Q&A: Customizing AI Tools To Attract and Retain Clinical Teams

HEALTHTECH: What have your top healthcare IT priorities been for this year? Where have you seen successes, and where have you seen challenges?

SHAFER: A top priority has been leveraging AI to make sure that we are taking advantage of all the efficiency gains that are possible. On the other hand, a major challenge has been sifting through all of the different AI programs and companies that are out there. It has become quite a busy field; it seems like, every week, there are multiple AI companies offering up different solutions.

HEALTHTECH: Presbyterian includes several rural locations. Are there any specific concerns when considering AI deployments at rural locations?

SHAFER: A rural facility typically has fewer resources, which can make things more challenging. In our system, we have a hub-and-spoke model, which includes our main facility in Albuquerque as the hub, and then several regional sites as the spokes, which may also receive support through virtual care. When we have a new AI solution, before we roll it out to a rural site, we will pilot it in our central locations to work out the kinks and get the bugs out before we release it to the rural site. The pro is that it saves that facility a lot of time and reduces headaches because we’ve already found a lot of the problems that they would have otherwise encountered. The con is that regional locations can be different, and while we’d like to think that they’re just a smaller version of what we have at our central locations, the reality is that that’s not the case. Sometimes, we think we’ve found a solution that works for a central location, but because of the uniqueness of each clinical environment, it may not work for a regional site.

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HEALTHTECH: What has the feedback been from patients on solutions that use AI?

SHAFER: We have deployed RhythmX AI, for instance, and a separate ambient listening solution in our central as well as in some of our regional areas. The patients love the fact that their physician or advanced practice clinician (APC) can now just focus on them and look them in the eye instead of turning to a computer screen for prolonged periods. From that standpoint, it's been well received.

HEALTHTECH: How have you used technology to retain and attract talent at Presbyterian? What works? What should be reconsidered?

SHAFER: I’ll give a few examples. With surgeons, for instance, they may expect robotic surgery applications. What we’re seeing more of is that people are coming out of their residencies having trained in robotic surgery and expecting that technology where they work. Or, in the emergency department, more people are coming out of residency having experience with ambient listening tools or AI scribes, and they expect to see that or more agentic clinical AI solutions that we’re using across our clinics.

So initially, people are exposed to different levels of technology in residency and trained up on those, and so the expectation is to have that technology where they find their first job, because that’s what they’re familiar with. There are some technologies that are quickly becoming the standard bearers of what people expect when they start their clinical roles. So, it's important to keep in mind how much we’re able to really focus on improving the clinical experience of what it’s like to practice at our organization. We also understand that there is no one perfect IT system, or any sort of new advanced technology that works for everybody.

As with most any new technology, many clinicians really enjoy it and find that it helps. But there are a few who say, “You know what, I don’t like it. It gets in my way. I’m just as fast without it. I don’t need it.” There’s not a one-size-fits-all solution, and an organization must figure out how the pieces fit together so that people get the practice environment they want.

When we talk about some of the regional or rural sites, it's very difficult to recruit there, so it's important that you try to create the best culture for people to practice medicine. That may involve different IT constructs, so make sure that you’re not mandating that people fit into one construct versus another. Instead, work with them and meet them where they are.

HEALTHTECH: How have you gotten buy-in from clinicians and other stakeholders for new solutions? How are you measuring success?

SHAFER: There are the early adopters, who seek me out and tell me that they want to participate in a pilot. There are the late adopters, who feel like they don’t want to have more change in their environment. It’s a change management curve that you have to navigate. People like to be innovative in their clinical care, so you have to find that balancing act. You don’t want to create a situation where clinicians want to practice outside of your organization because they feel like they’re no longer a cultural fit.

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HEALTHTECH: Tell me more about Presbyterian’s AI strategy. How does your organization evaluate and deploy AI solutions?

SHAFER: With the surge in AI companies now, we have formed an AI committee that evaluates each company that’s reaching out to us. We’re also reaching out to others and evaluating which companies make sense for us to partner with. We’re fully evaluating the advantages and the costs. The costs can be financial, but they can also be the burden that happens with change for the clinical teams – whether that’s physicians, APCs, nurses, techs or medical assistants, it may involve a lot of people, and that can wear them down. We have to be aware of how much change management will be part of what we’re evaluating.

Another aspect is understanding the needs for our own IT teams in terms of a build, because it’s frequently the case that companies don’t think there will be much involvement from our team, but that has been underestimated. Our own IT team has limited capacity, so if we partner with a company and find that we need to do quite a bit more in terms of our own build that was not anticipated, that becomes really challenging for us to reprioritize our work.

So, there are a few aspects to consider. You want to look at ROI, you want to look at various KPIs that are associated with the benefits, and then, you seriously want to consider the costs, how much build is needed and the change management that’s involved. And, ultimately, you want to identify the actual value that’s created for patients in the end.