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 Welcome to this Week in Health, it influence where we discuss the influence of technology on health with the people who are making it happen. My name is Bill Russell, recovering healthcare, CIO, and creator of this week in Health. it a set of podcasts and videos dedicated to developing the next generation of health IT leaders.

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If either of those two are of interest to you, hit the website and hit subscribe. We caught up with Winge Mayo, the EVP and Chief Experience Officer for Texas Health Resources out of Dallas, Texas at the Health 2.0 conference. She was just coming off a panel talking about, uh, setting up, uh, innovation and experience.

Uh, programs at Health Systems and we had a great conversation about what it takes for a healthcare organization to organize and to optimize the experience both internally and externally, uh, around the consumer. Hope you enjoy. I. All right. Another session from the Health 2.0 conference. I'm here with, uh, Ji Mayo with, uh, Texas Health Resources.

Uh, welcome. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. Yeah. I'm looking forward to the conversation. So, uh, uh, give us a little bit of your background and talk about your title. Your title is one of those, uh, new titles in healthcare. Maybe not recently new, but it's emerging. Mm-Hmm. , uh, as pretty prominent.

So I currently serve as the Chief Experience Officer for Texas Health. . Um, within Texas Health, uh, I have a diad partner, the Chief Operating Officer, Dr. Jeffrey Kenos. And together, uh, we are jointly working together to both transform our existing core business, um, as well as grow Texas Health to its fullest expression of its mission.

So our mission as a faith-based organization is to improve the health of the people in the communities we serve. And, um, we know in order to do that we have . Have to go beyond episodic sick care. And, um, doing that together with Jeff. Um, I've been with Textel for 19 years. I started as an intern, as a resident, straight outta graduate school.

Um, and spent most of my time in hospital operations, uh, and joined the system office about five years ago. And so give us the evolution of the experienced officer function. Mm-Hmm. . I mean, and, and was it just obvious they just all looked at you and said, that's the . Yeah, that's the person. Or was it one of those that they were like, well, let's do a national search.

I mean, what, how did it get there? Uh, it wasn't obvious to me. , . Uh, I think it's an evolution, right? As you think about, um, an organization you structure in your organizational structure and the people, um, you put in different seats on the bus to lead it. Um, need to really be in service of what you're trying to achieve.

As an organization and in our case for our community in North Texas. And so, um, when I transitioned from hospital operations over to a role, um, that was known as the Chief Integration Officer System Integration officer, it was really to look at our entire ecosystem and figure out how to connect all the dots so that we could be more standardized, more efficient, um, and more coordinated.

And when you put the consumer at the center, then you start understanding that in order to do that, you . Really have to focus on that experience of access and navigation, um, and coordination and affordability. And it is an extension of an internal focus that I had as the system integration officer and, um, evolving that to really be outside in and bringing the outside in with the inside out together.

And somebody once said, you know, if it's part of eight people's jobs, then it's really nobody's job. And so to take all these different functions, put them all together with one singular focus, and to integrate them all together, um, so that the sum is greater than the parts was really . What the pulling together the experience division was all about in service of a larger consumer driven strategy for Texas Health.

There's a lot of wisdom in that, that if it's a part of everybody's job, it's not really everybody's job. Yeah. Um, talk to me about the diet model. Mm-Hmm. , um, this is the first experience officer that I've heard that We'll wait for the plane to go over that . I dunno if we're picking that up or not, but, uh, the first I've heard of the diet battle, it really.

Uh, it makes a lot of sense to me 'cause we're hiring a lot of experienced officers from Mm-Hmm. , uh, from other industries. Mm-Hmm. . And we're bringing them in. We're p ploting them in healthcare. The dyad model is, is one that I think Mm-Hmm. makes a lot of sense. Talk, talk to us a little bit about that. Yeah.

So, uh, when we looked at, you know, the experience division and do we hire somebody from the outside who can bring consumer to us and teach them healthcare? Or do we take somebody who understands the complexities, . Of healthcare and then can learn consumer, if you will. Uh, we felt like as we looked outside of ourselves and other, um, health systems who had done this, that the learning curve for an outside in approach was significant.

It was a significant lift. And so we chose the other. Now, you know, only time will tell if that was the right decision or not. Um, but with that, um, comes. The idea then that, um, you bring new talent in to support that. So we've been, uh, we were talking earlier today about, um, bringing in talent from the outside, and we've done that in several of our roles and we'll continue to do that over time within the experience division.

