Lessons from Rush University Medical Center: How to evaluate, implement, and grow with an AI RCM Partner

CDI leaders across hospitals and health systems face similar AI-driven concerns. Will it replace their teams, slow them down, or disrupt daily operations? At Rush University Medical Center, CDI leaders prioritized an AI solution to support their teams with complex cases, extending their expertise, not replacing it.

In this session, Debra Levin, Clinical Documentation Improvement Director, and Sarah Jackson, Clinical Documentation Integrity Manager, both at Rush University Medical Center, will walk through how their team demonstrated the value of AI solutions, evaluated technology partners, and drove adoption. Debra and Sarah will share:

• Vendor selection criteria: How Rush built its evaluation framework for AI vendors, including the must-haves, non-negotiables, and red flags that separated serious contenders, and how leadership aligned clinical, financial, and technical stakeholders.
• Implementation tips and results: Details from a phased rollout across a centralized CDI department spanning three facilities; what worked, what didn’t, and what they would do differently next time
• Overcoming objections: Why the team's sharpest objections during evaluation became the strongest evidence that Rush's criteria had worked — and how that early skepticism turned into some of the tool's biggest advocacy.
• What’s next: Now 6+ months in, what does the future look like and how are they measuring success?

For CDI leaders evaluating their own AI partner or navigating pushback from their team, this session offers a real playbook: what to vet for before you sign, how to implement across multiple facilities, how to move a resistant team to adoption, and what denial reduction has looked like for similar health systems.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the must-have criteria, non-negotiables, and red flags used to evaluate AI vendors, and describe how Rush aligned clinical, financial, and technical stakeholders around a final decision.
• Translate Rush's phased rollout across a multi-facility CDI department — including early objections that turned into advocacy — into practical lessons for planning and managing their own implementation.
• Apply Rush's approach to measuring post-implementation success to define their own KPIs and roadmap, 6+ months and beyond.