Anika Gardenhire (00:03):

One of the things that we’re focused on is ensuring that we can have a more informed consumer and a more informed family. And so, just thinking about the practical realities of the way in which we name our diagnostic tests, so take a radiology test or something like that. And thinking about how to make that easier to understand. And so, utilizing artificial intelligence and being laser focused on the consumer, which we are, is at the center of everything that we do. Thinking about utilizing those tools in a very practical way in order to convert those tests into patient friendly language.

Speaker 2 (00:39):

Welcome to Hospitals In Focus from the Federation of American Hospitals. Here’s your host, Chip Kahn.

Chip Kahn (00:49):

Digitization of healthcare is a byword of innovation today. A system that takes this quite seriously is Ardent Health. Ardent Health’s, CEO, Marty Bonick, has been quite a visionary in his leadership on digitization of the company. He has prioritized this strategy as it relates to innovation, and is focused on integrating and leveraging data to support digital transformation.

(01:16):

Joining me today to discuss this focus is Anika Gardenhire, Ardent Health’s inaugural Chief Digital and Information Officer. I’m thrilled to have her here today to dive into her new role and to talk to us about what she is doing to transform Ardent Health. Thank you so much for joining us today, Anika.

Anika Gardenhire (01:36):

Thank you for having me.

Chip Kahn (01:38):

Anika, before we get started into Ardent Health, can you give us a bit about your background and how you got where you are today at Ardent?

Anika Gardenhire (01:46):

Absolutely. So, I started my career in healthcare as a registered nurse. I practiced at the bedside, practiced in CVRU, and several other unit types, and worked my way through clinical operations. And I think at some point through my career, really sort of got interested in “computers and data” and what that could mean for patient care. And so, transitioned into informatics and then had the wonderful experience of consulting, which ultimately landed me in Intermountain Healthcare where I was the AVP of Digital Transformation. And then at Centene Corporation where I was the Chief Digital Officer and ultimately, the Chief Customer Experience Officer.

(02:22):

And at the end of the day, my hope is that able to make the profession of being a clinician as good as it absolutely can be. Where people get to focus on why they entered the profession, which will ultimately make it better for patients and populations. And so, that’s my goal.

Chip Kahn (02:43):

That’s a neat background for the combination of the clinical and the digital, in a sense. Can you give us your perspective as you are in your, I guess a little bit over your first year at Ardent Health about the conceptual framework you bring to the company that will define the digital transformation that you’re overseeing there?

Anika Gardenhire (03:06):

Absolutely. My perspective is that this entire conversation, whether it’s digital or broader innovation or technology, starts with people. And so from a framework perspective, I first think about people, and I think about those people in terms of journeys. And so, I think about the journey for a person who interacts with us as a consumer, customer patient, someone that we are working to keep well and, or make well. And then I think about the group of people who care for those people, people at the bedside, people in labs, people who are doing the work of helping to make those people well. And then I think about the people who care for those people. So, that’s folks like myself who work in more administrative roles, folks who work in back office roles in revenue cycle, and broader operations. And so, I think about these big three macro journeys.

(04:06):

And my goal ultimately, is to ensure that we are moving the experience forward for everyone in the journey. And that we are not sort of making bad trade-off decisions where we make the experience maybe really good for providers or clinicians. But then it’s poor for patients and it’s poor for the back office. Or we make it really good for “operators and administrators” and we make it not so great for providers and patients.

(04:34):

And so, we really have to make sure that we’re keeping everyone from a people perspective in frame. And that as we move the experiences forward, we’re asking about the downstream impacts of people inside of those sorts of other types of frames. And so when I think about that framework, I start with people.

(04:53):

And then, I’m a big fan of the Calm Technologies books. I’m a big believer in really focusing on design, asking the really hard questions about design. First question being, what problem are you trying to solve? Big fan of Clayton Christensen and sort of that body of work. And so really thinking about, what’s the job to be done? Are we solving real problems? How will we know that we’re winning, as we’re driving those experiences forward?

(05:19):

So at the end of the day, my goal is to make sure that when we create products or we implement products, people use them. Right? They do something different tomorrow that they did today because it exists. And so to me, that’s how you get to transformation. So, that’s kind of what the framework looks like.

