Today in health, it. There are times where the news gets a little repetitive in health. It, so today we're going to take a walk through some of the polls I've done recently and discuss what the implications of those are. 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.

We want to thank our show sponsors who are investing in developing our next generation of health leaders, Gordian dynamics, Quill health tau site nuance, Canon medical, and current health. Check them out at this week. health.com/today. We have a webinar coming up. We have a webinar coming up all the time. So if you are interested in our webinars, go ahead and hit our website

Dot com top right-hand corner. And you can find out what our next webinar. Is coming up and we would love to have you there great conversations or have it happening there. And it would be great to have you there. All right. So every Monday. And I mean, every Monday I pop a poll out there and sometimes the polls are fun. Sometimes

More informative. , give you an example of a fun one. This. This past Monday and this full, still open. If you wanted to vote on it. I, , my birthday was yesterday. October 18th. And I got a metal quest too, for my birthday. And I started using it. And, , and I started thinking, you know, what are the practical applications of that? I thought, , how could this be used for business? How could it be used for training? How could you use use for a bunch of things? And so I just threw a poll out there. Have you used a VR headset for work yet?

And. , , we have, let's see 3000 people have viewed it. We've got a bunch of votes and I'll let you vote on that if you would like to. But essentially a majority of people have not used it. And a minority of people have used it. And if you are in it and technology, I would ask the question of why haven't you used it? Not for work per se, but why haven't

, this is one of those things where I like to get ahead of some of the things that are coming down the pike. VR, , virtual reality and augmented reality are going to be here and it's going to be the next significant wave. I think. In, , computing. In fact, , , I've lived through a fair number

If I think about Being nostalgic here having a, just had a birthday yesterday. But if I think about it, the eighties was about the personal computer and we lived through that standing up the personal computers, putting them into networks. , and then, , , moving stuff into data centers and whatnot. The nineties was really about the internet, connecting things up and making things, , , connecting to the larger, , ecosystem and sharing things across that ecosystem and whatnot. So that was really the nineties.

The two thousands was really about mobile. , that's when you had the advent of the iPhone and all the things that it can do, but you had some mobile devices prior to that, but that's really where the, the mobile devices took off The two thousands. , 2010s I would say was about social networks. Yeah, I think it really was about social networks and that, and that really drove a change in our behavior and how things happen. I think the twenties is going to be, , people would say AI and machine learning, and certainly that is true, but I think augmented and virtual reality in this same vein of.

Things that are going to fundamentally shift how we interact with technology. I think it falls into that category. So I threw that poll out there. Love to hear what you're you're, , thinking. Around this. , again, Only been in the virtual word world for a couple of days. I probably should have done this a lot sooner.

But I see the potential definitely in training and immersive training and those kinds of things. And potentially it's it. Creates a solution to a problem that you are looking at. I have no idea, but just thought I'd throw it out All right. So let me give you some of these other polls. , Monday poll, here we go. 15,000 nurses went on strike.

In Minnesota. Do you see this as a trend of more nurses, unionizing or striking?

And I put definitely likely, probably not a no, and definitely, and likely. Amount to 90%. So 90% of the people who answered this poll believe that the nurses going out on strike for whatever reason could be burnout, could be, , pay compensation. , , not enough. , support in their staffing and those kinds of things, whatever it happens to be.

They're a 90% of the people who answered this poll said, yep, that's, that's a trend that's going to continue. And that's going to, , not, , succeed many, any. Yeah. At any time in the near future. And if that's the case, we need to be planning for that. How are you going to be doing more care potentially as the baby boom generation gets up there with less people.

Interesting poll again. , I'd love to have you come out every Monday. I throw a poll out there. Here's another one Monday poll of the day. Today we look at patient room, which technology has the greatest potential to change the care setting. As we looked at that I put a timeframe on it of about five years. So which technology has the greatest impact in the patient room over the next five years?

And we have four technologies here. Ambient clinical listening, , computer vision. , remote touchless, monitors and care companions. And as you listen to that, , I think people have a tendency to focus on what's here today and really making a difference today. So ambient clinical listening. , close to 50% of the people say, Hey, that's the one that's going to make the most difference over the next five years. I don't disagree

I'm just saying people generally will look at the things that are right in front of them. , computer vision about 30%. So there you go, 80% right there between ambient clinical listening and computer vision. And again, I don't disagree with that. I think computer vision has the potential to really.

Make a huge difference, especially in the environment we just talked about, which is, , less staff. , being around. So if you needed. , your computers to have a set of eyes and be taking in information and to be, , automating some, some mundane tasks. And taking that away and making your nurses much more efficient or your clinicians much more efficient.

, your computers have to have a set of eyes. So I think computer vision is going to be one of those things that really takes off and really has the potential to change things in the space. , remote touchless monitors, I think is interesting. , I, I agree. It's not going to be as impactful, but it's going to be, , something that I think everyone's going to be looking at in the next five years and then care companions. And by the way, that's a very small percentage of care. Companions comes in at about 20%.

A little less than 20 per. Our little over 20% actually. So computer vision is 28. , ambient clinical listenings 46. , care companions. So these are the. , robot, like things that you see in hospitals, these are the robot, like things that we're going to put in people's To interact with them on a.

, care basis. And when you think about it, It increases the number of touch points. And we're talking about this all the time, increase the number of touch points you have with your patients. This is the way to keep them out of the hospital, keep them healthy. And those kinds of things, and the care companions can be something as sophisticated as literally a robot of some kind.

