Top of Mind #3 for Healthcare CIOs – All Things Digital
Episode 2411st December 2021 • This Week Health: News • This Week Health
00:00:00 00:07:16

Transcripts

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Today in health.

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It, the story is top of mind things for healthcare CEOs.

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And this is a top five list based on my recent interviews today.

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Number three, digital.

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My name is bill Russell.

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I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system.

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And creator this week in health, it a channel dedicated to keeping

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All right.

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So this series this whole week, we were just doing a series top five things,

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which are top of mind for healthcare CEOs.

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And I came up with this list after doing about 23 interviews across three

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conferences, , a lot of stuff going on.

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And these are the five top of mind issues.

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The other thing I did is I got together with some CEOs and

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it just validated the list.

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These are the things they were shaking their heads saying.

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Yep.

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That's it.

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We are really focused on a lot of those things.

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So on Monday we talked about labor.

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We talked about staffing, the staffing shortage, not only

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the staffing shortage in it.

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But also the staffing shortages.

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In nursing across the board, we're looking at a half million.

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500,000 nurse shortfall within the next three years.

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And so it is being asked to address some of those things.

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Then yesterday, we talked about cybersecurity and the challenge

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that we have for cybersecurity.

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And I understand that some people might say, Hey, that's number one.

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, but the reality is we got some money for cybersecurity about a year and a half ago.

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This was really top of mind.

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People went to the boards, they went to their leadership, they got some money.

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We are making progress on the cyber, which is why I put it at number two.

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And I feel like the staffing.

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, is really a top of mind current issue that everyone is trying to address.

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, number three, we're going to talk about today's digital.

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Number four is automation.

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We'll talk about that on Thursday.

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And we're going to close out the week on Friday talking about care venues.

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All right.

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So today we're going to talk about digital.

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And every CIO has a digital story, all things, digital chatbots,

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ambient listening, digital front doors, remote patient monitoring.

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We have, echos, iPads, and internet of things, all kinds of

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devices, all kinds of use cases.

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What is top of mind for the CIO?

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What can we do with digital?

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Can we address some of the staffing shortages that are projected in

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healthcare Staffing shortages due to competition for it talent or the projected

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half million shortfall and nurses.

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Perhaps we can find time.

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Make the existing staff, more efficient move tasks off of their

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plate and have computer assistance.

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Do the work.

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We're going to talk a lot more about that tomorrow when we talk about automation,

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but staffing is a major driver.

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But you know what the primary driver is?

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The primary driver was the pandemic.

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We needed to do things remotely to maintain a safe distance and

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still provide a high level of care.

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Chat bots were an interesting case.

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Study chatbots provided a, a guided experience that helped

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people to determine the best course of action for their symptoms.

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, find testing and even find answers to questions that they had a

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computer assistant that was able to educate direct and even diagnose.

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We called on our digital front doors to do more than our portals ever could do.

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Health systems went into overdrive to adjust their tools, to provide the

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services that the pandemic required.

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I had quite a few conversations with health it leaders who've decided to

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break down their, my chart implementation and utilize the components to build a

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wrapper around my chart functionality.

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So they could be more agile and build in new services that were

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specific to their community.

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No more one size fits all portal.

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Or one size fits all digital front door.

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Hopefully that word portal will go by the wayside here shortly.

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One of the things that was exposed during the pandemic is that

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our digital experience doesn't match our physical experience.

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Say what you want about the waiting room, but we have invested

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billions in beautiful campuses with amazing entries in waiting areas.

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Our hospital buildings are becoming more and more advanced.

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People are welcomed onto our campus.

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Greeted and directed.

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Our digital experiences, not so much.

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It was a series of tools pulled together for functionality, not for experience.

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Does it work?

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Sure.

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If you do it the right way.

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Does it please the end user?

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Not usually.

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This is where the focus is now and where it's going to be over the next year or so.

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How can we make our digital experiences pleasing to the clinical

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user and pleasing to the consumer?

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No small task for sure.

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During the pandemic.

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We also started to experiment with a new set of tools in the patient room.

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Ambient clinical listening was on the rise prior to COVID.

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But continues to accelerate.

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The promise, being a fully formed note where the clinicians only interaction

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with a keyboard is to approve the note.

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That would be really nice.

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I pads in the room to save PPE and Amazon echos also deploy to improve

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communication systems that were found wanting during the pandemic.

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The newly placed devices gave rise to innovation.

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What can we do with listening devices at the bedside experiments and sued and

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exciting prospects are on the horizon.

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If you want to check out more, see this week in health it episode that I did with

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Michelle Stansbury from Houston Methodist.

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Really interesting stuff.

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I guess the question is what's your digital story?

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What is your system's digital story?

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Healthcare has gone digital, but you know, all we have to do is turn the corner

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and we see that fax machine and we know.

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That we still have a long way to go.

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That's all for today.

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