Sam Hazen, CEO of HCA Healthcare, was recently interviewed by Lynn Thoman for an episode of the Podcast 3 points to rememberwhich features conversations with the world’s top thinkers, business leaders, writers, politicians, scientists and other newsmakers.
As CEO of one of the nation’s leading health care providers – comprised of 187 hospitals and approximately 2,400 outpatient care sites – Sam has a unique perspective on what the future of health care looks like . He shares his views on how innovative technologies, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) are poised to transform healthcare, and how HCA Healthcare is leveraging them at scale to improve care delivery.
Read on for highlights from Sam’s discussion with Lynn, through which he offers wisdom and practical advice to healthcare leaders and patients, and check out the full podcast for the full conversation.
Listen to the full episode of the 3 takeaways: AI and health: a dose of good news
Using data to support clinicians
Healthcare is a dynamic space and at HCA Healthcare we play a role in a very broad healthcare industry and field. Our role is in delivery – the delivery system. We provide hospital services, clinical services, emergency services, all these different services to patients who need us whenever they have an illness or an accident or they give birth or whatever the case may be.
I think our industry, at least in our space, is at an inflection point driven by emerging technologies. We take care of a lot of different patients, but these patients have huge patterns where, if you’re a mother giving birth in Miami, it’s similar in many ways to a mother giving birth in Dallas, Denver, Salt Lake City or London, England, where we also provide services. The opportunity for us to learn from these models through machine learning and artificial intelligence and convey those learnings to the people providing care – a doctor, nurse or other caregiver – is truly powerful.
In my 42 years in our company and in health care in general, I have learned that there are many variations and tailored care given to people simply because it is individuals who make individual decisions as best they can with their training and experience. If we can use our data to help policymakers and caregivers learn from models using artificial intelligence and emerging technologies at the bedside when decisions need to be made, I believe it will significantly improve quality. This will create greater transparency for the patient and make the entire system more efficient. These are all goals that we all share.
Advances in diagnosis and treatment
In certain components of our activity, oncology care for example, we continue to witness the development of new drugs. THE Sarah Cannon Research Institute (SCRI) conducts a considerable number of clinical trials and has generated more new drug developments in humans than any other entity. We will continue to do more research to support patients with new treatments.
On the technological side, robot-assisted surgery is less invasive for patients, allowing them to reduce recovery time and allowing doctors to operate on patients in ways they could not operate before. HCA Healthcare performs more robot-assisted surgery than any other system in the world, and we will continue to grow in this area as robotic surgery opens up to new areas, in orthopedics, in spine, in neuroscience.
On the diagnostic side, tests performed with computerized CT and MRI scanners are so advanced and rapid today, and can provide such clarity to doctors that, in many cases, they are beginning to replace more invasive diagnostic procedures and longer. This allows patients to get an answer and start their care process, if they need it, faster and more cost-effectively.
Leveraging scale to improve care delivery
I tell our teams that having scale is one thing; using it effectively is another. As we’ve grown as a company (we’re 55 years old at HCA Healthcare), we’ve learned to use scale more effectively.
I mentioned earlier that the next large-scale iteration for us would be to use our data more effectively through machine learning and artificial intelligence, and bring in all these new insights. This is a perfect example of our next opportunity to use scale to improve care. But historically and today, I would say there are three areas where we have been able to leverage our scale effectively.
The first is that we saved as much as possible. We have many redundant functions in 187 hospitals and many outpatient facilities, administrative functions like billing, purchasing or accounts payable. We consolidated them and created a lot of value for the company and those we serve.
The second area is that we have been able to pool our resources and access capital as a consolidated entity, which allows us to access capital at a reasonable cost so that we can invest in our business. We are a capital-intensive company. Hospitals require a lot of capital, buildings and technology. We are also labor intensive, and having sufficient access to capital through our scale has allowed us to invest in our employees.
The third thing, which is really exciting, is what I call the victory of intellectual capital. We have 20 hospitals in Miami. We have 20 in Dallas. We have 10 in Denver. They all do pretty much the same things and we’re constantly learning from each other. We challenge ourselves to share these learnings across the organization to become a better employer, be more engaged in the community, collaborate differently with our physicians, and provide a better patient care process. So collecting best practices is very powerful for us.
And I think if I had to add a fourth, it would be our culture. We have a unique culture in our company. We try to do the right thing and do it consistently. But we are also disciplined and detail-oriented, and this culture permeates our leadership teams. We believe this adds value to our patients. A disciplined approach allows us to achieve results comparable to, or even superior to, industry averages.
The Future of AI in Healthcare
I believe AI can help us improve healthcare delivery in three main ways. On the administrative side of our equation, we have a lot to do. Healthcare is heavily regulated, and it’s complicated because there are third-party payers, insurance companies, etc., woven into the fabric of the industry. All of these administrative functions have real potential to be streamlined and more efficient. We leverage AI to eliminate some friction in our administrative functions.
Related article: (Forbes) HCA Healthcare, One of the World’s Largest Healthcare Organizations, Deploys Generative AI
The second area is operational. We have to care for patients in our emergency rooms, for example, and see 10 million patients in the emergency room a year. We believe that artificial intelligence can help us improve throughput, allowing a patient to get to the emergency room more quickly. None of these 10 million patients want to stay in our emergency departments for long. They want to go home. If we can integrate artificial intelligence into demand forecasting, staffing, lab test transfers and more, we believe we can improve the speed, transparency and efficiency of processes operationally and improve our throughput.
The last area is the exciting area. This is where we can leverage the standardized data sets we have in our business, from every interaction a doctor, a nurse, a respiratory therapist has had with a patient, to every medication administered. All this will be anonymized. We won’t know if it’s you or me, but we will know it’s a total joint patient whose knee was replaced, or a mother who gave birth, and we’ll see everything what was involved in the care. Was it a good result? Was this a correct result or a less satisfactory result? We can continually learn from patterns.
We can use artificial intelligence to bring these models in the background of the medical record to the forefront so that decision-makers can interact with this information. They can adjust the delivery of care for that patient and nuance it in a way that draws on lessons learned from the incredible models we have.
Sam Hazen, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF HCA HEALTHCARE
If we can support human intelligence with artificial intelligence and enhance human intelligence, then our patients will benefit in ways I can’t explain. So I’m incredibly excited about that.
3 takeaways
The first is that hard work matters. You have to have a work ethic. And if you’re in a leadership role, you need to be willing to solve problems so your organization and teams can succeed. And you have to work hard to achieve it. That’s the first thing.
The second thing is that you never arrived. Keep learning. I mentioned that we try to learn from each other at HCA Healthcare. I try to learn from our own organization as well as other organizations. I think this desire to continue learning is critically important.
The third thing my parents taught me – things that are pretty basic, but have powerful implications – is simply to treat people well. We are in the people business. We are people who take care of people. And we find ourselves in complex decisions. And I’m like, what are we trying to do here? We are trying to treat a sick person. Let’s focus on that. And then we will be able to understand everything around it.
Sam Hazen, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF HCA HEALTHCARE
Listen to the full conversation and additional information from Sam at 3 points to remember