Health systems whose budgets were squeezed dry during the pandemic are creeping back into the black, but they’re far from the days when they had cash to blow on flashy tech pilots that might never pan out.
Instead, hospital leaders are increasingly cautious about their spending and the technology they test out, insisting that new products demonstrate concrete, measurable benefits to patients without disrupting an already fatigued clinical workforce — a marked difference from the pre-pandemic pilot heyday, experts tell STAT.
“I have a certain amount of goodwill credits I’ve built up with my physicians and I want to use those judiciously in the pilots we do,” said Paul Fu, who leads digital health efforts at City of Hope, a group of health systems focused on cancer and chronic conditions spanning California, Arizona, Illinois, and Georgia.