):
we rolled this out to ourclinicians.
Got it.
And so you were able to developCassie, this clinical
application support interactivebot.
Tell me right now, how is Cassieinteracting with your internal
help desk right now from theperspective of a clinician.
So can you walk me through anactual storyline of I'm a
(06:15):
clinician, I'm in the patientroom.
There's some kind of issue andmy patient sitting right here.
What do I do?
We we have within Citrix rightnow, but soon and I say soon
then the next week we'llactually have a launch point
directly within their EHR.
So that it is within theirworkflow that they can select
(06:39):
this to launch Cassie.
It already knows who they are.
So because you know, we workwith Microsoft already, it says,
Perfect.
hey, we know that this is whoyou are.
This is how we can contact you.
This is your email address.
And then it just gives themsimple options.
The options are do you want toopen up a ticket?
We all know physicians are busy,so we've also offered do you
Umm.
(07:01):
wanna open up a ticket onsomeone else's behalf?
So that office managers chargenurses, anybody who might be
working with them, maybe some oftheir support staff could go
ahead and do that for them aswell.
So they could open up a ticketor they could search for
Take a look.
additional information.
All they do.
OK, so let's say I have aproblem.
I'm trying to prescribe acontrolled substance.
(07:26):
We have to go through ECS forthat.
Uh-huh.
I'm getting an error and so Ineed to open up a ticket.
The nice thing is that caffeineknows who you are, so she
already knows that you're aphysician, and so it actually
gives me an option.
Do you need to open up a ticket?
Yes.
Is this for general clinicalinformation or is this for ECS?
It's for ECS.
(07:47):
Give me your contactinformation.
At that point, they may actuallyput in their office manager's
name or number.
That's fine.
We understand again, they don'twant to be on there long and
then they just let us know in asentence or two what the problem
is.
So two clicks my contactinformation and a sentence, and
within 2030 seconds they're backin their regular patient flow.
(08:10):
Got it.
Or they could even stick theirhead out of the the patient exam
room and say, hey, you know,office manager, nurse, whoever
happens to be around, would youmind going into Cassie and
opening a ticket for prescribingcontrolled substance and then
they could do it on aclinician's behalf?
Absolutely.
It's just of 10 second requestto a colleague and they can go
(08:32):
ahead and do it even though theydon't have the prescription
authority.
They can open the request onbehalf of the requesting
provider.
That's right.
Now, if it's a general, how do Iuse the system?
Maybe they're newer.
They haven't used controlsubstance prescribing very long.
Perfect.
Umm.
Cassie does have the ability tosearch through all of our
(08:53):
education documents.
We have hundreds of educationdocuments, so if she says if the
doctor says, oh, I just need alittle bit more information,
that's great.
What do you need informationabout?
He or she types in ECS and itsays here's all the information
we have on ECS.
What can I help you with?
So self serve I don't have tocall somebody and wait for a
call back.
So many of our listenerslistening to this episode maybe
(09:17):
wondering I love this newtechnological solution.
It seems to expedite things.
It seems to solve a realproblem.
It's budget neutral because it'sreplacing an external vendor
call center that you've nowgotten rid of and scaled back,
and you brought some more stuffin House leadership likes it.
They've approved it because itis budget neutral, but the next
question that a listener maycome up with is can we talk
(09:39):
about change management andprovider adoption?
What is provider responses binlike?
Anecdotally, what sort offeedback have you received?
I know you've done a soft rollout, but maybe promotion is
still on the horizon.
How have you been managing kindof adoption of Cassie and have
(09:59):
there been any pushback at allsaying, hey, we're used this
other workflow, how are you,you're changing it on us?
Has there been any anydifficulties or challenges with
implementing Cassie?
That's a great question.
We took the approach of ofreally a marketing approach.
Umm.
One of the reasons why we gaveher the name Cassie, we've also
(10:22):
for adoption used in AI avatarvendor third party.
Umm.
We just subscribed to it.
We're we're able to put in somesome scripts, so it's engaging.
