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Welcome to this week in Health It where we amplify great thinking to Propel Healthcare forward. My name is Bill Russell Healthcare, CIO, coach and creator of this week in Health. It a set of podcasts, videos, and collaboration events dedicated to developing the next generation of health leaders. This episode and every episode since we started the C Ovid 19 series has been sponsored by Sirius Healthcare.

Now we're exiting the series, and Sirius has stepped out to be a weekly sponsor of the show through the end of the year. Special thanks to Sirius for supporting the show's efforts during the crisis and beyond. All right. Today's show is going to be a fun one. So, uh, previous guest of the show, ed Marks former CIO for the Cleveland Clinic and Patty Ped Menon from Dam O Consulting, who also wrote The Big Unlock and is also the, uh, host of a, uh, podcast called The Big Unlock.

And if you haven't listened to that, it's worth listening to. Uh, he has some great guests on there. I have these guys on to talk about their new book, healthcare Digital Transformation, how Consumerism Technology. And pandemic are accelerating the future. Great book. Highly recommend it. Here's the show.

Today we're joined by authors of Healthcare Digital transformation, how consumerism, technology, and, and pandemic are accelerating the future. Ed Marks, uh, previous guest in the show. Hey, ed. Welcome back to the show. Thanks, bill and Patty Pabon with DMO Consulting, is that right? That is correct. Thank you, bill, for having me on the show.

I'm looking forward to it. And you're also a podcaster, so I should probably do a shout out to your podcast they unlock same as your previous book. Same as my previous book. Yes. Thank you. And you've had some great guests on that show and, uh, some great conversations. So highly recommend that podcast as well.

Guys, congratulations on the new book, Amazon bestseller. In fact, when I put my. Order in. They said I would receive it sometime in late September or something to that effect. So I guess you guys are, uh, the book's doing pretty well. Yeah. The book yeah. Has, has really resonated. Everyone talks about digital transformation and healthcare.

I. And obviously with the pandemic, it really highlighted the need for transformation and so the book has really taken off. Yeah, we were very pleasantly surprised to be the bestseller for, for new books. And disappointed though that, uh, it is on back order now, but the printers are working very closely with Amazon and the whole supply chain to catch that up.

Yeah, I think it's the first book that's, uh, come out since the pandemic hit out. So that really talks to, you know, digital transformation in the post pandemic era. And so that I think probably resonates as a message with our, with our audience. This is one of those books. I think you guys really hit on a lot of things here.

I think this is a must read for anyone who listens to this show. Here's the reason I liked it. You interviewed everybody. It's like a who's who you talk to, everybody. Uh, your focus groups bring great insight and color to the content. It's not just like a bunch of charts and graphs and bullet points, those kind of things.

You have stories from previous guests and others. Daniel bcis in there as well as, uh, John Kravitz is just a lot of, uh, Geisinger, Providence, you name it. A lot of health systems are highlighted, which is great. Um, but you also get very pragmatic. You suggest a structure, uh, to the digital transformation journey.

And I, I, I think that shows that you guys are a practitioners as well as authors, and that's what I really appreciate. Let's start with this question. Was the pandemic a tipping point for digital transformation in healthcare, or is it just giving us the illusion of a tipping point?

So I think we've been slow as an industry to digitally transform. I've often argued that we're several years behind other industries, and I think the pandemic certainly helped push us towards a tipping point. I don't know that we're there yet, bill, based on some of the data and some of the discussions I've heard you speak about.

It almost seems like we're going backwards a little bit now, but before the pandemic, certainly we were getting a little bit of traction with the pandemic, a lot more traction, but like I said, coming back down, so maybe the first wave of a tipping point. Uh, Patty, what are your thoughts? I, I think it is a tipping point for certain aspects of, uh, digital health and digital transformation.

I think it's certainly a tipping point for virtual consults. It's a tipping point for certain aspects of, uh, the healthcare experience that are now going online, allowing healthcare consumers to make a lot of choices and take a lot of actions not directly related to the care experience. All the administrative stuff and all that is moving online and it's been forced upon us by the pandemic because physically you can't go to a location.

