Latest / Becker’s Healthcare - Clinical Leadership Podcast / Aaron Hajart, MS, ATC, FACHE, Chief Operating Officer at Community Medical Center, an RWJBarnabas Health facility

Transcript

Aaron Hajart, MS, ATC, FACHE, Chief Operating Officer at Community Medical Center, an RWJBarnabas Health facility · Becker’s Healthcare - Clinical Leadership Podcast

• 0:00
  This is Laura Dierda with the Becker's Healthcare
• 0:02
  podcast.
• 0:03
  I'm thrilled today to be joined by Aaron
• 0:05
  Hajjart, chief operating officer at Community Medical Center
• 0:07
  and RWJBarnabas
• 0:09
  Health Facility. Aaron, it's a pleasure to have
• 0:11
  you on the podcast today. Yeah. Thanks for
• 0:12
  having me. Now I'm excited for our conversation
• 0:15
  because I know we've connected in the past
• 0:17
  and, you know, it's always really interesting to
• 0:19
  hear how what you're doing and how you're
• 0:20
  thinking about things, as well as where we're
• 0:23
  headed in the future. But before we dive
• 0:24
  in, I'm wondering, can you tell us a
• 0:26
  little bit more about Community Medical Center and
• 0:28
  what makes it unique?
• 0:30
  Sure. So, Community Medical Center is a 592,
• 0:33
  bed acute care hospital. We're in Toms River,
• 0:36
  New Jersey.
• 0:37
  We, started our journey into,
• 0:40
  teaching,
• 0:41
  about,
• 0:42
  3, 4 years ago. So we've
• 0:45
  morphed into,
• 0:46
  a very large robust teaching hospital.
• 0:49
  We're part of a large system, RWABarnabas
• 0:52
  Health, which is has 17 hospitals across,
• 0:55
  some adult children's and behavioral health platforms and
• 0:59
  is the largest,
• 1:00
  academic health care sent system in the state
• 1:02
  of New Jersey and affiliated with with our
• 1:04
  friends at Rutgers University, which has been a
• 1:06
  great partnership. And here in in Toms River,
• 1:09
  we've been able to really leverage that relationship
• 1:11
  with Rutgers over the last few years and
• 1:13
  are, you know, very excited to bring, teaching,
• 1:16
  medicine out to,
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  Ocean County.
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  Well, it's great to hear. You know? And,
• 1:21
  certainly, it seems like it would bring a
• 1:22
  lot of advantages, but what does it take
• 1:24
  to really transform into that type of,
• 1:28
  teaching facility where you're not just providing care
• 1:31
  for the community, which is so important, but
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  also training,
• 1:34
  new clinicians
• 1:35
  and really taking on that more of a
• 1:37
  academic role?
• 1:39
  Well, for sure, it takes a lot of
• 1:40
  planning. So,
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  you know, I've been
• 1:43
  in health care in academic health care my
• 1:45
  entire career. So, you know, moving into a
• 1:48
  role where it's new, to the hospital has
• 1:51
  been a interesting experience. But I can tell
• 1:53
  you,
• 1:54
  you know, with our partners at Rutgers, we
• 1:55
  did a lot of planning to make sure
• 1:57
  that we've covered our bases and have identified
• 1:59
  the right programs.
• 2:01
  And I think a lot of that is
• 2:03
  both around community needs. So,
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  you know, our our programs in internal medicine
• 2:07
  and general surgery really,
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  besides being the basis of GME, we're really
• 2:12
  focused at, you know, 2 areas where we
• 2:14
  had community needs. And we've been very fortunate
• 2:17
  to recruit and retain some of the internal
• 2:20
  medicine graduates, which our first graduating
• 2:23
  class was this past summer, and we're able
• 2:24
  to keep some people here.
• 2:26
  And and then, you know, as we've started
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  to,
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  you know, get into,
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  you know, the the kind of final phase
• 2:33
  of our GME growth, we've identified
• 2:36
  some other programs.
• 2:37
  1, pulmonology critical care where we had a
• 2:40
  lot of community needs to
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  bring new physicians into,
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  our our community, and we're able to,
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  you know, get that program up running. We'll
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  take our 1st class,
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  in in July and are excited because one
• 2:55
  of our graduates is from our program, and
• 2:58
  the other one is a
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  IIM graduate who is from the local area.
