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That's the beckershospitalreview.com events page. See you in Chicago. This is Scott Becker with the Beckers Health Care Podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by one of our regular guests, a brilliant physician leader, doctor Malik Purahit. And doctor Mehrd's gonna talk to us today about sort of the need as a move towards technology and automated solutions. Where the sort of human factor fits in in critical thinking and and how we think about, you know, where to inject automation technology. Doctor Pereahit, take a moment and tell us sort sort of what you're watching in terms of technology and automation, and maybe where and we're not, there's enough critical thinking being used to decide what technology and automation and how to use it. Thank you, Scott. It's always an honor to be on here. This is such a wonderful podcast, and you you do such a wonderful job of having so many guests that talk about different parts of the world and educating all of us. And I learned so much from from your podcast. So thanks for doing this, and thanks for having me on. My background, just to start off a little bit, is I'm a physician, with the background in brain injury, brain wellness. So a lot of neuroscience background. And then I also chair serve as the chief innovation officer for PAM Health, and also serve as medical director for neuroscience in Sugar Land, Texas. And it's, it's been a great, intersection of being a physician, seeing patients, but also at the same time, being really part of the digital infrastructure and innovation, in health care across many roles and currently, as chief innovation officer. And to me, it's always fascinating. You you know, it's part of my specialty. But to me, I really fascinated how the brain works and how people think and, come to a conclusion and what ideas they have and how they got there. And it's always, for me, a cool insight into how people think and what drives them and what the decision making process is. And with with this automation and and the digital stuff that we always talk about, you know, I was thinking just to give you a story, Scott, is, you know, over the weekend, a couple of things happened. 1, in the lawn, one of the sprinkler heads went out, and I had to look at it. And I called the sprinkler guy to come in and take a look at it. He's like, oh, well, you know, if this happened, you gotta just replace the whole system. And I was like, hold on. It's like one head. Like, what what's the how do we go from point a to b so fast? And so I was just discussing, like, okay. Let's I understand this happened, and then let's go through the process. And what what do we need to do? And and and, eventually, after, like, about a 10, 15 minute conversation, he's like, you know, all you gotta do is replace this one part. I think it'll be okay. And the cost went from, say, $3,000, whatever I whatever it was, right, to, you know, tens of dollars and a huge difference in cost. But to me, I don't think he was even trying to leverage and get, more work. I think it's simply just this concept of how we think and say we see a, that means we do b, without much of a thought process on it. And we sort of automated our brains as a result of this and creating a process by which you get to a conclusion without appropriate thought process behind it. I mean, that happens so much in a lot of the decision we make, as health systems for digital infrastructure. We're also in leadership and a culture, and we often are very reactive without knowing that we're reactive. And to me, it fascinates because it's it's a really important structure in the brain that allows us to think critically, the frontal cortex, and also control our emotions when the limbic system. And so those two parts that interchange to me is at the crux of a lot of success versus not so successful with the things that we do. And and talk about that for a second, because there's both this huge premium on making good decisions and thinking smart or making fast decisions. Excuse me. Sort of fast and good decisions. And what's that balance of all of us need to categorize things to be able to make decisions without so many different thoughts every single time or our brains would overload. But what's the balance to slow oneself down, you know, to to think a second thought, not just replace the system. Let's figure out how to replace that. But that's so true on so many levels. How do we make so we could slow our decision making enough, but improve our decision making. Because sometimes people slow it down but don't improve it. How do you sort of think about that? How do you That's a great question, Scott. Great quick question. So I think, you know, one phrase I've heard that I love is slow down to go fast. And what that means is can you slow down, meaning eliminate the noise that's giving resistance to your thought process so that you can quickly get to a solution that makes sense and, to your point, not just fast, but better decision that than you would make otherwise. And so there's a couple parts in the brain that are involved in this. I'm gonna throw out some technical terms just, just so that we know what we're talking about. 1 is the frontal cortex. The other is something called the default mode network and then the limbic system. And they go together the last 2 go together, default mode network and the limbic system. And for most people, there's this constant chatter in our brains as we're doing anything but thoughts and, oftentimes, negative thoughts and fear and other things. And part of the reason is because our brain is wired to think about threats and then protect ourselves against threats. And so we have this constant chatter and things to keep us somewhat alert as to what's going on in the environment, so that we can respond to things that are going on and not, be ruined by threats. Now in olden times, that could be in being in a forest, in a bear, whatever. You can imagine those scenarios. In today's time, that could be a number of things. It can be a job place and a bad email or bad quarter or bad earnings report, whatever it may be. All those things can affect us in a not so friendly way. And so those are the kind of threats we have in the modern world. But that chatter and that noise also fries our brain. And I don't mean literally, obviously, but in the sense that it sucks up so much energy of our brain that it diminishes the ability of our higher brain structures, the frontal cortex, from thinking appropriately about the facts and the situation and the circumstances and the people involved and decisions and all that kind of stuff so that then we don't focus on the right stuff, and we end up focusing on the noise. Then as a result, that creates some fear and and and threat response. And then we end up making decision, which we justify with logic. We made the decision based on our emotional or animal brain, so to speak, and our frontal cortex sort of came in at the back end to justify that that decision making. But if we were to just quiet that noise, and there's techniques to do that, if we're to quiet that noise, reduce that threat response, and the fight or flight response, then that allows the front the frontal cortex to the higher level of the brain to think