As healthcare organizations continue to deal with dwindling margins, investing in new and existing technologies can be hard but it is a necessary practice, Vincent Tammaro, CFO of Ohio State Wexner Medical Center, told Becker's.
"It's not an option. This is what we have to do, and we've got to do it smartly because we don't have a lot of margin to invest in everything," he said. "The technology is expensive, but we're focusing on functionality, improving systems and processes with technology so that we can drive better outcomes and efficiencies throughout the organization."
Mr. Tammaro said expenses come with both new technology and upgrades to existing technology. Wexner Medical Center, based in Columbus, uses an Epic EHR system and Workday, which often need upgrades.
"They're constantly coming up with upgrades with tons of functionality that increase licensing costs," he said. "The licensing fees for many of our existing systems continue to increase with every upgrade. So with each upgrade, you're getting new capabilities, but it is at a higher cost and it's heavily based on user usage. So the more patients we have and the more employees that go into the system, [that] will end up contributing to driving up costs."
To manage these costs, Mr. Tammaro said health systems need to maximize the utilization of these investments, drive out variability and drive standardization and optimization.
"If you think about any new technology, there are going to be additional costs," he said. "But that's directly attributable to the technology. You should have savings and efficiencies throughout the organization with the implementation."
For example, Wexner Medical Center has invested heavily into artificial intelligence programs, such as using AI for ambient listening and to generate responses to patients' emails to physicians.
With ambient listening, the technology can document clinical conversations so physicians can spend more time with patients. This also allows physicians to spend less time documenting after work and enhances the patient experience, Mr. Tammaro said.
Meanwhile, with automated in-basket responses, AI drafts responses for the physician. The only thing the physician has to do is review it before sending. The AI can also look at a patient's medical record and pull relevant information, summarizing it for the physician. The benefits of this are patients get a response quickly and physicians get to work at the top of their licenses.
"If you just purely look at cost, yes, it's going to cost our organization a lot of money to make those investments," Mr. Tammaro said. "But if you think about the value … there's a tremendous return not only for our physicians or caregivers but ultimately for our patients, which drives clinical outcomes, operational outcomes, financial outcomes and patient experience, which to me is a part of the ROI."