This transcription is provided by artificial intelligence. We believe in technology but understand that even the smartest robots can sometimes get speech recognition wrong.

  episode is brought to you by Quantum Health. Quantum Health celebrates its 25th year as industry leading consumer healthcare navigation and care coordination company for over 500 employer clients that delivers an unparalleled consumer experience to its over 3. 1 million members, as well as validated claim savings and high satisfaction rates for its self insured employer clients.

Quantum Health's proprietary real time intercept capability and Gen AI helps identify opportunities for early intervention in a member's healthcare journey, resulting in better engagement, outcomes, and cost efficiencies. Visit thisweekhealth. com slash quantumhealth for more information.

  Today on Keynote

(Intro) I believe, that digital transformation is imperative moving forward because It's an expectation of our patients and we should go not just to where they expect us to be, but we should go beyond that because this is their lives.

My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of This Week Health, where we are dedicated to transforming healthcare one connection at a time. Our keynote show is designed to share conference level value with you every week.

Now, let's jump right into the episode.

  (Main) Hi everyone welcome to this week health keynote, where we explore the intersection of technology and healthcare, focusing on the challenges and the innovations facing healthcare leaders and healthcare IT staff today. We have the pleasure of speaking with Joy Grosser, the CIO at SSM Health.

Hi Joy, thanks for being here. Welcome to the show.

Hi Drex, it's so nice to be here. Thanks for having

me. There's

folks that probably know this, but a lot of people don't. Joy used to be the CIO at the University of Washington at UW Medicine here in Seattle. I'm in Seattle. Joy has a great dog and I have a great dog and we would meet up at a spot where adults can have beverages and our dogs would hang out and we would hang out and talk about all the issues and challenges.

So it's really great to see you. I saw you at a 229 event recently. So it's good to see you there. know your dog's doing great. Jack's doing well too.

Yeah, my dog's almost 14 years old. And still liking to go to have an adult beverage. It all worked, right? Yeah.

Yeah. That's awesome.

Okay. So I'll start with just the, tell me a little bit about your journey in healthcare IT. How were you inspired to be in the field? What's your career path look like up to this point? That kind of, tell me a little bit about yourself.

Absolutely. I used to say I have an, a different journey into healthcare IT than most people.

And then I started meeting most people and I don't think any two journeys are the same. So I'm not going to necessarily say my journey is different than most. It's just mine. I went to college, didn't quite know exactly what I wanted to be until about my third year of college and had a class.

And funny, it was a class that was the only one who fit into a time frame that I could take because I was in sports and I had to have all of my classes in the morning. It was the economics of health and medical care. And from that particular class was like, hey, I think the business of health care.

really intrigues me and I want to go into that. So I went and got my graduate degree in I have a master's in health administration and I went on the pathway through operations in a large hospital up to being the VP of operations of that hospital. And while I had technology reporting to me and I used technology to make decisions, I was, I would certainly not have considered myself as a leading technologist in the field.

But one day the CEO walked into my office and said, Hey, we're gonna go through a merger and we're gonna bring all of these facilities together. And I think I'd like you to think about being the CIO of that new company. And I laughed and said, you just think because I use a computer and I have, Data behind my decisions that I can run IT.

I'm not sure. And he said you run IT right now, Joy. A good point. But he said, no he looked at me and I think this is one of those times when somebody sees something in you that you don't always see in yourself. But he said, as we look at where we're going as a system and how do we come together to as a single entity, when yesterday we were 12 separate entities, but now we're gonna go as a single entity, we have to think about how do we come together?

And that's a strategic place to be, but you operationally also have to get there. And he said, you've got that, you like the step in the strategic, but you want to see it go through it. I can't think of a better place for you to be. So I got him to promise that if it didn't work out, I'd have a job someplace in the healthcare system.

But I was the first CIO of that organization, that system that moved forward, and I never looked back. It was absolutely the right place for me to be. And what I had thought is if I don't have a coding background, or if I wasn't an entrepreneur in a software company, could I really lead through this?

