Latest / Becker’s Healthcare Podcast / Leading Intermountain Health Through Innovation and Change with Rob Allen

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Leading Intermountain Health Through Innovation and Change with Rob Allen · Becker’s Healthcare Podcast

0:00
This is Laura Dierda with the Becker's Healthcare
0:02
podcast.
0:03
Today, I'm thrilled to be joined by CEO
0:05
of Intermountain Health, Rob Allen. Rob, it's a
0:07
pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
0:09
Pleasure to be here. Thank you for the
0:10
opportunity, Laura. Absolutely. And, you know, I'm excited
0:12
to have you because I know there's so
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many things you're doing at Intermountain Health, and
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it's such an innovative
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health system and and time in health care
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where there's lots of opportunities to grow and
0:21
develop and,
0:22
really
0:23
have a lot of things to think about.
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So, I'm excited for our conversation today and
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really share what you're doing at Intermountain.
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Look forward to going where you'd like to
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go. So let's dive in. Perfect. Perfect. Well,
0:33
to start, could you briefly introduce yourself,
0:36
your role and the scope of Intermountain Health?
0:38
What's currently commanding most of your time and
0:40
attention today? Yeah. So, Rob Allen, I currently
0:43
have the pleasure of serving as the president
0:45
and CEO at Intermountain Health, an organization that
0:47
is based in the Western United States, headquartered
0:49
in Salt Lake City, Utah. We serve across
0:52
about six Western states, and,
0:55
we have 34 hospitals,
0:57
nearly 70,000 caregivers.
0:59
We have over 400 clinics. We have, an
1:02
insurance arm, SelectHealth, that we insure over 1,100,000
1:05
lives and, just really focused on our mission
1:07
of helping people live the healthiest lives possible.
1:10
And what are we undertaking?
1:13
Is that the question, Laura? Let's make sure
1:14
I know where you wanna go here. Well,
1:16
what what was most of your attention,
1:18
paid today? What are kind of the top
1:19
of mind things for you, especially as I
1:21
know there's so much happening in health care
1:23
space? And, truly, I know so many things
1:25
that your mom's doing, the innovative
1:27
new ideas that are brought up both internally
1:29
as well as partnerships externally. So what's top
1:31
of mind? Yeah. First and foremost, it's our
1:33
caregivers every day and the people that they
1:35
take care of. And, right now, while we're
1:37
speaking, we have all of our caregivers deployed,
1:40
taking care of our communities,
1:42
and that's important. That work needs to happen
1:44
every day. It needs to move along, and
1:45
we have remarkable people doing that work. I'm
1:48
proud of them. And, we wanna make sure
1:50
we're giving them due attention every day for
1:53
what they need. But then we also have
1:55
the vision at Intermountain is to be a
1:56
model health system, and it was established when
1:59
Intermountain was formed in 1975
2:01
when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter
2:03
day Saints gifted 15 hospitals in Utah, Idaho,
2:05
and Wyoming
2:06
to the community, and they did so with
2:09
this single charge to be a model health
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system.
2:11
And that has driven
2:13
our governance
2:14
under the board, our leadership of the organization,
2:17
and all of our caregivers for now fifty
2:18
one years,
2:20
always thinking about what does a model look
2:22
like. And it's not the model. It's a
2:24
model. We look for other partners who also
2:27
have like minds around serving community well. And
2:30
so what takes energy and time for me
2:33
is looking at what are the next steps
2:35
we need to take towards that model of
2:37
the future? How do we innovate? How do
2:39
we evolve our services? And how do we
2:41
do it in a way that we can
2:42
engage all of our caregivers
2:45
so that it becomes part of their journey?
2:48
As they're here to do good, that we're
2:49
able we're able to enable them,
2:52
to do good through the work that we're
2:53
doing and how we look to the future.
2:55
Now there's lots of innovation happening as you
2:57
and I have already talked about a little
2:58
bit on the side, you know, with AI
3:00
and technology coming. And and so we think
3:03
a lot about how do we use these
3:04
tools
3:05
to improve our abilities
3:07
to support our caregivers and to, enhance the
3:10
experience that our communities have with us.
