From supply chain disruptions and market volatility to inflationary pressures and skyrocketing labor costs, Cambridge, Mass.-based Beth Israel Lahey Health CFO Cindy Rios feels there's an industrywide need to re-engineer healthcare.
"We [the healthcare industry] have been focused on doing what we've always done, better, and slightly refining it," Ms. Rios told Becker's. "I think it's incredibly obvious that's not going to be enough going forward."
To combat these industry challenges and achieve success, Beth Israel Lahey has shifted toward implementing the right infrastructure.
These improvements have enabled the health system, which was founded in 2019 through a merger between Boston-based Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Burlington, Mass.-based Lahey Health, cut its operating losses in the second quarter of 2024 by around $8.7 million from the same quarter last year.
Over the last few years, Beth Israel Lahey has implemented a new budget system, a decision-support system and an enterprise resource-planning system.
Beth Israel Lahey also recently implemented the first phase of Epic's electronic medical record system, with Phase 2 coming in October and the last phase in the next fiscal year.
"The focus, once we implement this infrastructure, is then to take that and push the needle further on ChatGPT, AI," Ms. Rios said. "For the revenue cycle specifically, we want to get to the point where we're leveraging bots. We need to first implement the infrastructure and give ourselves a solution that we leverage across the system so that we can then build that next level. We can't take off until the basic platforms are in place."
Beth Israel Lahey also stresses recruitment and retention of top talent both within and outside the market, which saved the health system about 50% on contract labor spending compared with last year.
"We've been incredibly focused on making sure that we address initiatives that will allow us to both optimize our revenue [and] reduce our overall expense structure," Ms. Rios said.
As a female health system CFO in a role that is historically male led, Ms. Rios also touched on the opportunity to challenge where the healthcare industry stands when it comes to leadership, diversity, and gender.
"Simply being in the room challenges the status quo, because it's not common to have a female," she said. "As a leader myself, I look to challenge the status quo. My presence alone does that."
She also shared some advice for women interested in becoming a hospital or health system CFO.
"There's significant opportunity," she said. "It is challenging, but I would say, embrace the challenge, embrace the fact that, again, our presence alone challenges the status quo. There is a need to be much more progressive and to put out a different perspective about how we should be addressing things. Embrace that."