Latest / Becker’s Healthcare Digital Health + Health IT / Scott T. MacLean, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at MedStar Health

Transcript

Scott T. MacLean, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at MedStar Health · Becker’s Healthcare Digital Health + Health IT

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  - Prepare to dive into the forefront
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  of healthcare innovation at our 14th annual meeting coming
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  up on April 8th
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  through 11th at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago, with thousands
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  of industry leaders converging over four dynamic days
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  of discussions on crucial topics from health IT
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  to executive leadership.
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  It's where the future of healthcare takes shape.
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  We can't wait to connect with you in person
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  and engage in these important conversations.
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  - Welcome to the Becker's Healthcare Podcast, made
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  for the people who power US healthcare.
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  I'm Molly Gamble at Becker's,
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  and today I'm sitting down with Scott McLean,
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  senior Vice President and CIO of MedStar Health.
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  Scott, welcome to the podcast.
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  Thanks so much for being our guest. How are you today?
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  And where does the podcast find you?
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  - Thanks, Molly. I'm really pleased to be with you all
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  and I'm at our systems headquarters in Columbia, Maryland.
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  - Well, Scott, if you can start off by, from listeners
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  who are less familiar with MedStar Health,
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  but wanna be more familiar,
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  can you share a few key facts about the organization
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  and just help us better reacquaint ourselves?
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  - Certainly. We're an integrated delivery system in the
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  Baltimore, Washington DC region.
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  We have 10 hospitals and, uh, about 300 ambulatory sites.
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  Last year, our revenues were, uh, about $7.3 billion.
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  And, um, we have, uh, a large number of ambulatory, uh,
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  outpatient visits, over 6 million.
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  We, um, are affiliated
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  with Georgetown University Medical School.
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  We have an insurer in both Maryland and uh, DC
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  and we have about 8,000 nurses and 4,000 physicians.
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  So it's a, a large operation,
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  and we take care of, uh, many people here in this,
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  uh, in this region of the country.
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  - Perfect. And Scott, you
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  and I are speaking, we're, we're rounding out Q1 here.
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  It's already been a, a really busy and dynamic year.
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  What have you been spending most of your time
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  and energy on as of late in your work?
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  - Terrific question. And for us that we're running on our Q3
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  of our fiscal year, we finished up our fiscal year in June.
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  So it's, uh, we're, we're trying to strive to the,
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  to the finish line with all the goals we have for this year.
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  And I, I think what to talk about here, Molly, is
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  how we're organized.
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  And as, as CIO, our team has informatics,
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  we have applications, uh, information security,
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  infrastructure, uh, telecommunications,
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  and we, we partner with our, our chief, uh,
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  innovation officer, our chief digital transformation
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  officer, our VP of analytics and,
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  and other senior leaders
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  that are my peers in, in the organization.
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  And I think a lot of what we've been spending time on now,
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  in addition to, to running the, the daily systems, right,
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  the EHR revenue cycle systems is, um, we're partnering
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  with our innovation officer
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  around virtual nursing intervention interventions.
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  Um, we are piloting ambient speech recognition.
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  I'm sure you're hearing this from other, uh, podcasters
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  looking to improve our clinical workflows
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  and be able to deal with some of the issues we have around,
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  um, the, the shortages of, of clinicians and,
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  and making their workflows easier to re reduce their,
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  their burden, um,
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  and, um, helping them to be able to focus on taking care of,
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  of patients with our Chief Digital Transformation officer.
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  We're supporting our vision
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  around an integrated digital health platform,
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  which we would say is more than a portal.
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  This is where you as a, a consumer, even
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  before your, a patient can come to us with issues
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  and have various channels
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  that you might be able to discover care.
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  And, uh, like many others, we have, uh, intake automation
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  and self-scheduling and,
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  and ways that, that people can get care, um,
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  through telehealth, through urgent care,
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  primary care specialty and, and whatnot.
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  So, and then, um, we, we have a lot of data.
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  I think we know this in, in, in healthcare,
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  and we're trying to organize it
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  well through data governance.
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  And we're looking at our next generation analytics platform.
