HIMSS25 Presentations

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Dan Goldklank:
Welcome, everyone! Grab a seat and settle in. It’s day three, and I thought I’d start with a little icebreaker. I didn’t come up with it myself—I asked ChatGPT for a corny joke.

Why did the CIO break up with their old data platform?
They couldn’t commit to real-time insights.

Okay, not my best, but we’re warmed up now!

I’m Dan Goldklank, Executive Director on the Enterprise Sales Team at Tegria. If you’re not familiar with Tegria, we’re a global healthcare consulting and services firm. If you stopped by our kiosk and asked what we do, I’d say it’s pretty simple: we partner with healthcare organizations to help them maximize the value of their technology investments. One key way we do that is through data and analytics.

Today, we’re joined by our partners from St. Luke’s University Health Network in Pennsylvania to talk about their journey in building a modern data platform—and why they chose to bring in a partner like Tegria.

Let me introduce our speakers:

• Chris Naylor, Director of IT Development at St. Luke’s. Chris has over seven years with the organization and played a key role in leading this project.
• Curran McCalley, Enterprise Data Architect at St. Luke’s. Curran also brings over seven years of experience and a deep technical understanding of the platform.
• Mike Edwards, Director of Data Services at Tegria. Mike and his team supported the implementation and served as the liaison between our organizations.

Let’s jump in. Chris, to start us off, can you give us a bit of background on St. Luke’s and share some of the data challenges you were facing before this project began?

Chris Naylor:
St. Luke’s is a hospital network in Eastern Pennsylvania. We have around 50 campuses and over 300 ambulatory practices. We’ve been on Epic since 2016—inpatient first, followed by ambulatory in 2018–2019.

One of our main challenges was managing data across many point-to-point solutions. For every new use case, we’d pull data from different sources, sometimes duplicating efforts. We had multiple data warehouses and relied heavily on Epic Clarity for reporting.

As our data grew, we realized the need for a centralized platform that could scale and be governed effectively. We also had performance issues—15 hospitals and hundreds of practices meant a heavy load on our infrastructure, and it was becoming difficult to deliver timely data to users. We needed a more scalable solution.

Dan Goldklank:
So you were dealing with duplicated work, siloed data, and slow delivery—definitely sounds like a good reason to rethink your strategy.

What led you to the decision to bring in a partner, and why Tegria?

Chris Naylor:
We wanted a partner with healthcare experience, especially with Epic. Much of our data is clinical and tied to Epic, so it was critical that our partner understood that ecosystem.

We explored a few vendors, but Tegria’s experience and focus on healthcare stood out. They had the right background in data platforms and the technologies we were exploring.

Dan Goldklank:
Mike, let’s bring you in. Can you talk about the implementation approach and how our teams worked together?

Mike Edwards:
Absolutely. As Chris and Curran mentioned, everyone wants to jump into AI—but it starts with the data foundation. We began with governance, architecture, and engineering to centralize data using a medallion approach: Bronze, Silver, Gold layers.

We used Azure and Databricks to build out that platform, setting it up so St. Luke’s could take it from there and scale up into more advanced use cases like AI.

Curran McCalley:
One key thing for us was not just building the platform, but building internal capability. We used a “two-in-a-box” approach, where each partner from Tegria was paired with a St. Luke’s team member. This helped with knowledge transfer and made sure our team was trained to manage the platform moving forward.

Dan Goldklank:
That’s so important—not just getting something built, but ensuring sustainability. Curran, can you talk about the tech stack and how you landed on it?

Curran McCalley:
Security was a top priority. We weren’t initially tied to a specific stack, but we knew we wanted a native Azure solution. That way, our existing monitoring and security tools would integrate seamlessly.

We chose Azure Databricks because it’s first-party in Azure, it integrates well with our environment, and it’s a familiar toolset—especially for analysts used to SQL. It helped us provide a secure, scalable, and user-friendly platform.

Dan Goldklank:
There are so many options out there—it can be overwhelming. Any advice for others starting this journey?

Curran McCalley:
Talk to other health systems who’ve been through it. We connected with several who had gone down different paths and learned from their experiences. That helped guide us toward the right tools and avoid some common pitfalls.

Dan Goldklank:
Let’s talk about value. What outcomes have you seen so far?

Chris Naylor:
We’re starting to see value by deprecating old data mines and consolidating systems. One big move is migrating a large SQL warehouse into Azure Databricks with Tegria’s help.

We didn’t build the platform around a single use case—we built the foundation first, and now we’re integrating use cases into it. We’ve identified around 120 potential use cases and are starting to prioritize and implement them.

Curran McCalley:
From an operational perspective, the biggest value is unifying our teams. We had a lot of siloed tools, teams, and metrics. Now, we’re training everyone on a shared platform and creating a common approach to analyzing data.

Dan Goldklank:
Is the partnership with Tegria ongoing?

Chris Naylor:
Yes. We completed Phase 1—standing up the infrastructure—and now we’re in Phase 2. The partnership has been key to training our internal team and helping them build the skills needed to maintain and grow the platform.

Dan Goldklank:
What’s next for you? What new initiatives are you looking at with Tegria?

Chris Naylor:
We’re exploring chatbot use cases, data governance, and Master Data Management (MDM). We’re also looking at tools that can live within the lakehouse model—we haven’t seen many out there yet, so we’re leaning on Tegria for guidance.

Curran McCalley:
We’re also working on using AI to reduce manual work—like filling out clinical registries. Nurses currently answer 50+ questions manually; with clean data and AI, we’re hoping to automate that process and free up their time.