But I think what I really recognized and what the organization recognized is, This is looking at what does healthcare need to do to be ready for the patients, to be ready for the caregivers, the physicians, the nurses, the staff, and how does technology enable that work, as opposed to how do we take technology and try to make them enable their work to meet the technology needs.

So I started out on that journey more years than I want to say ago. But it was the right place to be. And that's really been my focus all the way along is how do we push the technology to enable that next step of work that we're trying to do, whether that's in an operational setting, a research setting, a well being setting, an engagement for my team setting.

It really just the right place to go from that technology. So that's how I got into technology.

was there like a pivotal moment in all of this that got you to that way of thinking?

It might've been before I actually went into the CIO role. I'd have radiology or pharmacy or lab and my clinical background was in the lab.

reporting to me, and I'd be asking the questions why can't I do that? Why can't it help me do this? Why can't we enable this differently? So I think the questions that I always wanted to ask and be answered is What if there were no barriers to what your technology or what your enablement strategy was, what would you do?

And then let's make sure that we figure out how do we enable that then.

So coming from the operational background helped you think about technology differently than if you would have come at it. From the technology side completely.

I think so. I can't a hundred percent answer it cause I didn't come from the other side, but as you run a department, as you are taking care of patients, all you want to do is get their needs met.

So I want their results. I want their surgery to start on time. I want the physicians to not have to type in hundreds of pages of notes. I want them to think through that differently. As you were on that side of it saying, why are you putting barriers to people doing their work?

And how do we think through that differently? Now, clearly when you got to the technology side, you learned what some of those barriers were. But I think it's also why you push, do those barriers have to be there? Are they self imposed or are they something that's regulatory or are they something that they're working on the solution for as it goes?

Sometimes it's

just that I don't want to change.

Yeah, absolutely. And, really a lot of what we do in our world is not, the installation of tools is not hard. I don't want to say it's a piece of cake, but it is the, how do we make sure that tool is supporting either the way I'm doing it, because I'm doing it the best way possible, or is supporting me to get to that best way possible

Of course, I'm going to ask you about cybersecurity because it's me. Okay,

yep.

Obviously a critical concern in healthcare today. The threat landscape continues to evolve and change. What are some of the most pressing cybersecurity challenges a healthcare organization faces today?

It's hard to answer that question, Drex, just because as soon as I think I know what that hardest thing is.

We have attacks that go to that next step. And so it is hard to think about where will that go next. But the fact of the matter is that we have people who want to disrupt the work that we're doing. and don't really care about what that means to the people that we're serving I think is my greatest keeps me up at night of what could we do differently as part of that.

As we look at from a healthcare facility, I think it really is how do we become resilient? We managed a healthcare system without technology, 50 years ago, how do we make sure that folks can do that in the future? Hopefully for a very short period of time, but not only can we manage those people who are in front of it, but how do we manage to make sure they haven't lost something?

We haven't lost a test result. In the scheme of your longitudinal record, it's certainly in there, but we haven't lost some of that, what does that make up, as part of that. And we haven't done everything on the backs of those critical caregivers. who don't have any more time to spend than they're already spending on the care of the patients, and they want to just spend time like this chatting with their patients, getting to know and getting to care for them more fully.

So how do we get to that place that we can be resilient in a way? That is a blip as opposed to continuation that just, puts so much extra on top of everybody as it goes through. It is one of those areas that I can't just pick a system and say, hey,

this is going to take me for the next 10 years, like I might when I pick my ERP. When I pick my ERP, I'm still going to optimize and do some things, but I'm not going to go pick a new ERP every couple of years. I think the tools that I pick in the cybersecurity space, often they have to be replaced, but oftentimes they have to be added to, as well as new outputs come to that as well.

And I think the partnerships that we do with some of the vendors. Faces is really important to the way that we move those things forward too.

