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Today on This Week Health.

 I look at the younger women in our circles and how they're juggling small children and school at home.

And all that they had to deal with was just incredible Through their testimonials, just share how truly life changing that they felt the experience was in giving them the confidence to lean in, to raise their hand, and really think about how we all work.

together

 Welcome to Town Hall, a show hosted by leaders on the front lines with interviews of people making things happen in healthcare with technology. My name is Bill Russell, the creator of This Week Health, a set of channels and events dedicated to keeping health IT staff current and engaged.

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Hello, I'm Sue shade, principal at Starbridge advisors. And one of the hosts for the town hall show on the community channel today. My guest is Lisa stump, SVP chief information and digital transformation officer at Yale new Haven health. Lisa and I have known each other now for a few years. She has a lot to offer to our audience as one of the leading CIOs in the industry.

And I just wanna say welcome Lisa.

Thank you Sue. Happy to be here.

All right. This should be fun. So let's start by you introducing yourself, your role, your work at Yale new Haven health, and with, having in your title, little transformation officer, I wanna understand the scope of your role beyond just the traditional CIO.

Sure. So, I have been with the Yale new ha Haven health system now for 26 years. My current role as CIO and digital transformation officer encompasses both the Yale new Haven health system and the Yale school of medicine. So I support both our Academic and the health system, clinical enterprise.

My span as you noted includes the digital transformation component, which is really focused on both our clinical telehealth. Remote patient monitoring, consumer facing aspects of digital health as well as all of the technologies that support our patients and consumers through finding the care that they need accessing it, booking their appointments but really putting a big emphasis and focus on becoming far more consumer centric in the way that we engage with and interact with our patients and consumer.

Excellent. Excellent. So tell us about some of the current initiatives that you and your team are working on and how have things changed since 21? When we were still in the height of the pandemic.

Yeah. You I, I think you've probably had lots of CIOs tell you that the pandemic for all of its, challenges and just, horrible.

Impacts on our society and on healthcare in many ways there were some silver linings that arose from that and that we've continued to build upon. So, certainly the role of telehealth video visits and asynchronous, store and forward visits really were accelerated by the need to deliver care.

Very differently and not in our traditional hospital and doctor's offices. And so we are continuing to accelerate and build upon our capabilities and the outreach to our patients through those modalities. I think getting through the pandemic was also very dependent upon our data and really understanding in real time.

What was happening with capacity with throughput and certainly clinically with our patients who were presenting with either symptoms of COVID or certainly testing positive for COVID all the work that we did to stand up the testing enterprise as well as the vaccine enterprise really showed us how agile and nimble we can be.

We sometimes don't always. Express those capabilities. But I think those were really valuable lessons for us as an organization as well. Our key areas of focus coming out of that really are on rebuilding. We recognize that patient volume shifted in many ways not just to a virtual care modality but you know, many patients deferred.

Care altogether as a result of their fears and concerns about coming back in. And so we have put extensive effort into that outreach engagement again drawing patients back in. Ensuring that we have the capacity and again, leveraging our data to manage that more effectively we are focused on access.

I would say for us as an institution, it is if not the top priority, a top priority we historically have not been as I think aggressive in adopting. Some of what we'd probably consider pretty table stakes capabilities in terms of direct scheduling of appointments and other digital self-service tools.

So we are very much putting the. pedal to the metal and accelerating all of those access efforts. Our financial performance is, a top priority as well. I think many organizations across the country facing that same. Outcome of the pandemic and it is another opportunity, you know, I, firmly believe in letting no crisis go to waste the need to become more efficient and cost effective is a real, signal and call to adopt robotic process automation, artificial intelligence tools.

And we're looking at that from the back office right up to the bedside on, how we complement. Our human capital with technology to make them more efficient, reducing their cognitive burden but overall, managing what we're still facing in terms of supply and demand mismatch in labor and, the work ahead of us.

So, those are probably some of our biggest areas of focus, right.

That's great. A lot going on. Certainly I think there might be a good segue here to the innovation center. Can you tell us a little bit about that and that fits what you're talking about?

Yeah, so, we have a center for healthcare innovation that is really a partnership between the Yale new Haven health system and the Yale school of medicine, really Yale university, more broadly recognizing.

The pool of talent and capabilities that exist in the university in terms of developing new products, tools solutions, both clinical and in the, digital space. The center for healthcare innovation in the health system was really meant to formalize and put structure to that activity.

And the partnership that the health system could offer to our university colleagues. And so we have a small, but mighty team led by a director and supported by some really talented innovation analysts who are really scanning the landscape. As, as we continued. I think prioritize our partnership with outside in, early startup or early stage companies but really a focus on our inside out innovation, really looking to harness the knowledge within our own workforce and our clinicians around what their pain points are and how we might solve them.

We have partnered with a couple of venture capital firms More national one sort of local to the new Haven region. And then within Yale university Yale ventures has just been stood up and created. And again in partnership with the health system, we look to create that environment and strengthen it with the health system providing essentially a learning laboratory as we think about the problems that are facing healthcare.

