Join us for a conversation with Jeffrey Sturman, SVP & Chief Digital Officer at Memorial Healthcare System. Learn about the dynamic journey of Memorial Healthcare System as it harnesses cutting-edge technologies to revolutionize patient care. Faced with the challenge of evolving healthcare landscapes, Memorial Healthcare System seized the opportunity to integrate innovative solutions, enhancing operational efficiency and patient outcomes. Through strategic implementation of advanced technologies, Memorial Healthcare System is paving the way for smarter, more efficient healthcare delivery, ensuring optimal care for all patients.
[00:00:00] VO: Welcome to Digital Health talks. Each week, we meet with the healthcare leaders making an immeasurable difference in equity, access and quality. Hear about what tech is worth investing in and what isn't. As we focus on the innovations that deliver. Join Megan Antonelli, Janae sharp and Shahid Shah for a weekly no BS deep dive on what's really making an impact in healthcare.
[00:00:31] Megan Antonelli : Welcome to Health Impact. Live digital health talks. I'm your host, Megan Antonelli, and I'm here today with Jeffrey Sterman. Jeffrey is the Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Officer at Memorial Healthcare System. He brings a wealth of experience to the table. With over 25 years in healthcare focusing on digital transformation, organizational change and operational governance. He's been with Cumberland consulting Ernst and Young and has had numerous initiatives in the healthcare space. Jeff, thanks for being here today.
[00:01:03] Jeffrey Sturman : Thank you, Megan. I felt, I felt like you were, like, almost family calling me Jeffrey for a moment. And I was like, I know you're my friend. You're, you're calling me Jeffrey. And I guess that's the formal way to start these things. But, my goodness, I didn't know if I was in trouble for a second there.
[00:01:18] Megan Antonelli : Not at all. You know, it has been fun to meet you over the, you know, the last few years, and then, of course, seeing you in person at vibe and hymns lately, it's been great, but we've had plenty of chances to talk. But I'd love, I'm excited to kind of get in depth into what you've been doing at Memorial Healthcare. I know that they've gone through, you know, as many health systems have, you know, a big digital transformation journey. Why don't you tell us a little bit about, you know what fueled that? And you know what's, what's been going on there?
[00:01:51 ] Jeffrey Sturman : Yeah, sure. Happy to and just for context, and hopefully, all your, all your great listeners and viewers here know who Memorial Healthcare System is, but not to be confused with anyone else. I'll tell you who they are, maybe as a primer to some of that conversation. So Memorial is the south Broward Hospital District. That means we're in southeast Florida six great hospitals, including the Joe Maju Children's Hospital, a sizable force within South Florida, and certainly within Florida, we think we're the best healthcare system in Florida, and I certainly think that it is a really wonderful place rooted in very strong community based medicine that's moved into academia and just A great place to be. So what's fueled the digital transformation and and really around innovation and thinking thinking differently? Maybe so by virtue of who we are. And I think it was important that you know who we are. Memorial Healthcare System is a hospital based healthcare system by its roots. And so many healthcare systems are and probably not that different from Memorial. So our bread and butter is hospital based care. But what's really fueled our our thinking around doing things differently, care delivery models, getting out of the hospital is just that. So we know that where healthcare is going, and we know what we need to do as an industry and as a healthcare system to transform, because if we're just going to stay in the hospital based business, which is a terrific business, it's an absolutely critical and a need for everybody, hopefully not a lot of people right now, but certainly, you know, we've all been through a very far last, probably three or four years, so we all know what hospitals have provided. And certainly, you know, heroes is an understatement. But you know, hospitals are changing and healthcare is changing, and people and consumers are demanding healthcare at a different level and at different places, and we need to think about healthcare from a perspective of a consumer, because hopefully, most of the time, and I say this all the time, we're mostly consumers, and we're not mostly patients. And I think it's really important that we take that perspective and think about where the delivery of healthcare is going, whether that be at home, whether that be in other ambulatory, out of hospital type settings, post acute care, and these areas are just going to get bigger and more complicated for the delivery of healthcare, but it also creates an opportunity to really leverage, I think, digital and technology at a different level. And finally, we can say we're not the guys in the bottom of the building or in that back room that no one ever wants to really talk to, but we're actually care delivery resources. We are we are by the physician, the nurse, the the therapist. We are part of that care delivery. Team, and we are absolutely helping to shape the future of where healthcare is going. So that's been the fuel, really, for thinking about doing things a little bit differently, thinking about where care is going, leveraging technology, being innovative in our in our approach, being very, very intentional about consumer experience, which we'll talk more about, I'm quite sure.
