HealthIMPACT Live Presents: CIOs Speak- Best Investments I Made During the Pandemic
YouTube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2s3PeAkus4
Originally Published: Nov 15, 2021
Our expert panel will discuss the best investments they have made in the last 18 months and what the future holds. With little room for error and the ground shifting beneath their feet, health system CIO’s had to make difficult decisions to keep their staff, patients and organizations safe. Almost two years after the start of the pandemic, CIO’s reflect on these critical choices. What were the best decisions they made? What are their regrets? As we face the Delta variant and beyond, what are they changing and what will they double down on? In this keynote panel discussion, we will discuss:
Lisa Stump, SVP of Information Systems & CIO, Yale New Haven Health System
Steve Hess, CIO, UCHealth
Mark Eimer, SVP, Associate CIO & Chief Technology Officer, Hackensack Meridian Health
Michael Ames, Sr. Director, Healthcare & Life Sciences, SADA, Moderator
Michael Ames : Hello everyone, welcome to our panel discussion today. We really appreciate you taking the time to join us here, and I think we're going to make really good use of the next 45 minutes or so. My name is Michael Ames, and I'm the Senior Director for Healthcare and Life Sciences at SADA.
And joining today on this panel are two men I've worked with quite a bit over the last few years, Steve Hess and Mark Eimer. I'm going to let them introduce themselves in a minute, as we were shaping up the content for this session and thinking through what would be valuable to the Health Impact community. This idea of looking back on the last 1820 months and seeing what organizations seemed to do well, through making good decisions and good choices in the pandemic and looking at those and retrospectively what worked and what didn't and how is that helping us prepare to the for the future, maybe useful whether that's a future pandemic another crisis we hope not or even just a future that we're looking at right now with difficulties in in staffing demand and other challenges.
We we brought together some really outstanding folks and i'm excited for you to meet them if you don't already know them and to hear a little bit about what they've done so. Stephen market like you guys to take a minute now and introduce yourselves tell us a little bit about your role and your background and then we'll jump right in with right in with questions let's start with Steve.
Steve Hess: you've asked jojo at ucl in Colorado it's 12 hospitals 2000 beds 5.6 billion about 4.1 million in between visits so we're on the enterprise instance of an epic ehr across that footprint i've been in healthcare ID for 30 years and a CIO for 17 of those years mark.
Mark Eimer: Thanks Steve hi my name is mark i'ma i'm the associate CIO and chief technology officer for hackensack meridian health we're a 17 hospital system 500 locations about 7 billion in revenue and so i've been in this role. For approximately three years with hackensack meridian health.
So we'd also like to introduce Lisa stump CIO of Yale new haven health Lisa will you take a minute and give us her background. We're also really happy to be joined today by at least a stump CIO at Yale new haven health Lisa week give us a brief intro on yourself.
Lisa Stump: Yes, thank you Emily stomp I am the senior Vice President and chief information and digital officer here at Yale new haven health system and the Yale school of medicine. We are five hospital health system here in primarily Connecticut region with practices and hospitals, though, covering New York Connecticut and Rhode island and really pleased to be with you all today.
Michael Ames : Thanks Lisa so let's jump into our discussion here, we want to start as thinking back to the the frantic days 1820 months ago in the early period of the pandemic. We had the sudden and unexpected challenges in that moment, there were likely investments that you had already made in your organization that you found yourself grateful for we'd like to hear about those what were what were some of the things that you were thinking yourself prior decisions before we knew there was a pandemic, on the way.
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Michael Ames : That had to pay off in those early days and think of it in terms of technology, but maybe it was also a surprise team or program that was in place and sort of emerged as an unexpected.
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Michael Ames : superstar during that period let's start with with Mike and then we'll go to Steve and Lisa we started with mark and then we'll go to Steve and Lisa.
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Mark Eimer: So thanks Mike, so I think, for us, you know, we had just started the Google journey so for us, we had a program called going Google and we were working on rolling out workspace and we were going to roll out chrome os devices as well we we weren't there yet.
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Mark Eimer: We had just implemented zoom for the board at the time, because they wanted some more virtual options and then, when the pandemic kit.
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Mark Eimer: It was we pivoted very quickly as zoom became the platform across the network that we leveraged.
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Mark Eimer: The chromebooks that we had purchased quickly converted into.
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Mark Eimer: managed devices, we put them in basically kiosk mode and literally send workers home to to use.
