Last week I attended Becker’s in Chicago and found the intimacy of the event really unique. It afforded the ability to connect with others naturally based on alignment of work ethic and passion for improved outcomes by virtue of sessions attended and insights shared.

Overall, recurrent themes for the week included:

• Emotional Intelligence (EQ)

• Addressing Burnout

• Partnerships

• Pragmatic Disruption

• SDOH and

• Text Messaging Apps

I’ll dive into further detail on each below.

Emotional Intelligence (EQ)

Kicking the week off, Maia Hightower, CMIO at U of Utah Health said: “Digital Transformation is really a change management process.  And change is emotional.  If we are to leave no one behind it [takes] connection on that level.”

So, what does that look like in practice?  I blend Dr. Hightower’s tenets with my own insights here:

1. Rework job descriptions — assume you can teach the technical and be more focused on the soft skills when hiring.

2. Include customers in hiring evaluation panels — you’re building integrated organizations where relationships are key. Is this person going to be able to support your operational leaders?  Can they handle themselves in high pressure situations?

3. Use a standard interview guide to evaluate objectively — this is what leading organizations do to assure hiring practices align with organizational needs and mission.

Emphasized throughout the week by a large swath of exec panelists: trust must start within your organization so that it may lend itself to enhanced relationships between your clinicians and patients.  Only then will new technologies be maximally adopted by your patient population more broadly and expeditiously.  

Burnout

Hiring with a focus on EQ will help build a culture to combat the ever-ubiquitous burnout too.  “Healthy clinical teams lead to healthier care,” as Timothy Lineberry, CMO of Advocate/Aurora stated in his insightful session on provider burnout.  Developing leadership is a big deal – I’ve seen it firsthand at organizations we’ve partnered with who have formalized programs to identify their rising stars. And per Dr. Lineberry (as well as shared research from Mayo), management evaluations rooted in empathy and listening are correlated with increased job satisfaction and decreased burnout - for clinicians and non-clinicians alike.  

 

Partnership

Speaking of ubiquity – the importance of developing solid partnerships internal and external to your organization was EVERYWHERE.  I’ll leave you with a few quotes and quoting organizations for this one:

• Vendors are not vendors, they’re partners. - Ascension

• Be open to working with some vendor partners. Say: I want this service today, but I want to in-source it; help me do that.  It makes them better as well. - Bon Secours

• Earlier stage HIT vendors can make strong partners, and are often more customer, value focused. - Brown  University

• You can find trusted advisors to keep you ahead of the curve. - UC Irvine

Pragmatism

Certainly, being smart about who you partner with makes complete sense, as does pragmatism about the risks you take and endeavors you choose to spend time on.  Case in point, consensus seemed to be there from the key-note audience when Ben Patel, CIO of Cone Health, shared how organizations would be way behind the curve if they tried to build algorithms on their own. 

Some other thoughts heard repeatedly:

• Maximize the functionality your vendors are offering you before going elsewhere or looking for add-ons

• Do whatever you can to get 5G up and running at your organization, in your city, your state, etc.

• Healthcare organizations need to dive more deeply into revenue generating spaces

• When it comes to data, first make sure it’s Actionable, then make sure it’s the Right Info, Right Channel, Right Format, Right Person, Right Workflow!  (For more on this, see our blog on CDS.)

And here are a few more pragmatic nuggets:

• One Rev Cycle leader from Ochsner in Louisiana is seeing folks in rural communities relying on burner phones due to financial struggles (and turning them off in order to preserve minutes). As you may imagine, this poses significant care coordination challenges and requires some creative outreach solutions.

• MUSC’s CMIO, David McSwain:

  • “Providers don’t want to be disrupted; they want to have their care enhanced.”

  • Paraphrasing regarding interstate licensing for telehealth: clinicians should be allowed to follow their patients out of state for vacation, for school, for temporary relocation etc.  The interstate licensing challenges don’t need to and shouldn’t be all or nothing.

• University of Iowa CMIO Ken Nepple on dedicating resources to value-based care activities: “No Margin, No Mission”

SDOH

Social Determinants seem to be a foregone conclusion with this audience that they’re a priority.  Donna Persaud of PCCI in Dallas had perhaps the most correctly-nuanced outlook (in my opinion):

Chronic illness metrics drive a lot of what is done in regards to improving outcomes.  Expand from there to see what trends are occurring and what can be predicted from the data.  That allows planning at the population level, literacy levels, zip code levels, language levels, etc.  Then, facilitate digital outreach and look to sensor management (scales, BP, wearables, etc.).

Finally on the SDOH partnership front, former Norwegian American COO Michelle Blakely (now of the Blakely Group) extolled how partnerships with the community can be difficult when you have limited resources, particularly if you’re not reimbursed (read: Medicaid).  To which I say: if your organization isn’t strengthening its community-based organization partnerships in order to integrate patients’ SDOH, it’s going to be a real challenge if and when 1) payers require it and 2) patients start demanding it!  (Feeling behind the curve? Ask for our White Paper on the topic HERE.)

Texting

I’ll keep this one short and sweet (everyone is hearing this loud and clear): patients don’t want to log into a portal or app. Many may, but many also don’t want to. 

Everyone ‘gets’ text messaging in 2019.  Move towards texting applications and solutions to engage your populations.  Period.

And finally….

Genuinely entertaining & substantive.  Apart from the intimacy of this event, those two currents ran deeply beneath the content, panelists, and key notes over the course of the week.  It was these underlying themes that really helped to drive Yale CIO Lisa Stump and Michigan Medicine CIO Andrew Rosenberg’s combined message home:

We need to think about redefining “Healthcare Information Technology (HIT)” as “Healthcare Innovation + Transformation”

A great sentiment that reflects both the reality of and excitement about our current landscape.

-CJ

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