Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Good afternoon. I'm Shane Spies, President CEO of North Mississippi Health Services, and welcome back to our podcast on a Great Strategy. So we thought we would take this session to respond to comments and feedback that you viewers shared with us along the way as a wrap up to that series on a Great Strategy Podcast. And we won't go through all components of a Great Strategy, but I've asked several of our members of senior leadership to join me this afternoon, those who participated in our podcast to share with us just some accomplishments, some progress we made, but in direct response to your feedback and questions that you've shared along the series and so welcomed by a number of our senior leadership members, thank you all for taking the time to join me and we'll just kick it off with some brief introductions. So Dave, why don't you start?
[00:01:04] Speaker C: I'm the Chief Operating Officer for our system.
[00:01:07] Speaker D: Hi there, I'm Angie Everett. I'm system Vice President for Post Acute and Rehabilitation Services, which includes our neuroscience institute.
[00:01:15] Speaker E: I'm David Barber, President of North Mississippi Medical Clinics, Chief Network Development Officer for the system.
[00:01:22] Speaker F: Hi, I'm Sondra Davis. I'm the Chief HR Officer for the health system.
[00:01:26] Speaker G: Hi, I'm Kristen Maung. I'm the Chief Nursing Executive.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: Hello, I'm Wally Davis, System Vice President for payer Strategy and Partnerships.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: Well, so thank you all for joining us again.
Hopefully you're familiar faces to our viewing audience.
So we've had a big year. So we look back on the last year and we think about a great strategy that we launched almost two years ago but made significant strides this past year. As you think about what's happened over the last 12 months and think about specific examples of our success and progress with a great strategy, what comes to mind to you?
[00:02:08] Speaker C: I think about our strategic planning process and we've always had a focus on growth, but I think our a great strategy connected the dots for many in terms of access to growth and the realization that as we continue to focus and improve access, the growth will come. That's been really eye opener for many of our leaders in the organization.
Focus on the Access the growth will come.
[00:02:41] Speaker E: From a clinic standpoint, it's very easy to focus on access because we see ourselves as the front door to the health system. More people have contact and have their initial contact with some member of our clinic team.
So having access is critical when we think about our role in being the front door to this health system. And we define access as how the patient defines access and that is when the patient, potential patient or customer wants to get in when they want to service, when they want to be seen, how they want to be served. And so it's been a fun journey over the past two years and it's going to be very exciting in the coming years as we focus and go deeper and deeper on making access our brand.
[00:03:32] Speaker C: I think the clinics have done an outstanding job too, and starting to focus on this and how important devices are to access at the hospital. A lot of credit to nursing because access is the opposite of diversion. Right. And so this, this, this year that we're in, we've seen a approximate 25% decrease in all important, like step down critical care. Because again, nemesis of access, if it's your, your parent, your family member and they can't get admitted here, they have to go out of town. That's a, that's a problem. So we recognize that. And so that's a, that's for ours. And of course, the emergency department. David, just like the clinics are a front door in the outpatient arena, the ER is the front door here. And so our focus has really been on decreasing wait times and also the number of patients that might come in and look and say, yeah, I'm leaving. And so those that leave without being seen or leave without treatment.
[00:04:34] Speaker G: I think another piece of the, a great strategy that relates to that are the tools that we use to help us be successful on those things. So not just things like virtual nursing, but with the implementation of, and how we're now able to track those diversions better and help us understand more why are we going on diversion? Where do we need to create more access to be more successful in the future as well?
[00:04:55] Speaker C: I think the virtual nursing is, is underappreciated probably by most and how that has had a huge impact giving, giving a morale lift, if you will, because of the workload that they take off of our floor nurses, but also the enhancement in the improvement in efficiency and throughput. I mean, we've never seen throughput like we're seeing today. It's, it's very impressive. And I'll call out our hospitalist because they're doing outstanding work also and they're taking care of probably 80, 90% of our patients. But coupled with the support of the virtual nursing, we're seeing patients discharged earlier than we've ever seen before, and that means we'll have a bed available for.