There's a lot of restrictions on whether you can go into a clinic and so on, and I think it moved the needle. Significantly to one end of the spectrum. But, uh, to your point, ed, I think the needle is moving back a little bit and the equilibrium has not yet been, uh, achieved. So I would say it is definitely a tipping point.

And at a very broad level, I would say that it has accelerated the timelines for transformation from years to months maybe. Yeah, it, it feels to me like we've really accelerated the delivery of virtual care. Care at a distance. There's a lot of conversations around it. I don't, I don't know that we've really moved.

I'm supposed to be interviewing you guys, but this is what I'm hearing and this is what I'm seeing. So we really moved that forward. But it, it doesn't seem like the enterprise strategy, the transformation of how we deliver care, uh, being thought about across the entire, uh, enterprise has really taken place.

And I guess to that point, what I'd like to start to tap into with you guys is. What does, what does healthcare look like after digital transformation? And, and let's take this question from a couple different perspectives. Let's first talk about the clinician and patient, and then I'd like to break it out and start talking about what does it look like to a, to a board and to ACEO and to ACIO.

So let's talk about the, the patient first. So once we've gotten to begin with the end in mind, once we've gotten to the other side of this, what does the patient experience look like? If they are going to a health system or a community of health providers that have digitally transformed. Yeah, so I think from a patient point of view, it's care anytime, anywhere and in any way they want it.

So that could mean for some that it is on their phone. Uh, for others it might be in their home, on their laptop or whatever. But it's definitely a mobile experience. Now, there will always be a subset of the population that, for one reason or another, want to go into a hospital or, or that's their only choice going into a physical location.

Uh, so we'll have to be multimodal bimodal, offering different channels for the patient. So the patient, again, . My opinion would be multi-channel multimodal. Depending on the situation, they would have many options, but they drive it, not the hospital saying, you have to come to this building for this care.

No, it's gonna be the patient that's driving where they access care. Yeah. I, I would say that, uh, everything's, everything that Ed said is correct. I would say it's gonna resemble more and more of a drive through experience. For many aspects of care, especially low activity care and care, things like that.

We, I'm seeing health systems investing in a lot of, uh, not just online self-service tools that provides. Uh, services in an asynchronous manner, uh, which is what, uh, ed was alluding to, but also a lot of contact lists and low contact experiences when it comes to visiting the clinic. So you drive up to a clinic or a hospital, you're in the parking lot, you are hooked up to your EHR mobile app and a geolocation, geofencing capability, which tells you whether you are there or not, and then registered for the visit remotely.

You come into the facility when they're ready to receive you, and then you minimize your contact with anyone and anything and, and you're out of there. So think of it like a Starbucks experience. You place your order using a mobile app. You drive up to the window, you pick up the drink, and you're on your way.

The Starbucks thing is extreme, but it will feel like that in many cases, like a drive through experience. It is not necessarily a bad thing. Interesting with Covid, and I've used this example a couple times on the show, so people are familiar with it, but I know I, I go to Great Clips and I go onto the app.

I schedule, I pull up and I literally spend no time in their waiting room. I go in and get my haircut and I come out and I. And that's just that now it's a very simple business process. They rethought the waiting room and that whole thing. And every time I think about that, I think wouldn't it be great if we could get rid of the waiting room and all those things.

So let's switch gears here and talk about the clinician experience after digital transformation. What does the clinician, what's the clinic clinician looking for from digital transformation and what can they expect? Yeah, I'll take a first stab and just talk about one thing and then obviously Patty will will bring up another example.

But for them, I think digital transformation means taking the hassle. Out of practicing. We've heard this for years now because of the EHRs and the way they were designed, it's caused a lot of issues with physicians and frustration added a lot of debt to their, to their work life in terms of having to deal with sort of manual things in their practice.

So I see ambient voice as an example of digital transformation where it's just, it's the keyboard list. Exam room or the keyboard list. In this case, we would, might not even have an exam room 'cause it's being done virtually. But it's that whole voice capability. So it's, it's bringing back the, allowing them to enjoy the passion of why they entered medicine by taking away all the barriers that, that we put in inadvertently.