[00:05:25] Megan Antonelli: Yeah,well, that's interesting, and I'm glad you gave us the context of sort of where Memorial Healthcare is being in South Florida, I'm sure you sort of a diverse population, and also have a children's hospital. So, you know, coming out of the pandemic, or maybe even going into the pandemic, seeing some demographic changes in your region, what were some of the, you know, sort of specific challenges, or even the needs of those consumers and patients that you saw that kind of, you know, sort of led you to the path of knowing that digital was going to be the answer, and sort of it must have,
[00:06:00] Jeffrey Sturman: yeah, and so I don't think these things will probably be novel. I think, like I said, many healthcare systems have been struggling with the same things and trying to solve whether that be access, which everyone talks about. So access is a real problem. We need to get smarter and create better capabilities, whether that be through actually Geograph geography, so real locations, physical locations, or in my world, create some virtual capabilities to deliver care. And I think that is a real mechanism by which we can again shape the future Primary Care. I live in an area where we are very dense. We have, you know, 7 million people that live between Palm Beach, Broward County and and and Dade and so it's a very dense population. And we can never have enough primary care providers, uh, Memorial employees, a lot more providers today than ever before. We're probably approaching 500 employee providers, but the majority of those providers, unlike a lot of my colleagues across the country, are specialists. So we don't employ a really big footprint of primary care providers. We've connected with them in various technology ways and various other ways, we have a great ACO, a very high performing ACO, in fact, one of the highest performing in the country. And so primary care is something that I think we really need to figure out, because it's that entry point for so much of what we do from a delivery standpoint. And again, I think a lot of what I and my team can provide is digital means by which we deliver primary care services, a virtual health telehealth, remote patient monitoring. Again, we'll probably talk about, we already talked about, you know, consumer experience a little bit, but consumer experience is real. It's something we got to figure out, and that drives so much of our pain. I think the experience for most patients, navigation of healthcare is so complicated. If I have one goal, and I've said this a lot too, my goal is to just make healthcare a little bit easier to navigate, a little bit easier for us to consume, as a normal consumer, instead of me, as an executive at a healthcare system, and my colleagues as executives at healthcare systems, get calls every single day To get a patient through the system, through either a an appointment, or through some complication, whether that be getting a patient onto a floor out of the emergency department because it's overflowing and no one has beds available, whether it be like I said, getting an appointment because the earliest appointment is six months from now, which is terribly unacceptable, especially in healthcare, especially when you're at a fragile state and need to see a provider. It frankly pains me and disturbs me a lot that, you know, we can't, as an industry, really solve some of these, these things in a little better way, be more efficient. We've gotta get, you know, the inefficiency out of our industry and become efficient in order to solve some of these other problems. So there, there's so much rooted there that ultimately affects patients, ultimately affects the quality and the safety of care.
[00:09:37] Megan Antonelli: Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, tell me a little bit about some of the technologies and innovations you have implemented to do that around virtual and remote patient monitoring that have improved the patient experience and the connection between the physician and the patient.
[00:09:53] Jeffrey Sturman: Well, I'll start with that those two, since you hit on them, on the virtual side or telehealth side. Okay, we're working with an incredible vendor using the same EHR, the same vendor of the electronic medical record that we use. So now, what that does for us, it creates continuity of care. So when a patient on those very off hours is not seeing necessarily one of our employee providers, but has a loved one or even themselves, and they're sick at home, and it's midnight and they want to talk to a provider that's connected to Memorial. They may be talking to a provider, and that provider might be actually in Boston or California, but it becomes seamless communication and seamless integration of care, because we're all on the same electronic medical record. And so through that very integrated, interoperable sharing of data, it becomes very powerful that we now are not losing that patient. We're not losing their care journey at all. So historically, in telehealth and most telehealth instances don't integrate, are not fully part of your hospital based electronic medical record, and therefore those off hours, those those times in which providers aren't available at your own health care system, you sometimes lose that continuity again and and that's why the best option for telehealth is always using your own providers, obviously, and using your own virtual list if you can afford them and and you can hire them, and you can make that happen operationally, because then you keep them in your electronic health record. But that's not always an option, and we've all signed up for different solutions, and I think this solution is absolutely critical for everyone that that is on a consistent EHR and then remote patient monitoring has taken off hugely. It's not just about taking care of those Population Health value based care programs chronic disease conditions. It has started there for us, it has now left and leverage to more disease states and really helps us create efficiencies, from cutting down on patients needing to go to the potentially thinking they need to go to the emergency room, cutting down on readmissions. As I said earlier, we're all struggling. I don't know anyone who's not struggling with emergency rooms overflowing with beds not being turned over more effectively in your hospitals. I know I struggle at at least two of my largest hospitals with this every single day. So if we can keep people healthy and create ways in which there's more self service and there's more technology at our patients, at our consumers, fingertips. I think we're going to be creating a way in which we're definitely impacting better care, better delivery, easier care. And then there's a silver lining for the hospitals as well, because, again, we want hospitals to be if they have to be, and you have to be in a hospital, we want you to be. Unfortunately, you should be really sick, so we can take care of you, get you healthy if you're not that sick, and we can take care of you. It's a better experience for you to be at home or some other ambulatory or or not hospital location. I mean, let's face it, hospitals are not safe. Sometimes we don't want, I mean, infection rates and issues around errors, it they happen. And I think the reality is we need to get better at all of that still.
