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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.

Here we are at the QIIME Fall Forum. I'm Reid Steffen, CIO and VP at St. Louis Health System in Boise, Idaho. And I'm joined today, as you can see, by Jeff Sturman, who is CDO and Senior Vice President at Memorial Healthcare Systems in South Florida. And recently elected QIIME board member.

Congratulations. Thank you. So, Jeff, thanks for taking a minute. Let's start with, based on that, we're at QIIME. Share for those listeners who maybe don't fully understand what QIIME is, maybe don't come to Fall Forum. Can't imagine anyone that's like that, but let's just pretend. What would you say to them?

Yeah. What is Chime? What's the benefit of this forum?

Yeah. I mean, it's getting bigger and bigger, which is good. , I think more well known, I mean, historically, right? Chime was the CIO forum. Yeah. It was the place where people like you and I would come and socialize and network with our counterparts across the country, which was great.

But we wanted to expand that capability and leverage the knowledge that we have with so many others. 'cause our CISOs, our CTOs, our c. You know, Chief Application Officers, or C whatever all can benefit from the networking, the education. This isn't just about us anymore, and I hate to say that because I like to believe it's always about just me.

But the reality is I think there's so much to offer from all perspectives, and the diversity that we're all enjoying in healthcare really translates to what CHIME can bring to the table now. It's a really diverse population, and as a result, we really need to be diversified in in our offerings.

Thank you. I

love that. So we've extended the stakes on the tents, and there's more room, and we're

better together. Yeah, for sure. Beautiful. For sure. And, look, it's not just about networking. Sure. It really is about education. Yeah. We sit in so many different forums and focus groups, and, no one can know it all.

So the only way you get benefit, I feel like, and I've said it to, to you guys many times over, is by talking to each other. Yeah. Talking to people who are in the trenches with us so that we can learn what others are doing and take that back to our systems.

Okay, so you're just on the early days of starting your board service.

How long is the board

service? So, it's a three year term. My service actually doesn't formally start until January 1st. Okay. So I could really screw it up between now and then. And there's a little bit of time. But I'm excited about it. So, January 1st, three year term. So

you say you're excited.

What are you most excited about? What do you

hope to accomplish in that time? You know, one of the benefits of all of this that we're a part of is again the networking. Yeah. But I think part of what we have to do is continuously evolve and think about where QIIME is going. And so, hopefully many of us, not just a small group, not even just the board members, we can help shape where that's going.

So if we can be a little bit of a mouthpiece for all of our peers, that's what I hope to do. Okay.

Very good. Alright. What's top of mind? What keeps you up at night? What have you QIIME that you're looking for that nuggage or that spark of inspiration to help you crack the code when you get

back to Florida?

You know what? There's two things. Too much that keeps me up at night. Too many things going through my head every single day like all of us. Dealing with labor shortages, dealing with whatever this artificial intelligence thing really is. Putting some definition around that I think is critical.

Putting some regulation around that. But really it is the labor shortages that I'm most focused on. So, nursing, even thinking about physicians and surgeons over time, we all see the decline happening. Florida's not immune to that even though I don't understand that. Why wouldn't everyone want to? We moved to Florida so we should figure that out and I think we can use a lot of the tools, the technology, the digital capabilities that we all have at our fingertips to help our colleagues in other parts of our business think about how we can deal with labor.

So, a question for you, like, immediately kind of after the pandemic, really acutely felt the nursing shortage. It's improved, it feels like, over the last year. Have you seen a similar improvement or is it the same level of

challenge? It's improved and I'm always I'm amazed by my colleagues across the country that have said, Hey, we don't have a nursing shortage anymore.

I would say that. Or we don't have to deal with travelers. We're still dealing with this to a large degree. We still have a big influx of travelers. I don't think that's going away any time as quickly as we'd like it to. But it is getting better. It is absolutely getting better. But again, we're using some really cool things.

Like what? So we're looking at some artificial intelligence. We're looking at documentation. Automate that. So, on the physician side, on the nursing side, if we can take some of that low, easy stuff, what I'll call easy stuff, out of their hands and automate that while they can be focused on patient care and actually talking to a human being, that's a huge win.

That's a huge win. So what I

hear from our nurses, chief complaints, the burden of clinical documentation. And so you said that you've seen some improvement there. What have you done in that area to

help remove that friction? We are using I think the vendor will remain nameless for The time being.

