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A growing number of health system chief information officers are prioritizing AI to ease administrative burdens and improve care, according to a survey released July 16 by CliniComp and the CHIME Foundation.

The survey gathered responses from CIOs at hospitals and health systems.

Here are five things to know from the survey:

Eighty-one percent of respondents identified automating administrative tasks as one of their top three reasons for integrating AI into their IT strategy.

Other common priorities included enhancing clinical decision support (70%) and improving revenue cycle management (59%).

Forty-eight percent said it is “extremely important” that AI tools be natively embedded within their electronic health record system rather than relying on third-party add-ons.

More than half of CIOs surveyed (54%) said documentation burdens — such as note-taking, ambient listening and dictation — are the top challenges they want AI to help address.

In terms of interoperability, 32% of CIOs rated AI-driven data sharing and care coordination as “extremely important,” while the remaining 68% viewed it as “somewhat important.” No respondents said it was unimportant.

The post Most CIOs want AI embedded in EHRs: Report appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

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Members of SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania at WellSpan Chambersburg (Pa.) Hospital ratified a new three-year labor contract July 16, the union and hospital confirmed in a statement shared with Becker’s.

The agreement, which covers more than 1,400 hospital workers, “marks a significant milestone in both organizations’ ongoing commitment to providing exceptional care and fostering a supportive work environment for all team members,” the parties said.

According to the union and hospital, the agreement includes a wage package of 3.5% in each year of the contract.

They said it also includes increased differential pay “to support those who work during critical times and capacities,” as well as “more generous” tuition reimbursement, “enhanced” retirement and time off benefits.

WellSpan Chambersburg Hospital and SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania reached the labor deal after union members authorized a strike in early July. Union members had planned a five-day strike beginning July 22, which will no longer take place.

The union represents 1,450 nurses and other healthcare workers at the hospital, including emergency department technicians; lab technicians; unit secretaries; pharmacists; certified nurse aides; environmental services aides; radiology technologists; and dietary aides, according to a previous union news release shared with Becker’s. WellSpan Chambersburg Hospital is part of York, Pa.-based WellSpan Health, which employs more than 23,000 people total.
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Cookeville (Tenn.) Regional Medical has been experiencing an IT outage believed to be caused by a ransomware attack.

The 269-bed hospital’s systems went down July 13, though patient care hasn’t been affected, according to a July 15 Facebook post. Some scheduling and technology has been slowed by the incident, however.

“The IS [information services] security team has been here 24 hours a day working,” Cookeville Regional CIO Tim McDermott stated in the post. “We take this matter seriously and we are working with outside IT experts to investigate the issue. This investigation is ongoing. At this time, we suspect that the outage was the result of a ransomware attack on our medical center. As we learn more information from our investigation, we will provide our patients with additional information as appropriate.”

The hospital said it is investigating whether patient data has been affected.
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Cincinnati-based UC Health has opened its fifth outpatient pharmacy, located inside the new UC Blood Cancer Healing Center on the UC Medical Center campus. 

The new pharmacy offers same-day access to medications, clinical pharmacist guidance and close coordination with care teams, enhancing convenience and continuity of care for patients and families, Jeffrey Akers, PharmD, vice president of pharmacy, told Becker’s. 

The pharmacy is integrated with the UC Specialty Pharmacy, allowing it to deliver advanced medications and support patients undergoing treatment for blood cancers such as leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma, he said. 
The post UC Health opens outpatient pharmacy center appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

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Notice of a proposed rule from the Centers for Medicare &
Medicaid Services (CMS) addressing: 1) changes to the
Physician Fee Schedule and Medicare Part B payment
policies; 2) policies for the Medicare Prescription Drug
Inflation Rebate Program under the Inflation Reduction Act
of 2022; 3) the Ambulatory Specialty Model; 4) updates to
the Medicare Diabetes Prevention Program expanded model; 5)
updates to drugs and biological products paid under Part B;
6) Medicare Shared Savings Program requirements; 7) updates
to the Quality Payment Program; 8) updates to policies for
Rural Health Clinics (RHCs) and Federally Qualified Health
Centers (FQHCs); 9) updates to the Ambulance Fee Schedule
regulations; 10) codification of the Inflation Reduction
Act and Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023 provisions;
and 11) updates to the Medicare Promoting Interoperability
Program. Comments are due on September 12, 2025.