• 3:02
  So I think we have 2
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  outstanding,
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  young physicians who hopefully in 3 years will
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  be able to
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  set up shop in in the Ocean County
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  and treat our community. And that's really been
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  the focus of of our program develop and
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  is making sure that we are able to
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  recruit retain those
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  those graduates and, you know, use those dollars
• 3:23
  we in time we invested in them to,
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  help
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  bolster the physician community in Ocean County.
• 3:30
  Oh, that's great to hear. And, you know,
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  definitely a lot to be excited about. Now
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  I'm wondering, you know, beyond, some of this
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  continued growth and evolution of the, teaching hospital
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  g and e and more, what are some
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  of your other big organizational goals for 2025?
• 3:44
  Yeah. So, yeah, we've really been focused in
• 3:47
  the last year and and will in 2025
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  as well on improving our access, both from
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  an emergency room standpoint, but also ambulatory care
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  centers.
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  Our system is really focused on ambulatory densification,
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  which I think will help put the providers
• 4:00
  where the patients need them. And and, so
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  we just opened up our, ambulatory care center
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  just down the road,
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  which includes our, ambulatory surgery center, our a
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  large primary care practice, an orthopedic practice, some
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  other,
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  colocated,
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  physician practices, which we're very excited about. And
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  so that's something we're really focusing on in
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  in 2025, but also,
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  you know, bolstering our service lines. We're a
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  service line led, health care system. And so
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  we've really been partnering with our system leadership
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  around our core service lines to,
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  you know, provide them the local support and
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  leadership that they need to,
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  implement their vision around service line coordination. And
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  then, also, you know, we as, you know,
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  the
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  evolving
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  tertiary
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  center,
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  you know, we really need to focus better
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  coordination amongst ourselves and our, tertiary and quaternary
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  centers where we, you know, they may have
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  things that we don't do, you know, particularly
• 4:58
  around cardiac surgery and some few other things.
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  So, you know, we are working really closely
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  with them on being more tightly aligned and
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  making the patient experience
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  from one site to another,
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  better and and quicker. And then and then
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  finally,
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  you know, just as our health system is
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  focusing on improving our patient experience, you know,
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  we're doing that here well as well.
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  We had, a lot of improvement in 2024,
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  but, are doubling down on some nursing and
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  and other,
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  care coordination
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  opportunities that we've seen, and and, we hope
• 5:30
  to see a pretty successful 2025.
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  That's great to hear. And definitely, you know,
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  exciting to have so much growth. I know,
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  in in particular for some organization, it's been
• 5:40
  a challenging few years and seeing, you know,
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  some of the contractions. So to have that
• 5:45
  ability to add service lines, to continue to
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  grow, and and, realize more of this, vision
• 5:50
  of being that, revolving tertiary center is just
• 5:54
  really cool to see. Now from your perspective,
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  I I know a lot to be excited
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  about, but I can imagine also some headwinds
• 6:00
  you have your eye on as well.
• 6:02
  What are you kind of thinking about or
• 6:04
  planning around for the next year?
• 6:07
  Yeah. Yeah. We have headwinds. Right? We we
• 6:09
  all have them, and I think, some of
• 6:11
  them are the same. And and we have
• 6:12
  some of the same that, you know, we
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  hear kind of,
• 6:15
  profession wide across health care, which is really
• 6:17
  around recruitment and retention of of nursing and
• 6:20
  technical staff. And I think it really comes
• 6:22
  down to the fact that, you know, when
• 6:24
  many of us were getting into health care,
• 6:26
  health care was a destination profession that we
• 6:28
  all kind of aspire to.
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  And that that kind of lasted through COVID,
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  and I think there was a little bit
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  of a rejuvenation of that, you know, during
• 6:37
  2020 and 2021.
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  But really as we've gotten out of and
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  further away from from those years, it's, you
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  know, really been a challenge.
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  We all know we lost a lot of
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  people
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  to early retirement,
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  during COVID, and we've not really been able
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  to replace that workforce. We have an aging
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  population,
• 6:56
  across the country, but here in Ocean County,
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  we definitely have an aging population, particularly
• 7:01
  in our physician and nursing staff. And so
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  while,
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  you know, we we know this is a
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  challenge,
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  you know, we've been taking some steps to
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  mitigate that, really partnering with some of our,
• 7:12
  nursing schools and and technical programs
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  to
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  to improve the training experience here at the
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  hospital
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  to keep those students engaged, to retain them
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  upon graduation.
