Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Welcome back to another episode of a great strategy podcast series. My name is Morgan Berger Rowe. I am the brand strategist here at North Mississippi Health Services, and I'm here with President and CEO Shane Spies. How are you doing today?
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Doing great, Morgan. And you?
[00:00:25] Speaker A: Doing well. We've had a very busy podcast series. Lots of conversations, lots to learn, a lot of feedback from some of our employees. What has the whole experience been like for you?
[00:00:38] Speaker B: It's been awesome. I mean, we, of course, put a lot of work into crafting the communications and being thoughtful about what we can share or should share with our teammates across the system, and it's been well received. I mean, based on the employee engagement survey from last year, the results showed that our teammates were connected now with our strategy, partly because of the podcast series. And so, based on the favorable view by our teammates across the system, we said, let's continue this. And so it's been awesome for us to not only be able to share or communicate what's going on in our system and what's important to us, but also to introduce a number of key leaders across our system to our teammates.
[00:01:21] Speaker A: Absolutely. Not just key leaders, but key initiatives that have played into this strategy. So let's take a little bit of a look back on what we've accomplished, what we're still working on, and what's evolving through this transformation. I want to start with epic, and that was a huge undertaking by so many people across our system.
So many, so many leaders, but also just people that work from the ground up on it. What was that experience like? And tell us more about that.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: Well, if we think about epic, I mean, it was an EPIC like project, but so it touched almost every member of our team across the system.
It was the single largest project that we undertook in the history of our system.
And of course, it's technology, and it brought about a lot of tools for us that help us provide the work or do the work of healthcare.
It was monumental, not just in terms of the size of the implementation, the amount of effort that our team put into the preparation, the training, and then the implementation of the system. But as I'll share some examples in a few minutes, it's been transformational for us, not only in terms of how we deliver care, but also how patients can access our care, how we communicate with patients, how we, as providers communicate across our entire system to support the care of a patient. It's been transformational.
[00:02:44] Speaker A: Why is EPIC so important to improving our patient access?
[00:02:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we have to remember that EPIC as significant and grand as it is, it's tools, right? It's a large toolbox with tools that help us in accomplishing what we do across our healthcare system.
But if we think about several areas where EPIC has really helped us transform the delivery of care across the system, there are a lot of different things that have gone into that. So just some examples.
So access, we think about a great strategy. Real focus is on improving access for patients to our system. And so the functionality and tools within EPIC brought about a lot of improvements to access for our patients. For example, we now have it's much easier for a patient to schedule an office visit and they can do that whether it's through my connection or now through our newly improved website, they're scheduling a visit.
The communication and coordination that it allows across our providers, across every location within our system, Sincere Olive is a game changer in that regardless of where a patient's being cared for, the providers on that patient's care team can also have access to the same information. They can better coordinate that patient's care. And as we know, most patients require the care of multiple providers at multiple locations. So having all that within one electronic health record has really helped that communication. It's also allowed us to provide additional forms of communicating with patients that we didn't have before.
You know, people use different forms to communicate, whether that's phone, email, texting. Well now EPIC has allowed us to communicate via text with patients and patients communicate with us via text in addition to email and phone and that sort of thing. It's really helped there. And then there are some key functions within EPIC that's really improved access to care for patients. When I say improved access, it's made it easier for a patient to access our care. So think about the self triage function that's now available for patients. So as a patient can go on through our website, enter in some symptoms they may be experiencing, the system will take them through a decision tree based on questions that the patient responds to and it will help guide that patient to the right provider or right service or right venue of care within our healthcare system.
Some other convenience factors like the fast pass.
So if you're a patient and you have a visit with a physician scheduled, say several weeks out, if that physician's schedule, if an appointment on that physician's schedule for that same day opens up, it'll automatically communicate with the patient that may have a visit several weeks out and say, hey, we have an opening today.
Would you like to take this opening today? So get that patient in faster and certainly make it easier. And then some other things that we think that are. And we're just beginning to launch this. But one of the functions within EPIC is called chears. And so chears is a way that we can, through an automatic communication link with patients, notify patients when they're up for their next, say, screen mammography.
So it not only sends reminders to the patient, but also provides some education on what it is, why it's important.
And they can easily schedule that mammogram through the website as well. So those are just a few functions that I get excited about because as a patient myself, just makes it so much easier and seamless to interact with our healthcare system.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: Absolutely. I'm a patient myself, but I also am a mom and a wife. And so I take care of everybody's schedule and that kind of thing. And for me, it's just been such an ease to be able to schedule my husband or one of my kids.