Um, you asked about the dyad. Um, I think this dyad is unique in that, um, my dyad partner, the chief operating officer is also a clinician, so he is a physician by training. So you have both the operations and clinician component of the core business housed under, um, Jeff and then myself, which has, uh, really the consumer focus building the new capabilities, the new products and services.

To both evolve and transform, um, our core business as well as, um, build out future capabilities that are needed for long term sustainability. Yeah, it's, um, it's interesting. We, we got in the flight path of, I know, right, of the San Jose airport here, so we'll have to talk in between, uh, in between flames, the, um, what has been your, uh.

But you know, one of the things as we think about experience, the, the question is, do you just focus on the consumer? And obviously you do focus on the consumer. Mm-Hmm, . Um, but a lot of it has to do with the operational complexity that's behind the scenes. Do you end up, uh, spending more time, uh, trying to figure out what the consumer wants or is that pretty obvious and it's more time spent on the operation and, and just trying to ease that burden and to make that, uh, experience that much.

Uh, easier for the patient. Uh, it's both equally, um, because you can design a beautiful consumer experience, but if operationally it doesn't work or it adds steps to the care team, it doesn't matter. You're still not gonna deliver that beautifully designed experience. And so what we've learned at Texas Health is it requires a very, um, unique set of capabilities to be able to operationally design and deploy and scale some.

Thing. And it requires that skillset, um, to be mobilized across the organization. And so we have a transformation office that does just, that, takes large scale initiatives, whether they're consumer focused or internally business focused or clinically focused, um, and is able to do the change management required, put the implementation plans in place, and really walk through that whole design and deployment process and adopt

Process so that you get the hardwired change that you're looking for. So what have, what have been your biggest successes so far? Um, uh, oof, . Are you, it's so early. I, I know it's, no, it's early and you don't, you don't want to, to, to put it out there as a success because everything's always in a certain stage of evolution, isn't it?

Yeah. I think, you know, sometimes it's one step forward, two steps. Back. Yeah. Right. Uh, so I think that as we, one of the things I'm most, um, proud of actually, and I'm most, um, I think is the biggest success thus far, is that, um, we talked, you know, a minute ago about all these different groups of individuals all in their silos working towards consumer and the.

The real point of bringing us all together was to integrate us. And when I see all of us together physically on the same floor, the entire team, whether it's the data and analytics team, with the digital team, with the marketing team, with the patient experience team, all working together in service of the same thing, and we're able to accomplish more and amplify individual initiatives because now we're all working on them and it's all coordinated.

Um, those are the moments, . I think where we've made significant progress across the organization, both internally and for, um, our patients and consumers. So I'll give you one, um, example. So we were in the process of aggregating and, um, standardizing branding for all of our primary care practices. So up until about a year ago, all of our primary care practices were branded still, um, independent names and not necessarily.

Under the Texas Health umbrella. So, um, rebranding them is one thing. Um, rebranding them and then standing them up all on one singular website platform is a second thing. Being able to do online scheduling, which comes from digital health team, is a third thing. Um, being able to route all calls through one contact number is a fourth thing.

And if you do each one of these sequentially, um, . You can get some value in each one of these incremental changes, but if you can thoughtfully wrap all of these together into one initiative and market it and communicate it about it as one thing versus four separate things, um. You amplify the impact of the four separate things when you do it as one reimagined experience for the consumer versus four separate initiatives coming out of four separate departments, and I think you'll see a lot more of those coming forward from us.

Um, where they're a lot more coordinated, a lot more, um, consumer centric in terms of how we package things together that makes sense from a user experience standpoint, um, than we have in the past. So experience, the role of experience is really, uh, an organizing and an aligning principle for an organization that we had, uh, Jeff Johnson from Banner on, and he.

Was talking about Sophia and they actually have personified Mm-Hmm. the, uh, consumer. And they've taken pictures of a model and she's all over the place. And, and, and he was talking about how it, it, uh, really focuses the organization on, on the consumer. So it, it's quality. 'cause they care, they care about quality.

Mm-Hmm. . Um, they care about convenience. They care about access, they care about cost, they care about, uh, but it's, it's, the organizing principle is the, the person, the. That's right. Um, have you found that, that the same kind of cultural, uh, change is happening instead, I mean, or experience could break down those silos?

And we have a way to ask them and involve them in the design and involve them in the decision making, which healthcare traditionally has not done in the past. And we have, um, personas and segments and stories . Um, that we, uh, share across the organization because we all got into healthcare for a reason, and the reason was to make an impact.