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Mark Eimer: The chromebooks and you know, we had a high reliance we're already an epic shop, so we already had a large citrix deployment going on, we really just expanded.
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Mark Eimer: The enterprise Apps farm for citrix to really support the work from home, I mean march 15 I still remember today the CEO saying I need everyone working from home.
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Mark Eimer: But, yet the technologies that we had really didn't and the strategies weren't around a mobile workforce at the time, so we had to pivot very quickly.
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Michael Ames : So you have the core of things in place to enable a remote workforce deployed in small ways the pivot was like you already had the strategy in mind the pivot wasn't to new technology, but it was to accelerate and expand that very quickly is that right.
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Mark Eimer: Oh, my goodness yeah I mean Kobe was the great external transformational.
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Mark Eimer: factor that literally pushed us into all sorts of areas that we were probably dipping our toe in weren't real sure if work from home was going to allow for productivity to maintain its levels, and you know when the CEO said, everyone go home.
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Mark Eimer: We literally had to pivot quickly, and you know, we had the technologies but we hadn't really fully worked through all the use cases or even developed how we were going to use it and everything was done really on the fly.
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Michael Ames : Steve What about you see.
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Steve Hess: yeah I think I have a similar story that mark just shared, so I think one of the common themes here, I think, during the pandemic is is those organizations that invested.
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Steve Hess: In their digital strategy and frankly intertwined their digital strategy with their overall organizational strategy.
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Steve Hess: or probably ready for this and many times to scale what they already had so, for example, we had been doing virtual health virtual visits virtual urgent care 24 by seven since 2016.
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Steve Hess: But our virtual urgent care of business as an example, were 13 a day in January 2020.
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Steve Hess: In February, there were 250 a day we went from 1000 virtual visits, a month to 77,000 virtual visits overnight, but we actually didn't build anything we scaled what we already had so.
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Steve Hess: who's forward Thank you in advance organizations like you have on the panel today had had to leverage their digital strategy and leverage their enterprise ehr implementations and then scaled it.
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Steve Hess: For what what we all had to do during the pandemic as mark said to.
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Steve Hess: The copia was a great accelerator, we had 600,000 portal users pre pandemic, we have 1.6 million portal users now so that it just became a burning platform for for joining kind of digital revolution so again, I think that.
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Steve Hess: Many of the events organizations pretty much had this capability, and this was actually an accelerator, and still is that I don't think we've stopped accelerating.
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Michael Ames : I was following CT lens post some blog posts in those in those early days, your CMO CMO there you see health, and it was fascinating seeing him post up, day after day Tele health visits going to.
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Michael Ames : You know 10 X what they were the day before 100 X, the day after.
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Michael Ames : And and just so so that that that has expanded hugely and you think that that is continuing to span i'm sure i'm sure you've seen a taper off.
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Steve Hess: yeah so it's actually really interesting Michael, so I think you know we went from 1000 to 77,000 and now we settled into.
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Steve Hess: About 26,000 virtual visits, a month, and we certainly have not gone back down to 1000 but we're not obviously it's only 7000 but what's interesting is.
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Steve Hess: view it's hard to paint a broad stroke it's not virtual visits are you know dead again or they're very much part of the future.
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Steve Hess: 95% of our behavioral health visits are virtual 95% so that's that's a specialty that's tailor made for this that will never go back right, but obviously a surgical specialty much harder to do a virtual visit for so.
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Steve Hess: Things like primary care are about 25% neurology 30% behavioral 95% so it's not this broad stroke of everybody's doing or nobody's doing it it's kind of found its way now.
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Michael Ames : yeah yeah it's exciting Lisa what were you patting yourself on the back for.
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Michael Ames : In those early days.
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Lisa Stump: yeah you know I think similar to my colleagues, this morning you know, certainly the prior investments in citrix and our virtual private network vpn technology really allowed us essentially overnight.
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Lisa Stump: To move 10s of thousands of employees to the safety of remote work and so that was, I think, an incredible advantage coming into the pandemic.
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Lisa Stump: Tele health, you know similar to steve's comments, I think we were worse off initially we were doing about one visit a day just about five per week prior to the pandemic we peaked at about 5000 visits per day we've tapered off now at between 20 503,000 telehealth visits a day.