[00:05:41] Speaker G: The next patient, which just decreases our boarding hours and our er, which you said earlier. And I think something else that's really important when you think about the throughput of Those patients is case management's role in that, as well as virtual nursing's role and helping follow up with patients and decreasing those readmissions from coming back in as well, which we've seen some improvements in as well.
[00:06:02] Speaker C: For sure. It's a team effort. Environmental services ambassador, I would say to support that.
[00:06:08] Speaker F: Access and growth is really about making sure we have staffing. And we made significant strides this last year, you know, filling open roles, particularly in nursing, and supporting all of that growth and access with adequate staffing, which has been a big.
[00:06:26] Speaker B: That's a good point. So, Kristin and Sandra, you two have been integrally involved in that. So tell us a little bit about both recruitment and retention of staffing over the past year, how that's evolved and improved. And are there a couple things that you can pinpoint that have really helped us as a system with attracting great talent but also keeping great talent?
[00:06:48] Speaker G: Yeah, absolutely. I think when. When I really think about our nursing staffing and how do we recruit them, it's really the same way we retain them. We're one of the largest clinical sites in North Mississippi, and we have a lot of students who come through our doors. And if we don't create a great experience for them while they're during their clinical rotation, then why would they want to come work with us once they graduated? Just this morning, I was welcoming a new group of graduate nurse residents into our system.
And when we think about how many graduate nurses we have, we have an extern program, we have an apprentice program, we have interns. Just creating this pipeline for nursing to train here and then to come here and work when they're done. But a lot of that starts with our staff wanting to stay here and work. And how do we retain them? I think some of the ways that we've made some big improvements this past year are bringing in enough support to make sure they feel safe with their staffing ratios. And we did have to do that with travel nurses. But because of the support of our leadership team, we were able to right size that increase our access and our volume and retain our staff to the point now that we have very few tribal nurses working with us because we've been able to retain our staff.
[00:08:03] Speaker F: Shout out to Kristen, she's included a lot of retention tactics around communication, your town halls and things like that. It goes a long way, not just for nursing, but all the support staff. And I would say that we focused really on sort of opening up that flexibility conversation. So we have virtual nursing, and we have a lot of different ways for Folks to engage with us, to become a teammate and then stay with us. And we focused really specifically on some SaaS principles.
[00:08:29] Speaker E: Right.
[00:08:29] Speaker F: How do we engage with our teammates to figure out ways to make their job easier? We've really leaned into that automation in a. In a number of ways with new tools. We talk about epic, but even just in some of our non clinical areas, we're using bots to do things that really help our teams feel more engaged and move away from some of that redundant work so that they have really a chance to focus on what their purpose is, what their mission is, what their passion is.
[00:08:54] Speaker G: Yeah.
[00:08:55] Speaker D: And when I think about hopes and dreams and I think about how we retain our physicians and providers around that too, because we can't have access and a great strategy without our providers. And one of the ways that we've done that over the last year is, you know, we recruited Dr.
Lucas McIlwain here several years ago as a geriatrician, and he worked in our palliative care program. And he came to me one day and he said, you know, Angie, I'm having a passion around memory care. I'm having a passion, I have a passion around this new treatment for Alzheimer's where a lot of folks in our community and surrounding areas were having to travel outside of our area to get this new infusion that slows the progression of Alzheimer's disease. And so we opened a clinic and we put him in our neurology clinic, which also helped us create more access for patients in neurology because we were able to offload those patients with memory and dementia from the neurologist to Dr. McElwain. So we've been able to create all of that. It's helped, I think, to retain heal in our community and has also opened up access for a treatment modality that we wouldn't have had otherwise. So, you know, it's a lot of different things around recruitment and retention of both our nurses and our providers.
[00:10:15] Speaker F: Shane, I'll add too, that as a system, we've had a really big emphasis on communication.
[00:10:21] Speaker G: Right.
