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Welcome to this week Health Community. My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this Week Health, A set of channels dedicated to keeping health IT staff current and engaged. Today we have an interview in action from the 2023 fall conferences of CHIME in San Antonio and HLTH in Las Vegas, and we want to thank our show sponsors who are. In our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders and they are Olive, Rubrik, Trellix, Medigate, and F5. Check them out at this weekhealth.com and 📍 here we go.

Alright, here we are from the Chime Fall Forum, another interview in action. And we are here with Beth Cooper Tivity Health. Enterprise data services, what does that mean?

Enterprise data services. So we are a service to the entire company or enterprise servicing data in many different ways. So I have responsibilities for business intelligence and reporting, data strategy, data modernization, as well as our data management team. So we serve building data pipelines, creating visibly pleasing and informative dashboards that guide insights and strategic business decision. As well as we are working towards a cloud migration.

Wow. it's interesting you talked about laying out the data in a pleasing way. I've talked to people about storytelling with data, telling the story with data. how do you tell stories with the data in a way that either captivates people or gets their attention or gets them, in your case, in Tivity's case, gets them to action or do something.

Yeah. And I would say, you know, even before that, you've gotta, it's almost like field the dreams. You've gotta build it to get them to come. And what we find is if we aren't creating an end user experience with them in mind, they're not, they're not accessing the dashboards that they could, and they're not getting the insights that they need. So it's about understanding it from an end user perspective and understanding the business.

And I think it's a misnomer that, well, it knows a lot about the business because we see it from end to end with all the systems, all the data that we process. Sometimes we know business processes better than the business themselves from, from end to end, right? And so we have this ability to see things differently and much more enterprise level.

at times And so how can we, as we look at data, create insights and as we dig further into it, leveraging AI and ML and things like that, and the technologies begin to tell that story in a way that connects the dots for not just the business, but people external to the company as well.

does that skill change telling the story internally versus telling it externally, telling it to your consumers? I mean, it was interesting during the. One of the things we saw from health systems is they were trying to tell the story of you know, the need to get vaccinated mm-hmm. Is what they were trying to tell. Right. And so some of the most creative graphics I saw were, you know, you could just look at it and say, alright, in our community, this many people are in the ed, this many people are on ventilators.

Right. But it was a, it was a graphic that you could just drop in. Yeah. A, a Twitter post. Yeah, but you could say, oh, this is what's going on in our community.

You get it. Yeah. And I think to do it externally, you have to understand that they're not in your business day in and day out. So you have to create that data story in that one little graphic in a way that they can quickly look at it and understand what the story is or what the outcomes are that you're trying to deliver to the group or to the audience. And it's different than what you would do internally. Cause internally they understand your business, they understand a lot of the data externally. They don't always underst.

But what we're describing here is left brain, right brain. Yeah. It feels like I do. I mean, do we have, do we have artists in the data team now? Do we have storytellers in the data team now as well?

We do. Yep. Yep. So we partner very closely with our business analytics team and our data consumer and insights vp who does a lot of that you know, take research, take surveys from our members and things like that, and create that. And they do have that visualization of how it needs to be explained and told both internally and externally so that the story is understood and we are finding, you know, members are coming back in hoards to gyms or they are actually now migrating cuz of the weather or different things.

Back to virtual engagement opportunities versus in person activity and things like that, and how does that guide your business strategy? And how do we, you know, partner with our, our clients, our health plans and things like that to help drive member engagement towards one or the other.

What about external data sources? I'm, you've talked about virtual and we're seeing all sorts of virtual exercise things come up where there's a screen in front of you and you're on a bike now, Peloton being the original, but now we're seeing all sorts of other things pop up where you're. And actually VR headset. I just saw VR headsets where people are doing full blown workouts.

Mm-hmm. , I don't know what I'm doing here. Yeah. But you get the idea of what I'm doing. Yes. And you know, 30 minute workouts, whatever. But that collects data. Yep. That data comes back. And are you guys collecting external data?

We do collect external data. We are working towards wearable data and things like that at this point. But like claims data and things like that, that helps round out our organic data supply helps us. Identify outcomes and trends and helps us with some of the predictive analytics of where we need to head or what's being, what's happening with our members to help drive, you know, whether it's social determinants of health, chronic conditions and things like that.

So we absolutely leverage, we call it research data, data that we don't organically have, but we can go outside and get that supply of data. And so as we continue to evolve and progress in that space, we will absolutely have that wearable. We do track activity data with our own virtual engagement, so Silver Sneakers live and things like that.

We bring in all that activity data we find. How big are the classes? How frequently are people joining? Are they one and done or they're you knowing throughout the week? How do we start to promote those opportunities to encourage additional engagement to help deliver wellness and things like that?