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Lisa Stump: But you know I think really a great trajectory and the right conversations now underway around you know what's the optimal place for Tele and and video care.
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Lisa Stump: Tele health in the Inpatient environment we haven't touched on, yet it was an also area, an area where we were glad we had started to make investments there and so.
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Lisa Stump: Really quickly we're able to leverage one of your points in the question was where their teams that surprised us.
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Lisa Stump: Our clinical engineering and tele health technology teams scaled very quickly, we were fortunate we had recently opened our regional operations Center essentially a large warehouse.
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Lisa Stump: that allowed us to acquire quickly lots of the mobile you know video carts that we were able to build I had TEAM members out there with with drills and.
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Lisa Stump: equipment assembling carts and equipment to be rapidly deployed to the Inpatient rooms across our hospitals.
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Lisa Stump: which allowed us to leverage specialists in one hospital to help care for the growing number of code patients that were being seen across our organization.
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Lisa Stump: being close to New York City, which was the epicenter as folks know our numbers grew quickly, particularly in our.
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Lisa Stump: Greenwich hospital area and slowly moved up the shoreline here in Connecticut and so that Inpatient Tele health infrastructure was as important, honestly, as the outpatient infrastructure that that we had in place.
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Lisa Stump: We haven't talked about call centers one of the successes that we also saw.
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Lisa Stump: Thankfully we had recently upgraded to an enterprise level suite around our call Center capabilities and technologies early on, we opened a coven call Center right the communities had lots of questions.
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Lisa Stump: About coven about testing about treatment options, and so we over the course of a weekend stood up a makeshift call Center quickly realized, it was too small for the safety of the people working in the call Center.
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Lisa Stump: over another weekend dismantled and rebuilt it in a bigger space and then about two weeks later, signed all of those people home and operated that call Center entirely remotely.
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Lisa Stump: But it was a huge literal lifeline for our communities, as we were you know being called upon to provide information in a very scary and uncertain time.
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Lisa Stump: So.
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Michael Ames : He said i'm thinking about.
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Michael Ames : A couple years back, I think you were quoted in becker's they were asking cios about terms they hate it and one of the things you said was.
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Michael Ames : keeping the lights on, you don't want it described as a keeping the lights on organization, because it kind of demote everybody to just.
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Michael Ames : we're just here for for maintenance and it's amazing to me how much the pandemic gave organizations like the three of you operate the opportunity to show.
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Michael Ames : Just how far above and beyond that you can go now I think it's been a while, since anybody uc health hackensack or Yale has accused.
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Michael Ames : It of being a keeping the lights on organization, but there are lots of hospital systems out there, where that's still the case right and where where the the function of the cios office in the IT department is still basic maintenance, as opposed to a partner to get things done it's thrilling.
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Michael Ames : I never want to repeat this pandemic, but if one good thing came out of it in our industry it's really putting to rest the question of.
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Michael Ames : The essential strategic nature of the IT departments you guys run So these are some great great illustrations.
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Michael Ames : let's move forward, then a little bit so we've talked about the things you already had in play it sounds like in all these cases the technology was there, the services and the people were there.
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Michael Ames : You discovered how much you can accomplish in a weekend if you had to in scaling these things out and going big.
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Michael Ames : let's talk now about what was new let's shift up the order a little bit, I want to go to Steve Lisa and then mark new investments that you made post pandemic that that you feel like what was the best use of your time, energy and money and had the biggest payoff go ahead Steve.
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Steve Hess: yeah, so I think that one of the things that we had in place prior to the pandemic scale during the pandemic and now actually are invested in more.
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Steve Hess: is really around our our virtual health Center so we actually have.
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Steve Hess: A off site virtual health Center staff by technicians RNA PPs and MDS is 24 by seven they're actually the group that also delivered the virtual urgent care, but they're doing things like.
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Steve Hess: You know, traditional Center eyes telemetry they're doing fall sitters so virtual fall centers.
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Steve Hess: But they're also doing virtual icu virtual you know MED surge surveillance and and we implemented like virtual sepsis around so they're watching over the substance clock and sepsis.
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Steve Hess: And deterioration interventions across our 12 hospitals.
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Steve Hess: But with the the pandemic, we also scale them to be doing more outside the walls of the hospital, so we actually have remote patient monitoring programs, now that are focusing on positive covert patients in the Inpatient or stable.