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  But also looking at other ways, alternative, you
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  know, pathways
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  to,
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  to education so that we get, you know,
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  some people who may be in nonclinical
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  or more entry level roles here in the
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  hospital
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  interested and engaged into
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  other training programs and and technical fields. And
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  so we have some of that stuff that,
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  you know, we're really looking at hard. And
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  then,
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  know, capital investment has been on everybody's mind.
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  Right? We
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  even though we're all at capacity, you know,
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  there's so many financial pressures that we're all
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  under that even if we're, you know, making
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  money, it's not, you know, at the same
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  rate that we were making 5, 6, 10
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  years ago. And so how do we
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  reinvest,
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  you know, that money into
• 8:05
  ways to continue to deliver first class care?
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  You know, many of our facilities are aging
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  or, you know, our hospital
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  is, you know, we have buildings that are,
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  you know, a few decades old. And so,
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  you know, we're really looking at how do
• 8:20
  we hit that head on the next, you
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  know, year to 2 years.
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  And then finally,
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  we may not be different. I feel that
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  we're different. Everybody says they're different, but, you
• 8:31
  know, we definitely have a changing patient population
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  in our region even though we had historically
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  been kind of a super senior population with
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  a lot of patients over the age of
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  80.
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  We actually are seeing, you know, the age
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  gap
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  increase. We're seeing a lot of obviously older
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  patients, but we're also seeing some very young
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  patients. And so not as much, you know,
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  the middle age, you know, twenties, thirties, but
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  a lot of, you know,
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  increased childbirths, increased teenagers in our market. So,
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  you know, really thinking of how do we,
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  continue to shift what we're doing here to
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  meet the needs of those, you know, kind
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  of diversion patient population. So it's been a
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  little bit of a challenge, you know, to
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  to rethink who we are, but it also
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  gives us opportunity to be creative.
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  That's fascinating to hear. You know? And and
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  really truly,
• 9:16
  that opportunity to
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  see what's happening,
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  within the marketplace, see what, you know, the
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  population changes, and then trying to think ahead
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  or plan ahead for that, seems like it
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  would be a fun challenge to have.
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  When you are are thinking through those type
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  of conversations and future planning, I know it's
• 9:33
  always hard because you never know exactly
• 9:35
  what's gonna be thrown at you. But,
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  you know, how do you,
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  really
• 9:41
  kind of bring those conversations and ideas to
• 9:43
  life today,
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  while also, you know, not
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  skimping on, I guess, what's needed for the
• 9:49
  patient population right now? Yeah. That's a great
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  question. I it's it's
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  for sure, we've been fortunate. You know, I've
• 9:56
  only been here at community for a year
• 9:59
  now, but, you know, we were fortunate in
• 10:00
  the fact that the hospital leadership,
• 10:03
  you know, made concerted efforts 2, 3, and
• 10:05
  4 years ago to really build
• 10:07
  programs and recruit physicians and clinical support staff
• 10:11
  that enabled us to meet needs today that
• 10:14
  we, you know, anticipated, you know, years ago.
• 10:17
  So, really, what we're doing today is focusing
• 10:20
  on what do we need to, do to
• 10:22
  enable us to be successful in additional 2
• 10:25
  or 3 years. And so right now, we're
• 10:27
  recruiting,
• 10:28
  providers in areas where we may not have
• 10:31
  the immediate need, but we know based on
• 10:33
  changing demographics that we're gonna have that need
• 10:35
  in the very near future. So it's it
• 10:38
  it does create challenges because people think, well,
• 10:40
  you know, that's not the need
• 10:42
  we we have right now. We have, you
• 10:43
  know, this thing. Well, this thing is gonna
• 10:45
  be very look very different in 5 years.
• 10:47
  And so,
• 10:49
  it it's, it's really about,
• 10:52
  sticking to the plan and maintaining focus on,
• 10:56
  you know, success in 2 3 5 years,
• 10:58
  not in 2 3 months.
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  I love that. That's, you know, really, really
• 11:03
  great perspective.
• 11:04
  And, you know, speaking of that type of
• 11:06
  thinking and leadership,
• 11:07
  how are you evolving as a leader, especially
• 11:10
  to meet the needs of what,
• 11:12
  you know, community medical center will have over
• 11:14
  the next few years?
