Leadership & Workforce Insights from Becker’s 16th Annual Meeting

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE:

 

Daniel Marino:

Welcome to Value-Based Care Insights. I am your host, Daniel Marino. In today's episode, we're going to reflect on a really good conference that occurred in early April, and it's the… it's the Beckers Conference. It was the 16th annual meeting that they had in Chicago at the Hyatt Regency, and often on the show, I do like to reflect on conferences, especially those that seem like there's really some strong takeaways and some strong topics that were discussed. The conference was extremely well attended, and my kudos to the Beckers folks. There was about 3,500 executive leaders that attended, and over 900 speakers, most of those were both, advisory professionals, but a lot of folks that, you know, leaders, operational leaders that are working through a lot of the day-to-day activities. It was just great to hear a lot of the feedback there. But there were a couple of really key themes that I thought were takeaways. Obviously, we talked about AI. AI, seems I can't go to a conference these days without talking about artificial intelligence and how to operationally deploy it, and I thought, you know, the Becker's team did a good job of kind of identifying some good topics there. There was a lot of discussion around margin improvement, margin recovery in the hospital, in the ambulatory setting. But two of the areas that… that I thought, in my opinion, kind of, really struck home, one was around designing workforce, and really the workforce of the future, concepts around stabilization, how AI sort of is incorporated in there, you know, of course, talking… working through some things related to burnout mitigation and wellness and so forth. And then the second topic was around executive clinical leadership and the development of executive clinical leaders. There were a lot of physician leaders, a lot of clinical leaders who attended. As a matter of fact, I had the opportunity to sit on a panel, with a couple of, actually 3 very strong physician leaders, and the discussions that, that we had, out of that, and it was really value-based care driven, was, was exceptional.

Well, I'm really excited today to have two of my colleagues, who attended the conference, provide their feedback, their thoughts. Amanda Adams is a healthcare strategy and finance executive. She has more than 20 years of experience and has worked with hospitals and health systems all over the country. She's done a lot of work with not only improving financial performance, but also supporting a lot of leaders in leadership development. I'm also joined by Jessica Wells, national expert… leader of medical education and learning. She's done quite a bit of work in workforce innovation, workforce development, and just creating a lot of stabilization of workforce within hospitals and health systems. Amanda, Jessica, welcome to the program.

 

Amanda Adams:

Thank you.

 

Jessica Wells:

Thanks for having us.

 

Daniel Marino:

So, Jessica, maybe we could start with you. Give me your thoughts on the meeting. What was one or two of your big takeaways?

 

Jessica Wells:

Yeah, thanks. Same for having us. I agree with you, Becker's was a… it was huge. One, you can almost see and hear so much of what's going on. I spend a lot of my time mostly on the academic medical center track, and so while, yes, everybody was talking about margin improvement, margin recovery, we also were talking quite a bit around, in the academic medical center side, or in the teaching health center side. This idea around what does it mean to train the next generation of the healthcare workforce was becoming quite broad around, okay, but what does that really mean? Because just training individuals doesn't necessarily mean you're training the right workforce, or what's the care model of the future that we need to be training towards? And then secondarily, having an academic and research mission in the pressures that we're seeing within the models, what is that that actually now have different pressures for these institutions in this particular regulatory environment coming up that creates different types of models? What does it actually mean to be integrated as a health system or integrated as an academic center? And so, those started coming up as just quite a big pressure point for what is it… what does that change necessitate, or what do those leaders need to be, or what do you need to be able to… to… to really succeed in the… in the next generation of our health system?

 

Daniel Marino:

Well it's the change in the balance, right? Especially when you're thinking about the different missions of the academic environment. I mean, that certainly comes into play. So, Amanda, you sat on a panel, and supported a panel around executive clinical leadership. What was some of your big takeaways from the discussion and the panel that you sat on?

 

Amanda Adams:

Thanks, Dan. Yes, I, had the honor of moderating the panel that was the next evolution in clinical leadership. So, we had two CMOs and two chief quality officers, all of them MDs in different markets. I think the takeaway was just in how to train up physicians to be in clinical leadership positions, and what they need to learn now, and how they need to learn it, and it's not just a stopping point of, take a break, go get an MBA, and come back, and you're a physician leader now. It needs to be integrated in what's needed for the organization. So there were some tidbits on how you can begin to position yourself as a clinical leader and taking on more responsibility in the organization, reframing what they're thinking about in clinical leadership, and what does that gain that? Not just another administrator, but… but how does that integrate you with your Physician Foundation and your physician, and create that, authority and camaraderie and negotiating power when you are promoting clinical leaders. I also went to another interesting panel on rural healthcare, thinking I was gonna… we were going to talk a lot about financials, but we ended up talking a lot about workforce, and at the other end of the spectrum, and just younger folks and getting them engaged. So there's just a lot of touched on training at all different levels.