So when we have announcementsover what's coming out new in
the EHR, if we do have maybe ascheduled downtime, any kind of
plans we give that to them in anengaging way that has helped.
(10:44):
Again, they're busy.
Sometimes they don't want tolisten to even a one or two
minute video.
Overall, they've accepted itbecause it's a if they love it,
use it.
If you don't go ahead and callthe help desk, you still have
that workflow option or turn tothe next person beside you.
So from a physician standpoint,we haven't seen it big uptick in
(11:05):
adoption, but I'll say our softrollout was about a month ago.
So we're very, very new intothis where we have seen a great
Umm.
deal of adoption is in ourphysician clinics.
So the support team that theywork with, as you mentioned the
So.
doctor leaning out and saying,hey, I'm having a problem call
OK.
the help desk.
Umm.
(11:25):
Those are the team members thatwe're seeing a lot of it.
And today, actually this week weare taking the time to round on
our nursing units.
Our nurses are busy.
They don't see emails, you know,they're worried about their
patients.
And so we're going out to themand when we round, we also
Umm.
mention it too.
My told my team, oftentimeswe'll get a phone call as a
(11:46):
OK.
clinical application support andsometimes we say, well, have you
opened a ticket yet?
I told him from now on what Iwanna hear if they say ohh I
don't have a ticket.
Say, did you tell Cassie causeCassie will open up the ticket
for you?
Right. So.
There's two things I want tofollow kind of tie up this case
(12:10):
study here.
One is, I understand that thereare some metrics for measuring
cassies effectiveness that maybe presented at HIMSS in the
future.
Do you?
Can you tell me something aboutwhat you're thinking about and
how you will evaluate theeffectiveness of Cassie and how
your leadership will beevaluating certain KPI that
(12:31):
you're collecting pertaining tothis, this intervention?
Yeah.
Thanks for that, Jordan.
We did just submit a proposalfor HIMS 25 and you know next
Umm.
year down in Las Vegas and whatwe're hoping to be able to give
is a very robust amount of KPIsaround the use of it.
We already know that it issaving minutes every time a
(12:53):
physician needs to open up aticket because we specifically
tracked when we had one of ourproviders opening up tickets.
We wanted to know specificallywhat was their wait times.
Everybody's wait time isimportant, but of course we
focused on those.
We know that the wait time hassignificantly decreased.
We're continuing to do studieson that.
(13:14):
Uh-huh.
Corrently, when they send in theinformation, they tell Cassie
It.
what the problem is.
The.
Cassie opens up a ticket.
Initially it's going into aqueue to be reviewed, but very
Umm.
soon our plan is that willdirectly go to those teams, so
it's going to directly go to theclinical team.
It's not just clinicians usingthis, it might be anyone who's
(13:38):
in patient access registrationor in other areas so they can
pick where this ticket needs togo and it doesn't have to stop
and a queue it can actually getto the person and get assigned
quicker.
So those are some of the thingsthat we're gonna be looking at
is how we can expedite the helpto everybody who's using Cassie.
So in addition to measuring theeffectiveness of Cassie, as I
(14:00):
mentioned earlier, you know withthe, with the kind of change
management efforts, I understandthat you spearheaded efforts as
a primary leader for a carouselof change for EHR optimization.
That has includedcollaboratively working with
physicians specialties tocustomize the platform for their
specific workflows.
Can you tell me about theorigins of this carousel of
(14:24):
change and how you've used it inother projects and then how you
brought it to bear in the cacheproject?
Yeah, the carousel of change hasbeen around at Baptist for
several years and it's becausethere is such a clamor for
optimization of the EHR.
Everybody wants what they'reusing optimized and So what we
(14:44):
wanted to be able to do is to beable to focus on specialties.
Umm, you know anyone who worksin the EHR realm knows that you
can't customize every documentfor every provider or every
order set.
So what we've done is we'vetaken that carousel, the
specialty gets to come on board,talk to us about what are the
(15:05):
pain points, maybe what's beenunderutilized, what they're
spending the most time on andthen we're able to optimize
Umm.
those and sprints.