• 11:16
  Yeah. You know, first of all, I'm getting
• 11:17
  more gray hair, but I don't think that's
• 11:19
  because of a leadership role. It's because I'm
• 11:21
  getting older. But I think most importantly, you
• 11:24
  know, I think we have to all recognize,
• 11:26
  and I've really recognized that the different workforce
• 11:29
  generations are you know, they they interact interact
• 11:32
  differently. They have different expectations.
• 11:34
  You know, we were all thinking about millennials
• 11:36
  5, 6 years ago in the workforce. Well,
• 11:38
  those millennials are now
• 11:40
  middle and senior managers and they think and
• 11:42
  act differently than than I do,
• 11:44
  you know, with who are being a few
• 11:46
  years older.
• 11:47
  And then, you know, the most interesting experience
• 11:50
  I've had is with gen z,
• 11:52
  You know, as they're entering the workforce,
• 11:56
  and having, you know, new grads, new college
• 11:58
  grads who are part of that, you know,
• 12:01
  that generation,
• 12:02
  they they definitely,
• 12:04
  think about different things. They have different expectations.
• 12:06
  They care a lot less about money and
• 12:08
  career advancement than I think we did,
• 12:11
  you know, other generations did. And so it's
• 12:14
  made me really have to rethink how to
• 12:16
  connect with them as coworkers
• 12:18
  and how to collaborate.
• 12:20
  But it's been a really interesting experience because
• 12:22
  I think many things that
• 12:24
  that I,
• 12:25
  you know, felt were important,
• 12:27
  you know, having a lot of independence,
• 12:29
  having my voice heard, and those things are
• 12:31
  really super important to them. The difference is
• 12:34
  in my generation. We were a little more
• 12:36
  willing to to wait, right, until we got
• 12:39
  further up there, the totem pole or ladder
• 12:41
  to to have the expectation that people were
• 12:44
  listening to us. But I think today's,
• 12:46
  you know, Gen z generation is definitely looking
• 12:49
  for those that independence and that voice,
• 12:52
  you know, now when they they get into
• 12:54
  the workforce. And so, you know, you gotta
• 12:56
  incorporate that, which has made me, you know,
• 12:58
  I think a better listener. At least my
• 13:00
  wife may not say that, but I think
• 13:01
  I I've tried really hard to to become
• 13:03
  a better listener and and spend more time
• 13:06
  coaching and mentoring than, you know, doing the
• 13:08
  more traditional
• 13:10
  direction and, you know, directing people and telling
• 13:12
  them what to do. And,
• 13:14
  I think that's been,
• 13:16
  really fulfilling. It's also made me more patient,
• 13:18
  which,
• 13:19
  you know, everybody I think can probably use
• 13:21
  more patience and having a generation that,
• 13:24
  you know,
• 13:25
  is gonna expect you to be more patient
• 13:27
  with them and supportive.
• 13:29
  You know, they really think about things around
• 13:31
  personal time and their mental health and well-being,
• 13:34
  as so much more and key to what
• 13:37
  they're expecting from you as a boss or
• 13:39
  as a leader.
• 13:41
  So it's been a really interesting experience.
• 13:44
  I'm really excited to have a 14 year
• 13:45
  old daughter, and I'm really excited to see
• 13:47
  her grow up because,
• 13:49
  you know, I think this the this, you
• 13:51
  know, generation z is definitely
• 13:54
  they may come out of this
• 13:56
  better ahead, you know,
• 13:58
  enjoying retirement a lot more than my generation,
• 14:02
  because, you know, their their entire life is
• 14:05
  focused around,
• 14:07
  how they wanna live, not necessarily
• 14:09
  how we as, you know, culture want them
• 14:12
  to. So it's been a really interesting experience.
• 14:15
  And it's fascinating to hear, you know, and
• 14:17
  certainly, just a great perspective on leading the
• 14:20
  different generations and understanding how to connect with
• 14:23
  them at their level and then,
• 14:25
  really truly building that culture that makes a
• 14:27
  difference,
• 14:28
  and gets the best out of whoever,
• 14:31
  you're working with in coaching and mentoring.
• 14:33
  Aaron, thank you so much for joining us
• 14:34
  on the podcast today. This has been a
• 14:36
  really fun and, interesting conversation, and I look
• 14:38
  forward to connecting with you again soon. Yeah.
• 14:40
  Thanks,
• 14:41
  Laura.