Chip Kahn (05:34):

That’s great, and it really makes it easy to understand. Why don’t we separate into the three parts you described and let’s drill down on each one? So, first is the patient and the family that supports the patient. What are you doing from a practical standpoint to bring digitization to bear for those who are patients of Ardent Health?

Anika Gardenhire (05:55):

Absolutely. And I’m incredibly fortunate to be surrounded by an amazing team. And one of our team members, our Chief Medical Information Officer has been working on this, and it’s about access, at the end of the day. One of the things that we’re focused on is ensuring that we can have a more informed consumer and a more informed family. And so, just thinking about the practical realities of the way in which we name our diagnostic tests, so take a radiology test or something like that. And thinking about how to make that easier to understand.

(06:28):

And so, utilizing artificial intelligence and being laser focused on the consumer, which we are, is at the center of everything that we do. Thinking about utilizing those tools in a very practical way in order to convert those tests into patient-friendly language, something that everyone can understand. And so, it really just helps to continue to create trust and stickiness, continues to help to ensure people understand what’s going to be happening to them. And at the end of the day, ultimately creates a more informed consumer, which I think is better for everyone.

Chip Kahn (07:02):

Then let’s talk about the caregiver. I mean, obviously caregivers today have to deal with electronic medical health records. And frankly, from what I understand, that adoption over time has been a big frustration. Because even though now it’s all digital, they had to do just as much work as they did before. So as you look for ways to make the work and the patient flow of information for the caregiver better, what kind of improvements can you make so they can do a better job and spend more time at the bedside rather than at the desk?

Anika Gardenhire (07:41):

And this is one very similar to the consumer, that has a lot of prominence in a lot of opportunities. We are well aware that we are hitting a place just societally where we don’t have enough clinicians to care for the people who will need clinicians. And so we are focused on extender technologies, technologies that work to keep people in the workforce, take advantage of clinical knowledge, and overall support clinical skills. And we’re doing that through programs around things like virtual nursing. We’re focused on creating a situation where we can have that support to keep clinicians in the workforce, but also support those entering the workforce in new and unique ways.

(08:25):

We also think about that from a provider perspective. We’re focused on ambient listening technologies and solutions in order to help support visits, and ultimately make documentation and that burden that we often hear about from clinicians, easier, better, faster, more manageable. But also create more integrity even in the documentation where there are opportunities around that.

(08:51):

And then we’re thinking about, how can we automate tasks in to ensure that we’re using people at the height of their capabilities? So, how can we do things like look at the possible automation of vital signs and ensure that we’re able to utilize that, take them more often to get trends that will help us better identify supporting patients, and ultimately getting the right information to clinicians?

(09:17):

And so, there are lots of things that we are working on in that space that really are focused on the clinician and making their work easier, better, faster, more efficient. But at the end of the day, it’s thinking about, how do we use clinicians that top of license so they can have the highest possible impact on patients? Which I think is why everyone who chooses that profession really wants to be focused on.

Chip Kahn (09:40):

Well then finally, whether it’s a health system or any other part of our economy, at the end of the day, resources make the money go around. I mean, will make the world go around rather. And you got to have the funds to make it work. And in a sense, that’s sort of defining part of backroom. How do you see the backroom of health systems being improved and made more efficient and cost-effective through digitization?

Anika Gardenhire (10:08):

Absolutely. And today, I think this is where we probably have the opportunity to make the greatest impact. And I say that from the perspective of where the technology is and understanding it. And sort of the risk for any organization who’s choosing to take a look at these types of technologies. It’s everything from how you make decisions, how you gather and aggregate data, how you pull information out of systems to do things like thinking about global abstraction. So, you’re trying to aggregate information. It’s thinking about how we do things like support our coding and billing processes and making sure that we’re able to utilize these technologies to help us do that type of work.

(10:56):

At the end of the day, whether it’s human resources or finance or revenue cycle, we are still focused on human-in-the-loop technologies. These are still really important roles. They impact our employees’ everyday lives, human resources does, finance does. And so what we are focused on is again, getting people to the highest level of their function and making sure that where we have those repeatable tasks, that we’re able to automate those as much as possible. Where we have opportunity for data aggregation and insights that we’re able to utilize those tools to get those insights to people so that ultimately, the best decisions can be made that are based on data.