So although I am part of the system, as an employee, I've been able to experience on the patient side, too, and it's been very, very helpful.
How has this implementation helped our clinicians?
[00:07:15] Speaker B: Significantly, probably as much of a help to our clinicians as it has been to our patients. And so I think about the hundreds of optimization efforts that we've gone through and made changes within the system since our initial go live in April of 2024 have all been in the spirit of how do we take this very complex delivery of health care and try to simplify it as much as possible, try to automate some of the steps or tasks that our clinicians have to do on a routine daily basis to automate those tasks so that they have more time to spend at the bedside with the patient. We'll share some examples of that going forward, but it's really helped us simplify all the processes, automate some of the steps with that, and remove some of that burden that the staff have to carry in the daily care of a patient within the healthcare system. So just to give you a couple of examples of those, and a lot of these improvements or optimization efforts originated from our staff, from the clinical teams. And so, for example, we, as part of taking care of a patient, that service delivers or transfers into a charge for that service.
In the past, a lot of that process was manual, so an individual had to manually enter those charges. With epic, that's now automated, so when the service is performed and documented, it automatically translates into a charge. That's certainly saving our team members a lot of time with it. If you think about the.
The routine care of patients, there's a lot of orders that our teams have to enter into the system, which a lot of orders on a daily basis. If you think about medication orders, test orders, there's thousands of orders.
And so we've simplified that process through EPIC to remove some of those steps for a clinician. So if you think about a clinician in their day in caring for a patient, may go through a thousand orders, just think about if you can remove some of those steps, how much time that saves the individual team member, but also allows them more time to spend with the patient. Same thing around the ordering protocol.
And there are a number of protocols that clinicians have to follow.
And just for regulatory reasons, the more that we can automate that, automate that and remove that clinical or that cognitive burden off of that staff member so it can automatically be done the more time they have and also the more cognitive time they have available for patient care.
And then I'll just say that if you think about how complicated the world of a clinician's life is these days, again, all the steps, all the things that they have to remember, in addition to actually taking care of the patient, the more that we can leverage EPIC and the systems and those tools to remove some of those things, that doesn't take a human's thought or judgment, frees up more of their time to the things that they got into practice of medicine for. Right. And so that's really the intent. And so we've. We've experienced a lot of change and improvement within EPIC over the last year, hopefully resulting in a better experience for our staff as well as our patients.
[00:10:56] Speaker A: Well, speaking of automation and improving the lives of our staff, let's talk a little bit about virtual nursing. How did that come about? Where are we now? And just what's that evolution been like? Because I know it's been impressive.
[00:11:12] Speaker B: Yeah, this is another area where I just. I'm amazed at what our team has done just in over the last.
We kicked off the pilot 18 months ago, but really expanded it the last year.
And so our team not only put virtual nursing in place and expanded it, but they started using it in ways that were innovative beyond what the model at, say, Houston Methodist that we learned from and adopted their model. They've expanded and made it innovative. So we initially rolled out virtual nursing in a few units and focused it on helping the nurse, the bedside nurse, with the discharge process of a patient. They expanded it to also cover the admissions process and the discharge process.
But now They've expanded it into patient rounding as well and also supporting bedside nurses with, with dual sign off on medications.
Another opportunity to help that bedside nurse save some steps in the process, giving them time back to devote to being at the bedside with the patient.
And of course, we're in the process of expanding it to all medical surgical beds in Tupelo, as well as beginning to expand in the community hospital setting over this next year.
But it's been, I would say, a game changer in terms of the nursing model. And that's the feedback we receive as well from the team is that it's gone from something that our team may have been a bit apprehensive when we first started talking about virtual nursing.
But as soon as we got in the pilot phase, nurses and units across the hospital and the system were eager to get virtual nursing capabilities supported within their unit.
[00:13:02] Speaker A: Well, that says a lot about our leadership and how it was implemented across the system. But also I think it's been a huge benefit to our patients. And our patients can feel that too. They feel cared for, right?
[00:13:13] Speaker B: Absolutely. So to that point, so you think about virtual nursing. And through our pilots, and ever since the pilot, when we expanded virtual nursing to other units, we tracked our patient experience and it showed that patients enjoyed and liked that experience of interacting with the virtual nurse.
And then kind of a similar type use of technology in the clinic setting is this past year we piloted a artificial intelligence technology called a bridge that helps our physicians with their documentation. So if you think about being a patient in one of our physician's office that piloted the technology for us, during that interaction between the physician and the patient, the physician can remain solely focused on that patient with eye contact and communication and not have to worry about toggling between the patient and a computer to enter their notes from the visit.
