CommonSpirit Health

This was another one of those Summit being super effective with their sponsorship activations.

I hope you guys are watching these CommonSpirit rehab-

Mm-hmm

... vignettes they're putting out with, with Naji, with, with Jas, with the, the rehab staff, the sports psychologists, the doctors from CommonSpirit.

Although they've been incredibly moving and also incredibly informative.

Yeah.

Um, they just keep doing the damn thing, so.

Uh, Prime Players, presented by Common Spirit.

Shout out to Common Spirit.

[laughs]

Um, they're all over the place out here in the mountain region.

HCA Healthcare's finance chief said in September that hospitals are behind the payers in using AI on claims and called the administrative cost on both sides enormous.

CommonSpirit Health's chief financial officer told investors on October second that the system had captured two hundred million dollars in financial value from artificial intelligence.

Though the published account of his remarks does not say which uses produced it.

Both are claims about money.

I did not like the text last night.

And by the way, KOA Common Spirit Health text line, 56690, that comeback wins are a negative stat, and you and Ben both hopped on that like, "Wow, what, what a great point."

Well, Grant, to be totally honest, right, there, there's two ways to look at something.

Two things can be true all at the same time.

Hey.

I don't know, man.

566-90, the Common Spirit Health text line.

How are you feeling about this game? Are you as positive as Rick Lewis about the Seahawks game on Thursday here in Denver?

Back on the other side on KOA.

KOA Common Spirit Health text line came in before when we had swamp music running with State Representative Ty Winter.

[laughs] Uh, "Jimmy, just tuned in." I knew it was you from the intro music.

[laughs] There you go.

I thought it was a really interesting conversation.

The owner of Liberty Vote, which purchased Dominion Voting Systems.

Of course, very controversial company in the last several years, but he laid out a lot of things, um, including one that, that hit from a, a listener text, 56690, KOA Common Spirit Health text line.

"Will he allow third-party inspection of the software? With 90,000 lines of code, any shenanigans are possible." And he answered the question by saying, yes, third-party audit is in that process of getting approval, certification, all of those things.

A small rural hospital should buy the few AI tools that fill a gap in its staffing or clearly pay their way and leave alone whatever it has no one to check.

CommonSpirit Health, which runs one hundred thirty-six hospitals in twenty-four states and twenty more through joint ventures, says artificial intelligence has brought it two hundred million dollars in financial value.

Its chief financial officer told investors on October second that a thirty-six-member governance committee had reviewed more than one hundred and twenty-two proposed uses and rejected twenty over bias, safety risks, and vendor redundancy, and that its clinical ethics team holds an absolute veto on any deployment, regardless of financial return.

Becker's account gives no breakdown or definition of the two hundred million dollars, and the figure does not appear in the system's annual report.

And one-time money should go on one-time things.

Grants are better spent on connections, hardware, and training, which last, than on subscriptions the hospital cannot carry once the grant runs out.

CommonSpirit can afford a committee of thirty-six to sort more than one hundred twenty-two ideas.

A twenty-five bed hospital should pick the two or three that fill its gaps and make sure someone is watching them.

But I think, um, uh, first and foremost, maybe just touch on what we're seeing from a few of the big national nonprofit Catholic health systems.

W- W- One of our fantastic reporters, Maddie Ashley, did a fantastic report this morning on the end of fiscal year twenty twenty-six for Ascension, CommonSpirit, Trinity Health, and, uh, Baylor Scott & White Health, obviously, uh, obviously headquartered down in Texas, large regional system, um, fantastically run and, and super prof- w- very, very profitable.

But I think just a quick little breakdown of how these systems performed at the end of the fiscal year twenty twenty-six, which ended at the end of June.

So three out of those four systems I've mentioned did see their e- e- improved operating performance.

So the Trinity Health, uh, swung from an operating loss up to about two hundred and eighty-one million operating gain.

Ascension and CommonSpirit also narrowed their operating losses, while Baylor, um, remained the strongest performer of that group, but is still holding around an eight point three percent operating margin.

So hugely, hugely successful, very well-run, profitable system there.

Of course, a very different market down in Texas.