Yeah you're lucky too, I think, because you have a really great CISO there who has done a wonderful job of putting the right things together to face this ever evolving situation that we're all up against in cybersecurity.

and it's always a balance of risk. I can spend every dollar of GNP of the United States and still not be secure. But I just have to balance that to the risk of how much is enough. And at that point, I'll take some risks. Yeah,

There's always going to be risk. It's just a matter of figuring out how much can you as an organization tolerate.

I'll switch gears on you here talking about digital transformation now. That whole idea of digital transformation now, a lot of conversations in the 229 Summit we were in, a lot of those discussions how is SSM Health leveraging technologies like AI and machine learning and analytics to improve patient care and operational efficiency, all of that kind of stuff.

What are you doing with digital health transformation?

we're probably on the cusp of where are we going into it? Cause I don't know that anybody's like fully embraced everything you could possibly do, although anything. Computerized is digital in some senses as well, but as we look at experience and I think if we look at experience at that core, how do we provide the right experience for our patients?

that's supported by the right experience by our physicians and the right experience by our staff and our nurses and our therapists and our home health and our community leaders and our SDOH. It is just this huge ecosystem that says we're a community health organization because We care for the communities that we serve.

And in general, we really don't want people to be sick. We do want people to be well, and as the healthcare ecosystem looks to continue to move in that operation, we really have to touch people where they are. So how do we touch people with simplistic things like. online scheduling or survey tests, or even paying their bills in an easier to experience way.

But we're really on that precipice of how do we take that to the next level. And really, to the extent we've hired our first chief digital officer to help us look at how do we bring that together? How do we look at supported by analytics, looking at our technology? But also looking at what the industry is expecting of us.

What are our patients expecting of us? Because they live in a digital world and it has zero to do with what age you are, because, I, frankly, we have 80 year old people who are so literate. On how to manage things. It's not to say that, you have to be, 25 years old to manage in that.

It's the expectations of how will they do that, but in a way that's meaningful, just because I can schedule my online appointment. I want everything in that same. I want to know my results in that same place. I want to know how does that fit into my next steps? What else should I be doing? How do I communicate in that space?

So how do we make sure that it feels like that touch? is something that's meaningful to me and actually is helping me on my wellness journey as we go forward, but I will take care of the sickness as it comes along in that journey as well. We believe, and I believe, that digital transformation is imperative for healthcare moving forward because It's an expectation of our patients and we should go not just to where they expect us to be, but we should go beyond that because this is their lives.

This is how they move that forward as well. And so we need to meet them where it is that they are and help them get beyond where they thought they could be.

It's interesting because it definitely dives into this other question that I had about patient experience. But coincidentally, I was talking to a nurse who works on one of the units at one of your old hospitals.

They had some technology. that they were using, it was in the hands of the patient. And the comments that they made to me was that the ability to use the technology turned out to be a lot less about age and a lot more about socioeconomic status. Had they ever really had a phone before or an iPad before?

Have they ever really used that kind of technology, like extensively? Or because of the things that they do and the places that they work or the situation that they're in, they've just not access to those things. And so what seems simple to some of us is not necessarily simple for our patients.

So meeting them where they are. Talk more about how you think about that.

it's very uncommon these days to have somebody who doesn't have a phone in their pocket. How they utilize it is very different. a multitude of ways, but that they don't have a phone in their pocket. So they're not intimidated by holding onto a phone, but they might not like to do everything on that space.

So I think we have to look at meeting you on whatever device you want to, including. if that's your device of choice. But I think what people would find over time, telephone was so limited in what that slice they could get to, because once you got to what you needed, I needed that appointment.

And then it's, Oh, by the way, how does that fit into, did I need something else on this visit? Didn't they tell me something in my last visit? If that all sits in one spot and they're used to going there, All of a sudden they don't need to talk on the phone anymore. They want to look at it in that ecosystem.