That's all done. That's dictated through this ambient artificial intelligence technology.
So the system is documenting the notes while the patient and the physician are talking.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:30] Speaker B: And so it, it not only produces an even better clinical note at the end of the day, but it gives that patient and the physician that one on one time that's more valuable, higher quality experience with it.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:43] Speaker B: You know, by the way, the physician has to spend less time documenting in the system, which means more time spent with the patient.
[00:14:50] Speaker A: Well, and as a patient that experienced that pilot, you feel heard. Right. And you don't feel like they're your, your provider's distracted. And I also think they're at ease. I don't have to remember everything you know it's all being captured, it's all being dictated. So it's very impressive. I'm excited to see that roll out here in the coming months.
Let's talk a little bit about access and North Mississippi Health Services acquiring Northwest Regional Health in a long term lease.
What does that mean? What does that mean for our organization and what can we look forward to as far as growth?
[00:15:29] Speaker B: Yeah. So we were excited on May 1st to add northwest Regional into our healthcare system. We now know it as North Mississippi Health Services South Marion.
So the hospital is located in Winfield, Alabama and it's a full service community hospital located in Marion county, which is the same county as where our Hamilton Hospital is located. So we're excited for, for a number of reasons. It supports a great strategy because clearly it supports our growth of our healthcare system. As we added a hospital into the system, it improves access for patients located in Winfield and Marion county and their surrounding counties greater access into our system.
Then also now that we operate both hospitals located in that county, it allows us to evolve how health care is delivered to folks in that county. So as opposed to having two competing hospitals trying to battle over who's doing what, we can now jointly plan and implement services that best serve those members in the county. So ultimately, we have two hospitals part of the same system working on the same mission to continuously improve the health of the people in Marion county and the surrounding counties.
[00:16:48] Speaker A: Winfield and South Marion have been a phenomenal addition to our organization. I've been there a few times. They've been a great team to work with. So we're excited about that. Let's talk a little bit more about access, not just from a physical standpoint, but more of a digital standpoint. We have a brand new website.
North Mississippi Health Services, of course is NMHS.net the URL didn't change, but it certainly looks a lot different.
Tell us more about that and what patients can expect.
[00:17:22] Speaker B: Well, first of all, we've received great feedback from the community in terms of just the appearance and is much better than the past. So it's a much better version, but also it's much easier to navigate. The functionality is more robust, it's easier to use the functionality on the website. We see that as a digital front door to our healthcare system.
So just like patients can walk into one of our locations today, they can access information, they can access to services, they can interact with staff.
The website is a digital front door that gives a patient access to a lot of tools, resources and functionality that helps them not only interact with our system, but also helps them improve, excuse me, manage their own healthcare. So if you think about the functionality that we've introduced through our new website, it not only looks better and feels better and easier to navigate, but patients can actually use that website to get access to our services. So they can schedule a visit with their physician, they could schedule an E visit, they can access their health record, they can access greater resources around, maybe it's a particular condition that they want to research and learn more about. And then from there, how can they connect with our providers that practice within the area of specialty or have an emphasis on that particular health condition? They can find it right there at the convenience of one location, one digital location.
[00:18:57] Speaker A: Well, it was built for our consumers and I think that's what people need to understand. This was built so that our patients had easier access to our providers, to their medical health records, to whatever they needed to improve their medical health.
[00:19:12] Speaker B: Absolutely. So if you think about our vision includes being patient and family centered, this is another example of us trying to be focused and centered around the needs of the patients and their caregivers. You can access that website and easily use it from the convenience of your laptop, your mobile device. And so now it's far easier to use and the functionality is readily available to everyone.
[00:19:36] Speaker A: It's seamless, you know, like you're saying you can go on and you can schedule those appointments, you can let urgent care know that you're on your way, all from your phone.
So lots of cool things coming, Lots of great things have been implemented over the last year. Year. Let's look forward.
Tell me a little bit about what's coming next and what we can expect as an organization as we move into this next year.
[00:20:02] Speaker B: Well, I thought we accomplished a lot last year, but we have a lot more on the drawing board for this year. Really excited about a number of things that are coming up, or actually they're in the process now and we'll see those come to fruition over the coming year. So looking at growth and improvement in access, we'll open a, a new medical office building in Tupelo in late 2026 that will allow us to expand a number of existing services such as urgent care and also retina clinic and the dermatology clinic will relocate into that with more space for more providers. We'll also offer a new service in pediatric urgent care, which will be a seven day access for pediatric patients through the urgent care setting. So again increasing access, providing us growth in those services, but also allowing us some additional room to expand in the future. So we anticipate we'll have a shelled floor that's available for future growth to add more providers, more services at that location. So really excited about that. And then sticking with the the technology theme there, we can expect that our Thrive project, or also known as Workday project will be will roll out in late 2026, around October 2026. And like Epic, this will be a significant project and technology that all of us across the health system will use all teammates across the system. And so EPIC was focused on the electronic health record and the clinical services.
