3 Takeaways Podcast: Sam Hazen shares insights on technology, AI and healthcare innovation

HCA Healthcare chief executive officer (CEO) Sam Hazen was recently interviewed by Lynn Thoman for an episode of the 3 Takeaways Podcast, which features conversations with the world’s best thinkers, business leaders, writers, politicians, scientists and other newsmakers.

As CEO of one of the nation’s leading healthcare providers – comprised of 187 hospitals and approximately 2,400 ambulatory sites of care — Sam has a unique perspective on what the future of healthcare looks like. He shares insights on how innovative technology, 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 for healthcare leaders and patients, and check out the full podcast for the complete conversation.

Listen to the full 3 Takeaways episode: AI and Healthcare: 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 large industry and area of healthcare. Our role is in delivery — the delivery system. We provide hospital services, clinic services, emergency room services, all these different services to patients who need us whenever they have an illness or an accident or deliver a baby or whatever the case may be.

I do 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 those patients have enormous patterns where, if you’re a mom delivering a baby in Miami, it’s similar in many respects to a mom delivering a baby in Dallas or Denver or Salt Lake City or London, England, where we also provide services. The opportunity for us to learn from these patterns through machine learning and artificial intelligence and bring those learnings back to the people who deliver care — a physician or a nurse or another caregiver — is really powerful.

In my 42 years with our company and in healthcare generally, I’ve learned that there’s a lot of variation and bespoke care given to people simply because it’s individuals making individual decisions as best they can with their training, their experience. If we can use our data to support decision makers and caregivers with learnings from patterns using artificial intelligence and emerging technologies at the bedside when decisions need to be made, I think it’s going to lift up quality in a significant way. It’s going to create greater transparency for the patient, and it’s going to make the whole system more efficient. Those are all objectives we all share.

Advances in diagnostics and treatment

In certain components of our business, oncology care for example, we continue to see new drug development. The Sarah Cannon Research Institute (SCRI) does a tremendous number of clinical trials, and has generated more first-in-man new drug development than any entity. We’ll continue to do more research to support patients with new treatments there.

On the technology side, robotic-assisted surgery is less invasive for patients so they have less recovery time, and allows physicians to operate on patients in ways they couldn’t before. HCA Healthcare performs more robotic-assisted surgery than any other system in the world, and we’ll continue to grow in this area because robotic surgery is moving into new areas, in orthopedics, in spine, in neuroscience.

On the diagnostic side, testing with computerized CT scanners and MRIs is so advanced, so fast now, and can produce such clarity for physicians that in many instances, it’s starting to replace more invasive, more time-consuming diagnostic procedures. This allows patients to get an answer and start their care process, if they need it, more timely and more economically.

Leveraging scale to improve care delivery

I tell our teams that having scale is one thing; using it effectively is another. As we’ve evolved as a company — we’re 55 years old at HCA Healthcare — we’ve learned how to use scale more effectively.

I mentioned earlier that the next iteration of scale for us is using our data more effectively through machine learning and artificial intelligence, and bringing all these new insights. That’s a perfect example of our next opportunity to use scale to improve care. But historically and today, I would say there are three areas that we have been able to leverage our scale effectively.

One is we’ve economized where we can. We have a lot of redundant functions across 187 hospitals and many outpatient facilities, administrative functions like billing or purchasing or accounts payable. We’ve consolidated those and created a lot of value for the company and those we serve.

The second area is we’ve been able to aggregate our resources and access to capital as a consolidated entity, which allows us to access capital at a reasonable cost so we can invest in our business. We’re a capital-intensive business. Hospitals require a lot of capital, buildings and technology. We’re also labor-intensive, and having sufficient access to capital through scale has allowed us to invest in our people.

The third thing, which is really exciting, is what I call the intellectual capital win. We have 20 hospitals in Miami. We have 20 in Dallas. We have 10 in Denver. They all do a lot of the same things, and we learn from each other all the time. We challenge ourselves to share these learnings across the organization to be a better employer, be more engaged in the community, partner with our physicians differently and provide a better care process for patients. So harvesting best practices is really 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’re also disciplined and detail-oriented, and that culture permeates our management teams. We think it adds value to our patients. A disciplined approach allows us to achieve outcomes that are on par — and often above — industry averages.

The future of AI in healthcare

I think AI can help us improve healthcare delivery in three primary ways. On the administrative side of our equation, we have to do a lot. Healthcare is heavily regulated, and it’s complicated because there are third-party payers, insurance companies and so forth embedded in the fabric of the industry. All these administrative functions have real potential to be streamlined and more efficient. We are leveraging AI to eliminate some of the friction in our administrative functions.

Related article: (Forbes) HCA Healthcare, One Of The Largest Healthcare Organizations In The World, Is Deploying Generative AI

The second area is operationally. We have to manage patients in our emergency rooms, as an example, and see 10 million emergency room patients a year. We think artificial intelligence can help us with throughput, getting a patient through the emergency room faster. Not one of those 10 million patients want to stay long in our emergency room. They want to go home. If we can infuse demand predictions, staffing, lab test handoffs and more with artificial intelligence, we think we can enhance the speed, the transparency and the effectiveness of processes operationally and make our throughput better.

The last area is the exciting area. This is where we get to leverage the standardized data sets that we have in our company, from every interaction that a doctor, a nurse, a respiratory therapist had with a patient to every drug administered. All of that will be de-identified. We won’t know if it’s you or me, but we’ll know it’s a total joint patient who had their knee replaced, or a mom who delivered a baby, and see all of what went into the care. Was it a good outcome? Was it an okay outcome or not so okay outcome? We can continuously learn from the patterns.

If we can support human intelligence with artificial intelligence and make human intelligence better, then our patients are going to benefit in ways I can’t explain. So I’m unbelievably excited about that.

3 takeaways

One is that hard work matters. You have to have a work ethic. And if you’re in a leadership position, you have to be willing to solve problems so your organization, your teams can be successful. And you have to work hard to do that. That’s the first thing.

The second thing is, you’ve never arrived. Keep learning. I mentioned that we try to learn from each other at HCA Healthcare. I try to learn from our own as well as from other organizations. I think this desire to keep learning is critically important.

Listen to the full conversation and additional insight from Sam on 3 Takeaways