[00:13:36] Megan Antonelli: Yeah. I mean, I think we heard a lot, you know, and been hearing a lot about healthcare at home, and how you know, not only from a patient experience, perception or perspective, but also just from the perspective of better care and better health, that that is the ideal in some situations, you know. And as you said, if you are really sick, the hospital is the place, but as you are being monitored, and you know, leaning up to that it is that home is a good place now. And we've talked a little bit about, you know, the digital front door. Talked a lot about that, you know. And I think now talking a little bit more about the digital back door of as the patients leave the hospital, how are we ensuring that care and communication is still available to them, and that those types of technologies are certainly doing that. Now, I think I've heard a little bit about you guys having kind of a virtual command center in place, so that would be to kind of integrate all of this. Why don't you tell us about that and how that works? Yeah,
[00:14:35] Jeffrey Sturman: I'm so excited for this because, I mean, I think many places across the country have done this. We've learned a lot over visiting some of my peers and places across the country, and we need to stand up our command center, and we've been doing that now for the last 12 to 18 months, both in a virtual way and actually a physical space. And that physical space is actually getting built out even further, and I'm excited. By couple weeks, actually, it will be fully done, and we should be able to move our our entire operation from a command center standpoint in there. We're calling it our care coordination center, and it is staff, and it's being led by our Chief Nursing executive, and who comes from a technology background and is amazing and will absolutely make a huge difference in how we again, think about patient movement, so patient flow. So one of the first use cases is really that transfer center capability. We've had a transfer center for a long time. We're taking the Transfer Center, and I like to say this that we take, we're taking and putting it on steroids. So it is getting to a much more comprehensive view of a patient through our healthcare system, and that navigation that we talked about earlier. So six hospitals, five major acute care, adult and pediatric hospitals, and then the one large pediatric hospitals. But if I can move patients more effectively across the south Broward region, then I know we're going to free up beds, we're going to get more efficient, we're going to decant our EDS more effectively, and the command center is going to be the secret sauce to do that. In addition, we're starting with some of the virtual nursing capabilities and some of the virtual observation that we can do from a command center. So we've had some virtual observation in place to cut down on patient falls and get away from sitters, for example, in the hospital setting, where we're implementing in the command center in the care coordination center, excuse me, is this very cool AI driven virtual nursing technology, so now not nurses that are in front of 12 screens will actually be in front of, excuse me, in front of 24 screens and leverage the AI capability and the really proactive means by which the technology will alert us about potential risk factors, whether that be a patient getting out of the bed dealing with that patient Fall issue. I mean, we are already seeing great success with that, and we know it's just the tip of the iceberg with what we can do from a virtual nursing capability here with this terrific vendor. And then there's so many other use cases that the command center is going to play a role in. So I have what's called our patient access center. It's essentially our contact center, our call centers, and those roll up to me from a consumer experience standpoint, really passionate about making that experience, that first interaction, a little bit easier, but the value of and the overlap that exists between our contact center, our patient access center and the command center, our care coordination center, is the clinical integration. So now we'll be able to actually have two way conversations with our patients when we need that clinical advice, and be real time, as opposed to putting them in the queue, calling them back, being maybe unavailable for a day or two, again, at a really fragile time for these patients, when they're calling our call centers or interacting with us better yet, even through other mechanisms, other omni channel, multi channel ways, like chatting, chat bot, bots in general, that we think will be a real differentiator for the way in which we engage and talk to our Consumers, our patients. And that, to me, is something that has been sorely missing in our industry for a while now. And I'm really excited, because we've already done this to some degree with our patient access center, but when we stand up the command center with those clinical resources, we'll have that huge overlap integration.