appropriately and to think faster and get to the right point in decision making. And so we often are in this environment being bombarded in digital stuff. We have our phone. We have our text messaging. We have emails. You name it. There's no shortage of ways to communicate, except despite all the tools to communicate, we end up being very much in the dark about the right communication with others and with ourselves within ourselves to think about things appropriately. And so I think turning off the environment so much sometimes is the biggest thing to allowing our brain to function at its optimal level or optimum peak level. It it seems like so many times, there are different ways of processing decisions. Some of us are constantly testing different things and then then double down on what we think works. It it seems like at times though that we could slow down and before testing different things, provide more critical thinking and probably not have to make so many tests, which, you know, which which can be time consuming and effort consuming and impact what you're doing, whereas maybe slowing down one bit and sort of just doing some critical thinking could lead you to a more likely the right solution, versus so much testing and iterative learning. What are your thoughts on that, doctor Pruharjit? Hey, Scott. Fantastic question. And I'll bring it back to the digital side here because I think this is a a fantastic analogy between the human brain and the digital, AI tools that we use oftentimes. So when I look at AI and when someone comes to me and says, hey. I've got this great new AI tool, and I can do x, y, and z, and save the world and world hunger at the same time. Right? And to me, that's always always a cool thing. But then, to me, the question is what are you feeding it? Right? To me, an AI tool is sort of like a child. Right? When you when you bring a child into the world, you've gotta nurture it, give it the right knowledge. You gotta take care of it, love and nutrition and all these things. Right? And as you see that child grow, if you've given it the right kind of care, that child will blossom as they grow up. But if you put that child in the wrong environment, you can imagine all the all the things that happen. Right? The kind of person that they they may become. And it's not to say you can't, you know, have be a bad environment do well, but you get the idea. And so to me, that's sort of the same way with AI tools is we may have a fantastic AI algorithm. But if we don't feed it the right data and the right processing and the right environment and all the integrations and everything that goes with it, that AI tool will not function well, just like a child that's been, improperly raised may not function well in society. And it's the same thing here with our human brain is if we train our brain to work correctly, to act correctly, give it the right nutrition, the right environment, the right exercise, all of those things, and practice the right way, then we are able to allow that brain to function better, think critically, and get to the right solution. And the way we do digital and creating AI tools and other digital tools and the way we work and think about neuroscience are so much in parallel and come together so synthetically that it's just really cool to have that interaction between digital and neuroscience in today's world. Thank you. And I and I couldn't agree more, but that that critical thinking that working to slow down and think intelligently and and make decisions. Not always the right decisions, but giving yourself a better process to think about what you're gonna try and implement, what are your priorities, Which system are you going with? How are you gonna apply it? Just and and and you can't slow down so much that things don't get done because you got that that problem as well, but but enough so that you're thinking critically. Right? Or how do you think about that? No. Fantastic fantastic point, Scott. So here's an example, I think, solid example that I think, a lot of us can relate to. Right? Is we're often in this world and say and somebody comes in and says, hey. I've got this awesome tool to improve x. Right? Whether it be my rev cycle, my marketing, my patient care and quality metrics and all that kind of stuff. And it may be an awesome tool to fix what they think they're trying to fix. But oftentimes, people would jump to a conclusion about, I need this tool because it does this, versus thinking critically and say, okay. Let me analyze the process. Right? And so, for example, in today's world, pre authorization is such a big deal. But what in the pre authorization space is the critical piece that you're having trouble with? Is it that you have some pre authorization requests? Is it that you're getting a lot of denials? Is it whatever it may be. Right? Or in the marketing space, for your institution, is it that your marketing is not hitting? So you're not getting, patients? You're not getting whatever maybe selling the product, selling iPhones, whatever it may be. Right? Is it that you're not reaching people? Is it that the that you're reaching people, but it's not, resonating with them? And all those kind of things. Right? And so we have to think critically in saying, what what am I doing, and what is the the opportunity that I'm not seizing on, or what is the problem in the space? And thinking critically about identifying the real cause of the situation and then saying, okay. Now I know what the cause is and analyzing that. And then saying, okay. Now let's figure out the tool that addresses that issue and matching that up really well. But oftentimes in life, what we say is, oh, I've got a problem. Let me buy x. Let me do this. And all of a sudden, we go down this path and you invest a lot of resources and dollars, etcetera, into it, but you haven't identified the real problem. And this happens all the time in in today's world, in leadership, in culture, in health care. You name it. Right? And if you don't have the critical thing to identify the specific root cause of something, but you try to find a solution without knowing the root cause, you're gonna inadvertently not get the solution you want because you haven't identified the problem to begin with. And this is where I think those two things that you identified is very important. Having that critical thought process to identify the need and then matching that with the right tool to solve that need. Thank you so much, doctor Peart. I think there's so much there that happened so often today where people are opportunistic versus being quite as critical thinking about what they're trying to solve. And thus, they're they're finding a solution, but maybe not to the most important problem they need to solve. And and it's okay, but it's not very efficient. It's not very it doesn't necessarily get you where you need to go, but it feels good for the moment because you're swallowing something, but just not necessarily what you need to solve. Doctor. Irvin, I wanna thank you as always for joining us today on the Beckers HealthCare podcast. Didn't mean to catch you out there. Literally fantastic to visit with. Just a great pleasure. Thank you for joining us again. Thank you, Scott. It's always an honor and pleasure to be on. Thank you for having me.