I'm not sure that I've seen, I've seen some research so I don't know if it's socioeconomic or not, but I think it is your how are you. How do you talk to your kids? Do you talk to them on the phone? No, you talk to them via text. How do you check in whether or not your house is okay?

Do you go and drive up to it to see if you shut your garage door or do you go look at the camera online? Yeah, those those things are done. And even I don't know about you, but I can talk to my dog when he's home alone, , just because there's a speaker in the room or something like that. It confuses him, but I can do that as well.

So not everybody would need that, but it, I do, I need to know the safety and security of the people in my home. So how do I do that moving forward? I think it's that same feeling of what hugs the person that you're in front of. So whether it's. I want everything in one place. I want to call somebody.

I want that person who I call to point me to the right place. I want to see on a screen how does my information compare to everybody else's information with the same diagnosis. It is how do you get to all of those spots so that people can feel like liken it to a hug, that you're hugging them.

You're giving them that feeling of how do they get to that next step? And then I'm there beside them to help them get to that next step too.

I love that analogy. Are you giving them a hug?

  📍 📍 📍 📍

📍 Hi, it's Sarah Richardson here, president of the 229 Executive Development Community for This Week Health. I'm excited to share details about the upcoming SOAR conference, happening September 18th through the 20th, 2024 in Midtown Atlanta. SOAR is your opportunity to elevate your career in healthcare IT.

Join us for dynamic sessions, interactive workshops, and keynotes from trailblazing women in the industry. This event offers actionable strategies and fosters genuine connections. Whether you're a health system employee or a vendor partner, SOAR provides unique networking and growth opportunities.

Sponsorship packages are available, offering visibility and engagement with industry leaders. Don't miss out. Register today at bluebirdleaders. org slash 2024 SOAR Atlanta. Let's empower the next generation of women leaders in healthcare technology together. See you in Atlanta.   📍 📍 📍 📍  

📍 Let's talk about leadership and team development. Building the team that you have, building the teams that you have built.

over the course of your career. It's tough, right? A lot of movement of people across organizations. There's a lot of new tech. What are some of your key principles? for leadership and leadership development that have let you build some of the great teams that you have and that you've had in the past.

Yeah, Drex, I think if you think sometimes about what's your legacy as you move forward I think the one that I always look at is have I left someplace better than what I found it? Yeah, I think As we go forward. And I think you can't do that without touching people. And as you join a new organization, they're 📍 used to what they had before, and what are you going to do differently and things like that.

What I really want to do is, what gifts do you have? How do I bring them out and help you develop those gifts? And how does that fit in together? But I also want you to understand that in IT, I can't work with 500 people who all have their own little journey to go on. I want 500 people on a journey that's all going in the same direction.

What are we trying to get to? How do we get to that space? And how do we help our leaders build teams that cascade down to teams that cascade down to teams? I spend a lot of time on leadership development. I don't know that it's an expensive operation. I think it's imperative, though, that if you don't have a leadership team that you're transparent with of how do you get to a place and why do I want to get there and what's that end result when we get there?

Because they think too often we just do a project, install this tool. Okay, now go install this tool. Okay, update this tool. People get a little bit lost into it, then they're just doing stuff, as opposed to how are they developing and how are they dreaming about what could be a possibility. When I get that next call from a doctor who says, why do I have to do this?

that I don't just answer that's the way your system works. I don't know. Let me say let's think about that together. Why do we have to do it that way? What could we do differently? What things are different about that as we go through? So I want to develop a team, a leadership team that thinks that way.

I think it's interesting the way that you talk about it too, as leadership development, not just being the leaders that report to you, but helping them understand the right way to develop their leaders and in turn, that's what makes a great team.

Yeah. So at SSM, I started this program. I've done it most places that I've worked, but I started the program. Everybody supervisor and above meets monthly together. We started. With a book but we've grown well beyond that book to how do we change management? How do we strategically plan? How do we do those things together where you're working and meeting with people who you don't normally work with, but you recognize, you can't be in an application space without working on a technology, without being supported by security, without networking to the network team.

