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The 229 Podcast: What It Actually Takes to Launch a State-of-the-Art Hospital with Tomas Bentley

Tom Bentley: we have more than a hundred robots that are delivering

supplies to the unit or taking trash away from the units, supplying the ORs with their, uh, sterile packs. Um, and that just becomes part of the patient. Um, uh. Journey and experience that they and their families see is there's technology all around them.

Bill Russell: My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former health system, CIO, and creator of this Week Health, where our mission is to transform healthcare one connection at a time. Welcome to the 2 29 Podcast where we continue the conversations happening at our events with the leaders who are shaping healthcare.

Let's jump into today's conversation.

All right, it's a 2 29 podcast. Today we're joined by Tom Bentley, CIO, the Ohio State University Medical Center. And, uh, Tom, welcome to the show.

Tom Bentley: Thanks, bill. Good to see you.

Tom Bentley: Yeah, sure. We're, we're very proud of, uh, of what has happened. We opened a new, um, 850 bed, 2 million square foot, uh, tower, which is our new university hospital, replacing a couple legacy buildings, uh, that are on our main campus. We brought that all live on, um, February 22nd. Moved, started moving patients Sunday night, and I think it was in about a four hour span.

Moved all of our patients from our old legacy buildings, uh, over into the new building. And now we are live and at full capacity already.

Tom Bentley: It is beautiful in Ohio in February. It was a little risky 'cause we've had some pretty bad snow this year and, and luckily that weekend in particular was not bad.

Bill Russell: So what, um, I, I wanna talk about the patient experience, the clinician experience, uh, somewhat. So what, what are the clinicians seeing in the new facility maybe that is different than what they had in the old facility?

Tom Bentley: Yeah, there's so many differences. Uh, and I guess one that I would highlight that we've heard from our clinicians is I. Just the, the, the leveraging of natural light and space. It's, it's a beautiful facility. Uh, even the break rooms, which are typically tucked away in, in dark corners of the organization, those have a lot of, you know, window space, natural light.

Bill Russell: The, uh, I see you got the crimson wall and the white wall with the bricks, so it's a little different. Actually, you look like you're, you're a defensive coordinator for Ohio State that looks like that. That's what that office is right there that you're sitting in. So you're probably not in the building that you guys just built.

Tom Bentley: No, I'm actually at one of my other offices. Um, but we, we've, we've basically lived in that building for the last few years it feels like.

Bill Russell: What technology will they be seeing in the new facility that they, they maybe didn't have at the old facility?

A nice, uh, nice big 75 inch TV for the patients.

Bill Russell: That is huge.

Tom Bentley: It is. It is. And and we just found it's, it's not a tv, it's a, it's a communication care device. It's a tv, it's, you know, a device that when a patient or a, a staff member walks in the room to say, this is your nurse, Tom Bentley. Show the picture.

'cause you know, that's one thing we've heard from our patients in an academic setting. A lot of people go in and out of the rooms and they're in scrubs. And it can be overwhelming too. Who is this person? Why were they, you know, what's their role?

Bill Russell: Is that screen linked into, uh, the epic chart and the whole epic experience as well.

Tom Bentley: It is, it is.

Tom Bentley: The thing that has struck me, bill, as we looked at that hospital is every aspect of it has deeper technology than maybe a hospital of 10 or 20 or more years ago. Even the elevators have more sophistication, uh, and technology. We have now in that building and neighboring buildings, we have more than a hundred robots that are delivering.

Supplies to the unit or taking trash away from the units, supplying the ORs with their, uh, sterile packs. Um, and that just becomes part of the patient. Um, uh. Journey and experience that they and their families see is there's technology all around them. Um, just even as they walk through our lobby and, and up to the room.

Bill Russell: I, I've seen some of those facilities where the robots are, are moving around, are, they don't run into people. They, they get up and down without any issue. Do they use the elevators? Do they have their own elevators?

Tom Bentley: They do have their own elevators, but they'll, um, also go through hallways and they know how to navigate around patients and, uh, you know, maneuver all of those things. I.