3:13
That's amazing to hear. And I think especially
3:14
when you look at AI and and technology
3:16
and some of those tools, I mean, there
3:18
can be some anxiety around
3:20
incorporating them some challenges because folks may not
3:23
wanna change or or see the technology as
3:26
threatening in one way, shape, or form. So
3:28
how do you really make sure that your
3:30
teams are,
3:31
in a a great place to
3:33
not only accept the technology, but then adopt
3:35
it in a way that's gonna be meaningful
3:37
for the organization? Yeah. First, I think you
3:39
have to be able to
3:40
talk about
3:42
change in the context of why does it
3:44
matter? Why is it important? And what will
3:46
it mean to those we serve, but also
3:48
to each caregiver? You know, anytime we individually
3:51
face change, you you you, at some point,
3:52
ask the question, what's in it for me?
3:54
I mean, how is this going to actually
3:56
be good for the things I'm trying to
3:58
do? And, we think a lot about our
4:00
caregivers'
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why, why they got into health care. They
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wanted to serve. They wanted to do good.
4:06
They wanted to bless lives and help people.
4:08
And and so when we look at this
4:10
change, whether it's the AI tools, the technology,
4:12
the general industry environment changing,
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how do we set a vision
4:18
to the next place
4:20
that helps them do that better? And what
4:22
I love about the promise of the technology
4:25
coming is that it will enhance our ability
4:27
to streamline
4:28
the work process, and particularly the administrative side.
4:31
Let's take that burden off of our clinicians.
4:34
Let's let them do what they got into
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medicine to do and and find the joy
4:38
in their journey again. And and the
4:40
environment we've been in has burdened them
4:43
with too much of the administrative workflow,
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and we are excited about where this goes.
4:48
In fact, at Intermountain, in order to help
4:50
people through it, we have two very clearly
4:52
stated objectives as an organization. Our strategic initiatives
4:55
are
4:56
simplification
4:58
for our caregivers,
4:59
our patients, our members, and our community,
5:02
and proactive care. How do we go upstream
5:04
and keep people healthy? How do we, in
5:06
the
5:07
parlay of our our mission statement, help people
5:10
live the healthiest lives possible
5:12
by being a partner before they get ill,
5:14
before they have, you know, incident, disease, whatever
5:17
that impacts them so that we can avoid
5:19
as much of that as possible? And on
5:21
the simplification front,
5:22
these tools really
5:24
bring opportunity. We're seeing some of an impact
5:27
already, ambient dictation, a number of things there.
5:29
There's more coming, I'm sure,
5:31
and we've gotta also be guarded and have
5:34
guardrails in the process. We know that as
5:36
well. And so if it's back office function,
5:38
we wanna run as hard as we can.
5:40
If it's, clinical patient touching, we wanna make
5:42
sure we're doing that hand in hand with
5:44
our clinicians and making sure the right guardrails
5:46
are there.
5:47
But how do you simplify? You know, Einstein
5:49
said,
5:51
and if you're gonna engage everybody in a
5:53
process, if you're going to make it work
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for everybody, you gotta simplify it.
5:58
And so when we look at these tools,
6:00
rather than have it be add ons,
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it is change, but it's changed towards something
6:05
that will be better, more simple, hopefully easier
6:08
to navigate as a caregiver, as a patient,
6:11
etcetera.
6:12
And,
6:13
when we anchor the work we're doing to
6:14
one of those two things, simplification or proactive
6:16
care, our caregivers understand why we're doing it,
6:19
and then they just need to know how
6:21
will that impact towards that. And that's one
6:24
of the things we really try and focus
6:26
on in our ongoing dialogue with our teams
6:28
as we continue to have change coming our
6:30
way. That makes a lot of sense because,
6:32
as you know, the the change doesn't seem
6:33
like it's gonna let up anytime soon.