And once we have that optimized,then they get off the carousel.
Uh-huh.
We let the next specialty on thecarousel, it's their turn to go
around and get optimized andthen we come back around.
And were you able to leveragethe carousel of change at all
(15:27):
with Cassie?
Or is Cassie the product of theCarousel of change?
What was there any interplaybetween the two?
Cassie is really more cross theentire organization, but and so
Umm.
I wouldn't say it's necessarilyconnected to the carousel of
change.
It's really connected to thatdecreasing clinician burden, but
Umm.
you mentioned change control.
So I do wanna go back tosomething you mentioned earlier.
(15:49):
We haven't touched on which isgenerative AI, and I think that
Umm.
when it comes to AI, you know,anybody in an IT in healthcare
IT is talking about AI in someway.
Of course you need to havegovernance.
We do have a a steeringcommittee when it comes to AI
with Cassie, we were able totake the generative AI.
(16:12):
Of course, we spoke withcompliance, we spoke with our
security team.
We made sure that there wasn'tany concerns and what she was
able to generate and what we'vedone is really given our
organization that first stepinto generative AI, but with a
very restricted amount.
So we provide her the documentsthat she can read and she can
(16:33):
generate information for us.
She can't go out and search theInternet and let you know what
the weather is in Orlando rightnow, but she can, however, tell
you what the directory is.
Do you need help for biomechsupport?
All you have to do is ask herwhat's the number for BioMed?
She'll let you know what thatis.
Got it.
So it's she has a limited poolof data upon which the machine
(16:55):
learning algorithms are trainedthat are defined particularly
specifically by the governance,compliance and security teams.
That's right.
And that's the first step.
That's where we are right now.
You know, I think that justtalking in general, not
necessarily specific to Cassieor our health system, you get to
(17:16):
stair step that in based off ofgovernance based off of how
Problem.
comfortable people are.
So you might want to start withlike.
We are very distinct library ofinformation and what we do is we
upload we have two or threedocuments.
Anytime we have new informationthat needs to go out through
(17:37):
those documents, we take thatthrough change control, just
like we should.
And it's great because thegenerative AI, we can upload
That's.
information.
When is our next upgrade?
What are we doing for hospitalweek this week?
Umm.
Even questions such as thatgeneral information can be
uploaded to her, but I could seethe next step being something
(18:00):
that might be a resource for ourclinicians that they already use
and letting it look at thatwebsite and I I'm kind of
hesitant to to go out on a limband say any vendors cause
stitely not why I'm here.
But.
But you know, we personally useumm, you know, a vendor for
education and and clinicalknowledge being able to maybe
(18:23):
the next step.
Take a look at can we allowCassie to use that website with
peer reviewed information on it?
The.
That might be the next step, butwe're not there yet.
So if you were to just looked inthe future towards what could be
done with Gen AI app, thishealthcare beyond help desk
(18:44):
tickets, it sounds like youmight be looking for educational
purposes to pull in marketinginformation.
Look at peer reviewed academicmedical journals.
I have this particular patientand this specialty practice and
I heard that there may be astudy here, but is there any
other clinical trial that mypatient may be eligible for?
(19:04):
Do you know?
Are there any kind of thoughtstowards a road map of an
interoperability road map topull in different kinds of data
sets and give that Cassie accessto different kinds of data that
either that may not live withinthe EHR?
Yeah, Jordan, I I hope you willcome back and ask me that a year
(19:24):
from now because we, you know,we really are so new to rolling
Cassie out.
I think she has been extremelysuccessful and those that have
started using her use hereveryday.
Umm I I think where we can go isI don't wanna say limitless, but
possibly I think all of thoseexamples you gave are perfect
examples of where I would loveto be able to get to umm and
(19:44):
then you know on and and andthis isn't specific to (Baptist
Umm.
I I don't want it to make makeit sound like it is.
But you know what I've heard?
And I love this as I'm roundingin the hospital.
I have people saying, oh, thisis great.