That just sits there and has a conversation with somebody who's, , up there in age and just ask them additional questions. How are you feeling today? You know,, did you take your medication today so forth and so on? It could be something that's sophisticated. If it could be something a little less sophisticated, maybe, maybe it's your phone that becomes your care companion. Not really

, what that looks like, but again, interesting set of categories. , , a week later I did a. , I, I put out a poll and I, this one to me was one of the most telling ones and it was a hard poll. Right? I know these are false choices. We have to address all of them, but if we were prioritizing them, which is the most important.

, in your book. So biggest challenge in healthcare today. And I gave four solid competitors for this biggest challenge in healthcare So. Around health, health equity. Flawed payment model, clinician burnout or unhealthy population behavior. So that is people eating. , too many piggybacks. And this one was interesting. So flood payment model came in at 37%. So it's people saying, look, until you fix the payment model, we're going to continue to have this challenge or this problem.

Or whatever problem in healthcare. So you need to fix the payment model. The next one is clinician burnout. And the clinicians are being are burning out. And we talked about that yesterday on the show. And what are we going to do around that? If we continue to lose, , clinicians at this pace, we are going to have a serious, serious problem within healthcare.

, and then the final two were a unhealthy patient population. , behavior at 18% in health equity is 15%. And I thought this was interesting. It's not that healthy. I agree. Health equity is a big problem and something we need to address, but it comes down to Maslow's hierarchy. To be honest with you. , and it's, , are you taking care of the basics before you try to take care

The really challenging, gnarly problems that exist in terms of bias and systems. And, , and , just the, the way we care for various, , populations. I know we can walk and chew gum at the same time and we should be working on health equity along with the rest of these things. But it's interesting when you put things out there, there, there is a Maslow's hierarchy that sort of exists and

Where you have to take care of your basic needs before you can take care of some of the higher order. Needs within the system. And if you're losing clinicians at a record rate, , there's going to be health equity in the Allah. It's going to be no, one's receiving care. , so you've got to address that problem first before

Anything. And then, , let's see then common spirit suffered a significant ransomware event after growing through M and a to over $30 billion in revenue. , his oversight required. And so I just threw this one out there. Should the FTC or state regulators require health systems to provide a security or operational risk assessment prior to M and a.

And this got a lot of conversation, actually. 24 comments on it. People asking, , what exactly are you? Are you. , asking for here. And, , , essentially the conversation was about it's transparency and oversight. So it was transparency.

Oh, our transparency and accountability. I say. It would be the two words transparency in that does the. , leadership, understand what they are requiring. If we do a complete security and operational risk Of a system before they get acquired. , then we know that the leadership saw the challenges that exist and then there's accountability for that.

And the answers were absolutely who cares and no. Absolutely came in at 77%. , who cares came in a four and no came in at 18%. And what's interesting is to me, I think our knee jerk reaction is get the, a. Get the state and federal regulators involved in this. It's the only way that you can really move healthcare.

, I'm not a huge fan of it, to be honest with you, just because it's already an over-regulated environment. And so I would like to find a way to get transparency and accountability. , without the regulators stepping in and I'm not sure how that happens and maybe the transparency and accountability is just how it's happening now.

, it's interesting. I read an article yesterday of don't throw stones at common spirit. , and, , , I, I sorta reading it and I'm sitting there gone, , , I think we, we play these things with kid gloves too often. We do know that we're the next target and all those things. And we have to be careful around that. , but at the end of the day, if this, and this has already been three weeks,

If these. And part of their cases, Hey, look, it didn't impact all of our hospitals only pick impacted a certain number of our hospitals. And my question to you is do you think that people. In whatever city, it impacts the people in Wisconsin care that it didn't impact all your hospitals. If their hospitals are on diversion and they can't go to them and they can't get their procedure done and they can't get there.

, care done. No they don't. , and if you're going to choose to be this Quite frankly, you have to provide the perimeter and the protection around the entire, , environment. And I'm not saying that you're not going to get a ransomware attack. I'm saying that your job is to provide the security controls and control the blast radius.

When somebody does get in. And, , taking down whole hospitals is not really acceptable. It's not like, oh, it's not that big a deal. It is a big , any time a hospital goes down for a period of time, it's a big deal. So, , I think we're giving people, we're giving common spirit of free pass because we want a free pass.

, later or they're interviewing. , vendors who want the opportunity to do business with common spirit. , moving forward, but at the end of the day, it's not acceptable. It's not okay. We've got to control the blast radius. And look, I understand some of you are listening to this saying, Hey, that happened to my health system and we weren't prepared that kind of stuff. I get it. I understand.

, but common spirit is $30 billion in revenue operation. It means that they did not prioritize security. , well, across the entire enterprise. , because they have the money, they have the people, they have the resources. , to do this and there are organizations doing it with a far less money and far less resources. , so anyway, that's my rant for the day, but I'm not sure. Well, first of all, the FTC wouldn't make any sense to do this, , security and operational risk assessment, but the state regulators could do it.

And provide a little bit of a. Of again, visibility, accountability. I don't know. , I don't know how I feel about that, but through the pull out there, cause my job is to get the discussion started. And then obviously I did the, , the one on a virtual reality headset what what's next around that?

So love, , love starting the conversation. Love doing these polls would love for you. To, , check them out every Monday, I'm going to be throwing a poll out there and seeing what the pulse of the industry is. Yeah. So that's all for today. , tomorrow we'll get back to the news. If you know of someone that might benefit from our channel, please forward them a note. They can subscribe on our website this week, health.com or wherever you listen to podcasts, apple, Google, overcast, Spotify, Stitcher. You get the picture. We are everywhere.

We want to thank our channel sponsors who are investing in our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders, Gordian dynamics, Quill health towel, site nuance, Canon medical, 📍 current health. Check them out at this week. health.com/today.  Thanks for listening that's all for now