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  So we're spending a lot of time with the analytics officer
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  and, and his team.
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  Um, our teams do a lot of the, uh, loading
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  of data from these transactional systems into the,
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  into the analytics platform.
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  So it's quite, quite an aggressive agenda.
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  And, uh, you know, I'm,
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  I'm sure you have many other people we talked to that,
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  that are dealing with these kinds of, of things,
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  but we're enthusiastic about what we're doing
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  and the, the platforms that we're running in order
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  to serve our clinicians
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  and the people administering the, the enterprise and,
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  and ultimately in service of location.
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  - Yeah, I have, I have a question for you there.
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  When you mentioned ambient speech recognition, you know,
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  as a reporter, I remember sometimes
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  the way the language we use around technology,
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  it sometimes doesn't evolve as the tech evolves.
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  We still use the same terms to refer
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  to really different capabilities over time.
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  When we talk about ambient speech recognition being put
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  to use for healthcare workers
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  and clinicians today, what, what should we keep in mind?
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  How has it grown? How has it advanced
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  or grown more sophisticated from your perspective over time?
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  And what, what is it capable of now that excites you?
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  - Well, we, we've gone from dictation
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  and transcription right to, to backend speech recognition,
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  to real time speech recognition, to
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  what I use the term ambient for is the, the listening
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  between a clinician and a patient
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  and the, the technology being able to capture
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  that conversation,
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  extract the important clinical pieces from it,
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  and create a, a note in the electronic health record,
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  which then would obviously be reviewed by the clinician and,
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  and signed off upon.
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  And I, I've seen this demonstrated,
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  we have several pilots going on of, of various technologies
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  as we've been following this the last couple of of years.
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  And, and our clinicians are finding it helpful
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  and being able to reduce their, their documentation burden.
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  And, uh, and I think that we've done a lot of this
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  with physicians, but now we're also looking
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  to explore it in, uh, in nursing interactions as well
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  to see if there are use cases that are applicable.
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  So does that, um, resonate with, with what
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  - You're hearing it?
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  It does. It does.
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  And I, I imagine from what we've heard about clinician
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  and physician burnout, this is something
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  that's really warmly welcomed.
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  Have you encountered any concerns
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  or maybe nervousness with the staff that you've had to work
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  through with 'em about this tool being put to use?
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  - Not specifically about this tool.
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  I, I, I think we have a lot of technology and it's important
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  and people like to, uh, to use technology to solve problems.
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  And I think just like we always talk about, we, we have
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  to organize it in a way that people can understand it,
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  they have a good process,
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  and then the tech is applied in a way that they can,
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  they can use it well and optimally.
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  So I, I haven't heard specific concerns about this as much
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  as there, there are a lot
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  of different workflows and it will work.
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  Um, it'll work well for some,
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  it may not apply as well to others.
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  And that's why we're, we're not drawing in on any one single
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  uh, vendor yet as we,
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  we wanna check these different use cases in different
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  specialties and, and see what works for them
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  and, uh, and how it helps them. Mm-Hmm,
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  - and then Scott to, to check in on something.
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  I know last year when you spoke with Bucker, you had noticed
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  a significant investment on behalf of the system toward
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  engineering talent and engineering talent.
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  It's just one aspect of the healthcare talent pool
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  that can be pretty easy to overlook at times, just given
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  how much attention is paid on the clinician shortages
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  facing our, our country.
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  What's important to keep in mind about recruiting,
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  retaining, growing, and,
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  and being a hub for engineering talent in,
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  in healthcare today?
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  I, I wanted to get your take on this specialty.
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  - Sure. Thanks, Molly. I mean, I think it's
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  important to, to all of us.
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  Um, attracting
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  and retaining, uh, talent is, is important for any leader.
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  And we're, we're very fortunate,
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  I think in at MedStar Health, uh, and,
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  and many healthcare providers
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  that people are very interested
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  and engaged in the mission of caring for people
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  and working on EHR configurations
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  and revenue cycle configurations.
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  Um, architectures are, are things
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  that people can participate in the care process
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  because, uh, our clinicians are
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  so dependent on it on these days.
