CHIME Fall Forum | San Antonio 🤠🌵

Written By Amy Oliver

Author note: High school Amy would be proud of this recap...like a scrapbook, but make it digital and on LinkedIn! 💻 📸 AND, as I like to occasionally say, "long story long," and this post is no different 🙃

Last week was one of those beautiful reminders of why I love this industry: the people, the energy, and the unexpected run-ins that turn into real conversations. I made my way down to Texas for CHIME, and, as always, it was the people who made it special.

This was in the midst of the government shutdown and the FAA instructing airlines to cut flights...everyone was just a little on edge with hoping to get to San Antonio! Thankfully everything went smooth enough, despite the winter weather already in Chicago. And there were some familiar faces on my flight: John Lee was a few rows back, and Nick DeJongh from 314e Corporation was in my row! I met him and Casey Post at last year's CHIME when we co-hosted an event.

Sunday night kicked things off with a fun, unique, very “Texas” event. 🤠 I met new leaders in the industry and connected with some familiar faces. It was great to catch up with Sean Roberts... I always enjoy hearing what’s going on in the midwest. We talked about work (acquisitions, migrations, and even my old health system, Freeman) and fun too…I can’t believe his two sons are at K-State and KU! Talk about a house divided.

It was delightful meeting Stacy Stika, MBA; I admired her new duster jacket that I really hope is something she wears every single day now. 😆🧥 Sherri Mills and I chatted about the day's travels, she ran into her daughter in the Atlanta airport on her way to TX, how fun! And it was nice chatting about our mutual friend, Mike Deegan. He was with us in spirit! At dinner, I got to know Jerry Vilbrun, MBA and Pam Austin, MBA, PMP, CPHIMS. They had an Epic migration in common... I am always fascinated to hear real stories from the IT front lines. And, what a story Pam has—she became CIO and migrated to Epic in early 2020—amongst other things going on in the world, like a pandemic!!

Monday was the CHIME golf outing (sponsored by SHI International Corp. and fellow Bluebird Leader, Kris Nessa) and it sounded like it was BRISK. I ran into Rebecca Woods, MHA, SHIMSS, PM as she was getting back from the course… she was ready to thaw out after the round of 18. We ran into Tracey Touma, CHISL, CDH-L as we were chatting, so of course we had to snap a Bluebird Leaders pic!

Later that day, I grabbed lunch with William Hudson, MBA, Sierra Kiner, and Brij Aswani from the Hippocratic AI team. Love an IRL meet-up after getting to know them over the past couple months!

I caught up with the team from Quoris. Laura Arboleda, MS and I have known each other for more than a decade (😳)from our days at Hyland and Xealth, and I have gotten to know Melissa Ursi, J.D., Kaitlin Traft, CDH-P, and Hannah Crawford recently and they are SUCH a delight. Their suite party theme was awesome and their events both nights were the perfect mix of hospitality and fun. (AND Maxwel Lyons and Rebecca Nadeau just joined them, too!! Melissa has a GREAT team over there.)

It was nice to meet Amy Rettler (a connection that happened from Drew Madden!) in person from Evergreen Healthcare Partners and hear more about the team is up to. I was blown away by their NPS scores both internally with employees and externally with their health system clients. 👏🏼

Dinner that eve was with Chandra Turner and Robyn Borowsky Ewers, and Aamir Siddiqi stopped by to catch up (and save the day for Chandra and me!). Last time I saw Aamir in Vegas at HLTH, we talked about the magic of October baseball and rewatched the Blue Jays inning that clinched their ticket to the World Series. So SAD that they couldn't pull it out over the Dodgers. But I digress! ⚾️

Tuesday started with a peaceful walk around the property with Chandra, a tradition I try to keep at conferences (even if it means getting up earlyyyy). Fresh air and vitamin D is critical before a long day indoors! ☀️

That morning, I ran into Adam Turinas who I’ve gotten to know through the Swaay.Health Marketing Community. Adam had just been in my backyard for MAICON in Cleveland, and he shared some great insights from the conference and what his team at Health Launchpad is up to in the AI space: they are building AI-driven personas that are 66% more accurate than GPT (seriously impressive!!). We chatted about what it means to be truly AI-first...not just using AI as a tool, but starting every problem with AI in mind.

Jaime Lira and I caught up over lunch, and then Laura Marquez and I caught up over coffee. Both of these women have become friends recently and it’s nice to hear what they have going on from a professional and personal standpoint! Both of these fierce women (also Bluebird Leaders) just fill.my.cup. 🫶🏼

In the afternoon, I connected with Taylor McPartland to hear all the exciting projects coming out of ScaleHealth. They are kicking off several big initiatives with some heavy hitters. They connect healthcare orgs to healthcare start ups and innovators to accelerate the development and adoption of solutions. Can’t wait to see what they achieve next!

More connecting highlights:

OF COURSE, woven throughout all of these connections and interactions are the themes that are echoing throughout healthcare. AI is still top of mind, but the convos are evolving:

  • There’s still some skepticism over AI… one conversation was inquiring if people realize it’s AI...and if they realize they are forming a relationship with AI vs. human caregiver. (And if they do, does that matter?)

  • Safety of the AI was a BIG theme throughout. In a non-clinical world, we’ve all had hallucinations with Chat GPT or the like… and in healthcare, those have much bigger implications. Focusing on this will always be a priority and those vendor solutions that truly prioritize safety (with the models and tech to prove it) will rise to the top.

  • In a convo about patient records, there was discussion around ambient scribes and the storage of the entire transcript belongs. In most cases, the full version is not included in the patient record...and, it sounds like that’s the recommended go-forward strategy.

  • In couple convos, and then on stage from J.D. Whitlock, there was a powerful reminder about the need to distinguish predictive AI from generative AI, especially when the topic involves anything resembling diagnosis. The risk in differential diagnosis is that generative AI’s “black box” makes its outputs impossible to trace—and explainability still has a long way to go.

  • Nurses are getting attention more than before: Tracy Breece, MSN, RN, CENP, NI-BC, CPHIMS talked about nurse adoption of AI and how ambient scribes like Abridge, Heidi, and Ambience are giving nurses time back to be present with the patient and practice at the top of their license. It’s refreshing to see the nurses brought into the fold to give them the attention that physicians had when the tech was first rolled out.

  • Another theme was around how important staffing and process changes are in addition to the deployment of the tech. Change management is not easy—especially with some of this new technology, but communicating and changing are important for successful adoption and true change.

These industry events are full with smart people... and these people have conversations in hallways, form friendships over shared stories, and have spontaneous introductions that spark ideas... and these ideas are really starting to change healthcare. I'm fortunate to be a part of this community, and with how quickly AI adoption has accelerated change, I am more hopeful than ever that we are really making a difference. 👏🏼

Amy Oliver
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