Tom Bentley: I think Bill, you touch on one of the, I think, hardest aspects that we deal with is, you know, if we opened a building in February of this year as we did, the reality is we were planning the technology probably three years at the, the most recent, probably three to five years ago. And when you look at all the, just take the in-room experience, for example.

Um, it's not like you can buy a platform that is an in-room experience. You're buying about six platforms that all have to integrate perfectly with the monitor system, from, you know, ADT there is just so much complexity to get that to work. Right. And now we have, quite honestly, with a building that's a month and a half old, we now have technology that's three to four years old and.

Bill Russell: When I, when I make these comments, sometimes there's somebody in the room who's pretty arrogant and they'll say, oh, that's an easy project, you know, and I'll say, all right, let's, let's go down this path. me how much, . How many network lines are you bringing into the, to the room? Oh, I wouldn't bring any, and I'd bring in all wifi.

Okay, great. Let's talk about how you do that. Let's talk about the redundancy. Let's talk about, and I'm like, oh my gosh. Like why are you getting so wrapped around the axle? I'm like, because if those systems don't work, a serious issue. I mean, you have to have all that stuff sort of planned out. And they're like, well, I take, and then they say, well, I'll take in as many lines as I can. Well, except there's a cost associated with every line you bring in there,

Tom Bentley: Exactly.

Tom Bentley: Mm-hmm.

Bill Russell: Going up, each one of those ports costs a, a fair amount. So there are limited, it's, it's not an unlimited budget as well. Just outta curiosity, what did you do on the network side?

Did you, did you lean on wifi pretty heavily or did you mostly go wired?

Tom Bentley: Um, we, we do lean on wifi a lot, of course. Um, but where we could go wired, we did, um, you know, things like the in-room video camera, you know, we, we had the ability, 'cause it was a new facility, let's put a wifi. Wire connection in, let's put wired in anywhere we can because the explosion of the number of devices in this building, by the time you add RFID and all your Internet of Things devices, all the in-room technology, I'll bet is between three and five fold the number of devices that we had in a building.

Bill Russell: of IP addresses just has exploded. It's crazy.

It's, it's the amount of connectivity that has to be in a hospital that is state of the art is, is really, really, uh, not insignificant and something we have to keep a close eye on.

Bill Russell: Nurse safety and those kinds of things, was it existing technology you took over from the old facility or did you do something a little different?

Um, those were sort of the first time we had brought all those together, integrated perfectly. So you can only imagine

Bill Russell: I

Tom Bentley: the, the, the challenges there.

Bill Russell: are those, are those all different systems or are they all that,

Tom Bentley: Oh,

Bill Russell: find the integration points and map it out and do.

Tom Bentley: it, they were all different systems with, you know, I would, I can't wait for the day where we can just go buy one of those off the shelf. That works well, but right now we couldn't find that.

Bill Russell: Uh, R-F-I-D-I assume most of your devices now have RFID, so you can find them anywhere in the, building. Uh, R-F-R-F-I-D for patients yet, or is that.

Tom Bentley: Not patients, not yet. That's coming.

Tom Bentley: Yeah, it's more manual. But even things we found, even things like temperature monitoring, the number of freezers and refrigerators in a building this size is, is staggering. So perfect application for RFID.

Bill Russell: Well, that's awesome. Tom, I wanna thank you for, uh, taking some time sharing, uh, sharing about the new facility and, uh, uh, any, any advice you'd drop for your peers that are getting ready to do a project like this. Uh.

Tom Bentley: Just think about the integration challenges early and set up as much testing simulation room time with your teams as you can beforehand. 'cause there will be a lot of bugs and kinks that need worked out.

Bill Russell: Yeah. You, you think you have a lot of time when they say, Hey, in five years we're gonna do this. And then all of a sudden you, you roll outta bed one morning, it's like, oh my gosh. It's been, we're going live today.

Bill Russell: there's a lot of work to do. Well, Tom, thanks again. Appreciate it.

Tom Bentley: Great. Thanks Bill.

Bill Russell: Thanks for listening to the 2 29 podcast. The best conversations don't end when the event does. They continue here with our community of healthcare leaders. Join us by subscribing at this week health.com/subscribe.

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