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Steve Hess: But we can actually discharge them watch over them for eight days it's almost like kind of the foreshadowing of hospital home, so the whole you know rpm.
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Steve Hess: Early discharge surveillance in true cms hospital home, those are things that.
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Steve Hess: You know our strategies pre pandemic and the need for something like this to decant our hospitals and keep patients safe at home.
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Steve Hess: What is only again accelerated based upon what we're doing so those kinds of investments, I think so virtual health and taking care of patients outside the walls, I think the other big.
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Steve Hess: really good thing that hot good thing if anything is good on the pandemic was.
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Steve Hess: The organizational and bracing have have really good predictive and prescriptive intelligence.
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Steve Hess: So, again prepaid dynamic lots of good analytics lots of good analytics with at bag with Microsoft with Google and so on, but the reality is is that.
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Steve Hess: Because of the need for real time data like as in I need this data for ventilators and in patients and positivity scores and predicting.
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Steve Hess: surges and so on, that need for that analytics and more of them machine learning Ai predictive prescriptive intelligence.
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Steve Hess: that's accelerated our adoption of that dramatically and so that's another never go back we've created some non it operational intelligence teams at them partner with the it teams.
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Steve Hess: and external data scientists to do some really crazy good things that just allowed us to make dramatically better decisions so that investment in both virtual health and in our intelligence infrastructure have paid off, time and time again.
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Michael Ames : that's outstanding i've been to interrupt your your virtual care facility, the remote patient monitoring facility and and I just got to tell folks who are listening.
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Michael Ames : The starship enterprise has nothing on that on that office space down there, the amount of technology and the cool blinky readouts and.
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Michael Ames : Not to mention smart people sitting in those seats if you're looking for a model of how to do that take a look at what you see health has done there it's it's remarkable now i've lost track of who I said was next was going to be mark.
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Lisa Stump: I think it was.
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Lisa Stump: gonna be realized yeah.
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Lisa Stump: Go ahead go either way.
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Michael Ames : Lisa take it away.
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Lisa Stump: Sure um you know, in terms of new investments, I was struggling a bit I do think, for the most part, our response during the pandemic was to.
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Lisa Stump: dramatically scale what were existing investments in some cases those initial investments were small, and so the magnitude of our scaling was much larger, but the themes are right in line with what Steve has shared.
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Lisa Stump: i'm feeling a bit remiss in not mentioning data in the first answer you know our ability to move to that real time data, I think.
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Lisa Stump: has truly revolutionized the way that meetings are conducted and decisions are made here in the organization.
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Lisa Stump: business decisions and clinical decisions, and you know I recall being part of one of our larger meeting forums just a couple of weeks ago and the.
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Lisa Stump: My colleague, who was leading the the conversation and discussion quickly through zoom you know shared his screen and launched the live dashboard and I thought we've we've arrived, you know it wasn't.
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Lisa Stump: yesterday's or last month's data in a arts and crafts rendition on a PowerPoint slide it truly was looking at what was going on in our organization in that moment and.
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Lisa Stump: You know I do think that we will never turn back some of the new investments, you know truly new you know we tried to push.
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Lisa Stump: The use of Bot technologies, I mentioned that call Center earlier, it was quickly overwhelmed with call volume.
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Lisa Stump: Basically 24 seven, and so we did introduced by technologies to help start to answer some of the very frequently asked questions that were coming in.
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Lisa Stump: That allowed our people to spend more time on the harder questions and the people who needed that high touch approach and use technology to manage what were some of the easier.
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Lisa Stump: answers we I would say again double down our investments again i'd be remiss in not mentioning the power of having a single epic instance across all of our care settings the ability to leverage it for scheduling once we got to that phase of.
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Lisa Stump: Being blessed frankly with a vaccine and we needed to get people vaccinated quickly scheduled testing, you know that common platform allowed us to operate in ways we never could have imagined, you know with testing tense and and vaccine mass vaccination centers all all around our state.
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Michael Ames : You know there's a theme here that i'm going to i'm going to i'm injecting here before mark comes in, to.
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Michael Ames : See.
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Michael Ames : If my theme i'm predicting the theme correctly, which is really that I think, as we devised this topic we we were envisioning more about what did the.
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Michael Ames : pandemic trigger you to do that was new really what we're hearing is that the things that were matter the things that mattered the best investments that you made were the expansions of things that you already had in place.
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Michael Ames : which speaks strongly to the need for.