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  And so we're, we're very fortunate to have people
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  who are extremely dedicated to this mission.
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  And, you know, it's a, it's a bit of a 24 7 job, right?
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  We, we need to be available
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  whenever there's an issue with any
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  of our technologies available to be responsive to the,
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  the care processes.
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  When I was talking to the podcast last year,
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  I think I was probably talking about our, um,
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  our infrastructure is outsourced.
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  And so we invested a lot in the last couple of years about,
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  um, improving that, that outsourcing relationship.
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  And that came with, uh, specific engineers
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  and architects who are, are very knowledgeable
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  with the technology and, and in healthcare.
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  And I think we, we had an outsource strategy
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  for infrastructure for, um, since 2008 now.
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  And, uh, we really think in this region, particularly
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  where there's a lot of government and defense
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  and that kind of industry, that if we go
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  to a global service provider on IT infrastructure,
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  we can have consistent resources and,
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  and a consistent cost, uh, that's predictable.
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  And so that's, um, that's why we do it,
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  and that's worked out for us.
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  And, and I think the investment we made last year in, uh,
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  changing some of the, the talent that we have
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  puts us in a place where we're able
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  to architect our networks
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  and our, our, um, data center, server room storage, uh,
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  and, uh, right up to the end, end user computing devices
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  and, and be able to take advantage of new technologies, um,
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  software defined networking, new security technologies and,
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  and ways of, um, organizing data that make,
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  make it most useful for the anticipation of, um, applying
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  artificial intelligence and other algorithms to it, to,
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  again, make it, uh, most easily
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  and helpful, helpful to our clinicians who are trying
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  to make decisions at the point of care.
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  - Mm-Hmm, . Well, Scott, I wanna thank you
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  for the updates on what you're doing
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  and leading at MedStar Health as CIO.
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  Is there anything I didn't ask you
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  or a thought that you wanna leave our listeners
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  with as we wind down?
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  - Sure. It's a great question, Molly.
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  I, I think a lot about the, uh, conflicts in the world,
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  and I know people worry about this a
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  lot for, for good reasons.
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  And so I've been thinking a lot about reconciliation
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  and what it means for people to really listen
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  and understand each other
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  and respect different points of view.
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  And I I also know, we all know that there, there are
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  so many social determinants of health for people's wellness
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  that are outside the healthcare system,
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  or at least outside the acute ambulatory system.
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  And so I, I think a root of a lot of challenge,
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  uh, that we have is people not having the right food,
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  the right housing, the right education, um, opportunities
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  for, for, um, economic development.
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  And that plays into, as we see, uh, people's, uh,
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  ability to be well.
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  And, um, so, uh, I'm personally involved in our community
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  and, and trying to help with some of those, those issues.
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  Their, they're, they're big tasks and, uh,
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  but I, I see it as part of my role as a,
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  as a health system leader regionally here,
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  to be thinking about that
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  and helping people understand what, uh, our, our, our
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  ultimately our patients out there in the community are up
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  against, um, so they can get well
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  and, and stay outta the hospital.
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  - Mm-Hmm, , I really appreciate that, Scott.
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  And I think there's, it's, it's tough to think about
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  an aspect of societal
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  or community living that isn't somehow correlated to health.
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  So to hear that you are taking time in your,
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  in your free time to even touch those factors further
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  upstream, I mean, what a, what a great leader, um, you,
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  you must be to not only be working toward health
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  and outcomes and patient care,
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  but then even, uh, on your own time trying to, uh,
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  support those measures further away
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  from the health system too.
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  - Well, thanks. Yeah. I mean, it's just,
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  I'm just one, one person.
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  What, what I, what I can do is talk about the issues and,
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  and do leadership
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  and in the community like I do at admit our health
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  and, um, you know, be able to bring the, the explanation
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  of what's, what's actually happening and, uh, and,
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  and bring resources toward it.
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  - Scott McLean, senior Vice President
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  and CIO of MedStar Health, I wanna thank you again
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  for being my guest on the podcast today, for checking in
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  with us, getting us up to speed on your
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  work and your initiatives.
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  Hope we can do this again soon.
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  - Thanks, Molly. It was great being with you.