When Jeff Sturman’s title was changed from CIO to chief digital officer a few years ago, the rationale was clear. Memorial Healthcare System wanted more focus on the consumer experience, and they wanted it to come from the top. As part of the shift, call centers now report to the CDO, which provides the opportunity to shape the experience from the beginning
“We have to figure out our competitive advantage,” Sturman said during an interview with Kate Gamble, Managing Editor at healthsystemCIO. “Instead of patients coming to us, I think we need to get to them, and that means delivering where they want.”
During the interview, he talked about his team’s core objectives – including moving to a new ERP system; how they’re leveraging analytics to improve patient flow; why partnerships are more critical than ever; and the ultimate goal of taking the friction out of healthcare.
LISTEN HERE USING THE PLAYER BELOW OR SUBSCRIBE THROUGH YOUR FAVORITE PODCASTING SERVICE.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 9:53 — 5.6MB)
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | RSS
Key Takeaways
- The rationale behind Memorial Healthcare System’s restructuring was to improve access and intake, and figure out how to “manage patients and consumers differently.”
- By maintaining strong relationships, executives are able to “translate technology speak into everyday operations or strategy.”
- Unlike in the past, hospitals can no longer rely on patients to come to them. “We need to know how consumers want care delivered, and we need to be able to deliver.”
- Creating hospital-at-home models requires a sizeable lift. But if organizations can’t figure it out, they risk “missing out.”
- For healthcare leaders, the ultimate goal right now should be to remove the friction and make it easier to navigate.
Q&A with Jeff Sturman, Part 2 [Click here to view Part 1]
Moving into the Chief Digital Officer role
Gamble: Memorial did a restructuring a few years back with you being moved to the chief digital officer role. What did that mean in terms of your responsibilities and your areas of focus?
Sturman: When I was changed to the chief digital officer title about two years ago, the rationale behind that was our focus on consumer experience and engagement, looking well beyond the digital world to figure out the problems we have from an access and intake standpoint.
Now, the call centers report to me. The way in which we interact with patients from that first call to our healthcare system to make an appointment, that rolls up to my responsibility as well.
We’ve brought in all these disparate call centers into a centralized manner through which patients engage with us. That’s a journey; it’s not done. And it’s a multi-year journey — probably five or six years in the making, and we’re probably two years into it. We started with underlying technology, swapping out the call center technology and implementing a very modern solution.
“Consistency means something”
We then also looked at the organizational structure and the way in which we’re managing it. Again, consistency means something here. It sounds silly when patients call different numbers for our healthcare system and they hear different voices. We took that out of the mix and got everyone on a single voice so that there’s a single message that’s consistent with how they engage them to get care. Whether they need an imaging study in our hospital, a primary care visit in our physician office, or anything in between, whether it be orthopedics or cardiology, we’re all managing in the same framework.
Three-legged stool: Operations, strategy & digital
It’s a huge effort and huge initiative for us to manage patients and consumers differently. It was the impetus for changing my title to chief digital officer. Innovation, experience, access, and intake all fall within my responsibility — but not mine alone. It’s shared across our executive leadership team. I work very closely with our marketing executives and our physician group, Memorial Physician Group. It really is a three-legged stool of operation, strategy, and digital that come together to make it all happen.
Gamble: You mentioned the relationships that need to be formed with other leaders. That’s become so critical, regardless of title (CIO, CDO, CDIO, etc). I’d like to get your thoughts on best practices for making sure you’re getting the most out of these relationships with other leaders.
Sturman: There’s no job that crosses the entire healthcare system quite like the CIO or CDO, whatever you want to call it. Depending on the organization, I think it’s a cultural thing more often than not. But that relationship is so important with my executive team; we can translate the technology speak into everyday operations or strategy. And so, I work very closely with all our leaders. Like I said, it’s that the three-legged stool of operations, transformation, and strategy with the digital component — maybe it’s a four-legged stool. But it’s really important. We can’t do anything without each other; when we do and vacuums exist, that’s a problem, because if we’re not aligned, we’re not moving the organization forward.
Many of our folks at the executive, and even the staff level, are focused every single day on just taking care of a patient — and that’s where they need to be focused. But we have to think about where we’re going tomorrow, or the next day, or a year, or 10 years from now, so that we can plan accordingly. Our executive team’s vision gets translated into tactical initiatives that we’re leading. So yes, it’s incredibly important. Relationships mean everything in most businesses, probably more so than ever in healthcare.
“Changing” consumer engagement
Gamble: It seems like change management is becoming so important as organizations shift to digital models. What are your thoughts on that? What does it take to lead people through change?
Sturman: At hospital-based healthcare systems, we’ve always expected patients to come to us. When they’re sick, they come to our emergency department, we admit them, we take care of them in the hospital, and then we send them home and we’re out of the day-to-day mix. That’s changing. We absolutely need to know how consumers want care delivered and we need to be able to deliver. Because when they’re in our hospital or care setting, they’re patients. When they’re home and they’re not directly receiving care from us, they’re consumers, but they can take advantage of a lot of things that we have to offer in terms of education and in terms of knowledge they’re seeking for a loved one.
As consumers, there’s a choice at the end of the day. We all have to figure out the competitive advantage in how we deliver care differently. Instead of patients coming to us, we need to get to them, and that means we need to deliver care where they want it.
Taking the friction out of healthcare
Oftentimes, they want to be seen at home. We as an industry are grappling to figure out the hospital-at-home environment. That’s a very challenging thing to do in the face of a huge nursing shortage in our own hospitals. The idea that, ‘we need to staff up in our hospitals, how can we possibly deliver care in other settings outside the hospital’ — that’s a very hard thing to rationalize and figure out. But if you don’t do those things; if you don’t figure out how to dispatch care to the home, how to provide care in post-acute care settings and long-term care and rehab, then I think we’re missing where the industry’s moving — and where our consumers want us to be.
Aligning incentives
And so, I think digital means, whether it be telehealth or other remote patient monitoring tools we’re investing in, can help in a lot of ways, but it’s also reimbursement and population health or value-based care that’s dictating that agenda, because the incentives have been historically misaligned. We got paid better when patients were in our hospital; now we’re getting paid better to keep patients healthy, in some respect. It’s catching on. That’s what I mean when I talk about consumer experience.
The experience needs to be simple. But our experience in healthcare is so complex. We have to take the friction out of it. We have to make it easier to navigate, which might mean care navigators in our hospital helping patients through their journey. I think it needs to be go beyond the hospital; we need to create an easier environment for consumers to navigate. I think there’s a lot that we can be doing there.
“There has to be an easier way”
Gamble: Right. The thinking has definitely shifted, but there’s still a long way to go.
Sturman: We always say healthcare is an industry that’s behind from a technology standpoint. But I would also argue that healthcare is behind, but from an experience standpoint. There’s only one way for us to go, which is good. But we have to get better. There must be an easier way to do this. The Amazons and Googles and Apples of the world have figured out a lot. We can borrow from them, and from other industries that I believe can influence how we do things.
Share Your Thoughts
You must be logged in to post a comment.