 

Daniel Marino:

Well, and all the evolution of the workforce that goes into, kind of, supporting growth and the growth of, you know, in many of the rural environments, the human capital and the investment in the human capital is the largest challenge that many of these institutions have. So when you think back, and I attended a number of the sessions, and as I mentioned, I sat on a few of the panels. Financial performance and really expanding the financial performance, was a common thing. Growth was a common thing. And, Jessica, you touched a little bit on this in some of your initial thoughts, but when you think about the workforce and, you know, the staffing, the teams that they have in place, the workforce in general, I mean, that's the largest asset, really, an organization has. And yet many of the… what I sensed was many of the leaders in the discussions were around. Ensuring that the workforce is prepared to take on the challenges that we're seeing. How was that discussed? Was… was… give me some thoughts in terms of. How some of the development of the workforce, the growth of the workforce, the initiatives that are in place, how are leaders thinking about that to get the workforce ready to take on these challenges, maybe to overcome some of these challenges, and make sure that the organization is financially growing?

 

Jessica Wells:

Yeah, that's a… it's a really great question. What we're starting to see is an evolution from the academic requirements of our workforce being an academic problem instead of it being an us problem. So, it used to be that we would matriculate learners to graduate. And then when they would graduate, that would become the clinical workforce. And now we're starting to see when we move this back into the curriculum, we're now able to start to graduate folks that are actual model-ready, or bedside-ready. And so when we are working together and moving that back into the curriculum side, now we're becoming much more nimble at what does that mean, and that becomes more of an integration strategy. And so, when we combine the academic and the clinical environment together, that's the winning solution. But when we have these two different sides of the house that are operating clinical and we're operating academic independently, that's not working. And innovation, when we do it together, that is when we're starting to see that as a winning solution, but it's being… it's a slow… it's a slow transition for folks to recognize that this is actually what we have to do to create that workforce that is actually going to be what we need in the future. So we have to get earlier on in that kind of time frame.

 

Daniel Marino:

Absolutely, and, you know, one of the things… I sat on a similar panel as you were just describing, or I attended a similar panel, I didn't sit on it, but defining kind of the path towards that integration, as you've described, with the academic mission versus the clinical mission, or the research mission versus the clinical mission, you know, for academics, that's a big challenge, right? And what many organizations are seeing, and this came out, was they have teams of members who do different things. And one of the questions from one of the attendees was, how do we better leverage that expertise so it goes across the different, you know, the different missions? And not only is that important in the academic side, but it's particularly important when you think about the community hospitals and health systems, and even rural hospitals and health systems.

 

Jessica Wells:

Yeah, and truth be told, incremental integration doesn't work either. You can't just pick and choose where you're going to have integration, or where you're going to collaborate on things, you have to stop doing it that way, because that's actually not creating that aligned functionalities to it. Your data systems are… when your data systems don't actually talk together, when the governance is so different, and when you don't have an alignment on any of that, then there's actually just two different operating systems that think that they're functioning in two different silos. And then when they want to work together, they choose when that works. And that's exactly what we are seeing as not the way that it actually functions together. And then you just have folks who sometimes work together and sometimes don't, and that doesn't work for any of your actual folks who are supposed to be working together. And so what we see and what we help our clients do is to break down all those barriers to actually integrate and to truly create that functionality that works together, so that there is no bifurcation between what is academic and what is clinical? It is one environment.

 

Daniel Marino:

Yeah, it just becomes a single environment, and they're kind of sharing those resources across the different environment, really around the common goal, if you will. If you're just tuning in, I'm Daniel Marino, and you're listening to Value-Based Care Insights. I'm here with Amanda Adams and Jessica Wells, two colleagues of mine, and we are reflecting on the Beckers Healthcare Conference that occurred earlier in April. Amanda, I want to turn to you, because, you know, you had mentioned another common theme there that I've seen was really around advancing rural health, and In rural health, obviously they, you know, there's a lot of challenges to just the rural health market, certainly the one big beautiful bill, some of the reduction in some of the funding, changes and shifts in supporting Medicaid and so forth. But, you know, one of the things that I saw coming out of that was the evolution of developing the leaders specific to rural health, and the growth of those leaders within the rural health environment. And although there's a lot of nuances that are specific to just rural health, being able to understand and translate what's occurring in the larger healthcare setting to a rural health environment is really important. When you think about that, and from what you heard around rural health and that development, how is that… what are some of the organizations or the big takeaways that you heard around development of leadership, or some of the change agent, or even some of the big initiatives that many of these systems are doing to move their organizations forward?

