Digital is the Key to Fully Integrated Care

In an industry defined by persistent challenges and disrupted by new competitors, health systems must transform how they operate to be successful in the future. And the biggest differentiator in this transformation is creating a comprehensive ecosystem that fully acknowledges the value of both physical and digital elements of care.

But developing this connected ecosystem isn’t easy. It requires health systems to build and coordinate a continuum of care that fully integrates the service and experience patients receive in physical care centers with robust digital capabilities, data usage, AI and innovation—all while staying focused on their patients, people and processes to attract talent and build value.

While physical care sites offer locally based access to affordable, high-quality care driven by physicians, digital capabilities are connected across a single platform and driven by data. And when we talk about integrating the two, we’re not only referring to coordination among various care teams and care centers but meeting the modern consumer expectation of our patients. Every other industry our patients engage with blends these capabilities into a single, well-orchestrated experience—and they bring these same consumer expectations to healthcare.

Effective use of digital capabilities can meet their consumer expectations by decreasing friction across their entire care journey—from finding care to scheduling it to getting to the visit to receiving care to staying connected in between visits. At Sutter Health we’re empowering patients to interact and transact with us digitally, achieving a 139% increase since 2018 in “digitally engaged” patients who we know rate us twice as high on patient experience surveys and are far more likely to use multiple services.

Digital tools also make work easier for care teams and help them save time. In 2024, our digital advancements saved our people 1 million hours of work through automation, AI, simplification and more efficient workflows. This includes a partnership with Abridge, a generative AI platform that “listens” during patient visits to take notes and create a summary that directly flows into Epic after a physician reviews and finalizes the content. Since April 2024, more than 350,000 clinical notes have been written, decreasing the time clinicians spend on this task by up to 15-20%. That allows them more time to spend with patients.

For health systems embarking on a digital transformation, I offer these as priority drivers and outcomes for this work:

• Patient as consumer: Engage patients in more personalized, self-service capabilities, and enable them to interact and transact when and where they want and need.
• Optimize access: Build new options for patients to access care across current and future care settings, including virtual care and remote patient monitoring systems.
• Make work easier and simpler: Innovate to make work easier and more efficient in ways that save time for physicians and care teams, simplify workstreams and support the health and wellbeing of your workforce.
• Data analytics and AI: Use data to activate insights that improve decision-making, personalize treatment plans, and move from proactive to predictive care and outcomes.
• Partnerships and collaborations: Work together with technology companies to develop and deploy advanced digital solutions that augment care.
• Continuous connection: Enable seamless coordination of care across all care settings, both physical and digital—and with patients at home—to deliver fully integrated care.
• Operational efficiency and productivity: Automate processes and utilize AI-enabled coding and analytics navigators to gain administrative efficiency in areas like revenue cycle, supply chain and HR.

Digital innovation is driving the direction and speed of change in healthcare, and none more so than AI. In fact, the impact of analytics and AI cannot be overstated. Although we’re in the infancy of this shift, it’s already so clear what a significant gamechanger it is for healthcare. This means health systems cannot afford to shy away from this technology. They must make the decision to lean in and take the steps necessary to learn and develop these capabilities.

At Sutter Health , we’re building strategic AI capabilities across the organization primarily through partnerships with enterprise tech and startups to improve patient and clinician experience and gain administrative efficiency. Additionally, we have a team at our Innovation Center in San Francisco exploring several new ideas and opportunities. A key initiative from the team this year is a new, fully digital care delivery model called Sutter Sync. It features a proactive, customizable and engaging digital app that will allow patients to track and manage specific health conditions and chronic diseases at home and in concert with a dedicated care team that will provide timely support and treatment adjustments.

As important as this work has been to the success we’ve had in growing use of AI and other technologies, so is the work we’ve done in other corners of the organization to build strong governance to ensure responsible use and oversight. This is one of the six keys to successful digital transformation and AI adoption that my team and I have learned as we’ve pushed hard on this front over the past couple of years. Here’s the full list of lessons learned:

1. Align the digital strategy with your business strategy, focusing on patient outcomes, care delivery and operations.
2. Engage relevant executive sponsors, multi-disciplinary teams and clinical leaders.
3. Build on the right technology platforms and high-quality data sets.
4. Digital transformation is a change management effort.
5. Integrate into clinical, operational and Epic workflows.
6. Build responsible AI and governance that is fair, inclusive, transparent and explainable.

Jack Welch, a former CEO of General Electric who turned the company around in the late 1990s, said, “There are only two sources of competitive advantage: the ability to learn more about our customers faster than the competition and the ability to turn that learning into action faster than the competition.”

For health systems today, that advantage lies in a digital transformation that fully integrates all aspects of the organization and keeps our patients and our people at the heart of it all. That is the way we can meet our patients’ consumer needs, retain the best talent and continue to advance the way care is delivered to help people get and stay well.