6:36
And and I I think to to back
6:38
up just one minute here, in a year
6:39
that was marked by a lot of rapid
6:41
change,
6:42
what are some of the recent decisions or
6:44
pivots,
6:45
required that required the most leadership conviction from
6:47
you, particularly when it comes to aligning people,
6:50
resources, or capabilities?
6:52
There's been a lot of change. The list
6:53
is long,
6:54
of different things we've done. But I think
6:55
when you frame it that way is what
6:57
took the most focus, the largest amount of
7:00
resource, the largest impact for people, and the
7:02
largest group that needed to be, bled through
7:05
and guided through the change.
7:06
Our epic launch last September clearly was the
7:09
biggest undertaking we had in the last year,
7:11
and it had been in the works for
7:12
a couple years before that. We had a
7:14
long planning prep cycle where our teams were
7:16
building and getting ready, but we had the
7:19
largest single launch of Epic,
7:21
in Epic history last September, on the September
7:24
6.
7:25
And, we had a part of our organization,
7:27
Colorado and Montana, who joined Intermountain through the
7:30
SCL merger
7:31
about four years ago that were already on
7:33
Epic, but the rest of the system was
7:35
on Cerner and a number of other smaller
7:37
ones, by the way, that were in other
7:38
places across the organization
7:41
that we combined all into Epic. So that
7:43
took a tremendous amount of resource and time.
7:46
Our caregivers did a beautiful job. Change is
7:49
never easy, and, it came with its challenges,
7:52
but I would say the launch went well.
7:54
We're still through the still in the process
7:57
getting through,
7:59
the final polishing, and there were a number
8:01
of areas that are still being built that
8:02
we knew going in would come later. That's
8:04
in process now. So still work to do
8:06
on it, but,
8:07
that was the largest deployment of resource, the
8:09
largest single change, I think, for all of
8:11
our caregivers. And that's a huge undertaking. So,
8:13
I can appreciate everything that went into,
8:16
making that moment happen. And then now, you
8:18
know, as you continue to iterate and and
8:20
get it into the place that you wanted,
8:21
I can imagine it just continues to become
8:24
a better better tool. But in that process,
8:27
how did that epic,
8:29
implementation
8:29
challenge your assumptions, and what did it change
8:31
about how you approach decision making, talent, or
8:34
or organizational readiness? So there was a lot
8:36
of planning around that on those very points,
8:39
and,
8:40
our teams did a beautiful job really coming
8:41
in and and planning it. Probably the biggest,
8:44
area of challenge for me
8:46
was the idea that we would do it
8:47
all at once, the Big Bang Theory. We're
8:49
just doing it. I was part of Intermountain
8:51
years ago when we launched the Cerner product,
8:53
which is the product that we transitioned from
8:55
to Epic.
8:56
And, the initial launch, it was scaled across
8:59
the organization. The initial launch had much more
9:02
challenge to it than we'd expected.
9:04
We actually put a hold on the rest
9:05
of the go lives and to work the
9:07
bugs out of that. It took us took
9:09
us several years to work through the whole
9:10
system.
9:11
And I was pretty anxious about launching a
9:14
new EHR. I I you know, having lived
9:16
through that scenario,
9:18
and so thinking we would do it everywhere
9:20
and the risk of, gosh, if it doesn't
9:21
go good, we've got a massive challenge,
9:24
was something that I had to work through
9:26
in my own mind. Why would we do
9:27
it all at once? And it became apparent
9:29
that, number one, Epic has done large installs,
9:32
not quite this large, but they've done large
9:34
installs successfully all at once. So there was
9:36
a track record to say this can be
9:38
done. And when we looked
9:40
at the disruption of not doing it all
9:42
at once, that was really the turning point
9:44
for me when I step back and said,
9:46
do we want another three year journey,
9:48
of a transition? And you've got some people
9:50
who are on it, some people who are
9:52
off of it. You've got staff who actually
9:53
work between facilities, and so they'll go to
9:55
one, and they'll be on the new program.
