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That's the beckershospitalreview.com events page. See you in Chicago. Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Becker's Healthcare podcast. I'm Mackenzie Bean, AVP and managing editor of Becker's Hospital Review. Today, I am very thrilled to be chatting with Brian Chokney, who is a senior vice president of sister regional operations for IU Health. Brian, thank you so much for being here today. How are you? It's great. I'm glad to be with you today. As are we. I'm excited to pick your brain on various topics regarding key trends you're looking at, future of nonprofit health care, and more. Before we dive in, though, let me turn it to you to share a little bit more about yourself in case our listeners, are not familiar with you. Thank you. Yes. I began my career in rural health and so still have passion for the health that we provide to our rural citizens across the United States and then transitioned to, IU Health, Clarion at the time, and became, mostly operations and had a couple presidency positions. My heart is in operations, and I want to always be sure that we're being most effective to our patients and caring for our patients in the best ways possible, efficient in our operations so the patients have the ability to afford their health care, and there are never barriers to their health care as well. So I've enjoyed 30 plus years in health care leadership and love, the opportunity to, be able to continue to grow and develop as a leader, but also grow and develop other leaders as a passion of mine as well. Wonderful. I think you're in the right role and have the right passion. I know operational efficiency is so top of mind for so many health care leaders today, especially. Let me turn to you, to get your take on what do you think are the biggest trends or issues right now, especially as we're heading into the November election. What are you looking at most closely? Well, there's a few things. The first thing is around workforce, and we all know that coming out of the pandemic, we were faced with workforce challenges. And some of those are resolving, but the long term effects and the long term needs of workforce challenges continue to be there. And so as we at IU Health and others are partnering with our schools and universities to continue to fund and support nursing programs and radiology tech programs, respiratory therapy programs. We also are focused on ensuring that our leaders and our elected officials at the federal level and state level continue to fund and grow residency and fellowship spot spots across the organizations that, are academic health centers. We at IU, have the largest medical school. And yet across the country, we have medical students who go every year without being able to get a fellowship or residency because the slots are not large enough or numerous enough. And so we've gotta fix that in order to get more people care, to not just, the metro areas, but the the rural areas as well. And so that's top of mind as we look at the continuing resolutions at the federal level and as we head into this next 2025 next year for, funding and budgets, for states as well. So workforce is a continuing issue, and we now need to think about it in the long term effects and support for health care and not just in the quick short term fixes that we've been focused on the past few years post the pandemic. Absolutely. Not just how are we recruiting and retaining the employees we have today, but really building out a strong pipeline of future physician leaders for tomorrow. I think another big topic we hear a lot about, rightfully so, is artificial intelligence, especially when it comes to operational efficiencies or, you know, relieving some of the burdens from the current workforce. I'm curious. Can you talk a little bit about how IU Health is using AI right now, and what do you anticipate as the biggest benefits and risks? You know, health care systems, IU Health included, has large databases, lots of information, and AI helps us to pull the information together to be able to make clinical decisions, business decisions, operational decisions. And so that's one way that we continue to use, AI across the the health system and across the the health across health care in general. One of the biggest areas that I see is an area that we have been investing in and across the health systems, but also at IU Health. And that is where the patient and provider relationship is concerned. So ensuring that the days where providers had laptops in front of them or computers in front of them and were continuously entering information to being able to do ambient listening that documents and scribes the conversation and the visit documentation into the clinical medical record. This connects patients with physicians and with their providers in a way that we haven't seen for many years as we've transitioned to electronic medical records. Another area that the SandBanc Listening is helpful is documentation for our nurses and our other team members who provide care at the bedside, and then they provide, documentation and have to document afterwards. And this is another efficiency that we see is going to be helpful for health care. We know that when we run studies related to what we call pajama time for physicians that's after work when they're having to go in and document, additional information, this will improve the health and wellness and welfare of our clinicians. We also know that this will get better over time, that the accuracy of this documentation is getting better over time as well and save time for our clinicians to spend at the bedside with patients. There's also a myth, I think that people have in health care and AI related to where AI lands in health care. And we are very careful at IU Health related to what tools we use and the AI technology that we use, and we use it internally to the systems that we have. We don't connect externally to AI technologies and platforms that could put things at risk, put data at risk, and and put the information systems at risk. And so that's something that we pay close attention to every day and have a whole team that works to be to ensure that everything that we do, is focused on protecting the patient information as well as the accuracy of the information that we're capturing as well. Absolutely. So huge huge potential benefits in terms of unburdening both physicians and nurse nurses with the documentation workload, as well as many other, promising applications for, but it seems to be, a big focus for executives right now, especially in that domain. And I think you bring up a great point about a lot of the data privacy concerns that go hand in hand with a lot of the benefits that we see from AI. So thank you for elaborating on that. Looking into the future of nonprofit health systems, do you see a bright future or a dark future? What are the best opportunities to grow and become more impactful, in communities for nonprofit systems? Thank you for asking the question. Nonprofit health care is key to ensuring our health care systems, continue and that our communities receive health care. Nonprofit does not mean that we do not need to have excess revenues over our expenses because we have to reinvest in very expensive technology. But more importantly, we as not for profit health care systems reinvest in our communities. IU Health, over the past several years, has put aside $200,000,000 where we have begun to provide community impact and investment grants that go to nonprofits in our communities and help strengthen social determinants of health, health care delivery, health care options. And a couple of those examples, one, we have a community, a small rural community that cares for and provides, care and and home homes and training for women who come out of, incarceration. And they also help them with finding jobs and, ensuring that they have what they need to get their feet back on the ground and not recidivize back to the, incarceration back to the penal system. And we are able to fund and help support that so that they can take on additional women based upon these great outcomes that they're getting. A second example is one of our communities where we were able to invest in a center that provides care for those who are suffering from substance use disorder. And they're able to go there without question, say there overnight. There's a nurse and care team there and, social work and case managers, and they're able to care for them and connect them to services. This, prevents them from being arrested going or going to an emergency department. And we know that when we go to the emergency department, we encounter expensive bills, that it's not the best place, for, someone to get, you know, care that someone can surround them with all the services they need when they're trying to move forward from an addiction. And it also ensures that when they do have an issue that they're not getting arrested, and that record goes on, on their it goes on their record. They become part of the the criminal justice system. And how do we prevent that? Everyone knows someone who suffers in this area with behavioral health or substance use disorder, and we have to find ways to, make sure that they have a bright future. So I'm very positive and optimistic about the future of nonprofit health care. And the reason I'm be I I am is because we see so many systems and so many nonprofits who invest back in their communities to ensure that they are healthy, that they have what they need in their communities to provide, services that will improve the health of their communities. I think that's such a poignant example of the important role that nonprofit systems play within their communities as we continue to see the shift towards whole person care and addressing social determinants of health, behavioral health needs as well. I appreciate you sharing that, and, overall, just appreciate your time to join us on the podcast today. It really has been enlightening to hear your perspective on AI trends, future opportunities for nonprofit systems. So thank you so much for your time, Brian. My pleasure. Thank you. And thank you as well to our listeners for their continued support. For more episodes and to hear from other industry leaders, please visit the Becker's podcast page at beckershospitalreview.com/podcasts.