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Welcome to This Week Health Conference. 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 and events dedicated to leveraging the power of community to propel healthcare forward. Today we have an interview in action from the Fall Conferences on the West Coast.

Here we go.

 good afternoon. I'm Sarah Richardson from Chivity Health, SVP, Chief Digital Information Officer, and I am so fortunate today to be joined by Juan Votto from RJW Barnabas Health. So welcome to the show. Yeah, thank you.

It's great to

see you. Definitely. Great to see you as

well. Yeah, we met in boot camp last summer. In 22, Utah. Which feels like a long time ago. Yes. And yet it's not. So I am so excited. I'm always excited to see you. Yes. But especially this morning. There you are, on stage, accepting Most Wired Level 10 for your organization.

Congratulations. Thank you, Thank you. Tell us about that

journey, yeah. I mean, so, the journey was, it's an amazing journey. We've, this was in the making for over, Five years and you know, I came in the middle of wave four where my hospital and a few other four hospitals were getting ready to really get this going and we just finished our fifth wave, a total of six waves.

We're on our fifth wave and included four hospitals Cooperman, one of our flagship, a hospital going live and it was just an amazing experience. We've learned so much in the wave. As we went through and as we evolved so much lessons learned, but we were able to kind of really minimize the issues, minimize just all the collaboration with all nursing and leadership.

Just really it's, it was an amazing experience. Impact Global was our help to help us get through all the change management. Everything, and an amazing experience as well. So, we have one more wave coming up next year, which will be the final hospital, a total of 13. So we're now all on Epic, except for one.

And so we're waiting for that to kick off soon and get ready for that for next year. Incredible.

So when you think about how you market that, how you share that, how that translates to patient care and what the patient experience is about, what does that mean to be a patient in your health system?

It's definitely, it's like going to Disneyland.

So it definitely, it definitely strikes the patient in terms of security, feeling that they're going to be taken care of, number one. To me, patient care is number one. Their experience to be stellar. Our staff, nursing, providers, the technology, it's all there for them to be aware and understand, what To do when they arrive, who's going to take care of them.

That communication and collaboration is by far the best experience in all our hospitals. And, we strive for the best patient care and we look always for opportunities to improve it.

Yeah. I love that because you think about consumerism today in healthcare and patients are willing to make a switch just based on the data, the information that they have.

Exactly. And yeah, and we saw yesterday's keynote, that compassion, that ability to be at the bedside with the patient, but all the things you're doing, how are your physicians receiving what it means to be most wired and more importantly, those innovations that you have delivered really does give them time back for the art and the science of medicine without all the documentation.

Like if you're a physician in your health system. What does that feel like for them?

It's really the timing. It's all about how we can treat the patient as quickly as possible, but also provide to keep the quality there for them. So, really that's number one, and making sure that they're properly documenting in the right place.

As well as, how do we make the experience much easier for them, the patient to be satisfied and understand what they're going through with the provider there. We're working on a new strategy with the digital patient. And what that's going to bring in terms of the experience. So, again, we want to increase our patient satisfaction scores.

And how do we do that? do the digital part of it. Right? And so, bringing that forward, having everything in a central location with patient bedside, epic bedside. Using that as well as digital whiteboards to kind of get them informed. What's their day going to be like? Who they're meeting with in terms of providers, nurses, old people.

Different shifts so that they stay informed, medication tracking that and then having just a vast experience with all entertainment just really getting them to feel like they're home.

Which is a super important aspect, because it's basically the last place you want to be. And yet, can you make it in a space where it feels safe and it makes a difference.

From an innovation perspective, continuing on that theme. Sure. How is being most wired, like top level, preparing you for all the things we're hearing about AI? Which comes, my current count is nine different flavors from the conversations I've had this week so far. What does that mean for you from the ability to have a platform for AI?

So talking about AI. Yes. I know that AI is just like the new kid on the block. on the block, right? We definitely need, before we actually even partake in anything AI, we have to have governance. And governance is so important because it regulates everything that we're consuming with artificial intelligence, chatGBT.

I know a lot of hospitals already in the place where they're adopting on a private scale, right? So they can provide the guardrails to govern and make sure that Our providers, nurses can use it effectively, right, and nothing outside of our norm. So controlling that is very important before we actually continue that route to increase the adoption.

But it's going to take time. It's not going to be a quick thing. We definitely want to make sure. that no providers or anyone is doing something out of the norm, but we want to make sure that the safety is there and the governance is there.

I love hearing from a super advanced tele system that even you will, to a degree, crawl into what that means for your organization, not be expected to be the cutting edge in that space.

Correct. Yeah, it's so new. And so 2024 is upon us, almost. What does next year look like

for you? Well, from a digital standpoint, So, obviously, number one, actually, we want to complete the full cycle of our waves with Epic, right? We want to get everyone on Epic, all the hospitals, so the final one will be in September.

In parallel, you know, we definitely want to look into, like I said before, the digital patient room strategy because there's a lot of expansion going on, we're converting double beds to single beds, new towers are going up, so there's a lot of construction happening. Also, infrastructure is improving. We're definitely looking at refreshing all the network gear throughout all the hospitals.

So we're revamping that. And really Chatbot is also in the realm, you know, and how we can best utilize Chatbot to make our employees a little bit more in the know of what they want to look for and within our organization, possibly ERP integration. So, there's a lot of good ideas but again, I know that I think we want to have the stability with having EPIC now, at least for a year, to kind of get the feel of the transition, making sure that all the staff is aware and trained, and we get to a point where we feel comfortable, and then we can pivot to now more opportunities.

Excellent.

All right. Last question. I hope it's the easiest one of the day. Two days into Fall Forum, we're back to the pre pandemic like excitement, levels of energy, etc. Everyone here. What have you loved most so far from Fall Forum this

year? The collaboration, the networking, the focus groups, learning more about AI, the adoption to that.

And, it's really good to see the different ideas, the different thinking, the flavors of What AI is coming to do for us as a utility is, better way to provide better patient care so bringing that awareness is key. And then really focusing on the challenges, the opportunities, and putting that together so that we can create a perfect strategy going

forward.

A perfect strategy. I want to hear about that next time. Definitely. Thank you for taking time today. Always great to see you. Yes. We'll catch up with you. T24 and your perfect strategy. Thank you. Be well.

Another great interview. I want to thank everybody who spent time with us at the conference. I love hearing from people on the front lines. It is phenomenal that you shared your wisdom and experience with the community and we greatly appreciate it. We also want to thank our channel sponsors who are investing in our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders.

They are CDW, Rubrik, Sectra, and Trellix. Thanks for listening. That's all for now.