9:57
They'll go to another, be on the old
9:58
program. The patient
10:00
records weren't connected then. It it just became
10:02
apparent that if it was feasible to do
10:04
it all at once, it was much better
10:06
to do it all at once. And so
10:07
the planning focused more on how do we
10:09
do that, how do we carry it through,
10:12
in one big move. And our teams did
10:14
a beautiful job. Yeah. Worked hard, planned out,
10:16
lots of scenario planning, lots of prep and
10:19
design,
10:20
and, just really proud of them.
10:22
That's amazing to hear, and and kudos to
10:24
you and your team for putting that all
10:26
together and then being able to go through
10:28
that go live. Now when you think about
10:30
some of the forces that are reshaping health
10:32
care today, what do you believe leaders should
10:34
be more decisive about, especially when you think
10:36
about balancing the speed,
10:39
risk, as well as having the right teams
10:40
in place? Yeah. I think as leaders, there's
10:43
so much coming at us, and it can
10:44
be overwhelming for anybody. Our caregivers will be
10:46
overwhelming for many at times when you look
10:48
at all the pieces that could be coming.
10:50
In order to see your way through the
10:52
cloud, I think you've gotta have a very
10:54
clear focus on where are we going. So
10:56
first off, why are you here? What is
10:58
it that your purpose is as an organization,
11:00
as an individual, as a leader?
11:03
Where are we going? And be really clear
11:05
on that. Like I said, we have our
11:06
two initiatives, simplification and proactive care, which is
11:09
extremely beneficial when all of these things come
11:11
and and you have people, you know, in
11:13
essence, lined up saying, hey. I can do
11:14
this for you. I can do that for
11:15
you. I can do this for you. You
11:16
have to say no to certain things. It
11:18
may be a great idea. And, in fact,
11:19
you may wanna come back and do it
11:20
later.
11:22
But right now, these are the things we're
11:24
focused on. And we've got the two areas.
11:26
We want all the work we're doing focused
11:28
there so that our energies are targeted,
11:31
our resources aren't chopped up. They're actually deployed
11:34
in a successfully supportive way, and that's how
11:37
we go about that.
11:38
We we need to get better at it.
11:39
I'll tell you that, you know, I it
11:41
gets exciting to see the possibilities out there,
11:43
and that sometimes takes real discipline to to
11:46
pause and not jump at the next thing
11:48
while you're working down this path. But when
11:50
we do that, we find much more success.
11:52
That makes a lot of sense. And I
11:54
I can imagine, you know, there's people who
11:57
are very fast and people who are a
11:59
little bit more thoughtful at times. And so
12:01
being able to balance that, you know, really
12:03
makes makes a big difference in bringing everybody
12:05
together, it seems like.
12:07
Yeah. Excellent.
12:08
Well, I'm curious too. Uncertainty has also become
12:11
the norm in health care, whether you're looking
12:13
at some of the policy changes,
12:15
technology, all of the things we've been talking
12:17
about today. So
12:19
what leadership habit or mindset has been most
12:21
critical,
12:22
in keeping your organization and your people moving
12:25
forward, especially amid all this uncertainty?
12:28
It's a great question. All this uncertainty.
12:30
And I'm gonna tell you a personal story
12:32
in a moment. But, when I became CEO,
12:34
I met with all these past CEOs. There's
12:37
five. I'm the fifth in Intermountain's history, and
12:39
they all live in the Salt Lake area,
12:41
all the previous four, which is usually really
12:43
good and sometimes a little challenging.
12:46
And they're people I admire deeply. And I
12:48
got together with,
12:49
three of them. It was, Scott Parker, the
12:52
inaugural, Bill Nelson, and Charles Sorensen. I had
12:54
lunch with them one day. And, I said
12:56
to them, I wanna know not all the
12:58
good stuff, because I actually know the good
13:01
stuff. I I know the history. I worked
13:03
in Intermountain in some role under each of
13:04
their leaderships. I admire each of them. And
13:07
I said, I actually wanna know the problems
13:09
and how you dealt with them. And it
13:10
was really interesting to go back and hear
13:13
their problems, the journeys that they went through,
13:15
the things that they really struggle with. And
13:17
now in hindsight, you go, of course. It
13:18
worked out great. Look. You made great decisions.