Can we get a bot or can we justput our information in Cassie?
Hey, can we get a bot that wecan put out HR information and
(20:06):
Umm.
so people are asking mequestions and I love that.
It's making them think about itin a way they never have before.
So as we approach the end ofthis podcast episode and you're
talking about how other peopleare reacting to Cassie, I'd like
you to speak to our listenersfor one minute and just what are
some of the lessons learned orwhat do you think is one thing
(20:28):
they should be aware of as theyconsider bringing Gen AI to
their clinicians and their ownorganizations?
What advice do you have?
Oh gosh, anybody who knows meknows I can never just have one
point right? Umm.
I would say make sure that youare in contact with your
security team.
Your IT compliance.
(20:48):
Make sure that there aren'tquestions that are abounding
that maybe get ahead of whereyou are and stay on top of that,
but also in encourage thosequestions and so we are also
Yeah.
partnered with a vendor and oneof the things I looked for in
that vendor is I wanted them toteach us.
(21:08):
I didn't want to vendor that.
I needed to attached to within,uh gosh, they need to be here
and they need to support usforever.
1st.
I wanted them to say, hey, letus teach you how to do this so
The.
that you can support yourselfand you can build and you can
expand on your copilots.
And so that was something that Iwould encourage as well.
The more you know is, the moreyou know.
(21:30):
Sounds like a pathway toindependence vendor who teaches
you how to fish instead ofgiving you a fish.
Exactly right.
Alright.
Well, thank you very much.
Uh, for a listeners, this hasbeen Julie Smith, the corporate
IT director of clinicalapplications and support at
Baptist Health Care.
Julie, thank you so much forjoining us today.
Thanks Jordan.
We're here today with JulieSmith, the corporate IT director
of clinical applications andsupport about this health care
for those who don't know aboutthis.
Healthcare is headquartered inPensacola, FL and comprises 3
hospitals, four medical parks, acomplex network of primary care
and specialty clinic practices,and an Institute for Orthopedics
and Sports Medicine.
(00:25):
We have an interesting topic todiscuss today.
We're going to be discussingalleviating clinician burden
with the creation of help deskdesk tickets that leverages Gen
AI technology.
So Julie, thanks for joining us.
And please, let's dive right in.
(00:46):
Tell me a little bit aboutCassie.
Cassie.
Cassie is our newest teammember.
I always ask people if we canintroduce them to Cassie.
Cassie stands for the clinicalapplication support interactive
bot, so she is she is calledCassie by those of us who know
her well.
(01:07):
And tell me about the genesis ofCassidy.
What was going on about thishealth care prior to the
introduction of this Gen AItool?
And what were some of theproblems that (Baptist
healthcare was facing?
So we had when we implementedour current EHR, we had
(01:28):
contracted for a third party EHRsupport vendor for help desk
specifically for their product.
There's.
And as we were watching the Slasand getting the reports every
month that comes in, what Inoticed is that I was seeing
whole times of two and threeminutes and you know Max wait
(01:49):
times and and then how long itwas taking to get some of those
tickets even opened, right.
And we all know that ourclinicians, their focus is not
on calling the help desk.
It's not on trying to resolve aproblem that they're having,
it's all about the patient careand they have more work than
they usually need.
It.
(02:09):
And so I started thinking abouthow can we take that off of
E.
their plate?
I've been looking at reductionof burden.
Overall, I think most healthcaresystems have, but that was one
that I really wanted to tackleand take away.
So that was really where it allstarted.
Got it.
And just so our listeners areclear, these help desk tickets
(02:31):
are with clinicians requestingsupport within their electronic
health record, which is epic.
So there's some kind of issuethat is either requiring
immediate assistance for patientcare or they can't close out an
issue and they'd be waiting onthe phone with the patient in
the room.
UM for sometimes you said 3minutes or somebody to get on
(02:53):
the phone and just listen towhat the issue is and it would
take even longer to resolvethese issues, correct?
Brought.
I'll correct one thing.
We're not on epic.