So it's an ecosystem where they all work together. But maybe they haven't had that opportunity to work together in their subject matter expertise. But then they are a group of leaders who all have leadership expertise, too, that just want to continue to grow that gift. And so while I might go to a seminar or a class to learn about my subject matter expertise, how do I keep helping them grow into that ability to continue to manage more and more complex things?

Because as I want that ecosystem and that community approach to health care, That's not easy. That's not a, Oh, I just go buy that off the shelf and that I'll work together. It takes smart people with lots of different gifts to be able to work together around a table, be candid with each other about what they think will and won't work and together coming out with a product that's better than any single one of them could have come up with themselves, and that's what success is of that team and of IT.

None of us in IT want to be thought about as, Oh, you're the fill in the blank. You're the Epic person, or you're the Infor person, or you're the Microsoft person. You're the person who's helping me get to that next level. You're the person who I can ask a question of, and if you don't know it, you'll help me think through where I might go to get an answer for it and things like that, and I think that's what we're all trying to develop as leaders is how do we just continue to grow the ability of our teams to be able to support the new work.

The work that we're going to do in the AI space, is different than the work that we did just to digitize a record. And so the opportunities and the barriers become even greater that I need that breath of thought.

It's the new healthcare. It's always the new healthcare, right? It's really almost you're building a framework for your leadership team to continue to innovate on its own leadership capabilities.

And not to feel like they're in it by themselves. Because again, we're all stronger together. And so how do I even invite somebody into that conversation to help think through something with me? So how do we even think through how does change work? How do we end one thing and start a new thing? How do we make sure we're adding value?

And even how do we stop something if it's not adding value, even though I might have invested quite a bit of time into it as well. So I think it's really important to invest in your leaders and significant investment and consistent investment. And for me, that's an investment of time. It's not, I'm going to go send everybody for their MBA and they're going to learn all of these things because it is our culture and how are we going to continue to move that culture forward and continue to provide more services than we could in the past.

Yeah. Hey, before I forget about it. Yeah. So you mentioned at the beginning of this sort of segment of the conversation about sitting down with all of your managers and directors and VPs. And it started with a book. What's the book?

We started with the five dysfunctions of a team. All right. And the reason I started there is because that's based on a foundation of trust.

Yeah. And I think it's important that people learned who I was as a leader. So I wanted to be transparent and open, but also how does everything else build on top of that? So that was Our first one. So we've gone through many of the Kotter books and things like that subsequently, but I thought that was a great foundation to start with.

I know that book and probably some of the other books that you've gone through are on that bookshelf behind me that I still open up from time to time and peruse because I'm just like, I need some inspiration here. There's a problem that I have, and I don't exactly know how to go about it, that everything connected to everything else, your comments about no one in the department and actually no one across the hospital stands alone anymore.

We all have to work together. That's a great approach.

Let me ask you about regulatory compliance and risk management. We talked a little bit about risk when we talked about cybersecurity, but navigating the regulatory landscape, which seems to constantly be changing whether it's, HIPAA or GDPR or state and local regulations that continue to change.

How are you managing that? What are some of your best practices for keeping your eye on those things and then who you're working with in the organization to make sure you don't miss something even by accident?

Yeah. We always hope so. Tell me about anything you learned, Rex, just in case there's one I missed as it goes through. We're in chats with our peers, we're in meetings with our vendors. We're in state meetings in terms of what our states are doing as it goes through. So there's always those opportunities to hear about what next item is coming up. I have to say the 229 daily always seems to have, maybe one that I knew was coming up, but maybe I forgot was coming up as fast as it was coming up.

And so it's another great place to link into an article of where are we going forward to. Thank you. Our vendors, EPIC in terms of if they're going to have to build something into their landscape to help us mitigate a risk or comply with a regulation as it moves forward. We have strong government relations teams who are always helping us to how do we want to comment on upcoming bills.