13:20
You did you did awesome. And they told
13:22
some of the stories of things they had
13:23
to change along the way.
13:25
That in mind, I wanna now go,
13:28
my wife was diagnosed little over ten years
13:30
ago, ten to twelve years ago with, MS.
13:33
And it was a shocking diagnosis for us.
13:35
It's a diagnosis
13:36
that apparently often for women comes younger than
13:38
she was,
13:40
in our journey,
13:41
but there was real risk with it. And
13:43
I remember
13:44
as she and I were trying to process
13:46
this news, what does that mean? What could
13:48
that mean? You have this period of you're
13:50
just suddenly so unsteady on your feet
13:53
trying to sort that out. And and she
13:55
was obviously quite impacted by it and and,
13:58
a bit distraught might be overstated, but she
14:00
was quite worried about it. And she was
14:02
talking to her mother, and this was within
14:05
the first couple of months of the diagnosis.
14:08
And she said to her mother, you know,
14:10
life is all of a sudden so uncertain.
14:12
And her mother stopped and said, Becky,
14:15
it always has been. That statement and that
14:18
perspective suddenly changed the journey for my wife
14:21
in a dramatic way, and it impacted my
14:24
journey with her as well.
14:26
But suddenly, she could go back to life
14:28
as she knew it when she realized
14:31
I was living at a time when I
14:32
thought everything was stable, that it wasn't changing,
14:35
when in reality, it's always been uncertain. You
14:37
know? In our journey of life, we never
14:38
none of us know how long we're gonna
14:39
be here. None of us know what challenges
14:41
lie ahead for sure.
14:42
But you just deal with it when it
14:44
comes. And I think that attitude and I
14:46
look back at these CEOs that I had
14:48
lunch with, and I look at my journey
14:49
and where we are today.
14:51
Health care has always been a challenging field.
14:54
And we can talk about the speed of
14:55
change, and we can talk about the challenge
14:57
of moving from one model to another.
14:59
It's not new.
15:01
The things we deal with are in ways
15:03
unique to us and our generation,
15:05
but this change is process in health care
15:07
is not new at all. And when we
15:09
get that perspective,
15:10
I think we can pause and take a
15:12
deep breath in the midst of it and
15:14
say,
15:15
it is challenging today.
15:17
It is fast paced.
15:19
But, actually, there's a history behind us. And
15:21
in our organization,
15:22
we have figured out how to do this
15:23
now for fifty years.
15:25
And so our job today is to figure
15:27
out the next step,
15:28
not to figure it all out. Leaders before
15:31
us figured a lot of it out. We
15:32
figure out what's in our era, and leaders
15:35
after us will figure out more of it
15:36
as well. It's a different perspective to have,
15:38
and I think it's an important one. It's
15:40
always been uncertain in health care. There's always
15:43
been change in health care. There's always been
15:45
challenge in being able to do what we
15:46
do. In our deep history, we merged with
15:49
SCL Health. We have the Sisters of Charity
15:50
of Leavenworth. We landed in Leaven or landed
15:53
in Leavenworth, Kansas in 1858
15:56
with a few dollars in total to their
15:58
names and went about to do their good
16:00
and their ministries and went out. Several of
16:02
our hospitals were started by these sisters as
16:04
they traveled from Kansas to Colorado and to
16:06
Montana to mining towns and and to take
16:09
care of people with little to no resource
16:11
and figured out how to actually build hospitals,
16:14
how to go get resource in the community.
16:16
I mean, I don't know any era that's
16:18
had more challenge than those sisters had in
16:20
doing what they did.
16:23
We can certainly tackle our challenges today and
16:25
their inspirations, I think, in this process, and
16:27
they should be. And we should look at
16:29
the histories as ways to inspire us now
16:31
to lead through what we're facing.
