AI Integration: Improving Human Interactions at Memorial Hermann

Written by Eric Smith, Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Officer of Memorial Hermann Health System

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming how companies and organizations interact with their customers. That transformation is also occurring in health care. At Memorial Hermann, we are harnessing its power responsibly to enhance our ability to engage consumers, empower our workforce, advance health and deliver compassionate and personalized care to the communities we serve.

With guidance from Memorial Hermann’s AI Governance Council, AI technology is helping to accelerate Memorial Hermann’s digital transformation in support of the organization’s transition to value-based care. Yet, even as we embrace these advancements, we remain focused on responsibly and ethically balancing technology with compassionate care delivery.

The promise of artificial intelligence in health care is immense and extends beyond technology; it is a powerful tool to advance value-based care. However, while innovation, funding and pilot projects often dominate conversations, AI’s success, especially in health care, doesn’t rest on the technology alone.

For AI to truly deliver on its potential, health care leaders must engage their workforce in organizational adoption and a cultural transformation by fostering collaboration, setting a clear vision and allowing for initiatives to scale effectively and rapidly while staying focused on long-term outcomes. While AI’s critics have blamed the technology for removing the “human factor” from certain interactions, at Memorial Hermann, we’ve found the opposite to be true. By thoughtfully integrating digital tools in a way that allows us to support care delivery—not by replacing what nurses and physicians do, but by acting as a companion for them—we’ve seen increased interpersonal engagement and higher satisfaction rates among our workforce, providers and the patients we serve.

Additionally, by aligning AI’s implementation with high-value care, we’ve seen that leaders can empower and engage their workforce, uphold ethical practices and enhance patient experiences. Utilizing the technology as an important resource furthers the broader mission of improving health and access to care, while putting people at the center of their own health care journey and reducing costs.

Currently, much of our digital transformation work is centered on solving the daily challenges clinicians face: reducing administratively heavy tasks, minimizing time spent charting outside of work hours, at home and late at night—which also helps reduce burnout—and relieving responsibilities that take time away from the bedside. By first piloting and then implementing AI thoughtfully, we are creating time for what matters most—patient-centered care.

Memorial Hermann has several AI initiatives underway across the clinical, operational and patient experience spaces.

In spring of 2023, Memorial Hermann began an advanced bot technology to assist patients in managing follow-up care. “Grace” is an advanced voice bot that specializes in handling complex back-and-forth exchanges with patient in a natural and friendly manner. Importantly, Grace is built to meet the highest standards of security, availability and confidentiality, adhering to rigorous patient data certification to protect customer information.

With Grace, patients receive personalized customer care, while allowing clinical teams to assist patients with more acute needs. Grace can make thousands of calls that would take significant manpower to complete, dialing and reaching hundreds of patients an hour to assist our call center. She populates a work queue for the call center to follow up and assist callers with selecting and scheduling a primary care physician as well as to enable our Population Health Service Organization’s Rx adherence team to take follow-up calls for patients who need prescription assistance.

Grace also makes follow-up calls to those who have reached out to our free 24/7 Nurse Health Line. Grace has made more than 50,000 follow-up calls on behalf of our Nurse Health Line, saving more than 2,000 hours of nursing time. This frees up nurses to assist more patients within our community.

Overall, Grace completes up to 5,000 calls per week, augmenting our staff and allowing us to efficiently and effectively reach more patients. We’ve also noted that patients who engage with Grace post-emergency center discharge revisit the emergency center much less frequently than those who won’t engage with her. In the emergency center workflow, Grace screens patients to find those who want assistance finding a primary care provider and/or need assistance getting their prescriptions filled. In many cases, Grace also has helped identify medication gaps because of circumstances in which patients can't make it to a pharmacy or can't afford the medication. Grace allows us to connect them to additional resources through our Community Health team.

In addition to Grace, Memorial Hermann has launched an ambient AI tool for Memorial Hermann Medical Group (MHMG) ambulatory providers and our network of affiliated physicians to utilize. This ambient AI tool combines real-time listening and documentation capabilities for clinicians to document their complex patient interactions without sacrificing quality of care, providing more time for building meaningful patient connection.

In a recent survey, affiliated physicians reported a remarkable 56% reduction in after-hours charting and 30% reduction in charting time per appointment. In a profession and environment where burnout is high, AI tools have truly made a significant impact to our workflows and the patient experience.

As we look toward the future, our goal is to create and implement digital health companions that empower providers to spend more time with their patients while allowing patients to participate more actively in their health journey—whether that means managing multiple chronic conditions or staying on track with preventive care. Through the thoughtful, responsible use of AI and other technologies, we continue to advance our mission to improve health and our vision to create healthier communities, now and for generations to come.

Eric Smith is senior vice president and chief digital officer for Memorial Hermann.