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Michael Ames : preparedness to looking forward to making sure that you have things and it's not that you know wouldn't have made sense to move half the work for us home and work remotely prior to the pandemic but, but you had the technology there.
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Michael Ames : You had integrated emr instances right, you had the other things that you needed there, so that when the crisis came you could expand a different kind of crisis might have resulted in expanding different technologies, but in the moment of crisis is probably not when you're gonna go shopping.
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Michael Ames : For something new.
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Michael Ames : As much as build upon what you already have so now said that mark you're either going to prove me right or wrong.
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Mark Eimer: I think I think you're probably pretty spot on Mike I mean.
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Mark Eimer: While the pandemic definitely allowed for a lot of innovation.
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Mark Eimer: And it took bureaucracy, out of decision making, because it was more around just to get it done you didn't have to go ask for permission anymore you're more along the lines of asking for forgiveness.
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Mark Eimer: Just rolling it out and getting it done but you know, for us, we had the same call Center issue that you know Lisa and Steve had right.
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Mark Eimer: We had to quickly procure a web based solution contact Center we had about 80 call centers that we had to get working from home, we had a patient access Center that we literally stood up overnight, to take patient calls coming in.
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Mark Eimer: You know, we were asked.
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Mark Eimer: By by the governor to set up a mega vaccine site.
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Mark Eimer: That.
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Mark Eimer: You know out in the middle of the middle lands and get that up and running.
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Mark Eimer: It well how do you do it right, I mean, these are things to lisa's point you know, we had to we started to install all these 4G routers.
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Mark Eimer: You know, new technology that you know we hadn't really test, did you know internally but we throw out a whole bunch of new technology, you know with.
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Mark Eimer: While carts and in the swords just so we could do you know in excess of three quarters of a million of vaccines at the meadowlands.
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Mark Eimer: I mean it was you know, and then to say I need you to go on to the Community and we're going to go vaccinate and the Community and we're going to go to the train station.
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Mark Eimer: Okay we've never set up, you know, a vaccine site and that, at a train station before, so there was a lot of MacGyver and going on.
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Mark Eimer: During the pandemic and leveraging a lot of the core and basic so our standard wild card had chromebooks on it running you know running epic.
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Mark Eimer: You know back to our 4G router but you know back back to the homeland, I mean it was you know we were MacGyver thing is, we were going.
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Mark Eimer: Pulling from the toolkit that we had built to build these solutions that weren't sure was going to work or not work, but we sort of pulled it together and it all worked right.
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Mark Eimer: We did do the chat Bot solutions to try to minimize the amount of call volume right coming in, you know from everyone and.
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Mark Eimer: You know and worried that when people were going to register for vaccines, it was going to crash epic right we're building out so much capacity.
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Mark Eimer: To ensure that when the public was scheduling you know for vaccines that you know we didn't go down, like so many other sites did so.
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Mark Eimer: There was a lot of scurrying around and a lot of praying and and a lot of hoping and a lot of MacGyver and going on, but at the end of the day, you know we did leverage, a lot of the core technology that we had previously invested.
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Michael Ames : yeah I think that okay so that's an important qualification is is the core technologies expanded, but that doesn't mean that you had to figure out how to do a bunch of stuff.
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Michael Ames : That you'd never done before in crisis mode nights and weekends and I guess there, I would say what you were expanding on.
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Michael Ames : Was the innovative capabilities of your workforce right you had good people in place, who were able to think big and willing to.
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Michael Ames : commit the time and effort and energy to go make those things happen Steve you are smiling and nodding a couple points there and I know you see health has played a big role in the.
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Michael Ames : vaccine rollout and things here in Colorado is there anything you want to add to that sort of MacGyver in vaccines into the.
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Steve Hess: Key so as mark was talking I wasn't my own, because I think all three of us are organizations, probably played a public health role in our state.
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Steve Hess: That we never assumed we'd have to play, and so you know, we were all collectively fighting this this.
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Steve Hess: invisible war, and it was incredible to see that our doctors and nurses, putting their lives on the line, frankly, every day, but our ID teams are able to kind of come together and actually.
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Steve Hess: created this huge Community outreach Community benefit almost a public health service and in the largest health systems in each State probably play that role.
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Steve Hess: So I think that's something that not everybody probably understood that you know we didn't have a national response, frankly, we even have state responses.