16:34
Absolutely. You you can really get that great
16:36
perspective in looking back and understanding
16:39
how monumental it was to even just move
16:41
from one place to another, back then. But
16:43
then to set up a hospital and care
16:45
for communities,
16:47
really puts that mission into perspective.
16:49
Before we wrap up here, I have one
16:51
more question. As technology becomes more embedded in
16:54
daily operations, how are you ensuring that the
16:56
digital investments you're making support rather than strain
16:59
your workforce?
17:00
Yeah. And I think this goes back to
17:02
the simplification piece.
17:04
There's also a piece here that's identity related,
17:06
which is fascinating to me. And and when
17:08
I look back at the big change we
17:09
talked about last September,
17:11
it's the one area
17:13
that I didn't think about before. We we
17:15
we thought about so many different angles. When
17:17
we were launching,
17:18
we, as leadership, were out across the organization
17:21
meeting with our teams,
17:23
every day just talking about how's it going?
17:25
Do you have the resource you need? You
17:26
know, we wanted to to support well. And
17:28
and one of my unit,
17:30
they came up to the desk, and they
17:32
said, good morning. I'm here to talk about
17:34
the epic change, see how things are going
17:35
for you. And one lady looked up and
17:37
said, you don't wanna talk to me.
17:39
And they said,
17:40
actually, I think I may need to talk
17:42
to you. Right? I mean, we were trying
17:43
to understand what's going on. It was obvious
17:44
that she was not in a good spot,
17:46
and
17:47
and she just broke into tears.
17:49
And they waited, and she, you know, came
17:52
to herself. Her managers are with her, put
17:54
their hand on her shoulder, and gave her
17:55
a moment. She recomposed a little bit, and
17:57
and then she said
17:59
she said, I have been the expert
18:01
on our EHR.
18:03
And now he and she pointed to a
18:05
young man that was there on the unit,
18:06
and now he knows more about the new
18:08
system than I do. It was her identity.
18:11
And I think in this process, we also
18:13
have to recognize when change comes,
18:15
there is a shift sometimes in people's identity,
18:18
how they identify themselves in the ecosystem.
18:20
And that was an area that we didn't
18:22
pay enough attention to, and we need to
18:24
stop and think about how do people view
18:26
their role. And do they see themselves in
18:28
a different way of doing their their function?
18:31
And can they define themselves in that new
18:33
role as we go forward? I think that's
18:35
really important in the work we do is
18:37
to help people get to that new space
18:38
as well. And when you look at the
18:40
investment of it, does it when you help
18:42
them through the transition, the change,
18:44
do you get to a point where it's
18:46
better?
18:48
Is this easier to manage? Is it easier
18:50
to do my job? Is it easier as
18:52
a patient to get through it? And so
18:53
when you look ahead and you're making these
18:55
investments,
18:56
what are you trying to impact, and what
18:58
is gonna be different?
19:00
Go back to that simplification for caregivers, for
19:02
patients, for members, for community. What is different
19:05
for any or all of that group when
19:06
you get it done? And if you can't
19:08
define it, and then if you ultimately don't
19:10
achieve it, then it's a failed investment.
19:13
So you need to be really clear on
19:15
that, and the change process adds burden.
19:18
But if we're changing the right ways, we
19:21
should be simplifying it and making it easier
19:23
so people have avenues for better success,
19:27
whether it's my job, my identity,
19:29
a patient getting what I need to get
19:31
out of the system. And if we have
19:32
something that and it's not how we measure
19:35
it on a chart. If if I go
19:36
to you and you're a caregiver and I
19:37
say, what's different for you now? And you
19:39
can tell me how it's better. Or if
19:41
you're a patient and I do the same
19:42
thing and you can tell me how it's
19:43
better, then that was successful.
19:45
I love it. Rob, thank you so much
19:47
for joining us on the podcast today. This
19:48
has been such an inspiring discussion. I really
19:51
can tell your passion for what you do
19:52
and the caregivers that work with you at
19:55
Interbound is just incredible. So I appreciate your
19:57
time and look forward to connecting with you
19:58
again soon. My pleasure. Thank you for the
20:00
opportunity to be here.