We are on Altera sunrisethroughout our enterprise, but
Terrorist.
otherwise yes and and they maymay or may not be with a patient
Turner.
when they're making those calls.
Sometimes it's an educationquestion.
(03:14):
They just need to know how toget past a step that they're
working on, and sometimes theymight get an error.
So it does kind of just stoptheir workflow and it's tracks.
Right.
OK, so you have an issue andthen you know your team comes
around and says, well, there'sthere's, uh, you, you partner
with Microsoft 365 and you haveyou've learned about copied
(03:34):
studio and you have some ideasabout how Gen AI could augment
the internal help desk and moveaway from a vendor help desk.
Can you talk about the workflowwith the vendor help desk and
how you propose to make this abudget neutral request to
leadership so that you may mightbe amenable to this suggestion.
Would be happy to also mentionthe fact that you at first our
(03:58):
first thought wasn't.
Ohh well we have Microsoft andwe can use to copilot studio.
Umm.
That would have been so muchfaster and easier if we had
gotten to the solution thatquickly, but really it was
trying to find out.
Asking ourselves, havingconversations.
What is the fastest way and thefastest way?
Was they just need to give you acouple of pieces of information.
(04:21):
How can you get a hold of me andwhat the problem is?
And then just keep moving andthat's where the thought of the
Umm.
bot came on.
As you mentioned, we wanted todo, we needed to do a been to a
budget neutral approach.
I mean, we all see that inhealthcare and and have for
several years.
How critical it is to managethat budget?
So I wanted to start by lookingat our current vendors and did
(04:45):
they have something that theycould help us with as you
mentioned, of course we haveMicrosoft 365 and so we took a
look at what they had to offerand then we also had to
understand well if our ourproviders are still calling a
third party service desk outsideof our walls then is the chat
Yeah.
(05:07):
bot going to do as much good aswe'd hoped and we came to the
solution that it's not we wannabring that clinical service desk
actually back in house.
And we can talk a little bitabout that as well.
That's in the complement toCassie.
But then we took a look at howcan we build this copilot studio
(05:30):
bot?
And we went to the vendorvendors are supposed to be our
partners.
How can we do what we need to doin the most efficient manner and
we were looking for somebody whocould partner with us and help
Well.
build the bot because we wantedto roll this out and in full
from the beginning, making surethat we skipped any hiccups when
(05:52):
we rolled this out to ourclinicians.
Got it.
And so you were able to developCassie, this clinical
application support interactivebot.
Tell me right now, how is Cassieinteracting with your internal
help desk right now from theperspective of a clinician.
So can you walk me through anactual storyline of I'm a
(06:15):
clinician, I'm in the patientroom.
There's some kind of issue andmy patient sitting right here.
What do I do?
We we have within Citrix rightnow, but soon and I say soon
then the next week we'llactually have a launch point
directly within their EHR.
So that it is within theirworkflow that they can select
(06:39):
this to launch Cassie.
It already knows who they are.
So because you know, we workwith Microsoft already, it says,
Perfect.
hey, we know that this is whoyou are.
This is how we can contact you.
This is your email address.
And then it just gives themsimple options.
The options are do you want toopen up a ticket?
We all know physicians are busy,so we've also offered do you
Umm.
(07:01):
wanna open up a ticket onsomeone else's behalf?
So that office managers chargenurses, anybody who might be
working with them, maybe some oftheir support staff could go
ahead and do that for them aswell.
So they could open up a ticketor they could search for
Take a look.
additional information.
All they do.
OK, so let's say I have aproblem.
I'm trying to prescribe acontrolled substance.
(07:26):
We have to go through ECS forthat.
Uh-huh.
I'm getting an error and so Ineed to open up a ticket.
The nice thing is that caffeineknows who you are, so she
already knows that you're aphysician, and so it actually
gives me an option.
Do you need to open up a ticket?
Yes.
Is this for general clinicalinformation or is this for ECS?
It's for ECS.
(07:47):
Give me your contactinformation.
At that point, they may actuallyput in their office manager's
name or number.