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Emily Chapman, MD, began her career in healthcare as a child-life specialist — a clinician who helps children and families navigate challenges of illness, injury, disability and hospitalization by supporting the child’s development. She believes this experience led her directly to the CEO role at Minneapolis-based Children’s Minnesota.

“I subsequently fell in love with medicine, went back to medical school and started that journey, and I think that has informed every chapter in my career,” she told Becker’s. “And it greatly informs my approach to the role of CEO: a reverence for the power of the human connection between the clinical care team and the family, patient and family, that leads to the outcomes that we’re looking for in partnership.”

Dr. Chapman has served as senior vice president of medical affairs and chief medical officer at Children’s Minnesota since 2017. She previously served as vice CMO and director of the hospitalist program. 

Effective Aug. 2, she will become president and CEO of Children’s Minnesota, succeeding Marc Gorelick, MD, who is retiring after a 42-year medical career. Dr. Chapman will be the first female president and CEO in Children’s Minnesota’s 100-year history.

Children’s Minnesota “has been my professional home, and so it’s a real privilege for me to be given this opportunity,” she said. “And as the first woman in the role, I’ve been preceded by some phenomenal leaders, and I’ve been at the organization long enough to have learned from several of them. Given the prominence of the woman’s voice in healthcare, it is a real privilege to represent that in the CEO role as well.”  

Dr. Chapman spoke with Becker’s to share her approach leadership and where she sees Children’s Minnesota, and pediatric healthcare, in the future.

Editor’s note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Question: You’ve been with Children’s Minnesota for nearly two decades. As you step into the CEO role, what is one area where you believe the organization must think differently to meet the needs of the next generation of pediatric patients?

Dr. Emily Chapman: We have to understand how the times in which we are delivering care are impacting what our strategy is. The preceding 10 years had brought with it a number of challenges, and I appreciate the leadership of Dr. Marc Gorelick through those enormous challenges. 

This next period of time is bringing its own new challenges, and with that, its own opportunities. We had been through a time where we focused particularly on access, on equitable care and on modernizing some of our processes. We have an opportunity now to focus on strategic growth and some targeted innovation.

We’re starting that by transitioning our electronic health record and business platform from the Cerner Oracle product to Epic, which will really lay a foundation for a lot of transformational changes in how we do our work, how we partner with our patients and families, and how we partner with our referring clinicians and community. So that’s a great place for us to be starting. That will be an implementation that takes place in October of 2026, and fundamental to laying that foundation upon which we can build.

Q: You’ve led efforts to label inequity and disrespect as preventable harm. How do you plan to expand that work systemwide as CEO — and what impact do you hope it will have on care outcomes?

EC: I’m extremely proud of what we have already done as a health system to expand accountability for all six domains of quality, including equitable care throughout the entire care team and our support systems as a comprehensive organization. The challenge for us will be to continue to do that effectively in a macro environment that may be less comfortable with some of those conversations that we’ve had openly in the past.

In healthcare, it is critically important that we understand each individual patient — what their needs are, what their social determinants of health are, what the barriers are to our returning them to health. And in order to do that, we must take a lens that allows us to inclusively — well, that allows us to see, hear and value the differences among our patients. And that’s a critical conversation between any physician and patient, and between any health system and its community.

The challenge for us will be to have those continued conversations and to not back away from our increasing recognition of the failures that we have had as a healthcare industry in treating our increasingly diverse populations.

Q: Healthcare leaders today are being challenged to grow strategically while operating under immense financial pressure. What’s your philosophy for balancing investment in growth with the realities of constrained resources?

EC: First and foremost is to manage your attention. As a healthcare leader right now, there are many things coming at us that we need to very thoughtfully respond to, and that can take up most of your time if you’re not careful. The challenge for a healthcare leader is to ensure that you are adequately — and with equanimity — responding to those things that demand your attention while also looking out over the horizon. You know the adage that we need to skate to where the puck is going to be, and with your head down, you can’t do that.