[00:10:21] Speaker F: And I think that has really shown, at least in our engagement scores, that we've made great strides around that communication and teammates knowing what's going on sort of how, what their role is in the organization.
We've seen those scores increase. And I think we continue to focus on making sure that our teammates are well informed and that we have different ways to communicate with them sort of when they need it and how they need it.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: And Sandra, expanding on the thought of communication We've learned we have multiple groups of stakeholders, not only our employees but our community members, our existing patient base, the family caregivers. So in my vertical very often we may add a new insurance carrier contract, there may be a new health plan to the state.
Unfortunately, there are times when we may end the contract and we've made a concerted effort to communicate early and often about those changes with a wide range of stakeholders. So everybody's well informed of what's coming.
[00:11:24] Speaker E: Good point.
Yeah.
[00:11:25] Speaker C: We've actually gotten compliments from the public about giving them, I guess, facts and in enough time that they could respond and make appropriate decisions.
[00:11:37] Speaker B: And a lot of our viewers think about access in terms of locations.
Right.
And so I know this past year and also coming up soon we'll have some locations. So we added a location in Winfield, Alabama Data. Just want to talk briefly about that.
[00:11:52] Speaker C: I did and that may be.
When you think about that you're like how does that improve access? Well, it's a great opportunity for us because now having both hospitals in the same county and the support of both medical staffs as opposed to patients leaving the county, we now have Tupelo based specialists that see an opportunity to bring services into Marion county that they previously wouldn't because it's overall it's a small county, small population size and it was fractured.
And just the support of maybe the Hamilton medical staff, if you will, wasn't enough to make it worth their while to make the drive. But now they are looking and say hey, we've got the support of the Hamilton medical staff and the south Marion medical staff. I think it makes sense for us to go so excited to tell you that I think cardiology is on the way to Marion County. Orthopedics is on the way. So again bringing access to services that can community didn't previously have.
[00:12:53] Speaker E: Correct? Correct. Yeah. Shane, you talked about locations and you said we started this journey about two years ago.
Two years ago tomorrow our urgent care clinic in Fulton opened another great example of seven day access physician led urgent care. For a community like Fulton, it's been a huge success. We look at dermatology which we added to our system less than a year ago. It's been a huge success for us. We looked down in Amory just over the past few months we've added podiatry. We've not had podiatry as part of our physician group. We've added general surgeons in Amory with Amory surgery claim. So there are a lot of examples of new service that connects to both bringing Services closer to our patients and physical access points. But we also think about access in a lot of different directions with the mantra that we want to serve our patients how they want to be served. I'll date myself here, but when I was growing up, Burger King said have it your way.
Okay, well we want our patients to have it their way when they choose how they want to be served. So over the past couple of years we've developed and now have services.
E visits. E visits are available seven days a week. Textual visits for a low cash price. Folks do not have to leave their home. Can conveniently access those virtual visits seven day a week Primary care visits, urgent care visits. Now we have six sites and more that we're excited about launching over the next few years and I could highlight a lot of our examples of our clinic teams and I'll just pick Iuka Medical Clinic, a great team we have there.
So before I walked in here I looked at my phone and went to my connection and it's late on Thursday afternoon I could get tonight at 6pm I could get a new patient primary care appointment at Iukamata Clinic.
7 o' clock tomorrow morning. Friday morning I could get an appointment with a board certified internist as a new patient in Iuka.
Saturday and Sunday I have multiple options for new patient primary care points in Iuka. Now you'd be hard pressed to find that in Birmingham, Atlanta or Nashville with great teams with seven day primary care access. But it's available in communities across our system now and we're seeing more and more of those develop each and every month. So it's just really exciting.
[00:15:47] Speaker B: And you can schedule those through the convenience of your phone, right?
[00:15:51] Speaker E: Convenience of your phone through a website of our staff and allows them to serve the patient in front of.
[00:15:58] Speaker B: And so thinking about access and growing our access into the system. Tell us a little bit about the new medical office building and cylinder construction at Crossover, how that adds to access and growth for our system.