So I think that's one key way that things are gonna change. And obviously with that means that they can practice. Just like we do now, right? Because of the pandemic from home. So if the practice largely becomes mobile, then they are able to take advantage of the same things the rest of us are in terms of working from home.

So I was speaking with my clinician, my primary care doc recently. I had my annual physical. And he was sharing with me how that's really been a game changer for him in terms of bringing back the passion of healthcare, allowing him just to focus on patients by being able to do things remotely as well as some of the new technologies like ambient voice.

Yeah, I, I think what clinicians are gonna have to prepare for is an era in which technology is going to play an increasingly important role in the way care is delivered. Now, it's not just in terms of decision support, but in terms of how care is delivered. So we saw that in the immediate week of the pandemic, everyone had to learn how to do virtual concerts.

They had to, there was no other way to take care of your patients. Now there's a lot of change involved in going through something like that, and that change was forced upon us and it was compressed into a very short timeframe, practically overnight. But now that we are one, two, quarter. Into that experience.

A lot of workflows and processes are going to be permanently redesigned to a model where the technology enables you to do a lot of things remotely, uh, through virtual consults as an example, but also a lot of other things, uh, related to taking care of patients when they're coming into the clinic.

There's a great example that, uh, I can talk about one of the hospitals. Uh, they brought in, they had a wave of covid 19 infections, and, uh, the nurses were overwhelmed. Uh, they just couldn't take care of everyone. So they bought a bunch of these, uh, vital signs, monitors, pulse ox meters and stuff. They hooked them up to the backend EHR system.

They all did in a very short time. And now nurses don't have to go around checking everybody for their vitals. There's a meter that is strapped onto the wrist or some part of the body, and. And then it just, you know, it throws off the data, it goes to the backend EHR system. Now one nurse can look at 35, 40 patients instead of having to, you know, walk around the building and taking, you know, it's not only more efficient and productive, but it's also more safe for both the patient and the nurse.

That's just one example of how technology is gonna play an increasingly important role in a digital future. Yeah, and I think Bill, we're obviously, we're limiting our answers, but clearly, and we probably can't go there for the sake of time, but is all the capabilities that we're already seeing today. But again, with true digital transformation, they'll be exploding.

I. And that's all around AI and the capabilities. You were seeing it already in radiology and pathology and predictive capabilities and and so forth. Precision medicine, so much more down that stream. But I think the real practical things right now are the things that Patty and I just mentioned. Yeah. The other things are happening too and will explode as I mentioned.

But these are here and now that we're seeing. Yeah, I wanna get into some of the pragmatic things that you guys put out there. You guys have a ton of stories by the way. You have, uh, the kyro stories, you have Providence stories, you have stories from, from New York, you have Mayo Story, Cleveland Stories.

There's a ton of stories to back these things up, which is one of the reasons I really like the book. But given that we, this podcast is really focused towards practitioners. There's just a couple of frameworks you have in here. I think they're phenomenal. But I, I want to finish this question off a little bit.

So you, you say that, uh, digital transformation supports four pillars, enrich community, engage patients, enable care providers, and drive compelling efficiencies. How is a, how is a board or ACEO looking at digital transformation today? How can I if, if I'm in a health system where I'm the CIO and my board and CEO still don't get it, how, how would I want them to view digital transformation?

So before we go there, you, because you've mentioned this a couple times, and I wanna reemphasize this point because there's a lot of books about theory and those are good. You gotta have academics and consultants writing books. But why Patty and I did this book was for the reasons you cited. I just wanna call that out.

And that is not only based on a lot of research, it's there's a lot of research in there and Patty drove a lot of that. Like you mentioned the focus groups, but there's also survey research. There's a lot of empirical research. I. Combined with the practical, and then at the end of each chapter, we give sort of some ideas about how you might wanna take this and make it real.

