Interview In Action – HIMSS 2022 Featuring Donna Roach from University of Utah Health
Episode 6619th March 2022 • This Week Health: Newsroom • This Week Health
00:00:00 00:12:02

Transcripts

right. Here we are from HIMS:

Yeah. University of Utah health and then it's the hospitals and clinics. So I have a responsibility for the hospitals and clinics.

Fantastic.

And you just got off stage. Wow. What were you, what were you talking about up there?

, mainly about telehealth and kind of how we, , had to respond during COVID and what were the learnings and how we go about, , taking those learnings and moving forward. What

did we learn? Actually,

a lot of good lessons, , one size doesn it all in my mind.

, it was a, so, so

within healthcare, within your span, You would have different telehealth solutions for different? I did

use case we had a multitude. We have, , standardized in some areas, but you know how you might do a primary care visit is very different than how you might do a specialty follow up.

So you have to, you wanna standardize, but you have to take into account the, you know, the uniqueness. Yeah. What you would do in behavioral health would be very different than what I might do in a pediatric follow up. So,

so are you doing that mostly through my chart or are you doing that other ways?

A lot of it through, , my chart and the tools or the tools that are in epic.

Yeah. So use, use the stuff you have. Yeah. , one of the things I heard is that, or actually, I just know the, the stats are a, you know, over 10% of the calls fail. Either the end user, it was too tactical for the end user. They couldn't figure out like one step or whatever. It's it's the, it's the traditional it's, it's so easy.

I can't, you know, we're looking at it through our user experience, but then you have your, you know, 80 year old, whatever who's going, you know, didn't click that last button. Yeah. , did you do anything to simplify from, from there? End, you know, we, so

we didn't do like, like you were talking about the year olds.

I don't know if that was our target audience. , we do help in preparing somebody for a telehealth visit. To test out their audio to test out their video. Oh, so you have, you have a pre-call we have a pre-call or a, , kind of a, a note that we can send out ahead of time just to say, you know, have this and this and this ready, test it out, make sure it's working because you know, for some reason the video doesn't work our job.

So pick up the phone and do it by phone. Right. So, you know how much. How much do you really in certain aspects have to see the video of it. And if you can do it by a telephone

call, that's what you know, I wanted to see from those stats. It said this many failed, but I wonder how many people picked up the phone and did that because a majority of telehealth, the stats would say almost 50% of telehealth that was done during the pandemic was done.

Just plain old telephone. Yeah. Telephone convers. Yeah. It's amazing. Nothing wrong with it. Your, , MyChart usage went up a little bit, went huge,

crazy, and what's nice is to have that base and have that, , data in there to improve upon kind of the patient's experience within using what's in MyChart is great.

So we can do can schedule visits. We actually brought up a, , , COVID testing capability. By registering through my chart. Okay. And then you would go on site, get the COVID test done and, , be able to get your results in a relatively short period of time

turnaround. Is there any of that kind of stuff?

Like COVID testing? We, we spend a lot of time figuring out those kind of things. Hopefully there won't be that great need for COVID testing, but is there any, do you think where we look at that and go look, , we can apply this, this scheduling, , , you know, the, the appoint, yeah, just the whole thing. We just automated the heck out of it.

Is there anywhere else we were gonna apply this?

Well, behavioral health is key. I think that is a focus that we will continue to have and continue to improve upon because, well, one, we have a huge behavioral health hospital and, and clinic and an intense outpatient clinic. But we know that that is an untapped need in, throughout our community and throughout the United States.

So that will be an area that we will leverage more and more.

So you're in Utah now. Mm-hmm wow. Loving it, loving it. I mean, because you're an outdoor person, you like, you love the outdoors. Yeah. , talk to me about recruit

it's. It's difficult. We have you live in a beautiful place. People should, but we have our unemployment rate is 1.5.

Wow. So think of what that's doing to us. We've got burnout of our providers, our nurses, our staff. Well,

I was just talking with Eric Decker, , CSO from Intermountain. And they're now hiring in all. Oh yeah. I don't know if he said 50 states, but most states. Yeah. Have you gotten to that point?

Well, we. We try.

So we're a state org owned organization, right? It is sometimes very difficult for us to hire from states and their employment laws and having to follow them. So it's an expensive proposition. There's certain states that we really just can't, or we are, are very careful about not hiring from those because of the way we would have to follow their employment laws, , for our employee.

So you really, I mean, that will, that, that's your pre I like to say to people it's like, they think, you know, CIOs have like full reign. They can do whatever. Why don't you just start hiring from other states? Well, there's, there's, I mean, you have to go through HR, you have to have an organization practices.

