Regional One Solutions, LLC is a national leader in using data to drive improvements in the healthcare industry.
Two of its newest innovations, PX Engine and SmartRev, are helping Regional One Health and other healthcare systems improve the patient experience and recoup revenue.
Jani Radhakrishnan, Principal & CEO of Regional One Solutions, said the initiatives are inspired by her colleagues at Regional One Health and their passion for exceptional patient care.
When Jani Radhakrishnan develops AI-based solutions to improve patient care and hospital operations, her inspiration often comes from her colleagues at Regional One Health.
As Principal & CEO of Regional One Solutions, LLC, Radhakrishnan is a national leader in using data to drive culture change and real-world improvements in the healthcare industry.
She recently led development of two AI-based solutions that are gaining attention on a national scale: PX Engine, which helps improve patient experiences; and SmartRev, which seeks to recoup revenue lost to claim denials and appeals.
Regional One Solutions Principal & CEO Jani Radhakrishnan is inspired by her colleagues’ passion for patient care. “So much of our work starts with seeing what issues our employees at Regional One Health are facing and thinking about what ideas and solutions we can create to help,” she said.
“So much of our work starts with seeing what issues our employees at Regional One Health are facing and thinking about what ideas and solutions we can create to help,” Radhakrishnan said. “When we create something that can benefit others as well, we try to make it available.”
Those efforts started in 2022 when Radhakrishnan, who is also known as Jani Rad, led Regional One Health’s implementation of the DOMO platform, which uses data to drive decisions and actions. That inspired Regional One Solutions, which helps other healthcare organizations use data- and AI-powered solutions to improve patient care, financial performance, and operational efficiency.
Radhakrishnan embraces the opportunity to drive change not only at Regional One Health, but hospitals across the country. That is the impetus behind PX Engine and SmartRev.
PX Engine gave Radhakrishnan an opportunity to partner with bedside caregivers to make a difference for patients and organizations.
“As a Regional One Health employee, I know how much we emphasize patient experience and patient experience scores,” she said. “It’s not just a strategic goal. We wanted to look not only at numerical outcomes, but how we can support employees in providing the best care.”
PX Engine uses AI to analyze data from patient satisfaction surveys. Its statistical model reads numerical scores and free-response questions and identifies themes. From there, it highlights which aspects of the hospital experience are strongly correlated with overall positive scores.
For example, Radhakrishnan said, PX Engine might notice that patients who give the hospital high marks for communication are more likely to give it high marks overall. Or it might show a weaker link between liking the cafeteria food and giving an overall positive rating.
That allows leaders to identify what is most important to patients and their families. “It shows which areas you can improve to make people more likely to rate the hospital a 9 or 10 on patient satisfaction surveys,” Radhakrishnan explained. “Then, it can generate ideas for actual interventions nurses and caregivers can do at the bedside.”
Regional One Solutions developed PX Experience to help improve patient care and experiences. “We wanted to look not only at numerical outcomes, but how we can support employees in providing the best care,” says Jani Radhakrishnan, Principa & CEO.
“They can see the data, they can act on the data, and they can document what they’re doing,” she added. “Managers and directors get visibility as well, which leads to accountability.”
The development process not only helped create an AI model that can be used at Regional One Health and elsewhere, it inspired buy-in among staff.
“We started seeing some really cool early outcomes in terms of process and culture change,” Radhakrishnan said. “Nurses who were unsure of how AI would fit into their workflow started saying, ‘Wow, this is really cool!’ When you have early clinical users become future champions of these tools, you start the culture shift at the bedside, which I was really happy to see.”
PX Engine is already providing beneficial.
For example, Regional One Health improved responsiveness to patient call lights: “We’re in the 90th percentile!” Radhakrishnan said. “It’s a big improvement from where we were, and that’s based on changes that were made with buy-in from the nursing team.”
So far, PX Engine has been used in inpatient settings at the hospital. Now, Radhakrishnan is talking with leaders in the outpatient services about opportunities for implementation.
The success of PX Engine also helped inspire SmartRev.
After Radhakrishnan presented the early outcomes of PX Engine to hospital leadership, Chief Financial Officer Jim Proctor suggested developing something similar for the finance team.
“We asked, ‘What are the pain points? What works and what doesn’t work? What are the gaps?’” Radhakrishnan said. “We discovered that one of the biggest opportunities was around the denials and appeals process.”
SmartRev reviews individual account-level appeals to identify documentation improvements that could prevent denials, opportunities to negotiate with larger payors, etc.
SmartRev is designed to identify improvements that can prevent denials, opportunities to negotiate, and more. Regional One Solutions is already seeing revenue recovery and opportunities to continue those benefits in the future.
“Within three months, we identified $5 million of opportunity,” Radhakrishnan said. “Some of that is annual – we found the systemic patterns that will be opportunities every year so we can continue to see benefits in the future.”
To date, total recovery is $1.57 million at the patient level, and SmartRev has identified $6 million in potential recovery and $5 million at the system level.
SmartRev caught the attention of Amazon Web Services and Snowflake, a computer software company, leading to a collaborative sales process.
Those partnerships and collaborations help Regional One Solutions reach an even larger audience. Radhakrishnan joined forces with AWS to give a joint keynote address at DOMO’s March conference and is a sought-after presenter at industry events nationwide.
Radhakrishnan said it’s an exciting time for the healthcare industry – and she’s proud to help Regional One Health be at the forefront.
She’s also grateful for the support of a team that is eager to innovate. She noted Angel Parker-Heffner, vice president for operations, was instrumental in the PX Engine development process, while Robin Clanton, director for managed care, was a big support in creating SmartRev. Parker-Heffner and Clanton championed the products with their team and have even joined Radhakrishnan on webinars and at conferences to share their stories of success.
“Knowing Regional One Health’s legacy as the oldest hospital in Tennessee, it’s amazing that we’re the ones who are innovating!” she said. “There isn’t a lot of guidance on how hospitals can use AI, and I love the fact that we’re helping pave the way. We’re not scared of leaning into unknowns. We’re not scared of doing something just because there isn’t a rule book.”
“Not only are we paving the way for others, we’re bringing that technology to our own patients, so the people of Memphis are benefitting.”