[00:18:58] Megan Antonelli: Oh, that's amazing. It sounds like it's, it's really going to all talk to each other and and really serve all of the needs, which I think is one of the things that we talked a little bit this week about, you know, when you have good tech, you don't have adoption problems with your clinicians, you know. So tell me a little bit about, you know, kind of as you're doing this, whether it's with with these new tech, newer technologies, or even as you've gone through the whole digital transformation journey in getting the healthcare providers and staff, you know, sort of engaged and onboarded. Were there particular challenges? Were there learnings that came from that? Yeah,
[00:19:32] Jeffrey Sturman: I mean, there's always challenges we live in healthcare, and so there's always challenges, but part of our job, and I think all of our jobs as executives, is one to evaluate what's going to be really effective and can move the needle again. And sometimes you got to take some bets. And so we've been very conscious of that and recognizing. Is this is rooted in culture and rooted in leadership. So we have a culture of acceptance of do no harm but try things. And so I really have been excited that we've been allowed the opportunity to work with some physician leadership, work with our executive team, and not be told, Hey, if you screw that up, that project goes south, you're going to be in trouble. I've never heard that. What I've heard is, if you're going to do something and you think it's going to make a significant difference in patient care or in in being more efficient, or, you know, going to create an ROI, let's try it. And so yes, we've had challenges, because sometimes priorities are always a challenge, and figuring out where you put your money and your resources and your time and energy, obviously we have, as an industry, a huge capital appetite, and we can't do everything we always want to do because it's just not feasible. So you have to have plans, and you have to plan accordingly, and you have to create buy in, and you have to have support, and you have to really identify those champions and those leaders that are going to stand by you. And part of that job is a sales job. Part of it is to help them understand what they're going to get, the value they're going to achieve from this. So stakeholder involvement, governance and bringing people along that journey is real and it's important. And, you know, I think it can often times be viewed as, I don't want to be bureaucratic, I don't want to get in the way of things. I want just to do, and I'm all about getting things done, but you have to sometimes bring people along with you, because you can't do it yourself. We're, we're, we're a as any other industry, no more than healthcare, is a team sport, so we gotta be focused on how we do things together, and therefore bring people along with you on that journey.
[00:22:00] Megan Antonelli: Yeah, absolutely. And you said something in there that I think is important, but I'd like to hear a little bit more about it around kind of, you know, when you're presenting the tech, when you're you're bringing them along, that impact of the tech and and sort of the success. So how have you been, you know, once you've implemented something, how are you looking at it and kind of saying, Well, this really worked, and making sure that the team gets it, that you know, that the even management gets it, where's the sort of evaluation process for that?
[00:22:30] Jeffrey Sturman: It's a great question Megan and I think from our perspective, we look at this from a variety of ways and reasons. So if there's value to be achieved that we can see clinical outcomes, that's always what we're striving for. So outcomes mean something, and we measure and we look at data. In fact, we look at data today more than we ever have, and I'm so proud of memorial by taking this journey of being very data focused, because data, data tells the story, and it's just factual, so that's very meaningful. So outcomes are important. Financials are important too. So that's another piece of data, obviously. If we can see a return on investment, if we can see that we're seeing more volume of patients coming through because we've made the experience for our providers and some of the tools and technology that we provided them more efficient because they're not going home at night at 7pm and, you know, documenting in the EHR, because they had to, you know, wait till that time to get all their documentation and notes done, which is one bad for them, bad for the patient, because know, you're going to miss stuff, and it's a terribly ineffective process, because you're going to forget things. And so if we can create, and we have created, and we are using this ambient listening, these tools that really do a level of artificial intelligence and documentation in a very automated way. Those are huge opportunities for savings financially, because we again, can create more volume, more throughput, if I can get patients out of the ED like we said earlier, because I'm caring for them through remote patient monitoring tools through more self service, and I can then be focused on our providers being working, really, at top of license, doing the things that are more meaningful to patient care. That's what we're all focused on. And so ROI financially, clinical outcomes, those are the drivers that I think we as an industry are always been focused on and and we're finally seeing the fruits of that of our labor on the digital and technology side, again, pay off,
[00:24:49] Megan Antonelli: right? Yeah. I mean, I think that that integration of clinical AI and documentation is such a big piece of that, of course, coming out of the pandemic and the folk. As you mentioned, the heroes that you know, of the work that they did, and the burnout that we've seen, and the staffing challenge that we've that we've had as a result, and in the last you know, 12 to 16 months, a real push towards this implementation of clinical AI and certainly, lots of new technologies out there, anything you've seen recently, or that you know, you know that you've implemented, or that you're looking at, that you're really excited about, that you think is maybe you haven't had the chance to implement or measure the, you know, the output of it yet, but that you think it's, it's really going to deliver.