Workday is focused around the finance and human resources or the administrative functions of our healthcare system. And so thinking about our teammates, it'll offer greater functionality for our teammates to interact and engage with us as an employer and as their team across the healthcare system. So major undertaking, just like EPIC was major implementation.
But we foresee a lot of opportunities for improvement like EPIC has brought to the clinical areas with this. So we're real excited about that. It's a large project for us.
I mentioned the abridged ambient artificial technology earlier that we've used our piloted throughout the physician clinics.
We'll roll it out to a couple of hundred providers throughout the system this year. So we'll have the benefit of that automated dictated note type setting that should give them more interaction, more time with the patients across our healthcare system there.
And then we can expect a number of changes in patient experience.
So we're excited to have to work with a company called NRC that will start in November. And so NRC will replace press gaining that in the past administered the patient Satisfaction Survey across our system. So NRC will start doing that. But NRC offers a lot more than just administering a patient satisfaction survey. They offer a full suite of tools and functionality that will help us provide a better experience to our patients because we'll have, we'll get real time feedback from patients that we can work with to make sure that we're constantly improving the encounter or experience that patients are having throughout our healthcare system.
[00:23:35] Speaker A: Lots of exciting things happening, lots of things to be proud of as an organization that we've come really far within the last year and a lot of really great things to look forward to and some major initiatives. Anything else you'd like to add?
[00:23:47] Speaker B: Yeah, one other thing that I'm really excited about coming up in the near future. So as we mentioned on previous podcasts, we started a partnership with a company called On Demand Pharmacy.
So In December of 2023 we started producing our own medications on site here in Tupelo.
So that partnership has evolved and so we're now planning on the expansion of that on site production capability to include more drugs and at a larger scale of production on that. And so you think about a year from now we could possibly be making tens of thousands of doses of drugs here on site in Tupelo that can support the needs of not only Tupelo but also all of our locations across the healthcare system.
[00:24:30] Speaker A: And real quick, why is that so beneficial to our organization and to our patients?
[00:24:35] Speaker B: Great question. So as we mentioned earlier, there are a number of drugs that are in shortage.
So systems like ours have had access to, has, have had difficulty accessing certain drugs that are on this shortage list.
And so being able to produce those on site gives us the ability to not only produce them on site, do it more timely, but it's a more quality, higher quality product that we can deliver and have it right here available to us.
[00:25:04] Speaker A: That's excellent.
Lots of good work being done. I appreciate your time today. I know you have some really great conversations in the works and we're going to have a Q and A session with some of our leadership. Any insight you can give us on that. So we can look forward to that.
[00:25:19] Speaker B: I would encourage everyone to tune in because I'll only get to see some more of those key leaders again. But they'll probably do a better job than I did highlighting some of the examples and key strategies or successes that we experienced over the past year.
But I think you'll get a sense of from hearing the other key leaders. Is that a great strategy in the work that's going on is not Shane's strategy, it's not leadership strategy, it's our system, it's our team's strategy. We're making a lot of great progress with that and I'll just finish with a huge thank you to all of our teammates across the system because none of this is possible without our teammates. And I think about everything from the EPIC implementation and optimization work to the introduction of some new technology like a bridge in the clinic setting. All that's possible because our teammates are willing to try something new, willing to try a different approach, but also have the desire to continuously improve the health of the people in our region, which is our mission.
Whether it's through tools, whether it's through a change in process, they've been very open minded and supportive of that. And so that's why we've experienced a lot of progress over the past year.
[00:26:37] Speaker A: And we've heard a lot of feedback from them. And so that's where those questions are coming from that our leadership will answer in the next portion of this series.
Appreciate your time, Shane. Thank you so much for being so transparent, not only today, but throughout this series. And I think it's been very beneficial to our organization.
[00:26:55] Speaker B: Well, I hope our teammates across the system appreciate this this episode, because we've continued to work to improve the flow of communication across the system. And it's one thing we heard in one of our earliest employee engagement surveys is, hey, we want to hear more about what's going on. We want to hear more about our plans and our progress. And so this podcast is one of those vehicles to do that. So hopefully people appreciate that.
[00:27:23] Speaker A: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for your time, and be sure to stay tuned for our next episode of our Q and A with leadership.
