Most health systems continue their digital transformation journeys with investments in innovations like virtual care platforms, AI-powered clinical tools, and remote patient monitoring innovations. But as investment accelerates, health system leaders are increasingly tasked with substantiating the return on that spending.
During a recent conversation hosted by Becker’s Healthcare and Xealth, digital innovators from top health organizations, including Palo Alto, Calif.-based Stanford Health Care and Boston-based Mass General Brigham, dug into strategies around leading enterprise organizations’ ROI conversations, and how to shift from fragmented digital implementation to enterprise-level impact.
Here are four key takeaways from the conversation:
1. Digital health’s value is core infrastructure
Rajesh Patel, MD, vice president of digital patient experience at Mass General Brigham, emphasized that digital health can no longer be treated as a side initiative.
“It’s core infrastructure,” Dr. Patel said. “There isn’t a way to do the work anymore unless you use digital systems.”
He noted that nearly every role within the health system hinges on digital platforms, from clinicians and administrative staff to environmental services teams. When those systems aren’t fully functioning, care delivery can stall. That reality changes how leaders must think about ROI.
Rather than evaluating digital tools as optional add-ons, Dr. Patel suggested executives frame them as foundational infrastructure that enables better care access, quality, and operational continuity. The challenge for organizations is that value flows across multiple domains, experience, quality, and financial performance. Because of its presence in multiple environments, it’s harder to isolate traditional return metrics.
Despite that crossover, Dr. Patel suggested clearly defined objectives and outcomes before advocating for solutions. “You’re not ready to talk about ROI if you can’t state the challenge in one single sentence,” he said.
2. Standardizing workflows is foundational to broader adoption
Todd Guenzburger, MD, former vice president and chief health information officer at Southern Illinois Healthcare, described the early push toward paperless systems as a period of digitizing existing workflows—often without simplifying them.
“You want to digitize care, but until you simplify the care experience for the clinician, it’s not going to get much simpler for the patient,” Dr. Guenzburger said.
He noted that fragmentation persists across many organizations, particularly when point solutions are layered onto already complex systems. For rural systems like Southern Illinois Healthcare, additional challenges include broadband limitations, financial considerations, and patient access barriers.
Dr. Guenzburger cautioned against chasing technology for its own sake. Instead, leaders should begin with a clearly defined challenge and measurable goals. This can be reducing no-shows, improving chronic disease management, or increasing preventive care engagement.
“Don’t start with the technology, but start with the problem that you’re trying to solve,” Dr. Guenzburger advised. “You’ve got to start slowly, and you’ve got to be very precise in thinking about the problem—then think outward.”
3. The role of an integration layer in unlocking the promise of virtual care
Leah Rosengaus, executive director of digital health at Stanford Health Care, described how virtual-first provider partnerships are helping the organization address access constraints in specialty care and behavioral health.
In psychiatry, Stanford reduced wait times from 66 days to 13 days by collaborating with vetted virtual behavioral health providers. For patients, that reduction represents more than operational efficiency—it shortens time to treatment.
For Ms. Rosengaus, success depends on tight clinical alignment and workflow integration.
“For the providers, this has to be all integrated in the electronic medical record, or it simply won’t happen,” Ms. Rosengaus shared. “We just have to figure out how to get the collaboration model to feel seamless, and that’s the job technology needs to play.”
Stanford uses an integration layer to connect external virtual providers into its clinical workflows, enabling closed-loop referrals and shared data visibility. That approach preserves continuity while expanding capacity and creating clearer opportunities to track outcomes, such as quality-of-life scores and organizational wins.
Panelists agreed that AI offers significant promise, particularly in scaling digitally enabled care models such as remote patient monitoring.
Ms. Rosengaus pointed to AI-driven triage tools and dynamic-alert systems as ways to reduce workforce burden and prioritize high-risk patients. However, she emphasized that technology must support redesigned care models rather than simply replicate in-person workflows in digital form.
Dr. Patel echoed that healthcare remains inherently complex.
“We haven’t solved healthcare,” Dr. Patel said. “It’s as complicated as the human body.”
While AI may eventually enable more tailored, semi-autonomous solutions, the three panelists agreed that leaders must continue to balance innovation with governance, risk management, and clinical oversight.
4. Guidance for ROI measurement today
All three panelists emphasized that ROI in digital health often unfolds over time and across multiple domains.
Dr. Guenzburger advised leaders to manage stakeholder expectations early and define success across clinical, operational, financial, and experiential metrics.
Dr. Patel recommended starting with concrete, near-term wins, hard-dollar savings or measurable utilization improvements—all while implementing solutions that can scale enterprise-wide.
Health systems, Ms. Rosengaus suggested, must simultaneously solve today’s operational pain points like improving access, reducing hospital readmissions, and managing capacity, while transforming care models.
In an era of intense margin pressure and executive scrutiny, the digital investment value dialogue needs to be more specific than ever. As the panelists made clear, when organizations align governance, workflow integration, and well-defined challenges, digital health can move from cost center to strategic engine in order to deliver measurable impact for clinicians, patients, clinicians, and the enterprise.