So that's one of the constraints you're gonna have to work around and figure out 1% employee rate. Yeah. Hey, Intermountain has some really good people. You should go over there and

hire those you. Yeah, well, they would love that brain Smith. Now. I know he stepped out over to grab. He would like

Don, we need to talk.

, but, but that is some, some of what's happening in the industry right now, as you see it is. , and, and the ones I really feel for are the, , the organizations that are in smaller markets. And then somebody else comes in with these rates SW in and, and they're like, Hey, it's an epic analyst. They already understand this.

We just,

we just, but I'll tell you our C H R O, which I just, I love her to death. Her focus is people first. Right. So we have a people first philosophy, culture retention. Yeah. Okay. And the culture and what we, you know, and it sounds a little trite, right? Like, well, it's all about our culture and we really, , You know, have, , we think of our employees first and we put 'em on that, you know, pedestal, but we really do.

I mean, that's we think about, and we incorporate what our employees are looking for. We address their concerns. We do quarterly surveys. Look at those results quarterly. Wow. At the dress we call 'em wellbeing surveys. , I find them fascinating. I came from Ascension was the same way in terms of the survey process.

I feedback is feedback. Whether it's it's good or bad, it's still feedback. And then you can address it. But my employees are telling me they love the mobile workforce. They love being able to work from home. They would like the capability to come in one needed. I'm like, we can, we can work around that. , they, you know, it's they want.

More, , inclusivity around. So what's going on in the organization, cuz when you step out right of the organization, you don't know all the activities and stuff. So we're, we have a great, , committee that kind of pulls people back in to keep them excited and , you know, , having fun at work. We did, , , over the summer we did these groups where we had, , hikes of 10.

And so somebody was the hike leader and then we would schedule them at all different times of the day. And on the weekend, did you go on any hike?

Yes, I

did. I had so much fun. Where'd you go? , it was kind of, , boy, you're gonna ask me a question. I'm not that good with, , you're not good with geography.

I'm not, I'm not, , north of, , salt lake city, about 20 minutes away, but it was, was such a fun hike. And what I was so shocked at is. People are riding their e-bikes on a same path, like a foot wide. And I'm like, are you kidding me? So, , but it was fun. We did it at night, , close to, you know, six o'clock at night and made it up to the top of the mountain and got back down by 7,

7 30.

Yeah. When you talked about Essention at St. Joe's we did the same thing. There's quarterly pulse surveys. Yeah. And I had to sit down and talk to HR and it's interesting when you do those things. We, we were able to just look at the numbers and they say, you probably have a manager problem here. Yeah. And here,

oh definitely.

You can see it. And I get, I, my group is one of the highest returns I get about 77% return on my surveys. I, I, I, I shoot over everybody I else and pretty much the organization. So it's fun to see that feedback. And I want that feedback. Yeah. Cause I can't, you know, Everybody working remote. I can't touch base with them.

I can't go into their office. I can't have this big staff meeting. This is the way that they can gimme feedback. And it's great. I mean, we learn a lot about, so what are the pain points for them and what, how can we help them be better employees and, and consumers in our community? I mean, their feedback is wonderful.

You seem like you're having a good time. I

am. It's. I love the I'm. This is academics, right? I love the physicians. , the, the, , chairs of the departments are amazing. Dr. Good, who is supposed to be here for the conference? , myself and Dr. Stronger stepping in for him. He is an, an amazing, , Dean of the medical school and senior vice president of health sciences.

He comes from a computer background. So when I talked to him about cybersecurity or stuff, he's like, yeah, I got it. I understand. And he, I don't have to, I don't have to, , sell him on why this is so important. He's like I get it, Donna. And you know, we're working towards improving the.

That is all the time we have, I man, I could, we could keep going for another 20 minutes.

All we hit on was really culture and people. Yeah. I know. That's fun. We could talk cybersecurity. We could talk a bunch of stuff.

We could, we could, I could go down a cybersecurity hall that,

yeah. Yeah. I just, I just sat through the, , the couple of the sessions at the cyber and that it was fascinating.

Then I went over to the, , the, , , , nurse informatics group is getting together. And it's about, it's about 200 some odd people in there. Yeah. That's great. It's crazy. The, the really cool sharing that's going on in that room. So yeah. And I think

people are all like, they, they bet on hold and now it's coming back and people are excited about the

thing back.

And, and it's this thing of, Hey, we did this during COVID. Oh, we did this. Oh, we did this. And you could see the wheels just spinning. Like I could see how we could do things very different than we've done 'em before. Yeah, exactly. 📍 So a lot of exciting things happening, Donna. Thank you.

Well, that's always, yeah, thanks.

Appreciate it. Appreciate it.

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