And structures like that. But I'll say more than almost anything else, Drex, is it's making sure that I'm talking to my peers. It's the conversation and a, I didn't hear about that one. What is that? Trying to make sure that we're covering it. I think it's only going to get more complex and I think especially as we start to see the regulations in the cyberspace.

Hacking is a crime, it's a crime, but that doesn't stop people from doing it. How are we going to make sure that some of that regulation that comes in is helpful and not adding a layer of cost? That adds no value,

as

we go through too, so I think it's also balancing, yes, I want help in that safety network as we go through.

I want help in making sure I'm bringing to my patients the information that they need in a safe and secure way, but I want to also make sure that we're commenting on those regulations when they appear to be more burdensome than they are helpful in that space. But then also, let's help the regulators write it down.

If that's really the issue is, yes, it's the right concept, but something's wrong in the legislation. Let's make sure we're all commenting and not just hoping, Oh the AHA will comment on that. So I don't have to too. No, they listened to the voices and we've talked to the folks in the different agencies and they read every single one of those comments.

So I think it's really important that we continue to comment on those and don't just say that's a bad thing. You say, hey, that causes us to do this. I like the concept, but we should think about a way of doing that doesn't cause a barrier or an extra cost to our patients.

Yeah, I think a lot of us as leaders, when we talk to our teams, it's always been, it's okay if you come to me with a problem, but come with some ideas about how to solve the problem too.

That same thing applies to, commenting on pre published regulatory stuff. Like when you see it and it's not working right, it is actually pretty amazing because you and I both spend a lot of time on the Hill and they really do read all the comments. The staffers really ask follow up questions to understand.

So sometimes when you make a comment, you'll actually get an email later from somebody or a phone call later from somebody saying, did you mean this? Or did you mean this? Help me understand that. They want to try to get better. Because they want to do the right thing too. Especially the staff or the, the folks that are in the agencies, they want to try to make this all work.

And so they're not there to make it hard. They're there to try to make it better for patients and families.

Yeah. And we have the luxury at SSM Health too, to be in multiple states. So sometimes when those state regulations come up, we can point toward another state to say, It was solved this way. And this was a direct feed.

I didn't have to build anything. Or this was one, the patients got the luxury of this certification in this or something like that. So that is also a good thing is to look at how other states are managing some of those things, so that we can offer those up as well.

And sometimes it can be the like, can you guys harmonize what you're doing so that we don't have weirdly different reporting requirements.

Yeah. Coming down to it I could talk to you forever. We've had a lot of these really long conversations. What's your vision for the future of SSM and healthcare information technology at SSM?

My vision is how do we make sure that the communities that we have the privilege to serve.

have the benefit of the right caregiver at the right time in the right context with their attention. How do I make sure that we're having technology that makes it easier to get into a system, technology that makes it easier for our caregivers to provide access to those folks? and also to document and provide a plan of care in a way that's not as burdensome, and we have to do it.

So we still want our patients to know what their care are. But then go to that next step of how does that go into the whole ecosystem of my social determinants of health? How do I make sure I'm not biasing our care in a certain way? How do we make sure that everyone has access to care where they should be getting care.

And how do we make sure that those, especially those who are vulnerable, poor and vulnerable aren't cared for differently in those spaces as well. And they have, it's not a lack of access to technology. It tends to be a lack of access and we're making it harder for clinicians to care for patients and how can we take some of that burden off of them with technology.

So I'm inspired by the early stages of what do we do with listening and visualization. How do we use virtual tools to help? I'm inspired by research that I'm watching at some of the universities of even watching the eye movement of the patients to see something to help physician who couldn't possibly, read every article that's out there and help them say, you might consider as it goes through, but not be so burdensome to say here's 150 articles you might want to read about your patient, but have that discussion.