An important part of this, particularly in pediatrics, will be thinking about the emerging therapeutics that are probably going to change pediatric disease and how we deliver care to kids, the changing workforce and the partnership between technology and human intelligence, and how that allows us to improve upon the care delivery and the outcomes that we get, and a number of other factors. Particularly, the concept of regionalization.

What we’re seeing forecasted is while birth rates in the country are declining, we are seeing an increasing demand to shift patients from community hospitals or hospitals that have pediatrics through adult care and transition those patients into pediatric centers. So we have to think increasingly about where we deliver tertiary and quaternary care in our regions, and how we partner to do that most effectively to serve populations that I think are increasingly going to be geographically distributed.

Q: You’re taking the helm at a time when workforce engagement and retention are critical across healthcare. How do you plan to sustain a culture where clinical and non-clinical staff feel empowered to innovate and improve care?

EC: One thing that’s underappreciated is that we are leading a workforce that has experienced trauma in the relatively recent past, and taking a trauma-informed approach to how we re-engage and help heal our workforce is the responsibility of any leader.

Fundamental to delivering care, and particularly delivering care to children, is that human connection, and one has to focus on their own health before they are well-positioned to do that. And that’s not something that we can overlook as leaders.

Leading into human connection — a radically human approach to leadership — is the foundation upon which we can rebuild the engagement of our talent to drive forward the innovations and the advances that we know we’re capable of delivering to our communities.
The post Children’s Minnesota’s 1st female CEO: ‘We need to skate to where the puck will be’ appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

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The executive leadership of Bedford, N.H.-based SolutionHealth is seeking to dissolve the system and return to separate, independent, board-governed systems. 

The system launched in 2018 after Manchester, N.H.-based Elliot Health System and Nashua-based Southern New Hampshire Health signed an agreement to combine operations. The combined entity, SolutionHealth, aimed to provide and improve medical care through the sharing of EHRs and other advancements in medical technology. Merrimack, N.H,.-based Home Health & Hospice Care was added as a member in 2022. 

The boards of SolutionHealth, Elliot Health System and Southern New Hampshire Health submitted their dissolution proposal with New Hampshire state officials on July 14. Home Health & Hospice Care will also negotiate a disaffiliation agreement, according to SolutionHealth’s website.  

“After using good-faith efforts to collaborate through the combination, the hospital systems have determined that they will be better positioned to continue to provide quality, efficient physician and mental health care services in southern New Hampshire by unwinding the combination and operating separately and independently and/or with potential future third party affiliates,” the members said in their July 14 proposal.

The proposal is being reviewed by New Hampshire’s Charitable Trusts Unit, which could take up to six months. 

SolutionHealth provides primarily administrative support to its members and does not provide healthcare delivery, according to its website. 

“Elliot Health System, Southern New Hampshire Health, and Home Health and Hospice Care have been providing care for their communities for more than 130 years, and this will continue,” the website said. 
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Providence aims to become the best place to give and receive care by 2030, backed by a technology-enabled transformation strategy.

President and CEO Erik Wexler detailed the Renton, Wash.-based health system’s direction in a June 23 internal message to employees, describing a “perfect storm” in healthcare: proposed federal cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, ongoing insurance denials and delays, rising labor costs, inflation and tariffs.

While Providence has taken short-term steps to stabilize its finances, the long-term 2030 strategy centers on three pillars: delivering exceptional care, building a future-ready care model, and driving innovation — with technology as a central enabler.

The first pillar includes standardizing clinical pathways, reducing wait times, expanding access and using real-time patient feedback to improve care. The second focuses on value-based partnerships, growing care in nontraditional settings and addressing health disparities. The third centers on digital innovation, including AI and partnerships through the Providence Global Center in India.

“What we’re seeing now is the culmination of a lot of understanding of where tech is going,” said Sara Vaezy, chief transformation officer of Providence, in an interview with Becker’s. “We say at Providence that we’re following the signs of the times.”

Reducing burden for caregivers and patients

Reducing administrative burden is key to improving both the caregiver experience and financial sustainability, according to Ms. Vaezy.

“It’s not just from a well-being perspective — that’s a core element — but it’s also from a financial perspective,” she said. “It’s really expensive to put so much administrative burden on human beings.”

Providence is rolling out ambient AI across its system to reduce documentation and inbox workloads for clinicians — including physicians, advanced practice providers and nurses.