So these are true stories based on empirical research and based on anecdotal evidence. And so it's very practical. So we're really proud of that and that's a differentiator for us. Now in terms of. Yeah. How do you communicate with the board and CEO? Usually it's the opposite I have found, so usually it's the CEO and the board that's interested in digital transformation, but it's the really, the CIOs that are the laggards.

Sometimes, not in all cases, but sometimes. And so you really have to evaluate yourself and the situation and determine which are you. Reacting to the CEO mandate for digital transformation? Or is it the opposite? You're there already, but they aren't to your point. So what do you do if you're there and they aren't?

What do you do? I think you have to show evidence and it can't be theory. Again, theory's important, but you got to show practical things. So what I always recommend in anything, whether it's digital transformation or or otherwise, . Show it, prove it. And there's ways of doing that without having to go through and get approval for a big project and tons of funds.

The whole proof of concept ideas, you'll find someone, you can find a partner, or maybe you can do it yourself where you demonstrate some sort of value of digital transformation. , maybe it's a, a small RPA, you know, robotic process automation and where you're pulling out costs from the health system because, uh, you're able to automate something pretty simply.

And there's all sorts of examples on how to do that. Or maybe it's virtual visits and setting up some, you're already doing some of it, but maybe do some baseline, do some measurements. Showcase you what things were before and what things were like after. Whether it's satisfaction of the clinician, satisfaction of the patient, so you don't have to start something new.

So that example is to, is probably something you're already doing, but you're may not be measuring. So measure and then you say, look, this is what we've done with virtual health today. We went from 2% of our visits. To 80%, we've slid back to 40%. I don't think we wanna slide back 'cause that's really not the future.

So here's some things we're doing. We did these measurements and we're showing the patient satisfaction is up. Uh, clinician burnout is down. We're still able to bill and generate revenue. So you can use some of those techniques to prove the point. And then when you get some of those small wins, you build credibility for yourself and your organization and then you can add on 'cause they're gonna be interested in more.

And then obviously, uh, to give one last idea, and then Patty will have some ideas as well. Is don't do it yourself. Don't necessarily, you do wanna be the leader. We've talked about this before as A-C-I-O-C-D-O. Do you, are you the leader or not? I, I say yes. Um, whenever you can, but you do it with someone else.

You do it with your chief medical officer, you do it with your chief nursing officer, and you get them to become the advocates. So when they become the advocates with you, it provides a lot more credibility. Plus they're clinicians and you're not a clinician typically in that role. And so that also helps bring credibility and helps deliver the message is build that consortium of other individuals in your c-suite.

And then approach the board and the CEO and you'll have much higher chance of success. You know, I will tell you this, uh, bill, the, firstly, the idea for this book actually came about based on the work that I did for Ed when he was CIO of Cleveland Clinic. And so he actually worked together and built what may have been the first enterprise.

Comprehensive Enterprise Digital roadmap in healthcare. Right. And we, everything that Ed just talked about, we actually saw it, uh, happen. And I'll just add a couple of points to what he said. Uh, first and foremost, uh, it, it, digital transformation is ACEO level priority. It is not ACIO project. The second thing about it is that for it to be successful, you need to build an active and engaged community of practitioners within your own organization.

And Ed did a remarkable job of that. Uh, at the Cleveland Clinic, we had at one point, not at one point, I think pretty much through the whole process of developing the roadmap, we had cross-functional involvement from the senior most leaders in the company. It was like. Eventually there were 50 or 60 people involved in developing the roadmap.

So there was collective ownership for the roadmap. It's not an IT project. Right. I think that that notion, I think is going away. I think people have recognized it, but just in case there's any doubt, I think we, we need to make it clear. I'll give you one other example to, to talking about board level priorities.

My firm's been doing work for several months with one of the large health systems where. The board actually approved a multi-year budget for digital transformation. And this was done before the pandemic hit us. But to their credit, even after the pandemic hit us, uh, they did not get distracted from the long-term goal for the enterprise.

And they were fortunately in a place as an organization, uh, financially and everything else. To stay the course and they have the complete support of the board. And of course the organization that is driving the digital transformation for the enterprise has to constantly check in with the board and inform them about the progress, seek funding, additional funding, or seek approvals to proceed with, you know, this or that.

