Driving Excellence in Patient

This article is based on an interview with Patricia Punzalan, sr. director for patient care services at Dignity Health.

Impact Emerging Trends in Patient Care Services

AI is one of the buzzwords across industries. There is still a lot of work to explore how this type of technology can add value to a highly human-driven business like healthcare. I have read in one of the leading nursing journals how we will see the future of AI in hiring and recruitment. The goal is to streamline the first steps in this process and be able to screen potential candidates for job positions based on decision support built around key behavioral or qualitative metrics. It is interesting to see how this new learning will shape how we reconstruct our resumes. As much as this can take over some of the administrative work for our TA specialist, we still cannot underestimate the value of human connection in this process. The other trend I see is redesigning health care delivery, where we are now considering virtual nursing to be included in the paradigm. It is again another wait-and-see phenomenon as we continue to understand how it impacts care, reimbursement, quality, team dynamics, union relationships, and others. AIs have also been used to create algorithms to facilitate decision-making through the analysis and interpretation of data. However, there is no technology that can replace critical thinking, which can partly be guided by insights from lived experiences. I feel strongly that there is value to AI application to enhance the delivery of care & elevate the practice environment. At the same time, there is also an acknowledgment that no amount of advancement can replace the humanity that goes with caring.  

"There are two key behaviors for me that are important to thrive in any environment as a leader – self-awareness & self-management"

Experiences from One of the Initiatives That You Were Recently Involved In

I consider myself new to Dignity Health, being a year & plus months, and most of the efforts that my team of leaders are involved in are centered on realigning our clinical practices with evidence-based guidelines. We are looking into redesigning our workflows to mitigate redundancy & improve efficiency.