HLTH Gave Healthcare Leaders A Chance to Look Beyond the Curtain

AI governance is, of course, a separate conversation, and one that many healthcare execs should be following. Healthcare organizations are embracing AI so rapidly that they’re in many cases making the rules on the fly, while collaborative efforts like CHAI and TRAIN are playing catch-up with standards and best practices. Sadly, a main stage session featuring Brian Anderson of CHAI, David Rhew of Microsoft, Christine Silvers of Amazon One Medical and Melanie Fontes Rainer of the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Civil Rights drew a small audience (much less than the session featuring Lenny Kravitz just a short while later).

On the exhibit hall floor, healthcare executives and others were talking about what they’re doing now with AI, especially generative and predictive tools. Dan Shoenthal, VP and chief innovation officer at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, said he was finding value in conversations with other executives and in the smaller, more focused sessions taking place in meeting rooms outside the exhibit hall.

During an exhibit hall session on Monday titled “Payer-Provider Arms Race,” executives from Providence, Ardent Health, Sanford Health Plan and Doximity talked primarily about how they’re using AI now, rather than how the technology might improve that often-testy relationship between providers and payers. Sara Vaezy, EVP and chief strategy and digital officer at Providence, did note that AI will help to “level the playing field” for providers and payers, and by giving both sides—and, more importantly, consumers—transparency, they’ll be able to have more meaningful interactions.

The changing discussion on AI may have also led to a subtle shift in the mood at HLTH as well. Two years ago, the celebrations were turned up a notch or two, buoyed by larger happy hours and food carts in the exhibit hall, vendors flush with cash from financing rounds and larger, more colorful booths. This year the atmosphere was (for the most part) less showy and more focused. The optimism is still there, due in large part to AI, but there’s less attention to putting on a splashy display at a time when the industry is dealing with cost, quality and workforce issues. Even the celebrities who graced the stage in larger numbers were there to discuss important issues, not just give HLTH extra cachet.

Moving care out of the hospital and into the home

The acute care at home/hospital at home strategy also had its moments, starting with the continued presence of Best Buy and its Geek Squad for Healthcare booth. Caroline Yang, MD, associate clinical director of Mass General Brigham Healthcare at Home—one of the more advanced programs in the country—noted that health systems and hospitals are beginning to move beyond the rigid Medicare model and experiment with new ideas and patient populations. That may be a critical strategy as healthcare leaders look to move more services into the home setting and experiment with remote patient monitoring (RPM), telehealth, mobile-integrated health (MIH) and home health services.

Those waivers are set to expire at the end of this year, but the rumor around HLTH is that the waivers will be extended, perhaps for another five years. Yang said an extension would be good for the industry, giving health systems and hospitals more time to gather the data needed to prove that these programs reduce costs and improve clinical outcomes.

Another extension may be on the table for the somewhat controversial effort to expand virtual prescribing for controlled medications. Prescribing by telehealth has been severely limited for years under the Ryan Haight Act, passed in 2008. That legislation put the onus on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to create a special pathway so that provider could be approved to prescribe controlled drugs for treatment of substance abuse, mental health, and other issues.

HHS unveiled a waiver during the pandemic so that providers could use telehealth, with the idea that the DEA would get around to setting up that registration process. The DEA still has not set up that pathway, despite pressure from a large group of providers and telehealth advocates as well as lawmakers. The rumor out of HLTH is that the waiver will be extended perhaps one more year, and that advocates will look at either having Congress force the DEA to establish that process or perhaps bypass the DEA altogether and a find a different means of enabling provider to prescribe by virtual channels.

Beyond those issues, healthcare’s innovation executives came away from HLTH with a good idea of where the industry is heading. Scott Arnold, EVP and chief digital and innovation officer at Tampa General Hospital, and Rachel Feinman, vice president of innovation for Tampa General’s TGH InnoVentures arm, said execs are looking beyond the next great widget or piece of technology to create and sustain a patient’s entire healthcare journey. That means embracing new ideas on care management and coordination, as well as SDOH and navigation.

“There are parts [of this journey] that we may not be able to do as well,” Feinman said. In order to become experts—and, in fact, stewards—of the patient journey, she said, they need to keep looking for inspiration from all angles inside and outside the healthcare industry.