[00:16:11] Speaker E: Very excited about the new medical office building on Crossover. It'll be three floors, be the largest construction project our clinic system has ever been involved in.
And so the original urgent care in Tupelo Med serve has been open over 35 years now currently is in its second home. It'll be moving to its third home since it opened and we'll be on the first floor there. We'll have over 14,000 square feet there. So continuing the traditional great care and service seven days a week there that Medserve has provided, we'll be adding as we open pediatric Urgent care as well. So something that is not offered anywhere in the northern half of the state. And so that'll be exciting to see patients of all ages come in and see our great team there.
Evenings, weekends, anytime, seven days a week there. That'll be on the first floor. Second four will be moving. Our retina clinic, we're very blessed.
Only place in the northern half of the state. We have not one, but two retina surgeons. So they're very cramped. If you bend past the clinic, you're seeing patients that don't have good vision, sometimes crossing the straight, and we're bursting at seams there.
So they'll be moving and take up part of the second floor, allow us to grow services there.
The other part of that space on the second floor will be our dermatology consultant. So Dr. Parker joined us last September, is taking care of a lot of people and the clinic's been a huge success. But we'll look to add two members of that team and the second floor space will allow us to do that. And then the third floor will allow for some additional care. We're in discussions right now potential use of that and hopefully we'll have some specialty services before too long. We can announce in the third floor of that facility.
[00:18:22] Speaker B: Yep. With room to grow.
[00:18:23] Speaker E: Room to grow.
[00:18:24] Speaker B: Absolutely good.
[00:18:25] Speaker E: That's right.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: So some of the feedback we received from, from the viewers was around the importance we place on the patient experience.
And so as we look back over the past year and all relating back to a great strategy, share some things that you think we've done and progress we've made as it relates to patient experience.
[00:18:48] Speaker G: Shane I think one of the things I think about when I think about a great strategy and how we relate that to the patient experience or how we've used some of our tools and our access for that patient to have a better experience, one thing that comes to mind is I heard early on when we went live with epic, how it has really changed our patient's perspective that they can come here, for example, and they are able to see all of their medical record. They can see all of their medications. They don't have to guess which medicines they're on because they can pull it up at the ease of their phone and heaven forbid they have to go out of state or to another hospital.
They can then have all of their records right at hand for those physicians there. So when we really think about that continuity of safe patient care that we offer our patients, we offer and extend that even outside of our four walls with the Tools that we've implemented. Black epic.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: Shane. I tend to think of the capability of the virtual checkout process Kristen and their team were successful in implementing. So the ability to utilize skilled nurses and have that virtual interaction to allow our clinical nurses to have more bedside opportunities with the patients, I think has been a great example of.
Of the great redesign.
[00:20:05] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. You mean that came up earlier in terms of virtual nursing. And Kristen, I don't remember the numbers offhand, but they're big numbers in terms of time saved for the bedside nurse to spend with the patient at the bedside versus handling some of those processes like the admissions and discharge. That's right, process.
[00:20:24] Speaker G: Sorry, Shane. It's thousands of hours.
[00:20:27] Speaker B: It's amazing. I mean, it really is amazing.
[00:20:29] Speaker D: It is amazing.
[00:20:29] Speaker B: And then you add that on top of the improvements the team have made, leveraging the tools within EPIC to save them steps and times with some of that process, using automation and simplifying it. I mean, it's pretty amazing to think about the time that we have, I guess, given back to the bedside caregiver.
And I'm thinking, David, of via Bridge technology, the ambient artificial intelligence technology in the clinic. I mean, yeah, I mentioned that before, but tell us just a little bit more since you've been more involved in the pilot project and the results of that and how it affects not only the patients but also the providers.
[00:21:09] Speaker E: Yes. Well, a bridge is ambient technology, as you're saying. It's basically the ability on behalf of the provider to use their mobile device inside the room and capture the conversation, the dialogue, the interactions that are going on within a B is it?