And when you can put a name to a face and you know that. Hey, it may require a change in my behavior. I may need to learn something new, but at the end of the day, it's going to help my neighbor or the person I sit next to in church or you know, my kid, you know, kids', um, classmates', parents. That is much more compelling.

Than doing it, uh, for an organization or, um, to meet some metric. So talk about your consumer. You actually talk to your consumers about what you're gonna name the cafes we do. Wow. Did they have a good idea or they have opinions? Sure. Wow. And oftentimes the names that we think internally are the winners are not the winners,

Do you hire professionals to do that for you or do you, I mean, because sometimes those, those, uh, those interview sessions and whatnot. There are, you know, uh, teams that have been trained on how to get the best out. Yes. Um, so we do both. It depends on the scope and the scale of what we're trying to answer.

Sometimes, um, we don't necessarily want them to know that Texas Health is asking that question because the fact that they're talking to a. Provider biases their answers. So again, you know when it's what to name the cafe we do, we send out a survey and anybody who wants to answer on the voting button can do that.

Um, but on some things that require, um, a little more depth or a little more personal, um, we'll take a different angle. So what problems have sort of bubbled to the top that you guys are looking at from an experience standpoint? Uh, I don't, so

I don't know that they're unique to us. You know, I, I don't know that we've stumbled on anything that we haven't heard the industry really wrestling with. Whether it's access, whether it's coordination, whether it's affordability, uh, whether it's curating information so that I get the right information at the right time.

You know, we've heard a lot about, um, personal preference. At Health 2.0, um, the past couple days, I don't know that we've unearthed anything in the large trends that are earth shattering. Um, what I think is unique that we have found is the barriers and how our consumers want us to solve those problems.

Um, are unique sometimes to region and locale and what's going on in the market and the psyche. So even North Texas. Within Texas. Mm-Hmm. , because you, 'cause you're rural as well as we are, um, urban, um, is it, is it that distinction or is there more distinctions than just urban and rural that you find with, in terms of experience?

Um, we found that.

So, uh, you know, some very smart person said a long time ago, if you design for everyone, you design for no one. Right? And so what we found is for very specific disease states, the barrier may be this. Same across disease states, but how you solve it is very different. And if you think that there's one, for example, care management solution that you can implement across all disease states that will be effective, um, that's probably not true.

Um, but again, what you're always trying to balance is the efficiency, right, with the personalization, and that's where we spend a lot of our time. So last question I'd be remiss. That show is called This Week In Health, it . How do you, how do you interact with the IT organization and are certain members a part of your team or how does that Mm-Hmm.

how does that look? Yes. Uh, they are integral partners. Um, and subject matter experts and co-lead many of these initiatives with us. So Joey Meyers, our um, chief Information Officer. He's a phenomenal leader. Um, he's been very open and invites, uh, our digital experience lead and our data and analytics lead.

To his meetings on a regular basis. Um, we are in constant conversation with them, um, as we look to develop new things, whether it's understanding the security implications of said new product, right, or, uh, whether it's how we integrate something in MyChart or we uncover something in the EMR that doesn't quite work for a provider and or a consumer.

And working together with that team, um, . To really, um, drive benefit, um, for both the consumer and the care team. Um, we couldn't do any of our work without them. Right. Yeah. Where does analytics report in your, uh, so we have enterprise data and analytics that, um, reports up through the experience division, and then we have clinical informatics that reports up through, um, the

COO. So my dyad partner, the analytics is becoming one of the more interesting things to me because it, it's so different in every organization. Yes. And, and every time I ask something I'm like, so do you guys have it wired? They're like, there's room for improvement, but it's, it works. Yeah. You know, that's essentially the answer I usually get.

It works, but we could do better. So, um, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about experience . Hey, I appreciate the time. Yeah. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. I wanna thank Ji for her time. Great discussion for any health system looking to set up an experience program.

Please come back every Friday for more great interviews with influencers. And don't forget, every Tuesday we take a look at the news, which is impacting health. It. Uh, keep your feedback coming, bill at this week@healthit.com. It's all really helpful, good, bad, or indifferent. It helps us to make a better show for you.

Uh, this show is a production of this week in Health It. For more great content, you can check out our website at this week, health.com or the YouTube channel this week, health.com, and go to the top right click on, uh, YouTube is the quickest way to get there. Thanks for listening. That's all for now.