But for the most part, the board is. And they're committed to staying the course for a multi-year or I think that's the kind of example that we need to see across the board. And I'm not saying that others are not there. I'm just telling you from my firsthand experience of one Health system or two, if you include Cleveland Clinic, where this is really the way to go about it.

Yeah, it is interesting. When I went into, when I was the CIO for a health system 16 hospital system, we went in and presented our digital transformation strategy and I. I remember having a one-on-one conversation with the, the CEO, our CEO at the time, and she said, I know, I absolutely know we need to do this.

You've made a compelling case. And, and I said, okay, how much money do we have? She goes, don't worry about the money. I'm like, I need to understand how to, she goes, put the plan together that makes the most sense for our communities, for our clinicians, for our patients. We will find the money. If this is the right thing to do, it's the right thing to do.

And, and I'm starting to see articles written now by CEOs. There's a handful of 'em out there. Ed, you worked for one with, uh, Toby Cosgrove, who's a digital transformation champion. I hope we see more and more CEOs start to step up. And really start to consume this type of book, this type of content, and become those champions.

As, as you talked about Patty. Um, I want to get into, and there's the lawnmower, as is always the case. So I want to get into the, the steps. So we talked about pragmatic, and I love this. I have some, uh, CIOs I'm working with right now that I, I'm gonna take this framework and we're gonna work through it 'cause it's fantastic.

So you gave, gave a digital strategy and read readiness. Set of steps and you have six steps, the strategy and enterprise vision readiness, assessment and benchmarking, agile roadmap development. Prioritization dependencies, agile operating model and technology platform and partner selection. This is about as pragmatic as it gets.

You have questions, things you should walk your organization through, who you should partner with in the process. So I, what I'd like to do is step through these six real quick and talk, talk about each one in, in a little bit of detail. So digital strategy and enterprise vision. What are you looking to do at that phase in an engagement with a, uh, health system?

Yeah. It, it really goes back to what we were just speaking about and hopefully you're in a health system, right? Like you had the great fortunate, uh, bill to have ACEO that, that you had where she was already there, understood it. She, she wanted you to go forward. And the the key thing though, as we spoke about is developing these key alliances.

With the rest of the stakeholders, because if you're out there alone, you're gonna fail. There's gonna be resistance, and you have to make it so that they own it. So who are they? Ed? So to me, it's the members of the C-suite, because if this is coming from the CEO, it then becomes your C-suite. So this is what we did.

This is just one example, but it's practical. So a lot of times organizations have IT steering committees, but most often they're mid-level leaders who don't have ultimate authority. So what we did during this process abolished the IT steering committee and the C-suite. My peers became the IT steering committee with the CEO as the co-chair.

So when we presented this digital strategy, I had every member of that C-suite were part of the development of that digital strategy. So when it came to presenting, it was them who presented. And when there was time for, you know, objections, there weren't any because they were all part of it. So the more inclusive you can be and transparent, the less resistance and the higher likelihood of coming to that compelling vision.

Like for us, it was double the number of lives touched. It was. Then the next mantra was, and it really served us, served them, I believe in hindsight, is 50% of our outpatient visits would be virtual. 25% of our inpatient days would be at home. And yeah, I'll leave it at those two. So that was what came out of that is we're gonna double the number of lives touch how digital transformation and the tools that come from that.

And that we're going to move fast into this virtual space with that declaration of 50% of outpatient visits, this pre covid, so, so that's an example. Get that team together. I believe it's a c-suite. It's your peers. Obviously you're working the ground. They're helping you work the ground in terms of all the clinician support, all the nursing support, finance, supply chain, all that kind of stuff.

But it all rolls up to them, so you really cover the continuum. All right, so here's what I'm gonna do. I'll, I'll do that one with you. The second one I'll do with Patty. So Ed, if I hear you, it's drive the right relationships, set the goals of the objectives as an executive team. At that executive level, set the measure, the measurable.