And so we've all been familiar with the office visit where the physician or the provider is spending a lot of time looking at the computer screen on their keyboard, having to enter a multitude of items in the record. This really transforms that process by listening to the conversation and distilling the visit into the medical record. It's integrated with Epic and we have over 50 of our providers now on the abridged system using it, and it's really making a difference. That number is growing every day. I was with one of our OB GYNs earlier today, and she was relaying how much of an impact it's made in her life. I mean, she described as life changing because she says, when I leave the office now, I don't even feel like I'm carrying a backpack around. My backpack felt like it was overflowing every day previously.
And when you hear that, first of all, it feels really good because, you know, it's made a difference in her life. Her workload has been reduced, and it really has allowed for better balance in life.
Physicians and providers talk about pajama time. You know, well, let's put the kids to bed, let's wash the dicks, do the laundry, and then we're going to sit down and finish our records for the day, which is a real thing that can be hours each night for physicians.
This is making a difference in reducing or eliminating that. And the exciting thing is that's an example. And we've got several things now that I feel like we're on the early stages of really integrating and making it a part of the way we do business. As we look at using technology, we talk a lot about people, process technology, and they're coming together more and more to allow our team to do just what we're doing here, which is really focus on the person in front, really focus on the patient, deliver the human touch and lighten the burden of work. We've got a long way to go. The work is so hard. We know that. We see that. But we're making progress, and that's very exciting.
[00:23:51] Speaker D: I will tell you, David, one of the things I'm excited about is when I heard. When I heard that described for the very first time by Dr. Kilman, my very first question to him was, when can we do this for the ancillary staff? You know, I think about using a bridge for a physical therapist that comes into the room to do an evaluation or a home health nurse. So you think about just the evolution of technology. It may start with the provider, but I think our staff is because of a great strategy, gives them a framework and a language that they can use to continue to be innovative and curious and creative. And so when I told them about it, everybody's like, we want to be next. You know, it's just amazing. There is a lot of. And it just creates all this excitement around it.
[00:24:37] Speaker E: If our people understand the mission and they have the tools and support, they're going to knock it out every time. And I think a great. Has been a great example of that because it is simple, it's easy to understand. Here's how we're going to define success.
[00:24:55] Speaker C: And we're going to go after Sandra said it earlier, she mentioned the acronym SAS that we always refer to. The Simplify, the automate.
I just. I will say Shane and our. As we focus on a great Evolve how work gets done, right? One of the things that we realized that we're here for our patients and our patients are our true north, as we say.
But with all the investments that we made in other locations, we realized that the feedback that we're able to get from our patients was very lacking. And of course, we have an existing partner that we've used for many years.
And we came to the conclusion that we need to take a look out there, see what else was out there. So Sandra, Kristen, many others have been involved. So we had a multidisciplinary team to really take a look at, at all the other alternatives to our current partnership because we knew there had to be a better way to get feedback from our patients more consistently and more timely. And so we're excited that we just came out of a meeting where we were talking about our impending change to nrc.
And that is going to bring so many benefits to us. You might want to share a little bit more about that.
[00:26:17] Speaker G: I'm happy to. I think one of the big things for nursing is the patient rounding tool. And it won't just be for patient rounding, but it will be one platform that we're able to use for environment of care rounds, for patient rounding, leader rounding. And we're able to really pull data from that to help us understand what it is our patients need from us, as well as the discharge phone calls, you know, so it's so important to understand how our patients needs are being met after they're discharged, because so many times they'll say, everything's fine, I have everything ready while they're here.
And 24 hours later, we call them at home, they didn't get their prescription, maybe they didn't have a ride.
[00:26:59] Speaker C: And so they're back in the er.
[00:27:01] Speaker G: They'Re coming back to the er. It's another admission to the hospital.
And so those things, I think NRC is going to be a great partner for us to help us understand those things and make positive changes for our patients.
[00:27:13] Speaker C: And real time feedback, right? We don't have to wait three weeks, four weeks to get a survey returned to us. We're going to have the ability to hear from them while they're still in the hospital.