That's fine.
We understand again, they don'twant to be on there long and
then they just let us know in asentence or two what the problem
is.
So two clicks my contactinformation and a sentence, and
within 2030 seconds they're backin their regular patient flow.
(08:10):
Got it.
Or they could even stick theirhead out of the the patient exam
room and say, hey, you know,office manager, nurse, whoever
happens to be around, would youmind going into Cassie and
opening a ticket for prescribingcontrolled substance and then
they could do it on aclinician's behalf?
Absolutely.
It's just of 10 second requestto a colleague and they can go
(08:32):
ahead and do it even though theydon't have the prescription
authority.
They can open the request onbehalf of the requesting
provider.
That's right.
Now, if it's a general, how do Iuse the system?
Maybe they're newer.
They haven't used controlsubstance prescribing very long.
Perfect.
Umm.
Cassie does have the ability tosearch through all of our
(08:53):
education documents.
We have hundreds of educationdocuments, so if she says if the
doctor says, oh, I just need alittle bit more information,
that's great.
What do you need informationabout?
He or she types in ECS and itsays here's all the information
we have on ECS.
What can I help you with?
So self serve I don't have tocall somebody and wait for a
call back.
So many of our listenerslistening to this episode maybe
(09:17):
wondering I love this newtechnological solution.
It seems to expedite things.
It seems to solve a realproblem.
It's budget neutral because it'sreplacing an external vendor
call center that you've nowgotten rid of and scaled back,
and you brought some more stuffin House leadership likes it.
They've approved it because itis budget neutral, but the next
question that a listener maycome up with is can we talk
(09:39):
about change management andprovider adoption?
What is provider responses binlike?
Anecdotally, what sort offeedback have you received?
I know you've done a soft rollout, but maybe promotion is
still on the horizon.
How have you been managing kindof adoption of Cassie and have
(09:59):
there been any pushback at allsaying, hey, we're used this
other workflow, how are you,you're changing it on us?
Has there been any anydifficulties or challenges with
implementing Cassie?
That's a great question.
We took the approach of ofreally a marketing approach.
Umm.
One of the reasons why we gaveher the name Cassie, we've also
(10:22):
for adoption used in AI avatarvendor third party.
Umm.
We just subscribed to it.
We're we're able to put in somesome scripts, so it's engaging.
So when we have announcementsover what's coming out new in
the EHR, if we do have maybe ascheduled downtime, any kind of
plans we give that to them in anengaging way that has helped.
(10:44):
Again, they're busy.
Sometimes they don't want tolisten to even a one or two
minute video.
Overall, they've accepted itbecause it's a if they love it,
use it.
If you don't go ahead and callthe help desk, you still have
that workflow option or turn tothe next person beside you.
So from a physician standpoint,we haven't seen it big uptick in
(11:05):
adoption, but I'll say our softrollout was about a month ago.
So we're very, very new intothis where we have seen a great
Umm.
deal of adoption is in ourphysician clinics.
So the support team that theywork with, as you mentioned the
So.
doctor leaning out and saying,hey, I'm having a problem call
OK.
the help desk.
Umm.
(11:25):
Those are the team members thatwe're seeing a lot of it.
And today, actually this week weare taking the time to round on
our nursing units.
Our nurses are busy.
They don't see emails, you know,they're worried about their
patients.
And so we're going out to themand when we round, we also
Umm.
mention it too.
My told my team, oftentimeswe'll get a phone call as a
(11:46):
OK.
clinical application support andsometimes we say, well, have you
opened a ticket yet?
I told him from now on what Iwanna hear if they say ohh I
don't have a ticket.
Say, did you tell Cassie causeCassie will open up the ticket
for you?
Right. So.
There's two things I want tofollow kind of tie up this case
(12:10):
study here.
One is, I understand that thereare some metrics for measuring
cassies effectiveness that maybe presented at HIMSS in the
future.
Do you?