So it's a really good way to understand the scientific discernment based on some things you talked with the patient about and moving that forward and working that into the, how does that move into who is doing research in this space? Who is helping children in a different space that's maybe in their school or their nutritional counseling or wherever that might be.

gamification for kids of how do they get into healthcare by what's in front of them and moving that forward. And I think technology is the right platform to move that forward because it is not intrusive to people's lives the way it might have felt 15 or 20 years ago. It is so important to lives and so if we can use that to help us forward the community for that community of healthcare to really healthcare.

How are we getting healthier as a nation? How are we thinking through what we could do differently to make choices that help and keep us healthy, but also put us on the pathway to health when we're less than healthy in that space as well. So I'm excited about the opportunities. We're in some of the clunky stages.

of where that technology is, but every technology's gone through that clunky stage to get to that next right stage, and you almost don't realize when you've gotten there. And so I think we've seen some of the years of older tools that are now just part of our ecosystem that are now going to move into even better tools in that front as well.

I think that can only help our caregivers provide more access to that frontline care that our patients and our communities are looking for.

So we talk a lot here about the crappy first draft. We're in the crappy first draft stage of a lot of these things, or second or third drafts, but as long as it's getting better, that's the important part.

Hey, one more question, and this is really just to you personally. This is a really tough job. And I know it's a grind, and I know that you're working all the time, even when you're not working. How do you stay motivated? How do you stay engaged and motivated to do this yourself?

It's a great question, and it's something, it's funny.

When I got out of my MHA program, you had to do a fellowship. And so you go to a town where you don't know anybody and you're working in a hospital. And so where do you spend your free time? You spend it in a hospital. So I started early on in my career visiting patients who didn't get visited.

And just start to talk to people about what they were looking for, whether they were a person who was in for a night and, leaving the next day or had been there, there was a patient who is there 500 plus days and still in the care of the facility that they're in and the hope that they have for a better tomorrow.

It helps keep me motivated to say I can be a part of making that better tomorrow. And it's not all work though. I have kids and my kids every day push me to think about things a little bit differently than I thought about them before. So it's great to think about. Yeah, maybe we don't have to, and they, Hey mom, I just got this app and it told me to do this.

Why are you guys doing that? And how do you think about it differently? And then how do you just think about balance? Because you got to balance all of the things that you do. And how do you make sure that you're spending some time, some downtime, but even that downtime helps you think through of how do I bring my full self.

To work tomorrow and make sure that I'm open to That nugget of information that's going to pass by from somebody who's said something that they don't even think is important, that's going to be that game changer too. So how do I make sure I stay focused, listen, and always looking for that opportunity.

And I'll tell you, I think sometimes we forget to dream. We sometimes think that we're put in the spot and we have to figure out how's the best way to stay in that spot and we forget to dream. And so I do try to spend some time thinking about if barriers were no object, if documentation were no object, if research didn't have the rules, what would we do differently?

If

I could empty out the whole building again and start over.

Yeah, I sometimes tell my staff, what if we just landed on Mars and we have to do healthcare? Are we going to do it the same way that we did just because we know it? Or will we do it differently? And I think that those are the kind of things we have to think about.

How would we do some of those things differently? What have we learned? And let's not just stop there and say, yeah, but I can't do it that way. Let's figure out how do we continue to make it better tomorrow? Because, frankly we're blessed by being able to help such a significant population to move those things forward.

And I view it as a blessing and I'm so glad that I have a career in a place that I can feel good about what the work is that we do every day and how we can make it better., I think that, It may be a little altruistic, but really it's what continues to motivate me that , there's more to be done and great things that happen when you do it.

Okay. That's the last word. Joy Grosser, thank you so much for being on the show. Hope I see you again in person sometime soon.

I hope so too. Thanks Drex. It's been a pleasure talking to you.

Thanks for listening to this week's keynote. If you found value, share it with a peer. It's a great chance to discuss and in some cases start a mentoring relationship. One way you can support the show is to subscribe and leave us a rating. it if you could do that. Thanks for listening. That's all for now..