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 My name is bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and create, or this week health, a set of channels dedicated to keeping health it staff current. And engaged. We want to thank our show sponsors. We're investing in developing the next generation of health leaders, short test and artist site two great companies. Check them out at this week. health.com/today.

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We had three great guests, Neil Patel, Dr. Neil Patel, Vanderbilt university medical center. Craig quite Koski, Cedar, Sinai, CIO, and Michael Penn medicine, CIO. , we had a great discussion. About priorities for 2023. What's a, we started with the macro trends that are facing healthcare. And I, you know, obviously financial pressure is one of the biggest, and it doesn't matter if you're an IDN. It doesn't matter if you're a critical access hospital. It really doesn't matter. At this point. The financial pressure is real.

We talked about that. We talked about where, where it is coming from, and it's coming from a lot of different places.

Here is Michael Penn medicine laying out some of the factors impacting. The financial performance of academic medical centers.

I think within the healthcare industry, we're all familiar with, more than half of our colleagues throughout the country are gonna run at a deficit in the upcoming year.

And those pressures, financial pressures are driven by, as we all know, many things, right? The covid cost of care escalating rapidly, revenues from payers, not escalating at the same rate, , turnover. Within, particularly the clinical ranks, , patients afraid to come back to the hospitals, , surgeries, you know, generally on a downtrend.

, so you know what's driving everything is the financial pressure. Pressure and the immediacy of that. Financial pressure wasn't like there was six years to plan for this. , people walked, you know, walked out in droves in a short period of time. Rates increase significantly, and the reimbursements in revenues to us will not come back as rapidly.

So a lot of pressure on cost containment, expense management, and, , trying to do more with less.

So more with less is a theme of this webinar yesterday. And so we start talking about how we're going to do more with less how technology is going to play a role in doing more with less. And I threw out this whole idea of automation and here's a great answer on how. These academic medical centers are approaching it. This is Dr. Neil Patel with Vanderbilt university medical center.

what we're having is, you know, technology will fix everything, right? And that's what the, that's what Commence sends as the 10 new request every morning, , to, , your local IT shop. But seriously, there's two aspects to that number. Can we automate mundane or redundant tasks so we don't need the human in that space anymore or any longer so that the staff we have can do as much as possible, , and do the work that they nec have to do that technology can't cover.

The other part is when we have these shortages, the burnout rate of the existing people increases because they're working short staffed all the time, and underfunded. So how can we leverage technology? To help support and reduce the anxiety of folks that are probably very not as experienced, don't have the safety net of folks around them to help them do their job well, you know, and you're right, it's all the way up and down the line.

Lab tech shortages, respiratory tech shortages. CT scan, tech shortages, surgical tech shortages in the ORs. Any one of those individuals is part of the care team, and if that link in the chain is not as robust, the whole system becomes slow and frustrating. So we're being looked upon. Obviously we can't fit skill issues that you need a human at the bedside.

But what are the technologies we can deploy? Change the model of care. That's something that has been the mantra since, , the end of the last year, where we're re-looking at how to deploy virtual support, not for care at home, but just even within the hospital. So that the bedside providers, , get some support instead of just running around, , chasing things down.

I then asked if we are looking for tools, additional tools, new tools that we can put into the environment that can automate things and bring things to the forefront. And I think Craig quite tasky really captured. The essence of how these CEO's are approaching this challenge.

Yeah, I

guess I'd say it's more the latter for us, bill. , it's maximizing use of existing tools and commitment to simplifying and optimizing, , optimizing scheduling. Scheduling, as we talked about, is critical using contemporary tools that, , you know, are in other areas of the world outside of he.

, consolidating and standardizing to single platforms were possible rather than adding net new boltons and, you know, new capabilities which complicate our lives and in some cases have, , a carry forward of technical debt As Neil , described earlier. , you know, I don't think, , you know, net new tools and more ways of doing things is the answer.

I think simplifying the world for our, , providers, our staff, and our patients, , is really the way to achieve some of those

So one of the questions from the audience was about customer experience or patient experience. And what the role of the CIO was with regard to patient experience and how they were approaching it.

And here is Michael or sushi, Penn medicine talking about the experience they're trying to create in Philadelphia.

we're branching out.

So, you know, I think our platform has a lot of functionality and we all use terms like low friction and, you know, engagement with our patients, , but leveraging some of the tools, whether it's a, , you know, a texting solution. , to, to augment our scheduling system is, is one example. , I think a, a broader example is, you know, and, and you mentioned the, the Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Nashville, they're, you know, urban centers, they're hard to get to.

, and three of our major hospitals are downtown and it's frustrating. And so that experience already has two strikes against it because they had to sit in traffic. They had a fine parking, they had to find their way to one of our buildings. And you know, now how do we make it better from there? So you're always trying to reclaim that in-person, , experience.

So more tele type of, , experience adds to the, , the benefit and pushing more to the. It's certainly a big initiative for us, cuz that'll do two things. One is it's generally where people wanna be, , served from a care perspective if they can. , secondly, it'll reduce the census population that we're all dealing with and provide the opportunity to get truly those sicker patients into the hospital.

So to reduce that stress level

I love that answer. I really appreciate the three gentlemen who filled in actually, we had a, we had a couple of other academic medical center CEOs who had to drop out at the last minute and three, these three gentlemen jumped in and I really appreciate them doing that. This webinar series has been really well received. We've had.

Over 200 registrations at each of the first two. , webinars that we are doing and, , we're going to continue to do that. Right. And, you know, and we're doing them a little different than we've done them before then we've done them in the past. These are not vendor driven. , webinars. They are really industry driven webinars. We have a CIO advisory board.

And I've asked them, what topics would you like to discuss and would benefit your staff if we had these discussions and that's where the topics are coming from? Our next leadership series is on March 9th. At one o'clock Eastern time. And that's going to be on the changing nature of work. I have not identified the three leaders that are going to join me on that. Although I know a lot of leaders have really strong thoughts and opinions on this, we're going to be talking about remote work hybrid work.

, this just single line. What question do you have, , about this topic? So we're able to incorporate your questions into the webinar. , right there instead of waiting for the chat questions to generate, , we started this webinar with 60 questions. , for the CEO's and I send them over to them ahead of time. So they get a chance to think about how they're going to answer those questions. And it creates a webinar that I feel like is really well designed.

, so that your questions are being talked about. They have some time to prep for it. It's not just being thrown at them at the last minute and they have to respond to them. So. , I hope you like this series. We are going to continue to do it. These are not on demand. You have to attend live and in person, and I keep getting requests for putting them on demand. And I don't think we're going to do that. So, , sorry about that, but we want you to be there and to be a part of the conversation March 9th.

1:00 PM Eastern time. Mark your calendar. Look forward to the next discussion.

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Check them out at this week. health.com/today. Thanks for listening. That's all for now.