[00:27:24] Speaker G: And it integrates with epic. It does so that if I pull a chart up, I can see that maybe on the last survey this patient was really struggling with, you know, finances at discharge. So we'll know that on the first day they're here so we can get our wonderful case managers and she social workers on board. And so it's really going to integrate and elevate that care that we're able to give from the first day they come in.
[00:27:48] Speaker C: I hate that Dr. Davis was not able to join us today because when you. I hear you talk about epic, and I think back about our last year, plus, I don't think there's. There's so many things that we're doing today that we could not do pre epic. And it's been a game changer.
[00:28:05] Speaker B: Right, I used that same terminology before. It's a game changer for sure.
[00:28:09] Speaker A: Yeah, no question. Access to data, access to complete medical record information.
As we evolve toward new reimbursement models, we're all aware of what I call mandatory value models for Medicare, that we have a model rolling out next year for Medicare. We have some mandatory models from division of Medicaid as a.
But we're well positioned for that because of all of these operational efficiency examples, reducing readmissions. And Angie, I tend to think of a great efficiency example when you realigned your home health group for more efficiencies. Maybe I'll expand on that.
[00:28:48] Speaker D: Well, you know, just looking at our geography, right, so when you think about covering patients over this large geography, how can we get really efficient around bringing those services more around the patient, not around a certain location? So that's been an amazing body of work by our home health team. And, you know, one of the things I think about is healthcare is so complex and it's so complicated, and you don't know anything about it until you need it.
And then when you need it, you don't know what you need and you don't know how to get what you need.
So, you know, what we've been doing and trying to do around our whole continuum of care is making sure that we're taking patients care of patients across their entire health journey before they come into the hospital, after they leave the hospital. You think about just taking care of that whole holistic patient around their entire care and health journey has been very important to us. And how can we do that in the home health environment? How can we do it in the inpatient environment? How can we make sure that we have success setting them up for success in the clinic environment so that we're helping them to navigate this big health system? I can't tell you the calls, texts, Angie, what do I do about this? You know, and it's just, you know, it's just clear every day that if we can just make it less complicated.
[00:30:09] Speaker C: Right.
[00:30:10] Speaker D: That we're going to improve it.
[00:30:12] Speaker C: And before April 2024, we weren't even on the same system and the ER was on a different System and radiology and lab. And it's just.
[00:30:20] Speaker D: Yeah, now it's just one.
[00:30:22] Speaker C: You really, after, you know, a year into it, you look back and appreciate and wonder how we manage and juggled before we made the conversion, how much time we spent.
[00:30:34] Speaker B: We could talk for hours about this, but I go back to. We started a great strategy podcast series based on feedback we received from the employee Engagement Survey. You probably all remember that. And so this was one of the key tools we developed to respond to that feedback.
But we've also done a number of things to improve communication flow throughout the organization, podcasts being just one example of many. So in order to wrap this up, our viewers really appreciated the podcast series that gave us positive feedback that helped them better understand what's going on in the system, help them better connect with their job and our approach and our strategy and what's important at the system.
So share with me, as you've worked with your teams, how you've worked to improve communication flow, whether that's through examples or things you've done to help us get more and better communication spread throughout the organization.
[00:31:34] Speaker G: I think for me, it wasn't even as much about me communicating with them, but it was me listening to the communication that they offered me back, which is just golden. And so one of the ways we've done that, there's been many. We've changed a lot of our communication pathways. But our town halls, we have once a quarter where all of our nursing staff come in and we just give honest updates in real time about what we're working on, changes that are being made, and things like that. We also do a coffee with Kristen once a quarter so that night shift and day shift are able to come up and have some coffee with me. And we just give feedback to one another. What are the things that we can be working on to make it a better environment for you? And we have seen so many positive changes because of that communication, which just goes right back into the retention and the recruitment effort. So it just all interconnects so well. And then we really changed the way we're rounding with nursing leadership.
I joked this morning with a group and I said, you know, a year ago, I would go up and around and say, hey, hey, guys, how's it going? People would hide from me. They would run in the patient's room and hide from me. And now we're very intentional. So everyone comes to the desk. I am now known as the magic wand lady.
