Latest / Becker’s Healthcare - Clinical Leadership Podcast / Matthew Primack, PT, DPT, MBA, President of Advocate Condell Medical Center

Transcript

Matthew Primack, PT, DPT, MBA, President of Advocate Condell Medical Center · Becker’s Healthcare - Clinical Leadership Podcast

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  It's so important for leaders at the top of organizations to keep learning,
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  This is Laura Ddo with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast.
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  I'm thrilled today to be joined by Matt Premack,
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  president of Advocate Conde Medical Center.
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  That's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
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  Thank you, Laura. Pleasure to be with you.
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  Now. I know we've got a really great, uh,
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  talk today to talk a little bit more about leadership and some of the things
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  that you're doing at Advocate Condel Medical Center.
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  But before we dive into our discussion,
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  can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and your background?
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  Sure, Laura. Uh, appreciate being here. Uh, I have been, uh,
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  the president at Condo Medical Center now for four years.
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  I've been within the Advocate Health System for just about 16 years.
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  Started my career as a physical therapist and have been in healthcare now for a
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  total of about 25 years.
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  Fantastic. Well,
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  could you talk to us a little bit about what your big focus is at Advocate Condo
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  Medical Center this year? What are the things that you're most excited about?
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  Sure, Laura. Y it's so interesting,
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  as we've spent many years now talking about our focus areas in healthcare,
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  we come back to some of our basics. And this year we've broken our,
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  our priorities into two different categories.
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  Number one is what are we doing inside of the hospital?
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  And we've taken this into three very distinct buckets of effort.
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  Number one is we've gotta be more efficient, whether that's in throughput,
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  whether that's in scheduling, whether that's in,
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  in the things that we do every day,
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  efficiency has become the absolute priority because we know the financial
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  headwinds that we're facing are like never before,
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  and we've gotta be delivering on a very efficient model. Secondly,
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  we've gotta retain and we've gotta recruit some of the best talent that we can
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  find. Uh,
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  staffing crisis has been an issue in this country now for at least the last 24
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  months, and we all know there's a agency issue and a,
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  and an open role issue.
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  And so we are really focused on making sure that we create an environment
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  where people want to come to work here,
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  where they feel recognized and they feel celebrated, and more importantly,
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  that they have the tools and the resources where they can be successful and
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  develop in their career journey. And lastly, a big focus, and I think Laura,
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  we may be talking about this a little bit later, is the patient experience.
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  We know that healthcare is transitioned really into a customer,
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  into a retail based service where patients have choice and they can go
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  to one hospital, they can go to another hospital.
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  And so we focused on the patient experience, and that's from top to bottom,
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  ambulatory to inpatient to our diagnostic imaging, to our rehab.
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  The patient experience is a, is an absolute priority for us in 2023.
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  The second area is really our growth area.
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  And so we've been focused on our physician development.
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  We've actually seen Laura, uh, up in the northern Illinois area,
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  a bit of an attrition of physicians. We've seen some early retirements.
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  We've seen some folks, uh, leave the state and, and move out of state. Uh,
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  we've seen folks take, uh, a different career path.
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  So we are on a mission to regrow our physician platform and
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  with that also grow our ambulatory infrastructure.
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  So whether it's ambulatory sites,
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  whether it's services that we offer out in the community. When we were in Covid,
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  we spent two to three years focusing really on taking care of the patients in
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  our four walls.
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  But we realized the future of healthcare is really on an ambulatory and also
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  virtual platforms. So those are,
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  I think what we're most excited about in 2023 is really getting out into the
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  community and bringing services out into these areas of, uh,
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  potentially underserved or, or, uh, or, or, or the, the,
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  the areas that need us to come out to them with the services instead of coming
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  to the big hospitals.
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  Absolutely. Wow, that's fascinating.
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  And I love how you talked about really that patient experience.
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  I know that that's top of mind for so many different, uh,
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  organizations and trying to figure that out. Um,
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  especially with the presence of more, uh, companies getting into healthcare,
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  non-traditional entrants and,
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  and then patients too expecting a different type of experience like they do, um,
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  in the retail sector.
