Presbyterian Healthcare Expands AI to 200 Clinicians in System-Wide Push

PALO ALTO, CA – February 03, 2026 – Presbyterian Healthcare Services (PHS), a major integrated health system in the Southwest, announced today it is expanding the GW RhythmX AI Precision Care Platform to its entire cohort of 200 primary care clinicians. The move represents one of the first full-system deployments of a precision care AI platform, signaling a significant shift from isolated pilots to enterprise-wide adoption in the healthcare industry.

The expansion follows a highly successful pilot program that demonstrated the platform's ability to reduce administrative burdens on doctors, surface critical patient health information, and deliver thousands of personalized treatment recommendations. For PHS, the initiative is a strategic imperative designed to combat rising clinical complexity, enhance the quality of patient care, and fortify its position in value-based care arrangements.

From Hours to Minutes: AI Tackles Clinician Burnout

For the 200 primary care clinicians at PHS, the GW RhythmX platform promises a fundamental change to their daily workflow, directly targeting one of the most pervasive issues in modern medicine: administrative burnout. During the initial pilot, clinicians reported that tasks previously requiring hours of manual chart review could now be accomplished in minutes.

The AI platform integrates directly into the Epic Electronic Health Record (EHR) system, creating a single, consolidated view of the patient. It synthesizes a patient's entire medical history, payer criteria, guideline-based recommendations, and even social drivers of health, presenting the most critical information to the clinician at the point of care. In the pilot phase alone, this capability helped clinicians identify over 200 critical health conditions across more than 10,000 patient encounters and generated 17,000 hyper-personalized treatment responses.

"We have patients who drive two hours for a 30-minute visit, and so we have to make every minute count," said Lori Walker, MSN, CNP, Chief Medical Information Officer at PHS. "The GW RhythmX platform gives our clinicians consolidated, critical information at the point of care and an AI assistant that answers patient-specific question personalized to their condition. This helps them navigate growing demands on time and clinical complexity while helping them stay focused on what matters most – the patient."

This efficiency gain is not just theoretical. One clinician involved in the pilot noted that the platform reduced their preparation time for seeing new patients from what was typically a two-to-three-hour process down to just one hour. By automating data hunting, the AI allows physicians to spend less time on their computers and more time engaging in meaningful conversations with their patients. Walker added, "This isn't AI because it's trendy. It's AI that is having a real impact on improving access, elevating quality, and delivering a better experience for our patients and clinicians."

The 'Triple Value' Equation in Value-Based Care

Beyond improving the clinician experience, the system-wide deployment is a calculated move to succeed in the increasingly dominant model of value-based care, where providers are reimbursed based on patient outcomes rather than the volume of services rendered.

Darren Shafer, D.O., President of Presbyterian Medical Group, explained that the organization seeks solutions that deliver what he calls "triple value." "It must benefit the patient, it must support the clinicians delivering the care, and it must create measurable value for the health system," he stated. "When all three intersect, that's when transformation truly occurs."

The GW RhythmX platform is engineered to hit all three targets. By providing clinicians with precise, AI-driven insights, it helps ensure more accurate diagnosis and documentation of disease severity, including Hierarchical Condition Category (HCC) coding. This is critical for securing appropriate reimbursement in value-based contracts and accurately reflecting the health risks of a patient population. Research suggests such platforms can unlock significant financial gains for a health system, potentially generating upwards of $50 million in annual incremental benefits through more accurate risk adjustment, optimized billing, and increased patient throughput.

"After reviewing various AI solutions, we found RhythmX AI best matched our vision and was most capable of making large-scale impact," Shafer said. He noted that improving quality and patient outcomes directly drives financial performance, and that AI is one of the few tools capable of moving all these metrics simultaneously.

Closing the Care Gap for Diverse Communities

For a health system like PHS, which serves a vast and diverse population across New Mexico's urban and rural landscapes, the AI platform also serves a crucial role in advancing health equity. Many patients face significant barriers to care, including long travel distances for appointments. The platform's ability to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of each visit is therefore paramount.

A key feature highlighted by PHS leaders is the platform's ability to surface social drivers of health (SDOH)—the non-medical factors like housing, transportation, and food security that can dramatically impact a person's well-being. New Mexico has significant social needs, and by flagging these issues directly within the clinical workflow, the AI enables providers to connect patients with embedded community health workers and other resources to address these underlying barriers.

This capability transforms a standard 30-minute check-up into a more holistic intervention, ensuring that the care plan accounts for the patient's complete reality, not just their clinical data. By helping to identify undiagnosed conditions and predict disease progression, the technology aims to deliver the right care, at the right time, to every patient, regardless of their location or background.

A Blueprint for Responsible AI Adoption

The PHS deployment stands out in an industry landscape littered with promising AI pilots that never reach production. While most healthcare leaders are optimistic about AI, many initiatives stall due to concerns over security, data readiness, integration costs, and a lack of trust from clinicians.

PHS and GW RhythmX appear to have navigated these challenges through a deliberate and collaborative approach. "This kind of enterprise-wide impact requires far more than AI models," said Deepthi Bathina, CEO of GW RhythmX. "It requires a great user experience that clinicians love, deep integration into clinical workflows, and explainable and transparent AI that builds trust."

This focus on trust and usability was key to winning over physicians. Dr. Shafer noted that even clinicians who were initially skeptical became champions of the platform after witnessing its positive impact on their workflow and patient interactions firsthand. PHS leadership worked closely with the technology provider to agree upon the clinical guidelines and conditions the AI would use, ensuring the insights were both relevant and trustworthy.

"Responsible use of AI in healthcare is foundational to where healthcare is going and the RhythmX platform will help support our progress toward better patient care," Shafer concluded. As PHS rolls out the platform to all 200 primary care clinicians, the broader healthcare industry will be watching closely to see if this "thoughtful, mindful" deployment provides a scalable blueprint for how to successfully integrate artificial intelligence into the art of medicine.