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Steve Hess: Usually the largest health system in the state ended up playing kind of this this public health role, I think the other thing to again to just amplify little mark was was talking about.
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Steve Hess: The creativity and innovation and work ethic of our teams just cannot be overstated like i'm just so proud of how you see health responded, just like mark ELISE i'm sure proud their own organizations by i'm.
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Steve Hess: very, very proud of how the it team stepped up as well, one of the funny slash creative stories we have here, so we implemented healthy planet, which is the epic pop health tool.
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Steve Hess: 2017 2018 rate and we use it for rescoring cohorts you can actually put diabetic patients or congestive heart patients or patients at risk of readmission and these cohorts.
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Steve Hess: And then your value based contracts can be modeled after those in care management and and virtual health and so on.
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Steve Hess: Well, we use that healthy planet registry architecture to actually schedule and invite our patients to get vaccinated so early up so try to rewind back to like the middle of December 2020.
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Steve Hess: We had a lot of people who wanted vaccinations and not as much back see Pfizer was just starting to roll out Madonna was probably two weeks away, so we had.
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Steve Hess: You know, hundreds of thousands of people who won the vaccine and 20,000 maxine doses, so we actually used healthy plan, and those are registries to put the different phases of the of the patients in those registries and then we use online scheduling our mobile APP.
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Steve Hess: Our our web APP.
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Steve Hess: to invite those patients in those core cohorts of schedule and then get vaccinated their first those and their second dose scheduled.
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Steve Hess: In a panel schedule so that's a great example where we use this healthy planet tool to manage population health.
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Steve Hess: And, and my team my creative team said, you know what we can use it for vaccine lotteries as well, and we actually were able to deliver vaccines like day one.
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Steve Hess: Of one availability was through this invite online scheduling approach that worked out extremely well you know, asked me two years ago, we would have had to create a vaccine lottery, I was at what do you guys talking about.
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Steve Hess: And, and the team use the tool in a way that it wasn't meant to be and delivered for the state of Colorado and beyond that's that's what these good organizations these great organizations.
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Steve Hess: That you have on the panel do and it's you know a lot of smoke and mirrors and magic going on behind the scenes, but the outcome.
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Steve Hess: is a response to this there's war that was extremely positive.
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Michael Ames : yeah I mean such great examples of layering the creativity and the talent of people.
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Michael Ames : On top of having made the right well thought out technology investments and how that can help you be prepared for the unexpected things that may come if you had said vaccine lottery, two years ago I didn't even think we could have imagined what it meant, let alone how you would.
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Steve Hess: implement it right.
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Michael Ames : yeah so and that's actually a good segue into into what I think is kind of the final chapter in the discussion here, which is around.
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Michael Ames : It but i'd like to get your thoughts on building resilience toward the next crisis and the trick here is we don't know what that's going to be right.
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Michael Ames : So so as you think about and and in a couple of perspectives in terms of technology, what are the new core technology investments that you're thinking of making your areas that you're going to continue to expand.
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Michael Ames : and also in terms of talent, we have a problem right now that's hopefully a little bit temporary but but, but today there's another little emerging crisis which is.
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Michael Ames : The difficulty in acquiring and retaining talent across the industry, both on the clinical side and on the technical side.
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Michael Ames : And so, so, given how much we've focused in this discussion today on how important that people were.
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Michael Ames : What are you doing to try to make sure that you've got people to be prepared for the next thing so it's fairly broad but just thinking about how are we getting ready for what's next.
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Michael Ames : And let's do it this way let's go Lisa first and then Stephen will let mark have the final word on this one.
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Lisa Stump: yeah I think I got the hardest one to go first um.
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Michael Ames : You know, I think.
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Lisa Stump: yeah you know our our people certainly are, I think the the greatest asset that we have and the pandemic, certainly, you know underscored that.
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Lisa Stump: You know our our approaches, I think probably some degree fairly common you know again against other high caliber organizations, but you know organizationally we have been committed to.
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Lisa Stump: Really measuring the level of engagement amongst our employees and we do that at least annually through a very formal employee engagement survey.
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Lisa Stump: In our it s division, I have then chartered a self governance employee self governance structure and group to help me and my leadership team understand what those survey results are telling us and and how we.
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Lisa Stump: then put into effect, things that that matter and are meaningful to our teams and we all know, pay is important but pay is not the only reason that you know people get up out of bed every every day and I was going to say come into work, but login to work.