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  So that's fascinating to hear about and definitely seems like a really great
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  areas to focus and, um, spaces to be innovative as well.
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  Yeah, Laura, I mean, this is, this is,
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  I think the future of our industry is making sure that we are delivering on the
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  expectations that our patients and Al Paz and our families have
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  for what we do, uh, and how we can support them every day. We are in a service,
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  uh, industry. Our,
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  our role and our responsibilities is to serve our communities and serve the
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  folks that need us. And now that we're seeing also our payer, uh,
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  be very, uh, um, uh, sensitive to our, uh, to our patient experience scores,
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  and we've seen Medicare start to transition an emphasis now on patient
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  experience. So it's, it's not only critical that we,
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  we do this for the community,
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  but we also do this because we know it's the right thing to do.
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  Certainly. And, and, you know, I,
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  I love that perspective and in thinking through what that means internally for
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  your organization, I know at the Becker's annual meeting last month,
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  you spoke on a leadership panel about instilling a culture of Yes.
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  Throughout the hospital.
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  Could you tell us more about what that means for you and what the shifts that
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  you had to make, uh, in order to make this a reality with your team?
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  Yeah, thanks, Laura.
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  Thi this cut on a little bit more than I thought it was gonna cut on, catch on.
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  I, I've received calls and emails from, from, uh, leaders across the country.
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  So we had an opportunity to talk about patient experience at the last Becker's
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  conference and had a, a wonderful response to that panel discussion.
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  We've introduced something called get to Yes.
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  And when we had looked at the patient experience,
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  and this is both on the inpatient, the outpatient, the ambulatory side,
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  one of the things that we saw was a bit of a frustration of navigating
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  healthcare. We've, in the industry,
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  it's become almost so complicated for our patients and our community members and
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  our families, sometimes even our own staff,
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  to navigate care that patients are often met with a,
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  well call this number, or, no, we can't, or, that's not something we do.
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  You've gotta go over here.
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  And that can create an incredible amount of frustration.
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  And for somebody who's going through an injury, an illness, uh, going to, to,
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  to schedule a screening, they want to be taken care of,
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  they want to feel like somebody is looking out for them and be on their journey
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  with them.
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  And so we instilled a get to yes model where we take a patient
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  who asks any question, say, how do we get to a yes?
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  How do we get to answering their question?
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  How do we get to escorting them to the next phase? That could be physically,
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  that could be philosophically, that could be logistically,
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  how do we shepherd them, escort them, navigate them to the next agent?
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  We've found that as we get to yes, on any of their questions or concerns,
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  we find that positively impacts not only by the patient experience,
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  but also the quality of the care and the results that we get from the,
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  from the service that we provide. Patients are more engaged,
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  they feel taken care of, the families are engaged.
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  They feel like they're part of the process. And so this get to Yes,
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  has been very powerful for us as an organization.
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  I love that. I think that's such a great example of, of one,
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  just simple way that you can embrace, uh, a,
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  a different mentality and make a huge difference.
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  And I can imagine it didn't cost billions of dollars to bring something in or
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  something different, but just a mindset switch that, um, really makes a a,
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  a a difference. So from your perspective, how does that get t yes.
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  Mentality add value to the organization and impact patient care?
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  Yeah, it's great. You know, Laura, when we,
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  I wanna go back to it to sort of that initial question is how,
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  how did this happen and why did we do this? Is we in the industry have,
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  have protocolized everything. We've created algorithms for everything. We've,
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  we've, we've built ourselves into a standardized model, which,
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  which we really have to do to create some standardization.
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  And back to what we're focused on is efficiencies. But what some of us,
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  and and this is just sort of the nature of the,
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  the trajectory of our org of our industry,
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  is we've sometimes lost that personal touch,
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  that moment where we just stop and look into a patient's eyes and say,
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  how can I help you? Not, your three answers triggered this response,
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  and now this is the next step for us,
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  but how can we just take a moment and pause and say,
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  how can I help you? What are you looking to achieve today?
