Today in health, it confidence investments and just silliness. My name is bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system. And creator of this week health set of channels, dedicated to keeping health it staff current and engaged. We want to thank our show sponsors who are investing in developing the next generation of health leaders.

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We ask you to join us at our website top right-hand column. You're going to see a logo for the lemonade. Stand, click on that to give today. We believe in the generosity of our community. And we thank you in advance. All right. I'm looking at three things today. The first is Becker's article posted 20 hours ago, healthcare CEOs are losing confidence. There was a poll that was done of.

Leaders in industry. And their confidence in the economy and where it's going. And, , every other industry is predominantly pointing up. And there was a significant increase in the number of. Leaders in healthcare. That have their confidence pointing down. That's not really a surprise to me, but this one is 19% of healthcare leaders ranked their outlook at the lowest tier between one and four. That's not a scale of 10.

, So, you know, it's, it's interesting as I was reading this again, Fridays are my time to just sort of use on things as I'm reading these stories. And as I'm reading that, and I'm thinking if your outlook, if your confidence in things, the industry in the economy, and those kinds of things is a one to four, your staff's confidence level is not going to be any higher than that.

And if I'm a board member and I see that my leader's confidence is a one to four it's time to move on that leader because. Again, whoever's at the, at the top of the ship is not, it's going to have the highest level of confidence and you have to have confidence to work through these things, not rose colored glasses. Oh. Things are great. We understand that the margins are low.

, margin's taken a hit over the last, I dunno, let's say a couple of years actually. And they've been significant and they're slowly coming out of it. I get that. I mean, we can look at the numbers and say, Hey, realistically, this is going to be a challenge. But confidence is understanding that there are ways through it. It's seeing ways through it. It's encouraging people with ways through it. If you cannot portray confidence,

then you should phone terribly give up your job. Or if I was a board member, I would be looking to move that CEO. Out of the chair. All right. Did a poll earlier this week. Let me see if I could find it. It was a interesting poll and your responses to it. , we're also, , very fascinating to me.

And here's what the pool had to say with limited funds. Where should healthcare providers invest in innovation? Okay. What I said is there's a retrenching going on in healthcare. Budgets are tight and innovation targets have to be almost a sure thing. If that is such a thing. I'm wondering where you think the limited resources should be invested.

In innovation. Okay. 181 votes. I only do three-day polls. 181 votes. I gave four options, patient experience, clinician, experience, quality and safety cost of care. All right. You have limited funds. You're investing in innovation. Do you have some leftover you're going to invest in innovation. Where are you going to focus?

The winner was patient experience. 34%. Second was cost of care. Third was clinician experience. Fourth was quality and safety. So I don't vote on these things. , I put them out there and I don't want to vote cause I don't want to, , you know, change somebody's opinion. On various things. If I have that kind of influence, but regardless I don't vote on them.

But I'm going to give you my opinion here. If I had funds to invest. Right now I would be looking at. , areas that impact the financial health of the organization, because that is the acute need right now. And so that can be the clinician experience because we have clinician burnout. We have a number of clinicians that are quitting.

, we have, , increased, we have wage inflation. That's going on. So there's a whole host of things in that space that I could see myself investigate. By the way, you couldn't pin me down on any one of these categories. So I could see any around the financial health of the organization and the, , stability, the organization. I would be investing in those things, clinician experience.

Might be the top of the list. Patient experience only with regard to its ability to either drive new revenues, additional revenues capture revenues that we're losing in some way. , now it's not the time with limited funds to go hog wild on the patient experience. We can talk about it all we want.

And we can say, you know, we have a portal and we're doing scheduling. All that is good. And we should be doing all those things. That's what you should be doing when you had a bunch of money and we'll come back again to that. Case where we're going to be doing that. And in fact, I would say patient and clinician experience are tightly linked.

Like, if you create a good patient experience, it should be linked to a good clinician experience. It should facilitate communication. It should facilitate care. It should facilitate the transactions that need to happen between the two and the communication, as I said earlier. So the two are tightly linked, but again, I'd be looking at the financial health quality and safety is always a priority. So, , but.

You know, innovating in that area. Only if there's something that's really going to dramatically improve. Life expectancy outcomes, quality, something. I mean, if there's something that we're looking at this really going to move the needle, you have to consider it. And in the cost of care, the cost of the care is one that I'm not sure technology will impact just yet.

And the reason is because we're predominantly fee for service and less, you are in a value-based care model. The implementation of technology seems to do more harm than good. So it's the only reason I would stay away from that unless I was in a very. , forward-thinking health system that had a lot of covered lives, , in value-based care contracts, in which case, then I might invest in, again, that patient experience.

Because it will, , drive up our overall profitability and health. I hate to be that crass, but there are times where you have to focus and you have to say, what is the most important thing? And if you get back to financial health, Then you can start doing everything else. But if you're teetering on challenges with financial health, and you're always looking at cuts and that's going to things.

You have to establish a, a foundation of stability. All right. Finally, I was reading this article and I, and this is the kind of stuff that just cracks me up and has absolutely nothing to do with healthcare. So if you want to tune out right now, you can, but. It's it's this whole Microsoft Activision deal.

So, if you don't know this Microsoft. Is trying to buy the gaming company company Activision. Okay. And you would think that this is going to form the largest monopoly ever. This is going to be, you know, we're going back to standard oil or we're going back to, you know, bell telephone and. I mean, this is just going to be the end of the world and commerce, as we know it, because this thing has been fought in, in the EU. It's been fought in California and now both the EU and California backed out and said, yeah, you can move forward with it. And the FTC is now stepping in to appeal the ruling.

And when I read this kind of stuff, I realize there's so much hypocrisy in the federal government. That we would step in to make sure that there isn't a gaming conglomerate, that all of a sudden has control of too many assets in gaming.

But we allow this to happen in just about every other industry. Including healthcare. And so I'm reading this and when I say silliness, I read this. And I think someone at Activision or someone at Microsoft has really ticked somebody off. And this is payback because it makes absolutely no sense. And I think it's a waste.

Of your taxpayer dollars. And I think somebody is just a grinding, an ax, little vendetta. Against one or both of these companies, not sure which, but at the end of the day, this should go through and there's absolutely. No reason not to. And the barriers of entry to get into this pace. Are not that great other companies can come in and compete.

Plus this environment, the gaming environment is changing so rapidly. You're going to see VR and AR , continue to morph that side of it. So I, I. I'm not sure I understand why the FTC is all up in arms on this or anyone else for that matter. Free Activision free Microsoft. Let them let them merge anyway.

That's all for today. It's a Friday, just some musings. If you know someone that might benefit from our channel for them to know. This really does help us and, , let them know that you're listening to the podcast. They can subscribe anywhere. Apple, Google podcast, Spotify, Stitcher. Anywhere that you can subscribe to podcasts. We want to thank our channel sponsors who are investing in our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders. Short test 📍 artists, site parlance, and service now for great companies. Check them out this week. als.com/today. Thanks for listening. That's all for now.