Well, and that's gonna be the transition I believe that we're seeing in healthcare is this whole push towards wellness. Yeah. Let me go back to where I thought I was gonna start, which is what's top of mind for you? I mean, I'm just asking you questions. I'm interested, but what, what's top of mind for you?

Of course? Well, I mean, there's a ton going on, right? We're activity doing a lot of different things to evolve, grow, and you know, bend and flex into different areas. And one things that we are dealing with, much with, like the rest of the marketplace is staffing, shortages, budget, things like that. And how do we start to do more with less?

Or how do we bring in skill sets that have the ability to flex in different directions and have that culture and mentality of, you know, this is my. But when there's a need over here, I'm willing to bend and flex into that space. And part of that is a culture shift and making sure that the culture allows for that and that it's okay, you know, to say I'm willing to go do development work or key way work depending on the day. And so we can hopefully get more done without having roadblocks and impediments that we on a day to day basis run into at this point. You need people that are, have a flexible skill set that can do a lot of different things. Yeah.

How do you identify that in the interview process?

To me it's you know, the ability to be adaptable and an aptitude. And so we'll ask questions and drive interviews towards that of tell us about a time where, you know, you've had a role and you've had to step in and support in a different space or area and kind of go down that path. I think the more challenging side of it is, is you can bring that talent in with that mentality, but I also want to create that space for existing colleagues and employees to start to morph into that space.

The foundation, it's interesting, I'm thinking about this, the foundation is the job description. Mm-hmm. , absolutely. And if it's written incorrectly, you can sort of cement in. It's like, It's my job. And you can say, well culturally we, we expect our anticipated. It's like, no, this is my job. Have you taken the time or are you considering taking the time to go back and look at those job descriptions?

Absolutely. Yeah. That's absolutely part of it. And actually we just, Went through this with one of our senior directors and we, you know, went through that job description, made sure that it was written in a way that it wasn't written in a cement of what that person's role is. Yes, there's the, the core foundation of what that role is, a hundred percent the experience, everything that's creates that person be qualified for the role.

But in open mind, how are you gonna build relationships? How are you going to bend and flex into different areas? And so far it's worked out really well. And so now, Leveraging our leaders to start to create the culture with the existing teams of how do we start to create that space where it's safe to go, bend and flex and maybe there's a mistake, maybe we, you know, excel in that space and stuff like that. 📍

📍 All right. We'll get back to our show in just a minute. We have a webinar coming up on December 7th, and I'm looking forward to that webinar. It is on how to modernize the data platform within healthcare, the modern data platform within healthcare. And I'm really looking forward to the conversation. We just recorded five pre episodes for that. And so they're gonna air on Tuesday and Thursdays leading up to the episode. And we have great conversation about the different aspects, different use cases around the modern data platform and how agility becomes so key and data quality and all those things. So great conversation. Looking forward to that. Wednesday, December 7th at one o'clock. Love to have you join us. We're gonna have health system leaders from Memorial Care and others. CDW is going to have some of their experts on this show as well. So check that out. You can go to our website thisweekhealth.com, top right hand corner. You'll see the upcoming webinars. Love to have you be a part of it. If you have a question coming into it, one of the things we do is we collect the questions in the signup form because we want to make sure that we incorporate that into the discussion. So hope to see you there. Now, back to the show.

📍 📍 I notice your thing does not have a new member on it. Is this your first time or have you been

This is my second fall forum. Yeah,

it is your second fall forum. Yep. Okay. So what are you gonna walk away from this conference with?

First it's the friends and the networking. It's so great to be here in person with people and to hear about others' experiences and perspectives and what they're doing within their healthcare systems.

My favorite thing, I mean, I like to sit in the focus groups cause I always find it interesting to hear what different partners and vendors are doing, where they're leaning in. Yeah. But then the folk, the the track sessions always, like I just came from one with Tufts where they're talking about what they did with cloud data, their emr, and it is things that I want to take back to my organization and I know others do too, just to start to continue to that evolution of, of what's the art of possible.

Yeah. It's fantastic. my understanding is that the, the focus groups have been very dynamic. Like.

Yeah, they've been different. Yeah.

so like, which focus group are, do you choose the focus groups ahead of time?

I don't, I like to play the, the lottery and just get slotted. So this time I got slotted into a group of 'em and yeah, so I got a, a myriad of focus groups this time and I, I did attend all four and they're all four dynamically different.

Fantastic. Beth, I wanna thank you for your time.

Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it.

Another great interview. I wanna thank everybody who spent time with us at the conferences. I love hearing from people on the front lines and it is Phenomen. That they have taken the time to share their wisdom and experience with the community, which is greatly appreciated. We also want to thank our channel sponsors one more time, who invest in our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders. They are Olive, Rubrik, 📍 trx, Mitigate, and F5. Thanks for listening. That's all for now.