Okay. But we are using, how about in Pig lab? Just so know what Yeah, well, well, it's a three letter acronym. How's that? Okay. Very good. And and I think they're, you know, certainly bought by a larger organization that everyone uses. So hopefully that's clear to all your audience now. But I think that's a game changer for how we can really, again, think about bringing automation in into the environment.

Think about, you know, what is gonna be more predictive, proactive, what is gonna be really what. Listening, the burden on a nurse on the floor, and let them do clinical care and, and I was going to, I was going to shoot you with a shot, but I don't have a shot. So, what are we going to do with clinical care and be focused on, you know, the things that matter most, and that's actually taking care of people.

Yeah, so without naming the vendor, so this kind of ambient listening AI capability, have you found an effective way then to also ingest that into the EHR? So

again... We're just getting there. I mean, I'll name the vendor. Our EHR is EPIC. We're a huge fan of what EPIC can bring to the table. EPIC is certainly secret sauce that we all, many of us, leverage at the same time.

It can't be all things to all things and all people. And so, you know, we gotta think about where we bolt on solutions. And one of these solutions is actually what we're ingesting that data into. And then we'll use the data to make better informed decisions.

Yeah, I think more and more I'm...

Epic is a huge investment. It's an asset, not a tool. But it also can't be all things to all people. So how do you then strategically decide where you augment, maybe even overlap, and as long as there's an intentionality behind that, it can work

in your benefit. For sure. And look, I have this battle all the time.

I say it, we're an Epic first strategy. If Epic can do it, that's where my priority and preference will always be. However, it can't do everything. And there's some early adoption with early... with systems who have gone further ahead. And that's okay. As Epic matures and over the next couple years, we see that evolution, we'll push more back into Epic.

But we have to start getting benefit for experience and consumer engagement and satisfaction and quality and all the things that really matter at the end of the day, right now.

So it's still like day one, maybe day two for you for the conference. Any ahas you've had that you want to kind of share in closing?

You know, it's really early. Conferences haven't even really formally started until tonight. So I think, you know, we're really looking forward to a good audience this year. It's over a weekend, which relieves some burden on some things relative to work. It increases burden on some things relative to family life.

So I think we're all trying to figure that one out still. Alright, Jeff, appreciate

the time and have a great conference.

Thanks, buddy. Alright.

📍  We want to thank you for a wonderful year. As you know, we have celebrated our five year anniversary at This Week Health, and we are going to enter our sixth year of doing this. And we set out a goal to raise 50, 000 for childhood cancer this year, and you did not disappoint. We have raised close to 60, 000 this year for childhood cancer, and we really appreciate you.

We appreciate you. The community coming together. And we hope to do more of this next year. We hope that you'll join us. 📍 📍   📍 📍 Good afternoon, I am Sarah Richardson with Tiviti Health, SVP and CDIO. More importantly, I am joined by Bryce Thompson from Intermountain Health. So Bryce, tell us about your title and your role. I believe everyone knows about Intermountain, but give us a little plug for your organization

as well. Okay, so I am a senior director in our DTS organization.

And right now I've been focused on our mergers and acquisitions and really a lot of our outreach work. And Intermountain is a large IBM. Really, we've kind of expanded in the last few years, but we're now over seven states really deeply, and then two, two others that we're just in the corners of.

So we've been growing a lot lately.

And so when you hear that phrase, like, seven states, like, that's a big footprint. Yeah. And the blocking and tackling is still at the local level. And so we keep hearing about all these amazing new innovations and all the conversation this week, especially about AI.

When you think about the things you focus on and what you're What does that look like in your

universe? So, when I try to describe this, it really is, I think in our IT organization, we're doing a lot of really complicated things to make the lives of our clinicians easier and simplify. So our CEO, Rob Allen, and he, that's what he's preaching, is how do we simplify things for our caregivers.

And they include everybody, including those of us in IT, as those that are delivering care. So how do we make it simple? A lot of it is just hiding how the sausage is made. Because there are these, you know, the plumbing can be very complex, but when you surface it to the business, you need to explain it in value and speed to value.

And so that's what they're looking for is how do we use complexities that they don't have to know about to make their lives a little bit more simple. I

love that because the ability for the clinician have a simplified workflow. Flow process to spend more time with their patient. I heard it yesterday in the opening keynote.

Yeah. About compassion being a leading indicator of how healthy people are actually gonna be or how they'll, how well they'll heal. So what do you think about this last year? Because it's, believe it or not, you've got like six weeks left or ish in the year. What are you most proud of this year? What has Intermountain done in 23 that you're like, that is on my resume, as an example, or your LinkedIn profile in case,

yeah.