 

Amanda Adams:

And I'm glad you mentioned the, the, one big beautiful bill. The, rural health system cannot wait to figure out what's going to happen with the funding for rural health, and… and for that to trickle down, and what really is the final impact with Medicaid. They need to do something now, and their staff, if you have someone in a rural health system, and it's a couple people that are out, that could be half of your, one of your programs. So the staffs are really, spread pretty thin, and they're, working… some of the initiatives they're working on and focusing on are upskilling while people are in one job, looking at what they can do in the future. Jessica talked about silos, and we've talked a little bit about how there's sort of these milestones of education. You achieve this degree, and now you do this thing. But, shifting to a continuous learning environment, that people are training for the next job while in the current job. They're cross-training, particularly in rural environments, so they can help each other out when staff, when some departments are understaffed. If you're waiting for the regulation, and for the money to begin flowing in a different way, and you're trying to keep up with that, you might be closing programs. And once a program is closed in the rural health system, it's really hard to start that back up again. So upskilling and cross-training, also what kind of partnerships can be developed? The systems of the rural health hospitals are partnering both with larger systems to help with some of those resources. They're partnering with virtual care organizations to, on both ends of the spectrum, from the primary care perspective, to help that primary care crunch if we don't have enough primary care physicians or APTs.

 

Daniel Marino:

And even providing a larger breadth of services, right, that goes across that whole continuum. One of the sessions that I attended, and we had talked about this in the value-based care area that I was in. Was the, how some critical access hospitals, how some rural community hospitals are starting to integrate with these larger systems within a clinically integrated environment, and really moving away from being able to provide as many services or, you know, as we can to the community, but really focusing on those two or three impactful services that the hospital can provide, but then integrating, then, the other support services within a larger clinically integrated network or an organized system of care. How was that addressed in the session? Did you see a lot of those strategic alignment discussions around integration, around network development, around, you know, the advancement of providing shared services of some sort?

Amanda Adams: Yes, and transportation is a big issue, so thus we're leaning into virtual care and getting subspecialty care online so people are not having to drive hours to get to that program if it's not part of the rural hospital. And not only are they partnering with the larger health systems, they're partnering with each other, because there may not be that opportunity at a health system, and that may be very, very far away. And if they partner with each other, and not necessarily kind of carve up the services, but really identify who is providing, perhaps, subspecialty in one area versus a different hospital, focusing in another area. They can create a little bit more of a catchment area for those patients that don't have an opportunity to travel. These hospitals have very high payer makes in Medicaid and Medicare. This is not a population that can just hop in their car or get on a plane.

 

Daniel Marino:

No, and sometimes it's a good couple hundred miles away as you'd be able to, you know, to connect. And, you know, I think transportation challenge… I mean, that's an issue, right? And I think that's where virtual health certainly comes into play. Jessica, I'm going to turn back to you and kind of building on a couple of things that you said, particularly around that level of integration. And tying it to another theme that I… that I heard, in a number of the sessions, and that's really around incentives and compensation design. Particularly in the academic setting, you know, this, I think always… it's a continued challenge, right? What's the right compensation model? How do we ensure that we're building a model that incentivizes our, our physicians, our scientists, our teams across the different, you know, missions, if you will. What were some of the big takeaways that you picked up on related to workforce alignment, incentive creation, and just overall compensation design?

 

Jessica Wells:

Yeah, it is always a challenge, because sometimes if you don't have an aligned emissions, we sometimes can have contradictory models that, at the risk of the other, can be competitive. And that can, not on purpose, but can then put it… put things at odds. And we want to be very mindful that if we're not paying attention to one mission or the other, then we're inadvertently creating a competition amongst the time and tension that we're wanting to do. So we have to recognize that if we do have a mission that, in essence, has multiple areas, teaching, research and our clinical excellence accordingly, then we have to recognize that our compensation models have to recognize the parity of that, and to compensate accordingly. So if our… if our models don't do that, then there's actually just a de-incentivization according to that. And that's not… that's not what we want. We want to make sure that we have a value attached to that. And sometimes that's hard to do if we don't, again, don't have line of sight, and we don't kind of connect those environments together. And when we have those siloed environments, that actually is when that does also occur. When we're compartmentalizing each one of those areas independently, then we're actually not seeing all the way across, and we want to try to carve all that out. Fortunately, the providers, or those who are teachers, or researchers, or who have multiple hats that they're trying to wear, they actually see that across as being, I've got 3 masters, but nobody understands what each one is doing across, and so they start to compete against each other. And so we want to actually look at that more holistically as an organization, and that's what we need to be able to help drive towards, because that's actually all together the same. Foundationally, optimal clinical environments then have optimal teaching and optimal research all together.

 

Daniel Marino:

It all comes together, yeah.

 

Jessica Wells:

Right. And now when we have, like, these really innovative models of payments, like value-based care payment models, or others, we have to recognize that that also is part of our payment structures. How does that actually create more incentives for everybody who provides care as well? So, it's… it's quite complex, but we can do it when we start to look at it as a more holistic environment, as opposed to trying to carve it all up independently.