How are you gonna measure your success in those things? So Patty readiness and assessment and benchmarking. What are we doing during this phase? The, uh, what Covid 19 has done is it has exposed many organizations to. Structural weaknesses that they're gonna have to deal with at some point, especially in terms of their readiness for digital health.

So what, what we are saying in the book is that. All health systems must invest in developing a digital roadmap. It doesn't mean you're gonna execute it all on day one, but you must have a roadmap. And we have given some very practical guidance on how to develop a roadmap, some tools and templates, frameworks and so on.

But it's very important for, uh, digital leaders and health system leaders. First of all, do a self-assessment of where they are in this journey. And, uh, there's multiple tools you can use and be a provided several. And using that self-assessment, you have to build a roadmap to where you want to be and in what timeframe.

Ed mentioned, uh, the goals that they had, which was more 50% of all outpatient visits to child visits. Now that's a great goal, but you want it done in the next three months. Are you giving yourself three years to do it? What and how are you gonna get there? So you have to have a roadmap for that. And I think that roadmap needs to be put together for the entire organization.

And then you prioritize the initiatives within that, set some goals and, and move forward with it. That is really what we are putting, uh, saying in the book. How specific is it to that health system? Can I just go take the Cleveland Clinics or take ? Somebody else's roadmap and say, ah, okay, these are ours.

You know, some things are gonna be common. Yeah. Some things are gonna be common. So it's, if you say, look, I'm gonna turn on a virtual console capability that's on everybody's roadmap, because that is, those are table stakes now. But when it comes to, if you look at a roadmap and there are 30 initiatives in the Cleveland.

Those same 30 initiatives may not map to your own. If you are another health system out on the west coast somewhere, they may not map to you because your populations are different. Your organization is a different level of maturity, uh, so many other factors. So off the 30 you might find, maybe half of them are common to you and the other half may be specific to your organization.

And that's what we are seeing because my firm does these roadmaps all the time and we have a comprehensive set of digital. Health, uh, opportunities, digital engagement, touchpoint and so on. There's over a hundred of them. Nobody's gonna implement a hundred initiatives. Even if you look at a two or three year timeframe, they're gonna implement a dozen.

But to pick the top ones, they're more likely than not to be common to all the health systems. And then there's a few that are gonna be specific to your markets, and that's where you really have to make, uh, you know, informed decisions. And. Informed call about what you are gonna fund and move forward with it.

Yeah. Ed, ed, I want to tee you up with a, a topic I know is dear, near dear to your heart. So you have agile roadmap, development, and agile operating model. Talk to me about why agile is so important. I, it's become such a buzzword and I think people have a lot of misconceptions about it, but I saw you implement it at Cleveland.

And you're a true believer in it. So talk a little bit about how, what is agile and how it applies to this process. Yeah. I, I first was exposed to Agile in a deep way. I. Uh, through our project management office actually at Texas Health Resources many years ago. Then in New York City, uh, I saw an action again with our PMO when I was CIO of New York City Health and Hospitals.

And I just saw the, the capabilities. And then when I arrived at the clinic, I give credit to other people. It wasn't my idea, but they approached me and they're like, we need to become agile as an entire it. And I thought, wow, that's brilliant. So I checked out like Starbucks and some other IT organizations and thought, yeah, we really need to do this because.

It's the, the value there. There's a, you know, speed to market. So in the past it, as I mentioned, very slow in healthcare to change. But in other industries they're, they're transforming all the time. And how is that is 'cause they have an agile it. So in order to do all the things that we wanna do for healthcare transformation, I don't think you can do it not being agile.

So we actually. Trained everyone in Agile, we reorganized our entire it. We became, we into domains. And if you understand agile language, I won't go deep into it because not everyone will, will be familiar with the terms. But we switch completely how we operate. So it's a whole new methodology of operation.

Just like all modern companies, Facebook, Spotify, they're all agile. So what that means is that every two weeks we're iterating, uh, we're constantly meeting with our customers to make sure that we're on the right track and that we're prioritizing things correctly and we're working off backlogs that they're interested in.