“We’re aiming to get it out into our entire system — the whole kit and caboodle,” Ms. Vaezy said.

On the patient side, Providence is expanding digital access through tools such as self-scheduling and is building identity-based engagement platforms to personalize care for the more than 5 million patients it serves annually.

Chero Goswami, chief information and digital officer of Providence, emphasized the importance of execution.

“Strategy without an execution path is the slowest form to defeat,” he told Becker’s. “Sometimes our job is actually not to create more, but to do less.”

Global support and platform integration

As Providence reimagines care delivery with more virtual, ambulatory and in-home services, it is investing in integrated platform technologies to support data exchange and care continuity, shifting away from fragmented point solutions.

The Providence Global Center in India plays a key role in the innovation pillar. The center operates under a “follow the sun” model — as U.S. employees end their day, employees in India begin theirs, allowing development work to continue around the clock.

“It [the Providence Global Center] allows our caregivers out here to focus on adoption as we go forward, not slowing down the creation of technology that PGC does out there,” Mr. Goswami said.

One recent initiative at the center involves training small language models on millions of annotated patient-chatbot interactions to improve workflow navigation and inbox triage.

“We created a golden test,” Ms. Vaezy said. “That golden test is the crux of this sort of safety plan for our basket management efforts.”

Tracking progress and defining success

Providence is finalizing short-term goals for 2027 as it tracks progress toward its 2030 vision. Mr. Goswami said the system is measuring progress against five goals: improving quality and safety, increasing productivity, reducing claim denials and enhancing revenue, promoting caregiver well-being, and maintaining cybersecurity.

“This isn’t just a nice-to-have kind of thing,” Ms. Vaezy said. “This is a critical part of our strategy.”
The post Providence maps 2030 strategy with tech backbone appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

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U.S. inspectors have found new breakdowns at a Sun Pharmaceuticals plant in India that produces medications for U.S. customers, ProPublica reported July 16. 

The FDA found the factory failed to identify the source of bacterial contamination in test samples and did not address damaged equipment that had caused drugs to be contaminated with metal particles, according to the June inspection report. 

The findings come roughly two and a half years after the FDA allowed the facility to continue exporting selected drugs to the U.S., even after the factory was officially banned from the U.S. market. 

Inspectors also cited that workers improperly handled vials and stoppers meant for sterile medications, and in some instances, there were lapses in disinfecting both the equipment and production areas, the report said. Investigators also said they saw liquid dripping through ceiling cracks, and that fungus and mold appeared to be present in a storage area for samples used for testing. 

The inspection in June was the first time the FDA had been back to the factory since it imposed the import ban and Sun Pharma began shipping exempted medications to the U.S.
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City officials in Waterbury, Conn., plan to sell the property of a former school to a private developer to create apartment housing for hospital employees, CT Insider reported July 14.

Five things to know:

1. The three-school building property is across the street from Trinity Health’s St. Mary’s Hospital. City officials initially waited to see if the health system would purchase the property, but a deal was not made, according to CT Insider. 

2. When informally contacted by city officials, representatives at St. Mary’s Hospital and nearby Waterbury Hospital confirmed there was a housing demand for hospital workers.

“We are in constant communication with the mayor’s office on a variety of subjects,” a Trinity Health spokesperson said in a statement shared with Becker’s. “Although purchase of the property did not align with our strategic operational objectives, we are always interested in and supportive of opportunities to improve the lives of colleagues and the greater Waterbury community.”

3. The $1.6 million purchase agreement is awaiting approval from the city’s board of aldermen, according to the report. Kaybar Development submitted the winning proposal and is seeking to build a complex with 80 units ranging from one- to three-bedroom apartments. The project is estimated to cost $18 million to $20 million.

4. The development firm proposed three scenarios based on a combination of state and private funding. Each includes the construction of a new building and the renovation of the existing school buildings and the property’s convent.

5. A public hearing will be conducted before the aldermen’s vote, which could take place Aug. 11, according to the report. The tentative closing date is Sept. 15, with a final deadline of Dec. 15 to allow Kaybar to pursue state funding.Becker’s has reached out to Waterbury Hospital and will update this story if more information becomes available.
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