Dan Goldklank:
It’s an exciting time for healthcare tech, especially with AI in the mix. Thank you all for joining us, and a huge thank you to our speakers. We’ve got a few minutes left for questions—anyone want to jump in?

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Tye Cook:
Welcome to our session on patient experience and consumer insights in healthcare. I’m Tye Cook from Tegria.

Tegria is a consulting and services company focused on helping organizations get the most out of their core technology investments—like EMRs and claims systems. We do this through consulting, process improvement, and managed services. I lead strategy and business development for our Access and Experience service line, which we’ll talk more about shortly. Jerome?

Jerome Pagani:
Thanks, Tye. I’m Jerome Pagani from the Health Management Academy. We’re a membership-based organization serving health system CXOs and leaders from outside the healthcare sector.

Today, we’ll share data and insights we’ve gathered that highlight key challenges and takeaways related to patient access—particularly from the provider perspective.

Here’s a slide we could spend the whole session on, but I’ll pull out a few highlights.

Access has evolved, influenced by external factors like third-party payers and their influence, and EMR adoption. Ideally, access should be a top priority for health executives—and closely linked to the broader consumer-driven push for more convenient healthcare experiences.

This chart reflects data from a survey of our members on their top priorities for 2025. Across roles, improving access to care is the top priority. But delivering consumer-centric care ranks much lower. That disconnect is part of the problem.

Tye Cook:
We see this disconnect in real scenarios. One client—a large, innovative organization—struggled with the number of messages going to physicians’ in-baskets. They tried using ChatGPT to reduce volume and saw an 85% drop. But after deeper analysis, they realized most of those messages shouldn’t have gone to a physician in the first place.

This highlights how operational processes need to evolve alongside technology. As the keynote from the Samsung clinic mentioned, the first step is process improvement. We often don’t need more tech—we need to better align operations to fully leverage what we already have.

Jerome Pagani:
Exactly. Designing for the people at the center—clinicians and patients—is essential. Patients are increasingly choosing providers based on experience.

Tye Cook:
We recently did a CHIME survey that revealed some surprising stats. Between 25–33% of patients said they would leave a health system if they couldn’t get an appointment when needed. A quarter would leave if their phone call wasn’t answered.

At the same time, many highly trained clinicians are underutilized—10 to 20% of their time goes unused. There’s a big gap between patient needs and actual access to care.

Jerome Pagani:
Why does access matter? First, it reflects broader systemic challenges in healthcare. Second, while everyone talks about the “digital front door,” access is often treated as a service, not as a product—and that distinction matters.

If patients are leaving over these access issues, it threatens decades of work in building integrated delivery networks. Competitors notice these weak points and are entering the market.

We conducted a “secret shopper” study with our members—analyzing what it’s like for a patient to access care. We compared large health systems to disruptors.

While health systems have made progress in some areas, disruptors are pulling ahead. More than half offer weekend appointments for primary care—compared to almost none among health systems.

Tye Cook:
If you’re not providing convenient access, someone else will. Disruptors are carving out pieces of the healthcare journey—like primary care—and making it frictionless. That builds loyalty.

We’re seeing innovation from tech companies and others. For example, one of the country’s largest dental service organizations is embedding nurses and PAs in dental offices and taking on Medicare Advantage contracts. These models are faster and cheaper—and they’re gaining ground.

Jerome Pagani:
Here’s a look at average wait times. Health systems average about 16.7 days to get an appointment. Disruptors get you in within a day—whether through digital scheduling or call centers. That’s a 10x gap, which is often what enables disruption in other industries.

Wait times for access centers were also significantly shorter among disruptors. People won’t stay on hold forever, and disruptors know that.

What’s causing the difference between call center and digital scheduling performance?

Good question. Part of it is structural—many systems don’t have centralized access centers. Patients may be calling individual clinics that don’t have visibility into the entire network.

Tye Cook:

Also, while most systems have the front-end tech (like portals), they lack sufficient clinical capacity behind those tools. We turned on the “digital front door,” but didn’t add any new “seats.” Expanding capacity requires hard work—figuring out where clinicians can realistically take on more.

Let’s get pragmatic. First, these initiatives must be operationally led. That used to be standard, especially during EMR adoption, but we’ve drifted. One CEO I heard of even eliminated the CIO role because tech recommendations weren’t helping operators.

Second, get meaningful data. That’s the foundation for change. Jerome, you’ve talked about viewing access as a product, not just a service.

Jerome Pagani:
Right. A product has features and benefits that can be marketed and measured. Think of KPIs that matter to patients—low friction, short wait times, ease of use. Some systems are even bundling these features into tiers for direct-to-employer models.

Tye Cook:
On the demand side, many health systems track days-to-appointment or abandonment rates. But the supply side needs work. Are you tracking clinical utilization by specialty and by provider? That directly impacts how much access you can offer—and where improvements are needed.

Once you get that foundation in place, operations can dig into the work: removing tasks from the wrong plates, opening more appointment blocks, streamlining scheduling, and delivering ROI on tech investments.

And that sets you up for strategic growth. Want to expand remote monitoring or telehealth? You now have the system to support it.

Jerome Pagani:
As you look ahead, remember that affordability is top of mind for both CXOs and patients. New companies are using price transparency to steer patients—potentially creating the “PBMs of access.”

Also, AI-enabled scheduling is on the horizon. Think of Pre-Check or Clear—you might soon be able to “pay to skip the line.” This is another reason to treat access like a product. It’s becoming commoditized, and competition is rising.

Thank you for your time and attention. We’re happy to take one or two questions if you have them.