It was a whole new way of thinking. We started putting out product MVP most . Minimally viable products and then iterate on it. And our customers, they were astonished by the speed of which it moved. So they were used to traditional legacy it very slow. With Agile, we moved very quickly and were very focused, hyper-focused on the customer requirements, what they're trying to do.

So it aligned perfectly with what we called objectives and key results as a management methodology for our overall health system. And. Agile became so popular that parts of our hr, parts of our finance adopted it. We're like, whoa. And uh, and it really picked up, we called it team of teams, but it's the same sort of content really picked up organization wide.

So in order to meet the demands of a pandemic that shows up or, or digital transformation that your organization's going through, you've gotta be agile. If you try traditional waterfall methodologies, PMO, you're gonna be hurting. Uh, so Agile is really the only way to go. Yeah, it's, and there's a great story in the book, it, it talks about Providence's model and how they, they renew their road.

It's a three-year roadmap. They re renew it every three years, but they update it every year as well. And they even have, within that year, they have updates that are going on. They're, they're constantly adjusting based on what's going on in the, like, COVID just changed everything. It, it, it's taking into account that the world we live in.

Industry that we operate in is constantly changing. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So let me, let me close this out with a couple of quotes. But you guys throw out so many interesting quotes in this . So I just, I started pulling 'em out in a section I called quotes, and, but here's a softball. It's technology that holds us.

It's not technology that holds us back it's culture. And we hear that all the time. What can a leader do around culture to prepare the culture for digital transformation? Or is the culture ready for digital transformation and we're not moving fast enough? Patty, I'll defer to you first. So here's one of my favorite things to say about digital transformation.

Uh. Digital transformation is it enabled, but it's not. It led, and I'll start with that because it doesn't have to be the CIO or the IT leader that leads digital transformation. It's really the person who can reach across, uh, multiple stakeholder groups within the organization, build consensus, have the influence and the authority to drive.

Uh, decisions and drive the programs and drive the change. And that is all about organizational culture. The people who are the most successful are the ones who understand this better than anyone else. They're the ones who understand what it takes to. Do the puts and takes within an organization to move this, move, a massive program like this forward, how to make the compromises, how to take care of everybody's needs and yet remain true and maintain the integrity of the transformation program.

That's a very practical level, and you can, there's a lot of books you can read about why, you know, culture, eat strategy for breakfast and those kind of pity sayings, but at the ground level, this is what it really means. Someone who has the authority doesn't necessarily have to be the biggest title in the room.

Doesn't necessarily have to be the IT person, but it has to be somebody who can build this community and drive change by having a really deep understanding of what it takes within the organization to drive change and drive it. I think, go ahead, bill. No, please go ahead. I, I just wanna add to that and just give some practical things that you can do.

So to change it, one, you have to live it yourself and then your, it has to live it. So that's why I was talking about Agile. When people see you completely change and transform it, you get their attention, especially when it's in a positive way, then you gotta start doing stuff. And so some of the things that anyone can do, we call them digital transformation minutes.

So once a week I put out this email that would there then get propagated and it was like three things in 30 seconds. Drex Drex three text Drex, that one of your, your hosts co-hosts sometimes a concept. So we would put out this, uh, email, three things in 30 seconds, just letting them know about digital transformation.

Then we put out a video, I wanna say once a week. It was probably once every two weeks on average. But it was one minute long, had bumper music, was well crafted, and it was a clinician talking about something that it did for digital transformation. Over time, all these different messages, multim, modalities, video, email, those sorts of things.

Over time, people start understanding our culture is changing, we are becoming digitally transformative. And those are just some practical things. You can start seeding. They're almost subconscious, but you're talking about it, you're showing examples, and then you just gotta be smart in terms of every organization's different.

But I'll, I'll just tell you one thing that that we did, and I've done this many times in the past and anyone can do it, so I just repurposed some funds and everyone has budgets and you can do a little bit of repurposing based on your authority. I. And so we repurposed something to really enhance our digital front door, if you will.

And so if I would've gone through the traditional channels, it would've taken two years. What I said is, I, you know what? We're gonna go light on this area. We're gonna take some of those funds, apply it to here, show. So that's what we did. We moved some funds around. We did this development. We showed this new digital front door, and everyone around the table was astonished.