That's great. You're in an excellent position in a university environment to yes. Have that focus on innovation and leverage what's going on in the university with some of your resources, but also then the lab as you call it right within the health system. It's great.

Yep. Yep.

Another good segue to question I wanna ask you, which is what are some of the challenges dealing with two different constituent fees in university environment and the health.

Yeah. I think we are aligned on mission and values. I think sometimes with two very strong constituencies as you can imagine, there are sometimes differences of opinion on approach and how we go forward and navigating funds flow between the two organizations.

I've found as a leader in this space, Keeping people focused at the top of that, where I started, around the mission and vision is really powerful way to help keep people aligned and driving through some of what can sometimes feel like, politics or, other complexities in any big organization.

Right. And so, I'm pretty proud of the culture around our technology and our digital work is often cited in both organizations and across the enterprise as Switzerland, if you will, right. That it is very strongly viewed as a joint. It has been a unifying force.

Even when it felt like other things might be pulling us apart we've managed to come together in that space. And I think we, I, my team, I'm privileged to lead a very talented, committed team in this space. And we take pride in being that and taking that role for the institu.

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 that's

great. And I'm smiling. The thought of politics in an organization like yours. I've been there as well and as long as you can focus on what it is you need to deliver. Yeah. The politics. That's great. The last thing I want to talk to you about is your involvement with and we talked, about this before.

I know Lisa yes. With a program that focused on developing. women Leaders tell us about that, your involvement with it, some of the key learnings and successes of that program. That would be great.

Yeah, one of my very strong passions so we in the Yale New Haven health system, Have organized a lean in program that really centers around Sheryl Sandberg's book.

And it created initially a source of conversation and. The effort began as a small group of women leaders in the organization coming together around the Sheryl Sandberg work. And once the conversation started, it was, it just never stopped. We formalized that structure and approach to the point we have now had, we're probably 500.

If not more women leaders in our organization, that's good. Who have participated in our lean in circles. About two or three years into the work, we recognized that we also needed men to be very strongly engaged as allies and sponsors and really understanding. what The dynamic was in the workplace for us as women.

And we wanted to better understand that dynamic from their perspective. So we started leaning in for men and recognized that both groups needed their private space. Right? So women meet in circles of just women. The men meet in small circles of just men. About once or twice a year, we bring everyone together in a more programmatic way, typically with panel discussions and sometimes outside speakers.

And we, think we're probably just getting to a place that making that happen more often throughout the year is important as well. We then recognized, women would spend a year with, their circle. That the circles are about. We found eight to 10 seems to be the magic number of big enough for people to feel like they've started to build a network, but small enough to keep the conversations intimate and where everyone can participate.

And the year would end and people didn't sort of want it to end. And so we then created a leaning in for life program, which is really for the alumni anyone who's gone through the program Those of us on the senior advisory group, lead those sessions. We invite larger cohorts of women to come together around either articles.

We've added other books into the curriculum, but really to keep the conversation going. With COVID obviously like everything else. All of that became virtual interaction, through teleconferencing. We've just started to reintroduce where people are comfortable the ability to come together in person.

And it's been profound, people need that connection, right? The shared experience of leading in the environment that we're in. but Doing it as women in this very challenged, I look at the younger women in our circles and how they're juggling small children and school at home.

And all that they had to deal with was just incredible So, incredibly powerful program overall, we've had. women Through their testimonials, just share how truly life changing that they felt the experience was in giving them the confidence to lean in, to raise their hand, to, to show up differently seek new opportunities and really think about how we all work.

together

That's great. I love hearing about this program and the emphasis on male allies. So important. And I nodding my head here on, talking about going from the zoom to in person.

I'm sure that that connection's really important for people. And the fact that you're doing this, you have the life group. Has anything done published on this, anything available for other organizations that might be interested in this.

You know,

We haven't, I think a few of us have spoken about it in a variety of forums.

We have not yet published it, it is a good call to action. That we should think about.

That's great.

Anything else that you wanna add about work at Yale new Haven?

Before we close out,

I would just add, building on the leaning in program. We focused our lean in efforts on our managers and above. And I had one of my very talented managers in it.

Come forward and say, Lisa, I think we need to do something for our non-managers particularly in it where in. Segments of our department and division still fairly male dominated. And we also started a women in technology affinity group and have had two cohorts go through that program as well.

Really focused on sort of the unique challenges sometimes of Still being the only woman in the room and what that feels like in how we work. So, all of that's been incredibly positive in terms of the broader perspective around Yale, new Haven health. I think, would just end by saying we're all have been in a tough position coming out of the pandemic.

I. There is a sense of hope and purpose that I think was also ignited as a result of that. And really a focus on the great institution that we are and the greater institution that we can be. And a lot of that being fueled again by our technology strategy. And it's an honor to work here and to be a part of moving that.

We share a passion. This is great and hear the passion you have for your work and what you're doing with the women's program.

So thank you. This has been great. I hear the passion in your work. I share that passion for healthcare, what we do and developing leaders. So thank you so much for your time today. This has really been an honor to talk to you again. Thank you so much.

Yeah.

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