Can you tell me something aboutwhat you're thinking about and
how you will evaluate theeffectiveness of Cassie and how
your leadership will beevaluating certain KPI that
(12:31):
you're collecting pertaining tothis, this intervention?
Yeah.
Thanks for that, Jordan.
We did just submit a proposalfor HIMS 25 and you know next
Umm.
year down in Las Vegas and whatwe're hoping to be able to give
is a very robust amount of KPIsaround the use of it.
We already know that it issaving minutes every time a
(12:53):
physician needs to open up aticket because we specifically
tracked when we had one of ourproviders opening up tickets.
We wanted to know specificallywhat was their wait times.
Everybody's wait time isimportant, but of course we
focused on those.
We know that the wait time hassignificantly decreased.
We're continuing to do studieson that.
(13:14):
Uh-huh.
Corrently, when they send in theinformation, they tell Cassie
It.
what the problem is.
The.
Cassie opens up a ticket.
Initially it's going into aqueue to be reviewed, but very
Umm.
soon our plan is that willdirectly go to those teams, so
it's going to directly go to theclinical team.
It's not just clinicians usingthis, it might be anyone who's
(13:38):
in patient access registrationor in other areas so they can
pick where this ticket needs togo and it doesn't have to stop
and a queue it can actually getto the person and get assigned
quicker.
So those are some of the thingsthat we're gonna be looking at
is how we can expedite the helpto everybody who's using Cassie.
So in addition to measuring theeffectiveness of Cassie, as I
(14:00):
mentioned earlier, you know withthe, with the kind of change
management efforts, I understandthat you spearheaded efforts as
a primary leader for a carouselof change for EHR optimization.
That has includedcollaboratively working with
physicians specialties tocustomize the platform for their
specific workflows.
Can you tell me about theorigins of this carousel of
(14:24):
change and how you've used it inother projects and then how you
brought it to bear in the cacheproject?
Yeah, the carousel of change hasbeen around at Baptist for
several years and it's becausethere is such a clamor for
optimization of the EHR.
Everybody wants what they'reusing optimized and So what we
(14:44):
wanted to be able to do is to beable to focus on specialties.
Umm, you know anyone who worksin the EHR realm knows that you
can't customize every documentfor every provider or every
order set.
So what we've done is we'vetaken that carousel, the
specialty gets to come on board,talk to us about what are the
(15:05):
pain points, maybe what's beenunderutilized, what they're
spending the most time on andthen we're able to optimize
Umm.
those and sprints.
And once we have that optimized,then they get off the carousel.
Uh-huh.
We let the next specialty on thecarousel, it's their turn to go
around and get optimized andthen we come back around.
And were you able to leveragethe carousel of change at all
(15:27):
with Cassie?
Or is Cassie the product of theCarousel of change?
What was there any interplaybetween the two?
Cassie is really more cross theentire organization, but and so
Umm.
I wouldn't say it's necessarilyconnected to the carousel of
change.
It's really connected to thatdecreasing clinician burden, but
Umm.
you mentioned change control.
So I do wanna go back tosomething you mentioned earlier.
(15:49):
We haven't touched on which isgenerative AI, and I think that
Umm.
when it comes to AI, you know,anybody in an IT in healthcare
IT is talking about AI in someway.
Of course you need to havegovernance.
We do have a a steeringcommittee when it comes to AI
with Cassie, we were able totake the generative AI.
(16:12):
Of course, we spoke withcompliance, we spoke with our
security team.
We made sure that there wasn'tany concerns and what she was
able to generate and what we'vedone is really given our
organization that first stepinto generative AI, but with a
very restricted amount.
So we provide her the documentsthat she can read and she can
(16:33):
generate information for us.
She can't go out and search theInternet and let you know what
the weather is in Orlando rightnow, but she can, however, tell
you what the directory is.
Do you need help for biomechsupport?
All you have to do is ask herwhat's the number for BioMed?
She'll let you know what thatis.
Got it.
So it's she has a limited poolof data upon which the machine
(16:55):
learning algorithms are trainedthat are defined particularly
specifically by the governance,compliance and security teams.