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  How can I be your escort along this path of recovery or along this,
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  this, um, challenge of finding out what a diagnosis is,
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  or I just need a simple MRI or a CT scan or an x-ray or, or,
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  or a screening. How can I help you get there?
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  And that moment of pause sometimes deviates from a
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  protocolized or an algorithmic model, and just that time to say,
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  I'm gonna help you and I'm gonna be your yes,
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  I'm gonna figure out how to deliver on you.
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  That inherently lowers blood pressure, it reduces anxiety,
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  it increases compliance,
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  it engages patients to be along this with us. And,
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  and so we've seen not only that it, that it improves the, the,
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  the overall patient experience,
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  but that it improves quality of care because people feel engaged,
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  i i in their care itself. So, uh,
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  we've seen tremendous benefits to this early on. And, and like, we always,
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  I think many of my colleagues always say, this is a, this is a journey.
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  We're not done. We, we've started this probably two to three years ago.
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  We're still learning. We're getting feedback from our own teammates to say,
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  we're trying this, but we're, we're,
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  we encounter these barriers or these challenges,
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  and we bring that back to the team and say, all right, here's a new challenge.
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  We, we wanna go this route, but maybe we can't. How do we find a way?
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  And it's back to the principle, how do we get to Yes.
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  Absolutely. I love that.
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  That's just fascinating and thank you so much for talking through how that came
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  to be. I think it's, um, you know, really awesome that, you know,
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  you were able to kind of work with the team to have such a creative and
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  interesting way to go about all that. Now, looking ahead,
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  where do you see workforce trends headed in the future?
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  Where do you see some of the patient engagement, uh, trends headed?
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  I guess what's next on tap for you? What do you really have your eye on?
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  Yeah, let's, let's, let's take that in pieces. So you ask about workforce. Uh,
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  I, I dare say,
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  and I'm knocking on wood and hitting my head and biting my tongue right now,
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  but it is looking a little better. Uh,
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  now I know some of our colleagues in rural areas are still having incredible
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  challenges with, with finding good staff, re retaining good staff.
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  We know that the agency is, is still part of what we do every day,
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  and we've gotta solve our staffing issues as quickly as we can. Uh,
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  we are located in more of a suburban area.
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  We are seeing a reduction in our agency, in our traveling nurses and our,
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  and some of our staff like respiratory therapy, physical therapy. Uh,
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  we've even seen some central sterilization team, uh,
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  some gaps needing to be filled by our agency and our, our travelers. However,
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  we are seeing a, a, a decline in that.
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  And now we have less open positions.
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  We are finding folks to be part of our family.
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  We talk about this at condel often on a daily basis. It's, it's a condel family.
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  And like we talked about earlier,
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  when we create an environment where people have the resources to be successful,
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  where they feel recognized and celebrated for the work they do every day,
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  we've even have travelers and agencies shift out of that model and become
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  full-time employees. So we're working hard at it,
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  as I know we are working across the entire US market.
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  We're working hard on bringing in folks to do great work every day.
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  We are seeing a, a, a bit of a shift in the positive right now.
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  Let's talk about where else we're headed in the future. I,
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  we've talked about this now a number of times.
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  I o Becker's does a phenomenal job. I think the future, uh,
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  is really into virtual and ambulatory. We know that,
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  that patients are looking for, uh, quick access.
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  We're lo they're looking for the ability to,
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  to navigate healthcare in the problem of their hand,
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  whether that's a mobile device or whether it's online. And so we at,
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  at Advocate Health are really looking towards what's the next step,
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  two steps and three steps beyond of where patients are receiving and wanna
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  receive healthcare. And, uh, we feel very good about where we're at.
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  We know we've got a long way to go, but that's really our future.
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  So we're gonna start to showcase a lot more innovation to our patients.
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  How do they access us from wherever they are and however they want? And that,
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  and that's gonna be the focus of us 2023 and beyond.
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  I love it. Matt, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.
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  This has been a really fun conversation and we look forward to having you again
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  in the future and always at, at our live events. I think, uh,
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  your sessions are can't miss. So thank you.
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  Excellent. Thanks Laura. Always a pleasure to support backers.