You just wanna brag. You know, I think a lot of it really has been from an acquisition perspective. We've made a lot of moves and I think a lot of it is painting a picture for those. Because a lot of them come from smaller divisions, mom and pop shops. And being able to help them understand that when they plug in to Intermountain Health, they have a whole lot of additional resources.

They don't, they no longer have to do it alone. Yes. I think when you can kind of see that they're used to doing everything. And they wear so many hats. Yeah. And you can describe to them, there's still a need for good people. There's a... We're not talking about getting rid of people. We're talking about retooling.

And I think that's where AI comes into the picture as well. If we can take out the menial things and let people act at the top of license, I think we're getting closer. There's some

really cool solutions I've already seen here this week in that space where, like, the dog's walking around the microphone capturing everything and all of that gets translated, really in the ambient listening space.

Yeah. And then even just serving up some of those Nespect actions. So, as you think about 24, like, what's on your plate? And what are you most excited about for next year?

Really, I think it's continuing that path of finding those things that simplify. And we have about 60, 000 caregivers of Intermountain Health right now.

And if you find these little things, they add up to really big things. And so we really try to focus on capturing ideas from the front line of things and ways that we can use technology in ways that actually help simplify. A lot of those things can't translate to building and buying a whole bunch of new platforms just because of some of the challenges.

Challenges we're going through in the industry with inflation and, you know, it has to be how do we leverage existing platforms in an innovative way? So I think the innovation part of what we can do in 2024 is how do we leverage what we have in a better way to simplify and, and not forget the patient, keep the patient at the center of all of the simplification.

The reason we're simplifying is so that the provider has that time with the

patient. And what I love talking about, and you're bootcamp Brad. congrats. That's how we met, was in boot camp a few years ago. Best staff ever. Best student ever. We are all patients too. And so how we receive our care and how we influence the industry that we work in, but also, even when we're healthy, we are still patients.

And then when we're sick, we realize how important it is to be able to navigate that journey more than ever. So we're two days into CHIME. What have you seen so far that is thrilling you the most? And just the general like buzz about why forum's always the best time of the year. You

know, the first thing is just coming back and the friendships and the comradery that we have here at Chime.

I've connected with people. I went to the bootcamp in 2019 and I have friendships that I keep in touch throughout the year and text like each other, text back and forth. And I think the thing that I'm taking different this year is, you know, what you said is we're all patients. I've been thinking about things a little different.

having been an in and out of our health system a little bit more as a patient of, our providers, our caregivers, there's a lot to do there. Yeah. But as a patient, what they want may or may not align. What does AI mean to the patient? You know, we've seen patients go and search Google and use Dr.

Google a lot. Well, AI is going to be the same kind of thing, is let, it can do a lot for us in healthcare, but don't forget what the patient may be able to do with it as well. So it's the converge. That makes it super exciting and makes things seem like they're going very fast. Like you mentioned, this year is already over.

We're already thinking about 2024. And as a matter of fact, we're doing budgets and things for 2025.

I literally had my 2025 spreadsheet up the other day and my PowerPoint. And Keith Bradenburg sits next to me and goes, you're working on 2025? I'm like, as far as I'm concerned, 2024 is a done deal. Like, I gotta be thinking about how we're bringing in these new opportunities into 2025.

And what's super interesting is this round of bootcamp, I taught consumerism and healthcare. And I revisited Eric Topol's original... The patient will see you now. Because the idea of citizen medicine is more prevalent than ever. And that's us just having enough information to manage our care with our physician.

We are lucky enough to be informed and able to do that. And we're going to see more and more of that again. The proliferation of the data and the accessibility to be able to, I don't want to say self diagnose, but be informed on your journey. It's going to take a totally different spin for so many of us.

So as you simplify, the environment is almost getting harder. Bringing those two things together. We're lucky to have people like you that are tackling it

every single day. Well, thank you. I think that's a big, we say that we want the patients to engage in their healthcare, and I think that's different than just asking them to comply.

Correct. And so, you know, if we really say that we want the patients engaged and involved in their healthcare, that, that's different than just, you know, going and following X, Y, Z. I think adherence is very important at the same time, so can you see where that, that, that happens? Absolutely. The future is very bright.

I've learned it's not, there's no destination, there's no done. And so, are we building the processes and the journey that this will outlive us? That's the

exciting part. That's the plan. When you said the future is so bright, I'm like, I feel like we should have just put on shades and the conversation.

Bryce, always amazing to speak with you. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Look forward to next time.

Be well. Okay, see you soon.

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.