And I ask her, if you had a magic wand, what would you Change to make it better for patients or staff and the feedback they give us, it is just amazing. And because of that, we've made amazing changes based on that communication. Just so thankful for our staff.
[00:33:01] Speaker C: I think from some operations, and Angie can chime in on that, is if you look back, despite us being a system, we recognize that there still were silos and from a system perspective, and so we tried to be more intentional to bring the operators in to meetings, routine scheduled meetings, not just tupelo people, but people from across our system. I know Sandra does the same thing now from an HR perspective, but having all those constituents sitting around the table at one time, then you're not either having to repeat yourself. You're getting everybody on the same page and you're able to hear from them and you're able to get buy in on the changes or decisions that are being made. And I think having many examples of that from just the daily operations, from throughput committees to our Wednesday admin council meetings.
[00:33:57] Speaker E: Right.
[00:33:57] Speaker D: So I think too, it's about relationships and it's about trust and it's about creating a culture where people feel safe to have open dialogue. I think it's about accountability.
I think it's about having structure and being very intentional, about creating space for people to give ideas and for communication to flow. I don't think it's up, down, I think it's a circle. It's all communicating around and everything that we talk about, everything that we decide, everything that we work to try to improve or every problem we're working to solve, and it's all around the patient and it's all around the staff, and it's around the family and it's around what matters. And continuing to mine for ideas through our staff around what matters to them is very, very important.
[00:34:52] Speaker A: And change is constant.
And when we implement a strategy January 1st, it could change April 1st.
[00:35:02] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right.
[00:35:04] Speaker A: I think we've done a really good job. From Shane's system operating review meetings, David started a series of monthly meetings now with leaders in the auditorium.
I know David Barber holds a series of meetings not only with his staff, but with his providers as aligned providers and connected care partners, which is also so critical so that we don't get captured by the grapevine, we present the facts when we stay out in front.
[00:35:31] Speaker F: I would lean into what Angie said around, you know, it's not up, down, communications around. And we've created tools, right, to actually mine for ideas from our staff.
[00:35:42] Speaker G: Right.
[00:35:43] Speaker F: They're the ones that are experiencing, you know, Whatever sort of issue or celebration. And so I think we've really leaned into those the last couple years to really mine from our staff what makes their day better.
[00:35:55] Speaker D: Right.
[00:35:56] Speaker F: We call it hassle factors.
[00:35:57] Speaker D: Right.
[00:35:57] Speaker F: Tell us what your hassle factor is. Sometimes it's big, sometimes it's small, and sometimes it's easy to solve. But it gives us that insight about how do we make their life easier.
[00:36:08] Speaker A: Sorry to interrupt. Today would be a good day for the snow cones or the ice creams.
[00:36:11] Speaker E: Yes.
[00:36:13] Speaker B: Well, I just think about an EPIC and what we've done with EPIC and how we've utilized EPIC since the initial implementation just over a year ago.
We've implemented over 300 optimization initiatives, most of which came from our staff and users of the product who've given us feedback along the way. And so our technical team and operations folks have integrated those changes within the system which have helped us make progress on a lot of these initiatives. So to that point, I want to thank the viewers for your feedback and your comments throughout the series and hopefully this wrap up Q and A session provided you some sense that we heard you and we're addressing that feedback and we'll continue to use that feedback.
This is not the end, this is just the beginning. And so as we stay focused on our mission is to continuously improve the health of the people in our region.
I go back to staying focused on the true north and that's our patients.
[00:37:15] Speaker C: Right.
[00:37:16] Speaker B: And so we'll be great as long as we remain focused on the patient and the families with that, our true north as a healthcare system. So thank you leaders for joining us this afternoon for sharing that feedback.
Really excited about what lies ahead for the organization. Look forward to many more communications with our teammates about the great progress in the health system and what's important. So thank you all for your leadership. Thank you.
Thank you all for joining us.