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Lisa Stump: You know, recognizing that there is that now national essentially competition right we have unfortunately lost a few TEAM members who can continue to live.
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Lisa Stump: Here in the Community, that they love, but work for other high caliber organizations now across the country and so.
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Lisa Stump: The importance of telework you know also became very clear early on, I had the opportunity to co lead with our chief human resources officer.
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Lisa Stump: You know, a broad scale look at our telework approach what in our policies say what did our job descriptions say how are we, ensuring that we could be as flexible as we were going to need to be to attract and retain top talent.
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Lisa Stump: But we've also looked at our PE we we looked at, you know market analyses to ensure that that caliber was where it needed to be and then very much look to partner, where appropriate, with you know some managed services organizations to augment the staff and talent, that we have.
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Lisa Stump: I think that's the people side of the equation Mike I think that there is also the question of what are the skills that are going to be important as we go forward and some of that flexibility in the workforce through some of the.
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Lisa Stump: You know staff augmentation firms, I do think helps us maintain some ability to be nimble in acquiring some of the very perhaps specific and newer talents, that we need, while we continue to invest in the training of the workforce that we've got.
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Michael Ames : Lisa that's great I appreciate that and Steve What about you technology people, how are you getting ready for what's next.
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Steve Hess: yeah, so I think let's talk about people, so I think Lisa mentioned quite a few things that we're probably all doing by look at as a toolbox.
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Steve Hess: You got a bunch of tools in the toolbox compensations one remote working one, but the toolbox label says, flexibility and choice and that's the reality of it, this is all about flexibility and choice and.
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Steve Hess: And we all have TEAM members, you can go work for anybody they don't have to move and they make it work for another organization for.
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Steve Hess: You know insert here double digit percent increase in compensation right, but we have to have a strategy around benefits COMP.
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Steve Hess: Paid time off other things around flexibility and choice and and and I think one of the tools and toolbox is your digital capability your innovation, the projects, you get to work on there's.
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Steve Hess: there's something about people that work in healthcare it their mission base, they can make a lot more money at Google at Amazon at Microsoft and so on, but there's something special.
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Steve Hess: about being here so working on projects where they're impacting people's lives there's something about that, so a tool in the toolbox.
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Steve Hess: Is around innovation and creativity as well, I think there's two other things that we're laser focused on and we need to be better at it, one is.
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Steve Hess: Making sure that everybody's working to the top of their scope.
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Steve Hess: And that's that's true for a doctor that's true for RN that's true for a technician out in the bedside areas that's also true for it.
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Steve Hess: and making sure that people are really working the top of their scope and that we're reducing administrative burden, wherever we possibly can let's make things more frictionless okay.
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Steve Hess: I think the other thing too, and this is, this is a really tough topic, but we spent a lot of time, money thoughtfulness around.
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Steve Hess: Mental health capability and behavioral health capability for our staff and creating capabilities for them to seek help.
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Steve Hess: And in a safe and protected way, so you know we went from a pandemic crisis to a staffing crisis i'm afraid we're going to land and a behavioral health crisis as well, and so.
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Steve Hess: We really need to create some resilience around that mental health and behavioral health and no one's immune from that so.
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Steve Hess: Those are some of the interventions we're doing they're hard there's no silver bullet there's it's a journey it's not a it's not a sprint here but yeah we are kind of looking at this from that multiple lens perspective.
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Michael Ames : You know, for a lot of organizations, I think the kinds of things you're talking about are things that that the organizational leaders may have wanted to do for a long time.
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Michael Ames : But when you believe that it is to keep the lights on organization it's hard to go make those arguments, this is the time now for again for folks who are listening in on this.
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Michael Ames : To to to take some of the insights here around how important the people, the people were through for for helping to respond to the crisis and to say.
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Michael Ames : we've got to figure out how to do more for other people, because if we're just if we just barely keeping them here because they don't have other options, if we think we're going to keep them here.
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Michael Ames : Because they don't have other options we're going to lose them and we've got to look at how we take care of the whole person like now is the time to tie directly those investments that the people who hold the dollars for you.
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Michael Ames : need to make to your ability your organization's ability to be ready for the next problem that hits the road you some these are some great insights to you Lisa Thank you mark take us out what are your thoughts here.
