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Physician executive Christina Johns discusses her article “Modernizing health care with AI and workflow.” Christina explains how clinicians in the U.S. are facing unprecedented burnout due to administrative burdens that detract from patient care. She explores how artificial intelligence can serve as a supportive tool rather than a replacement by streamlining documentation and coding tasks to allow for more meaningful doctor-patient interactions. The conversation highlights the importance of moving away from fragmented point solutions toward a comprehensive care enablement platform that modernizes operations and restores the human connection in medicine. Join us to discover how technology can ethically revitalize the medical profession.

This episode is presented by Scholar Advising, a fee-only financial advising firm specializing in providing advice for DIY investors. If you want clear, actionable strategies and confidence that your financial decisions are built on objective advice without AUM fees or commissions, Scholar is designed for you. Physicians often navigate complex compensation structures, including W-2 income, 1099 work, production bonuses, and practice ownership. Scholar’s highly credentialed advisors guide high-earners through decisions like optimizing investments for long-term tax efficiency and expert strategies for financial independence. Every recommendation is tailored to the financial realities physicians face.

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Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi. Welcome to the show. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast. Today, we welcome Christina Johns. She is a physician executive. Today’s KevinMD article is “Modernizing health care with AI and workflow.” Christina, welcome to the show.

Christina Johns: Thank you so much for having me. I am really delighted to be here.

Kevin Pho: All right. Before we get into your article, just briefly share your story.

Christina Johns: Sure. I am a pediatric emergency physician by training. So I did pediatrics then a fellowship in pediatric emergency medicine. I thought I was going to be in academic medicine forever and did the tertiary children’s hospital emergency department thing. And then, kind of by fluke, I joined a startup. That was really where I got the bug to lean into innovation and some strategy and communications work. That led me to where I am presently, working for a company that is called IKS Health, where our mission really is to make the clinical experience more about patient care and less about administrative activity—more getting back to core versus chore, as we say.

Kevin Pho: As you know, we live in a very exciting time. Various AI-related tools are emerging. It is a little bit of the Wild West with a lot of health care startups trying to best utilize AI and incorporate it into physician workflow. I see that all the time on this podcast and in my work as a primary care physician. So tell us about your KevinMD article and your vision of integrating AI in our workflows.

Christina Johns: Clearly, AI is not going away. I think the key piece is to be very mindful about it. What I really like about what I am doing now is the real acknowledgement that AI needs to be monitored, kept in check, and always working alongside what we call “human in the loop.” So making sure that there really are a ton of those checks and balances.

But the biggest piece that is important—and as doctors, I don’t think we are really very good at understanding the real nitty-gritty and looking under the hood of some of these AI solutions and other vendors, for example, that we use in the workplace (whether it’s our EHR, other dictation, or the backend in billing for some of us). What I really like to see are what we call “connected workflows” where AI can really work across the continuum of the patient visit. That way, it saves time and is oftentimes a good safety check and balance. There are a lot of good use cases for it. So I am a believer.

Kevin Pho: When you say physicians don’t look under the hood, what are physicians missing when it comes to a lot of these AI-related tools?

Christina Johns: I think that people don’t really understand kind of what they are really getting. Number one, I think physicians don’t understand the full value. Oftentimes, whether you are part of a hospital or a big group practice, you just sort of get handed: “Hey, I guess we are going to use this vendor, this EHR, or we are changing billing.” Most physicians I think don’t really understand what goes into that decision-making. What is the ROI? What is the real value add? We are doctors, right? We care for patients, and that is what we do. Sometimes the rest of the patient experience and the business experience really doesn’t happen for us. I think it is important that we all do that.

Kevin Pho: So tell us exactly which tools we are talking about. Of course, there is a whole genre of AI scribes, and now we have AI trying to be incorporated into the workflow. So tell us the specific tools that you are referring to in this specific article.

Christina Johns: There is certainly the scribing piece, right? That is the most obvious one, and that is the one that doctors use. But there are other types of AI tools that can be used, for example, for automated prescription refill. KevinMD is on a statin; he has been on a statin forever and a day, and he needs a prescription refill. You can use AI to sort of determine: Has there been a lipid profile for Kevin in the most requisite amount of time before the next appointment? Get that lab started. AI can be trained to do all of that kind of stuff with specific workflows very automatically so that it can save time and make the patient experience better too.

Kevin Pho: When you said that sometimes physicians don’t know what goes on behind the hood or under the hood and they are just given a tool, are there specific differences between the vendors or are there specific questions that physicians will ask before using a particular AI tool?

Christina Johns: I love that question because I think that really gets to the heart of it. When you are in practice and find out that some new solution is coming your way, I think first of all it is important to understand: What exactly does it do? What is the expected ROI? Is this saving me time? Is this saving me money? Is it both? What does the patient’s journey look like? What does this mean for the rest of my coworkers and my staff?

I think the other piece—and this is the part that really gets me—is: How does it connect to other parts of my workflow? We have got a point solution vendor for our scribing, a different vendor doing scheduling, and a different one yet again for all of our billing and rev cycle. I think that those types of things are important to understand: How does it work together, and is there a place where that can be all connected?

Kevin Pho: In your article, you wrote that 77 percent of physicians are dedicating significant time to non-reimbursable tasks. So tell us about how AI can alleviate some of those tasks for physicians. We briefly talked about things like AI scribing and prescription refills. So speaking today (this episode will go out in early January 2026), what are some of the common ways AI can reduce some of those non-reimbursable works?

