Craig Richardville, chief information and digital officer of Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Health, is focused on supporting the system's transition to value-based care and embracing simplicity when applying new, cutting edge technologies.
"The thing I'm excited about, but also very nervous about, is how healthcare is going to get reformed in terms of the redistribution of the dollar," said Mr. Richardville on a recent episode of the "Becker's Healthcare Podcast." "When you look at healthcare, you've got the provider side, you've got the payer side, you've got pharmaceuticals, etc. What we need to do is start to shift a lot of those services over into prevention and wellness. If we can start to incentivize providers and move plans upstream, that would be a great change for us."
Technology powered by artificial intelligence can support more precise and efficient care in the value-based arena. It can also enrich the patient, provider and healthcare consumer experience, said Mr. Richardville. But healthcare providers are cautious with AI to avoid biases and stay nimble as regulations around AI use change.
Technology can support the health system's mission and Mr. Richardville is using it to fuel the transition to value-based care and augment the human workforce. The system is taking a "copilot" or "assistant" approach to make the human workforce more efficient and effective, and give intuitive tools to patients so they can complete simple tasks for data entry and scheduling.
Healthcare is catching up to other industries with more sophisticated consumer technology, Mr. Richardville said, but there is still work to be done.
"If you find yourself in the banking industry, you move a lot of clerical tasks like going into the branch, chasing checks, withdrawing money, standing in lines. Now I do that all on my phone and I do it at three o'clock in the morning or whenever I want to," he said. "That's the same thing with healthcare. We've got to take some of these tasks that we've assigned and processes we've created to really totally reimagine what that is and allow that back into the patients and members."
Making this transition isn't easy and requires leaders to think differently and take risks.
"We've got to get a lot more adventurous," said Mr. Richardville. "That's going back to re-imagining exactly how we do work today. We have to be audacious, we need to be courageous, we have to be very energetic in our work, excited about the work, but also very humble and be able to continue to learn from others."
Mr. Richardville sees a need for boldness and courage in the next few years beyond the "continuous improvement" and "translational change" mantras of the last few years into becoming a truly transformational industry.
"This is turning [healthcare] upside down and changing how healthcare is administered or delivered, and financed in our country. We have to start seeking and going places we've never gone before, but we have to do that in a very calculated way," said Mr. Richardville. "We do have to make sure that we ensure privacy of our data, safety and security, in the services we provide."