[00:25:38] Jeffrey Sturman: Yeah. I mean, the list is too long. We just got back from chime and vibe and HIMSS. Many, many people probably, and you probably saw all these vendors, you know, touting and delivering on, you know, the next best thing. Like we said, I'm really excited about a few areas. One, I am really excited about how we are monitoring patients again, proactively, how we're monitoring them even, even reactive, so that we can cut down on, like I said, readmission, length of stay in our hospitals way too high, how we can leverage the tools to get patients out quicker, so that we can then get them to their better place of care, which is, I believe, their home in a lot of ways. So I'm excited for touchless monitoring. You know, these are, these are things that are out there. Now, you know, if we can create a better experience for our patients in I mean, this sounds really, really simple and really little, but I can tell you, will be huge. But if a patient's in the hospital and they're getting woken up every three or four or five hours to get their vital signs check, that's bad for their health and wellness and and their journey to getting back to healthy. If they're in the hospital, it's bad for a clinical resource to have to go in and do that, if we can create automation through some of the tools that we have seen, and I'm so bullish on touchless monitoring right now, because it's going to be able to do that in a lot of different care settings, both in the hospital and at home. I think there's so much data that we'll be able to provide to, again, be more predictive about care. So that's one I talked about. It a little bit ambient listening. I mean, this is, this is taking off all everywhere. It's pretty expensive in some cases, and it's probably more robust in other cases. And so ambient listening, if I can give a provider a tool by which they can just have a conversation with a patient, and that documentation, that note, the clinical note, the most important part of their electronic health record, the clinical note, is done automatically for them, and it's clinically relevant and accurate. In fact, what we're seeing is it's not only clinically relevant actor. It's better than what they could have done on their own, and now they're just reviewing it and saying it's a lot easier to read a note that's done for you than think about what you're typing. And by the way, your back is turned to the patient while you're typing, at best case, at worst case, you're not doing that and you're trying to remember six hours later is what you talked about to that patient. So that's a bad experience. So ambient listening and really capturing of this is incredibly important. And then I'll highlight one more, which I think is related. Well, maybe two more. So in my call center, people call in all the time for an appointment that they're calling in specifically for that appointment, but we know so much more about the patient when they call not just the particular appointment they might need, but rather, be more predictive and proactive in helping them get out in front of things that maybe they weren't thinking about, whether that be someone Coming and calling in, like my mother for her annual mammography, or whether it might be my dad, because I wasn't going to talk about me who might need his colonoscopy again. And so, you know you want to get, you want to be again, helpful to our patients, and again, get out in front of disease. And I think if we can be predictive and proactive, that's terrific. And the last one I'll highlight, because I think it's awesome, and we've seen it all over the place, in different imaging radiology tools, but it's so cool with regard to really again, so many times you come in for an appointment, you get this imaging study done, and there's some secondary diagnosis that gets buried in the medical record, if we can get out in front of some of those secondary diagnoses and make sure the patient is followed up on, which oftentimes never, never happens. And I know we will save life. I know you know. We're doing this on a couple of different clinical scenarios, but that's the type of stuff that I want to foster and feed up to our providers and to our patients, so that we're getting out in front of this. And there's probably so many more that I could talk about Megan, but you're going to cut me off because your your listeners are going to get bored and but there's so many great things that I think we as an industry can be tackling and doing and doing it together.
[00:30:26] Megan Antonelli: Yeah, well, I think that's that's really exciting. And I think it is, you know, for a long time in healthcare, we said, oh, move so slowly. You know, we're risk averse. We can't implement and, you know, I think since the pandemic, we're seeing things change quickly. We're seeing technologies come to, you know, come into play fast. And, you know, we're seeing positive outcomes and impact. And as you said, you know, I think that that collaboration and that ability to kind of integrate all these systems, but, you know, kind of bringing it and the technology to be at the same level you know, of giving that clinical care is really the promise, right? That's the promise we've all been talking about with the digital transformation. Absolutely. Well. Thank you so much for joining me today, Jeff, it was a pleasure, and I look forward to seeing you at another health impact event soon.
[00:31:18] Jeffrey Sturman
Thank you, Megan, thank you so much, absolutely.
[00:31:24] VO: Thank you for joining us for this week's health impacts digital health talk. Don't miss another podcast. Subscribe@digitalhealthtalks.com and to join us at our next face to face event, visit healthimpactlive.com you