Wow, that's great. What about this, that, and the other? I said, yeah, we can do all that. , we're gonna need funding. And so that's how digital transformation can begin and snowball. So those are some techniques that anyone can incorporate in their particular organization. Uh, that's fantastic guys. How, uh, so clearly the book is out on Amazon.

Easy to find, uh, healthcare digital transformation, how consumerism technology and pandemic. Accelerating the future, how, uh, can people follow you? Uh, what's the best way to, for them to follow you or to connect with you if they have questions? Yeah. For me, I'm on LinkedIn, both Patty and I, because the book is Outta stock, which is just unbelievable to me.

It's more a reflection of supply chain than anything else. But anyways, if you want a signed book. Patty will tell you what his site is. You can look on my LinkedIn. I, I advertise it. Uh, it's the same price as Amazon, but fortunately both Patty and I had a few ahead of time. So it's 'cause some people want signed copies.

So if you can't find it on Amazon and don't wanna wait, you can go to my LinkedIn. That's the best way to connect with me. I'm also on Twitter and things like that, but start at LinkedIn. Everything is there. And then Patty definitely has his own site. Patty. Yeah, as far as, uh, I'm concerned you can Google me and you'll come to all my sites.

My personal website is a big unlock, uh, dot com, and then my company website, demo consulting.net. You can find everything that I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Twitter. Uh, the book, even though the print edition is, uh, uh, out of stock, you can buy the electronic, you can buy the ebook. You know, it's, you know, you can get it anytime.

And we are also putting out an audio book, which should be available for those, you know, who like to listen to in an audible or a platform like that. Uh, we should have that available within the next two weeks. So, you know, give or take. And we also have an India edition coming up because we had a huge amount of demand from India and all our readers.

It's like, when is the India edition coming on? So I think we're trying to squeeze that into the scheduled summer. It's just a lot of moving parts, but it's very exciting stuff. We're really pleased with the response that we've got for the book. And I, I'll, someone sent, sent me a note saying, I read the book.

It's like a masterclass for digital transformation. I'm like, wow, that's a nice way to put it. It's really how it's structured. Six chapters, very structured. Every chapter, you have a bunch of takeaways, specific action items. Bunch of tools, templates, everything to help you execute on this. Yeah, that was cool.

But, uh, yeah, you can find it, you know, you can get a copy of the book. It just may not be print at this moment, I'll tell you, they said September, but I've received my copy on Wednesday, which is fantastic. So I've got my copy here. I am going to recommend it to my clients 'cause it's, there's a lot of things that we could talk about.

If you're not following these two gentlemen on LinkedIn, you should. Patty is one of my sources for all my Tuesday Newsday articles. 'cause he's constantly hosting the, the news stuff and I just, I take those and go, Hey, somebody's doing research for me. So Patty, thank you for doing the research and finding all the great articles.

I'm glad to hear it. I'm glad to hear it. And, and Ed, I think LinkedIn has become your primary, uh, place for publishing articles these days, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, LinkedIn is good. And Bill, can I say one last thing? Because I, we didn't address it upfront, and I'm telling you, both Patty and I, we, you don't get rich from writing a book.

The intent of the book is not to make money. It really reflects our heart of who we are as people. And we know, we've seen personally the power of healthcare transformation and how it changes people's lives. It saves people's lives. It enables the dignity of death when that time comes. And we would just want to propagate.

You know what we've learned and share it with others. That's the heart of the book. So it's not a, you don't get rich as many people know, who've, uh, written before, especially when you divide up the time that it takes to actually write it. And it's really about helping others. So I, I hope others, even if one hospital or health system grabs it and something changes as a result, then we've done our job.

And that's the goal of the show. Amplify. Great thing to thinking, to Propel Healthcare forwards. Gentlemen, thanks for coming on the show. I really appreciate your time. Thank you, Mr. Meeting. What a great interview. I really like those guys and, uh, the work that they're doing, and, but that's all for this week.

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