This transcription is provided by artificial intelligence. We believe in technology but understand that even the most intelligent robots can sometimes get speech recognition wrong.

  Today in Health it, this story is a new kind of partnership to gain strategic talent. My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week in Health IT a channel dedicated to keeping health IT staff current. I. And engaged. I provide executive coaching for health leaders around technology and it, if you wanna learn more, check out health lyrics.com.

Alright. Here is today's story. This is interesting to me. It comes from Healthcare Innovation Group. The title of the story is The Logic Behind the Edward Elmhurst Health. Impact Advisors, strategic partnership. Let me just give you a couple of excerpts from this to get us started. Last month, the senior executives at Naperville, Illinois based Edward Elmhurst Health, a three hospital, 736 bed system in western suburbs of Chicago, announced a long-term strategic partnership.

With the consultants at Naperville Based Impact Advisors, a leading healthcare consultancy providing strategy, operations, revenue cycle, and technology services according to the press release, posted to the Impact Advisors website on April 13th, the unique strategic partnership pairs Edward Elmhurst Health's expansive consumer-centric mission-focused healthcare.

Operations with impact advisors, industry leading talent, and focus on driving value through digitally enabled solutions. Together, the organizations can drive meaningful change with measurable impact faster with less risk by leveraging each other's strengths. This partnership moves away from the more transactional model and aligns both organization's interest to create valuable market leading solutions that have not been done before and can transform healthcare.

We had a lot of commonality and kept talking, and one of the things I asked him, I. To think about was how we could change the relationship that we had and deepen it and reimagine what a partnership could look like between a consulting firm and a provider. And we all know that the world is changing. And so we kind of said, you know, assuming the status quo in terms of we need help, we reach out to consulting firms, get a proposal, have them do the workforce and sign a check.

And it's very transactional, but there's got to be a better way. What if we could create a much more fluid environment to meet demand without requiring a lot of overhead and negotiation to access that? Jonathan Goldberg stated, Haglund asked Smith, what does the relationship look like now? And he goes on to say, we've created a joint review board comprised of folks at.

Edward Elmhurst, impact Advisors and our private equity firm, Chicago Pacific Advisors. And so we've partitioned the opportunities around innovation, process optimization and information services partnership. So for example, we've created a digital health program beginning in oncology. At Edward Elmhurst, we're looking at value-based care, customer relationship management, and other areas.

Second per process optimization. What do we really need to do to improve and automate the process to make things safer, more efficient, and more timely? And third, per partnership. Edward Elmhurst has access to everyone at Impact Advisors, and we want to create a seamless demand management so that Edward Elmhurst can access our capabilities at any time.

Goldberg goes on to say, Andy and I have talked about this. Lots of vendors and consulting firms will come at this and say, we'd like to be partners or consider us partners, but the reality is that most relationships are not really partnerships in a vendor relationship. They only want upside. He said, I.

No, we want a true partnership. We'll work with one another on both the ups and the downs, so they have full access to us and the information about our organization. And there's that level of trust. And we actually did make an investment in Impact advisors as an organization, and there are a couple of reasons for that.

One, we're always looking for opportunities for revenue, but more importantly, we have a short attention span in our world, and we felt it important to have skin in the game, so to speak. So the more we can make impact advisors more successful, the better we can do. And that's why the Joint Review Board is so important.

We're both incentivized to be successful. I. Alright. One last thing on this. So you're, how are you interacting at this time? Haglund asked. Goldberg says, that's exactly it. The impact advisors, people are embedded in some of our communities such as our innovation committees and our digital transformation group.

They have access to our strategic plan. They're interacting with all of our senior executives. It's a long-term view where it's not about when the next deal is going to be made. It's not like that. We have full access to one another and are constantly going to look for opportunities and impact advisors has dozens of leaders that are considered thought leaders in their area of business, and we have access to all of them, and we don't have to spend a lot of time figuring out how to access all of them.

Smith goes on to add, we've almost become an adjunct management team for them. We're walking the halls. We've got office space there. And I know it's a bit of a trope, but we really are looking to create value to help them become safer, more effective, more efficient, and help them grow and to make sure we mutually benefit from any changes.

Alright, that's probably enough from the article to get a gist of what they're talking about. As you know, with all of these articles, we try to do a so what at the end? Why does this matter? Why should we care? And as far as the deal itself, I really can't comment on it. I, I don't know the financials of the deal.

Perhaps there's a better way to gain access to these resources. I'm not entirely sure. I'd have to really look at the details and there wasn't enough of the details. I. I will say this though, great talent, I mean really great talent that can transform an organization. It's not rare, but it's not plentiful either.

Healthcare is a dynamic space. You used to be able to get by with mediocre talent in some areas because healthcare moves slowly and you had a captive market. Healthcare is not moving slowly anymore. New entrants are getting in between health systems and their patients more and more. This requires a new level of thinking beyond leveraging existing models and optimizing margins.

This is about creating whole new business models, leveraging technology to stand up new practices, and developing non-traditional partnerships to remain relevant in the health of the community that you serve. . Are most health systems made up of these kinds of leaders? I don't really know. I guess the better question is, is your health system made up of these kinds of leaders?

And if not, how do you gain access to them? And that's what I think this article's about, and that's why I think it's important. How do you get access to the best talent you possibly can? In this dynamic and changing market, they've essentially taken impact advisors and put them in a strategic role across the organization.

You may need to do that in your organization depending on the scale and scope and the market that you serve. You may need to do that within the security area as well. You may need to look at different areas within your portfolio and your business model and determine where are we lacking talent and how do we create these kinds of creative partnerships.

And that's why I cover this story. I think it's really about talent. How do you get the best talent in order to ensure your future as a healthcare system? That's all for today. If you know of someone that might benefit from our channel, please forward them a note. They can subscribe on our website this week, health.com, or wherever you listen to podcast.

Apple, Google Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher. You get the picture. We are. Everywhere, or at least we're trying to be. We want to thank our channel sponsors who are investing in our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders, VMware Hillrom, Starbridge Advisors, McAfee and Aruba Networks. Thanks for listening.

That's all for now.