Chip Kahn (11:40):

To talk about data, you can’t avoid in today’s world, talking about the protection of data, the confidentiality of data. Can you talk a bit about security and what principles you see as being really key to assuring the protection of the data for the individual patients, the data and actions of those caregivers? And also making sure that financial data and the other data that’s so important to the functioning of a health system, that’s protected also?

Anika Gardenhire (12:16):

You don’t get to occupy a seat like mine and not have cybersecurity be one of the things that are top of mind for you. And then obviously, considering some of the historical items that aren’t right, it’s even more prominent I think, holistically in the organization.

(12:31):

When I think about the principles, the first principle around data protection is trust. Right? And it’s being mindful of the trust that individuals are placing in us when they choose to receive care in our organizations, and ultimately choose to trust us with their data. They’re trusting us not only with outcomes to make them better, but they’re also trusting us with incredibly deep insights about their daily lives.

(12:55):

And so from my perspective, the biggest thing that I like to think about is to be clear that there is an entire industry that is working against us on the bad side, and trying to take this data and create exploitive situations. We ultimately have to fight back as an industry. And so, I feel really grateful for the network of colleagues who come together on a regular basis to talk about what we’re doing, to talk about our posture, to share indicators of compromise. Because we have to create more opportunity for us to integrate and do that, and make sure that we’re doing that together.

(13:36):

The other piece is ensuring that we are laser focused on managing the posture for the entire enterprise. That we have the infrastructure that we need to ensure that we are supporting the organization writ large in thinking about cybersecurity. And helping every individual understand the type of social engineering that bad actors are focused on to get you to click that thing or say this thing or hit approve when they ultimately try and get into the multifactor authentication. So, we’re definitely focused on those things and ensuring that those are wide and pervasive throughout the organization.

(14:12):

And then the last thing that I’d say is making sure that from the highest of heights inside of our organization to every individual that is using a keyboard or have access to data, that every person sort of understands the frame. Right? That every person has the thought process that we are being entrusted with precious cargo and precious information when we think about our patient data, when we think about our employee data. Same vein, in that we are providing the tools to help people understand that. And ultimately, we’re providing the best possible tool set in order to create protection.

(14:51):

And so, whether that is how we think about ultimately all of our protective technology and making sure that we’re providing the call of arms. And whether it’s thinking about how we think about infrastructure or whether it’s thinking about what we can do to build security into platforms or the future. Holistically, I think about security in sort of every facet of everything that we do, because I think you have to.

Chip Kahn (15:17):

Anika, thank you so much for joining us today. I think this has been very enlightening. And it’s so encouraging that health systems like yours, Ardent Health, is making so many leaps forward in this very important area. We really appreciate what you do and thank you for serving the patients.

Anika Gardenhire (15:37):

Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (15:42):

Thanks for listening to Hospitals In Focus, from the Federation of American Hospitals. Learn more at fah.org. Follow the Federation on social media @FAHHospitals. And follow Chip @ChipKahn. Please rate, review, and subscribe to Hospitals In Focus. Join us next time for more in-depth conversations with healthcare leaders.

Speaker 4 (16:04):

Voxtopica.

As chief digital information officer, Ms. Gardenhire oversees the development and implementation of Ardent’s digital strategy across the organization. She is responsible for ensuring digital initiatives are fully integrated into Ardent’s strategic plan with a focus on leveraging data to support digital transformation. Ms. Gardenhire also oversees Ardent’s IT infrastructure and systems, as well as data strategy and governance. 

An experienced caregiver and clinical informatics leader, Ms. Gardenhire joined Ardent in September of 2023, and has previously served as chief digital officer and regional vice president of digital and clinical systems at Centene Corporation. She also held various roles at Intermountain Healthcare, including assistant vice president of digital transformation. Ms. Gardenhire holds a bachelor of science in nursing from the University of South Carolina’s Mary Black School of Nursing and master’s degrees in clinical informatics and management from Duke University.