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Mark Eimer: yeah I mean I don't think mine are going to be drastically different you know, then Stephen Lisa, I think, for us, I clearly.
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Mark Eimer: You know the previous methodologies of building everything inside the four walls presuming everyone's coming to work and they're doing their job.
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Mark Eimer: that's all gone out the door right so flexibility, you know I now have the ability to tap into all 50 states, you know, to find the right talent anytime anywhere any device is really our strategy and methodology moving forward.
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Mark Eimer: Whether it be from a clinician doing telehealth from home, whether it be a radiologist doing reads from home or whether it be you know, a back office corporate type function that needs to work from home or work anywhere so.
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Mark Eimer: You know so we're trying to put flexibility into everything I think the behavioral health piece that Steve brought up is critical as well you know we we did hire a chief wellness officer in the middle of the pandemic.
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Mark Eimer: And we do have two years ago we we purchased carrier clinic the largest behavioral health facility in New Jersey 300 beds and so you know behavioral health.
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Mark Eimer: has now been a huge piece, but I think at the end of the day, you know everyone talks about leadership.
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Mark Eimer: You know in sort of everything and Mike you sort of nailed it on the head i'm focusing on manager one on one right because.
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Mark Eimer: You need to be able to manage the resources and especially if they're remote.
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Mark Eimer: Right, how do you know they're having a bad day and how you really focusing and getting them and understanding what their needs are right and how do you get them to collaborate with the rest of the team so.
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Mark Eimer: we're also focusing on sort of that manager one on one skill set on not just how do you manage people in the office, but how do you manage that hybrid workforce.
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Mark Eimer: both at home and in the office, and do you have all the tools that you need to help them be successful because not everyone works well in a home, you know, a Home Office environment.
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Mark Eimer: Whether you've got kids you got dogs you're you know dealing with dependent care, whatever the issues are and so it's really tailoring what we need to do for individuals.
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Mark Eimer: But right now at hmm ah, you know it services here, you know we're at a 5050 hybrid model I have people out of State I have people in state.
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Mark Eimer: You know if you're out of state i'm still expecting 25% travel, so we can still have that touch point in collaboration piece.
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Mark Eimer: You know, but but we're 5050 and I think it's finding that happy medium.
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Mark Eimer: You know, we subscribe to great places to work and, like Lisa we do do engagement surveys and you know, want to understand what people want and I think it's that balance.
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Mark Eimer: Between, how do you make the people happy and make them and give them the tools that they need to be productive and at the same time, meet the business need.
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Mark Eimer: And we're in healthcare right, so there, there are some roles that can work from home, and there are some roles that can right and so.
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Mark Eimer: You know it's just understanding that balance and really working with them to make sure that we can meet all of that so it's you know it's it's definitely a challenge but i'm definitely.
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Mark Eimer: happy that we've expanded, you know the geography of where I can go look for help.
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Mark Eimer: On a more permanent basis, so it's definitely been a pleasure trying to come up with the hybrid work model.
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Michael Ames : Mark Thank you and thanks to all three of you and I gotta say when we when we stacked up the attendees or the the participants on this panel, I thought this we're going to get some great stuff out of this.
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Michael Ames : You did not disappoint I love it when when we're planning a particular topic and it takes another angle, which is where the real insights where.
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Michael Ames : We expected this conversation, to be more about technology and applications, the conversation ended up being more about people.
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Michael Ames : And that is the answer to the question right what were the best investments that you made, what are the investments that you're making now to go for it to be prepared for the next thing.
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Michael Ames : That technology is important that people equally or more so if we take nothing outside of this I think that's crucial.
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Michael Ames : Lots of great other specific insights from each of you.
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Michael Ames : For for me as a healthcare consumer and merely a consultant to the health care provider community, thank you for the work that you did, and your teams did getting us this far and I know we're not out of the woods yet.
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Michael Ames : So thank you also for the work that you are continuing to do and for the insights that you shared here with your Community today.
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Michael Ames : thanks to everyone who attended and listened in on this conversation I know that health impact is providing a mechanism for questions and answers and so please participate there and we will will try to get your questions answered and hope to see you again soon thanks everyone.
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Mark Eimer: Thank you.
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Lisa Stump: Thank you.
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Thanks.
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Michael Ames : Okay Emily we good.
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Emily Raisch: Now, and greet everyone that was Thank you so much, I really appreciate it, this was a great conversation, and I think.