 

Daniel Marino:

So, when you were, when you were talking through that, did, were any of the sessions kind of giving advice on where to start, right? Because when you're working with compensation models, particularly as you're starting to create that level of incentives, you know, to your point, it's complicated, right? There's a lot of different areas there. So, you know, and many academic organizations are, you know, they're currently working through this. Where's the starting point?

 

Jessica Wells:

I'm gonna… it sounds like a broken record, but you gotta remove the silos. You can't have the beeftrans that traditionally we were built on. I mean, we just…We kind of were… we grew up that way in the United States. We just… we had academic missions, we had research missions, and we had clinical missions. And while they were all underneath one roof, we acted and functioned in a lot of scenarios as three different, or if we had partnerships in which we had one side of the house who managed and owned part of the mission, and we have other parts of the house that own and manage other parts of the mission, we still create and manage them as different parts of the mission.

 

Daniel Marino:

Organizations, yeah, yeah, separate silos.

 

Jessica Wells:

Correct, but think about the… our, you know, our teachers, and our researchers, and our clinicians who are sitting in the middle, and that's a really difficult place to… how do they… how do they understand it, and how do they… they just want to do a really great job, and they just want clarity on what does it mean, and to feel valued for the work that they do. And the learners who are sitting in the middle, who are your future workforce, they can feel that tension sometimes.

 

Daniel Marino:

Sure. Well, it really then starts with leadership, right? Starts from the top, and I think you know, as I've said, form follows function, so if you're able to break down those silos and have it integrated, you know, I think, to your point, I mean, then you're in a much better position to incentivize that level of behavior, that level of support, that level of activity that's going to drive the success. Amanda, I want to turn to you real quick. You know, as you were sitting in some of your sessions, either, you know, facilitating the panel or hearing a couple of the other things, were there… were there a couple of strong pieces of advice that you thought really resonated with a number of the of the attendees, and, you know, really focus as big takeaways for the other providers that were in the audience.

 

Amanda Adams:

I want to touch just a second on AI, because as you mentioned, it came up absolutely everywhere, and that was maybe the biggest deer in headlights. What do we do? How do we handle it? So, in focusing on that and what that means to your workforce, where are the places that it can be used to, help identify the bottlenecks of your patient care and figure out where your staffing needs to go. It can build models to help you be really dynamic with your staffing levels if you have a pretty thin staff. What administrative tasks, like scheduling and that first level of call, taking in calls, how can it help? And not in a way of taking over jobs, but in a way of creating, a better environment for your people. You're just talking about compensation, and you can't separate compensation from incentives. Just focus on the money, you're going to lose your people. Right. So how can… how can you make their lives better, and give them that purpose at the end of the day without burning them all out.

 

Daniel Marino:

Yeah, I kind of get the impression with AI, everybody's kind of figuring… trying to figure out, you know, what's that… what's that quick path, right? What's the… you know, everybody talks about it, and everybody is trying to figure it all out. I think one of… with some of the folks I was at the meeting, they're like, okay, well, we're… we're tired of hearing about what AI can do. We want to experience the results. So, I think we're going to see more and more, and talk more and more about that. Well, ladies, this has been wonderful. I appreciate you sharing your insights, and it sounds like there were some really big takeaways for you all, and some thoughts going forward. If any of our listeners that are tuning in today, would like to contact you, or maybe follow up, share some of, you know, hear a little more of your insights, would you mind sharing some of your contact information? Amanda, maybe you could start?

 

Amanda Adams:

I don't mind at all. You can find me on LinkedIn. There's a lot of Amanda Adams, but if you do LinkedIn.com/N/AmandaW.Adams, you should get to me. And you know you're the right person if you see ECG in my, work history.

 

Daniel Marino:

Wonderful. Jessica?

 

Jessica Wells:

Yeah, same thing. There aren't that many Jessica Wells, though, so fortunately, that's easy to find me, but also my ECG email is jcwells@ecgmc.com. So, thanks so much for having us, we really appreciate it.

 

Daniel Marino:

Well, a special thanks to both of you, really appreciate you joining and sharing your thoughts, and again, a big thank you to a lot of our listeners for tuning in. If anybody is interested in learning a little bit more about this topic or other topics, please visit luminaHP.com/insights and ECGMC.com For this and information on many other topics. Until our next insight, I am Daniel Marino, bringing you 30 minutes of value to your day. Take care.

About Value-Based Care Insights Podcast

Value-Based Care Insights is a podcast that explores how to optimize the performance of programs to meet the demands of an increasingly value-based care payment environment. Hosted by Daniel J. Marino, the VBCI podcast highlights recognized experts in the field and within Lumina Health Partners