Christina Johns: The system can be taught on the business side, certainly for insights into patient scheduling so that you don’t have gaps there. I am really thinking about this not just as physicians, but the whole clinical team, because I think it is important to acknowledge that that is how the operation hums: when everything works together. So it is thinking about schedule optimization, things like that. You can use AI for your staff for calling for reminders, for example. You can use it as I talked about for prescription refills and for abstracting data from the medical record so that you are not fishing around asking: “Where on earth was that CT report from eight months ago?” things like that. I think that we are really headed into a brand new space where there is not only clinical efficiency but business efficiency as well.

Kevin Pho: Your hope, certainly with these AI tools decreasing the amount of non-reimbursable work, is that that can help physicians practice at the top of their license, right?

Christina Johns: That is really the thing, right? We want to get back to doctors being doctors and doing what we do best: spending more time with our patients, not rushing in with your laptop and not looking at the patient, tapping away at the keyboard just so that you can get through your charting with maybe only an hour left of extra charting at the end of the day, for example.

Kevin Pho: So there have been studies, as you know recently with these AI scribes, showing that the time saved per visit is actually quite nominal, but the major benefit is with decreased cognitive burden and decreased burnout. Is there clear data from your end showing that with AI scribes, for instance, they really decrease a significant amount of charting time?

Christina Johns: They certainly can. This is a really hard one to answer I think on an individual level basis, on an individual clinician, because I think there is some work upfront. Most of these types of machine learning learn as they go. So the more that you use them, the better they are. I think it can be a tricky answer, and I get why the data is a little bit all over the place right now. That is why I think doing some of the front-end work as you evaluate the potential use of some of these tools—to make sure that it will fit right for your workflow and your practice, not just for you but for the rest of your team—is crucial.

Kevin Pho: Let’s talk more from an organizational standpoint. You mentioned that only 13 percent of health care leaders have a clear strategy for integrating AI. So that leads me to think that a lot of them are using it kind of in a piecemeal or a haphazard fashion. Tell us more about the stories behind that statistic. What are you seeing in terms of how organizations are implementing AI, and do they have a comprehensive AI strategy at all?

Christina Johns: I think that is the new frontier, right? That is where I think that organizations are really going to see more of that. I think getting with the program—having a chief AI officer, for example, who can really help have a coordinated, integrated strategy in larger health systems—is key. But I think that is a big issue because you have got the backend office people thinking: “Hey, here is a great tool here,” and you might have the front-end scheduling folks, and it is all different and not connected. When it is not connected, it can’t work together to really maximize the potential impact.

Kevin Pho: You mentioned you are a pediatric emergency physician and now you are in a health AI startup. Talk to me about the voice of clinicians when it comes to developing these tools. Tell me how important your clinical experience is when it comes to introducing new tools. And in general, do these AI startups value the input of practicing clinicians?

Christina Johns: You know, this was one of the key points that drew me to this organization: It was just such a priority to have a team of clinicians who really could speak out and not just say: “Oh, hey, this is a great idea,” but comment on that idea regarding what practice really looks like, so this is what will work and this is what doesn’t work. The notion of being data-driven and testing a solution was a really big piece.

I do think that, look, we doctors can be a tough tribe when it comes to having new products and solutions introduced to us. So I think that any company that is worth its salt will absolutely have clinicians on—certainly consulting, if not part of the team—as they construct their offering. That was very important to me when I made my job change.

Kevin Pho: In pretty much every field, people are worrying about AI taking other people’s jobs and really impacting the human workforce. As it relates to health care specifically, how do you see the infiltration of AI affecting the human health care workforce?

Christina Johns: Look, I am a real believer that AI is never going to replace humans. That just doesn’t work, right? And it doesn’t work in the concept of health care because of the second syllable of that word: “care.” I think that there is always going to need to be the human connection, and I will fight like heck to make sure that that is something that always sticks around. It has got to be something that enhances your job. It doesn’t replace it, and it isn’t just physicians. It is I think every staff member along the journey. I think that is important. It should enhance what we do. It should make us better. But it needs to make us better as we care for our patients, not as any machine learning does.

Kevin Pho: So what do you see in the immediate future, the rest of 2026? What are some of your crystal ball predictions as it relates to AI and the physician workflow? What is coming down the pipeline?

Christina Johns: As with a lot of new technology, there is this kind of honeymoon phase and then there is a little bit of a disillusionment phase. The question is: Are we in that disillusionment phase where there will be a lot more critical appraisal of these tools as more of them are coming out into the market? Will there be more end-to-end comparison of them? I think there will certainly be much more solid, robust, data-driven literature about them—about their capabilities, about their shortfalls, and how they can be improved. I will love to see that refinement of the tools that are doing well, that are consistently showing up and working for physicians.

I think also there is going to be more of a comfort level that we have as a profession where we are getting used to that in our workflow. Then when I think we are more used to it, we have a stronger voice to be able to really call out what is working and what isn’t so that we can refine this, make it work for us, and mostly make it work for our patients.

Kevin Pho: We are talking to Christina Johns. She is a physician executive. Today’s KevinMD article is “Modernizing health care with AI and workflow.” Christina, let’s end with some take-home messages that you want to leave with the KevinMD audience.

Christina Johns: Fantastic. Thanks so much for having me. First of all, what I would say is again: Understand what you are getting. Don’t be afraid, but understand what you are getting. That means ask the questions: Let me see a demo. How does this work? What is really the value? And then: What are the gaps in my own current workflow that need to be addressed? I think so many times people think: “Oh gosh, this is new and flashy. I must have it.” But make sure you understand what your pain points are before you jump in.

Kevin Pho: Christina, thank you so much for sharing your perspective and insight. Thanks again for coming on the show.

Christina Johns: Thank you.