That's right.
And that's the first step.
That's where we are right now.
You know, I think that justtalking in general, not
necessarily specific to Cassieor our health system, you get to
(17:16):
stair step that in based off ofgovernance based off of how
Problem.
comfortable people are.
So you might want to start withlike.
We are very distinct library ofinformation and what we do is we
upload we have two or threedocuments.
Anytime we have new informationthat needs to go out through
(17:37):
those documents, we take thatthrough change control, just
like we should.
And it's great because thegenerative AI, we can upload
That's.
information.
When is our next upgrade?
What are we doing for hospitalweek this week?
Umm.
Even questions such as thatgeneral information can be
uploaded to her, but I could seethe next step being something
(18:00):
that might be a resource for ourclinicians that they already use
and letting it look at thatwebsite and I I'm kind of
hesitant to to go out on a limband say any vendors cause
stitely not why I'm here.
But.
But you know, we personally useumm, you know, a vendor for
education and and clinicalknowledge being able to maybe
(18:23):
the next step.
Take a look at can we allowCassie to use that website with
peer reviewed information on it?
The.
That might be the next step, butwe're not there yet.
So if you were to just looked inthe future towards what could be
done with Gen AI app, thishealthcare beyond help desk
(18:44):
tickets, it sounds like youmight be looking for educational
purposes to pull in marketinginformation.
Look at peer reviewed academicmedical journals.
I have this particular patientand this specialty practice and
I heard that there may be astudy here, but is there any
other clinical trial that mypatient may be eligible for?
(19:04):
Do you know?
Are there any kind of thoughtstowards a road map of an
interoperability road map topull in different kinds of data
sets and give that Cassie accessto different kinds of data that
either that may not live withinthe EHR?
Yeah, Jordan, I I hope you willcome back and ask me that a year
(19:24):
from now because we, you know,we really are so new to rolling
Cassie out.
I think she has been extremelysuccessful and those that have
started using her use hereveryday.
Umm I I think where we can go isI don't wanna say limitless, but
possibly I think all of thoseexamples you gave are perfect
examples of where I would loveto be able to get to umm and
(19:44):
then you know on and and andthis isn't specific to (Baptist
Umm.
I I don't want it to make makeit sound like it is.
But you know what I've heard?
And I love this as I'm roundingin the hospital.
I have people saying, oh, thisis great.
Can we get a bot or can we justput our information in Cassie?
Hey, can we get a bot that wecan put out HR information and
(20:06):
Umm.
so people are asking mequestions and I love that.
It's making them think about itin a way they never have before.
So as we approach the end ofthis podcast episode and you're
talking about how other peopleare reacting to Cassie, I'd like
you to speak to our listenersfor one minute and just what are
some of the lessons learned orwhat do you think is one thing
(20:28):
they should be aware of as theyconsider bringing Gen AI to
their clinicians and their ownorganizations?
What advice do you have?
Oh gosh, anybody who knows meknows I can never just have one
point right? Umm.
I would say make sure that youare in contact with your
security team.
Your IT compliance.
(20:48):
Make sure that there aren'tquestions that are abounding
that maybe get ahead of whereyou are and stay on top of that,
but also in encourage thosequestions and so we are also
Yeah.
partnered with a vendor and oneof the things I looked for in
that vendor is I wanted them toteach us.
(21:08):
I didn't want to vendor that.
I needed to attached to within,uh gosh, they need to be here
and they need to support usforever.
1st.
I wanted them to say, hey, letus teach you how to do this so
The.
that you can support yourselfand you can build and you can
expand on your copilots.
And so that was something that Iwould encourage as well.
The more you know is, the moreyou know.
(21:30):
Sounds like a pathway toindependence vendor who teaches
you how to fish instead ofgiving you a fish.
Exactly right.
Alright.
Well, thank you very much.
Uh, for a listeners, this hasbeen Julie Smith, the corporate
IT director of clinicalapplications and support at
Baptist Health Care.
Julie, thank you so much forjoining us today.
Thanks Jordan.
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