← Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Amy Linsin, EVP and Chief Human Resources Officer at Prisma Health
00:15:20
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- [00:00]
Molly Gamble
Hello and welcome back to the Becker's Healthcare Podcast. I'm Molly Gamble of Becker's and today I am joined by Amy Linson. Amy is the EVP and chro at Prisma Health. Amy, thanks so much for being my guest today.
- [00:12]
Amy Linson
Glad to be here.
- [00:14]
Molly Gamble
I've had the privilege of joining you in conversation a couple times earlier this year, Amy, but not in the podcast format. So I'm looking forward to catching up with you and your work at PRISMA Health. Can you start off for listeners who might be less familiar with the health system? Tell us a bit more about it and about yourself too.
- [00:30]
Amy Linson
Sure, sure. I've been with PRISMA Health for about six years now. We are located in Greenville, South Carolina. We're a not for profit healthcare system and the largest healthcare system in South Carolina. We were formed by bringing two smaller organizations together in 2018 and we have since added a partnership with a facility and system in Tennessee. We have 32,000 team members, 6 billion in revenue, 19 acute and specialty hospitals, and about 1.6 million unique patients annually.
- [01:12]
Molly Gamble
Great. Thank you so much, Amy. So 32,000 team members and it's been quite the interesting year for leaders like you. Can you get me up to speed on what trends you're watching currently? What has been really taking most of your focus, either for better or for worse?
- [01:29]
Amy Linson
Okay, I would say that it's a little of both. Some of the trends that we're watching obviously are in our sort of meta environment and a lot of sort of fast cycling patterns in our external environment. Some of the things that I keep close to are trust, trust from our patients, trust from our team members. And when you look at trust across the country and you look at some of the studies, I think about the Edelman study, which is a trust study, that's an international one, but it basically lets us know that we are at an all time low for trust in leadership. One of the things that stands out to me from that Edelman survey is what they refer to as hostile activism. And there are several organizations, shrm included in that group, that measure that juvenile activism means, you know, attacking people online, intentionally spreading disinformation, or threatening or committing violence. Basically you've got 40% of those surveyed saying they, they agree with it, not that they do it, but that they agree with it when it happens. So that is clearly a trend that we don't want to have in our, in our workplace. Right. So that erosion of trust stays on my mind. There's been a lot of uncertainty we see especially in the, in the for profit sector. We've seen so many companies that have had to go in and revise or withdraw some of their 2025 financial guidance and a lot of it's based on, on tariffs. And in healthcare, of course we have to look at what's going on with the Medicaid, Medicare spend and how much that will affect us.
- [03:13]
Molly Gamble
Amy, I wanted to follow up with you about the Trust Barometer report. This is from Edelman, like you said, and it's been tracking trust and institutions and stakeholders, like you said, for 20 plus years. And the finding that you just voiced over is very concerning how hostile activism is seen increasingly as a acceptable or legitimate way to drive change. And I think in health systems especially these are places of healing, of treatment, of care. I can't imagine a way of driving change that is more across purposes with the mission of health systems than hostile activism like you said. So I think this is a concerning finding across many industries, but I imagine it has a special edge to it in your role. Right.
- [04:03]
Amy Linson
We're very consumer facing, we're patient facing. We see the public every day, all day and 24 7. And what, what we focus on is leaning into who we are obviously and our values. But for our team members and patients, we want to make sure that we maintain our space of safety, psychological safety and physical safety. So in times of like really big transformation and times when trust is lacking, we need to stay on, stay on the balls of our toes. Right? We need to stay forward thinking, being agile and change ready. And I think that staying optimistic while we do that is going to be really, really important. I think that we can be agile, we can react, we can be agile and be psychologically safe at the same time.
- [04:54]
Molly Gamble
And agile, I mean agility is just such a, it's a necessary mindset and skill more than ever, it seems there's so much coming down the pipe and so much information to constantly be consuming and registering and reacting to if appropriate. But that brings me to my next question, Amy. I mean in your role especially, you mentioned the 32,000 team members, you mentioned that this PRISMA is an organization that came together from a 2018 partnership. So putting you, you know, seven years out of post M and A. I know the effects of M and A can really linger though for systems. Talk about what you're focused on next. Looking ahead, can you give us any insights into what 2025 for the remainder of the year holds for you in this role? Anything that we can expect out of Prisma Health or keep a closer eye on Yes.
- [05:45]
Amy Linson
I think that part of what we're looking at is making sure that our workforce has the skills that it needs to meet our strategic goals in the next three to five years. And that's not easy. So I'm thinking about the change management piece. We're doing a lot of work in that area. But if you break it all the way down to think about what you do when you walk in your office or place of work every morning, you have some predictions, predictability, you know where the coffee machine is, you have a certain chair you like to sit in, you have a light that you like to turn on. Any of those basic things around place and ritual. We're trying to keep as calm as possible. We want to make sure that the physical space and that the routines that typically ground people, the things that we can keep the same. We want to keep the same. And we want to make sure that we are change ready, but that we can move in an agile way. We want to change, but we don't want it to be crazy turbulent like we're seeing on the external in terms of being a little more predictable. Team members and leadership having agency, making sure that they feel a sense of belonging in the change. In other words, we've invited all the right people to the table to discuss that change, making sure that the change makes some sense. That there has been this feeling of, yeah, my boss told me about that. I was talking with my leader and she said we should do X, Y and Z and we should expect this, this and this. This is how my day will change. And these are how the things, these things are going to stay the same. In other words, the coffee is going to still be in the same place. My chair is going to remain here and I'm going to be in this office. So making sure that people feel that almost radical communication around the changes is going to be very important for us. So we know that our leaders embracing that change, we need to help them make sure that they stay in their values and the values of the organization and that those behaviors continue to align, Maintaining, especially in healthcare, that trust. When we look at that Edelman survey, that's, that's something that we're focused on going forward. And one other thing about that Edelman survey is that they measure trust in government, NGOs, business, and, you know, not for, like, media. And the one group that has stayed higher in trust than the other groups are the business leaders. And so it makes a little bit, it feels like a little bit more responsibility on those of us who are business Leaders to ensure that trust because they. They don't feel it anyplace else in the world. So that's a big. That's something that we're managing. That disruption and that communication. Leaning into our authenticity is really important. The other bigger picture that we're looking at in PRISMA Health is not being at the mercy of all these changes. We're in control of this. We have a plan A, we have a plan B, and we have a plan C, and we can adjust accordingly. I would say that for our leaders, we're encouraging them, gosh, way more than we would normally do. We're outside of a normal. Here's our budget. This is what we would do this year almost on a monthly basis. We're revisiting all of our numbers and we're asking everybody to look around the corner quite a bit and imagine, well, if this happens, we need to be ready. If this happens, we need to be ready and just making sure that our leadership has the tools and the skills that they need to be able to think in a forward fashion with all the uncertainty.
- [09:22]
Molly Gamble
You just tie that together so wonderfully. I wanted to ask you too, Amy. I mean, change management, to me as a, as a writer, a communicator, journalist, it often seems like this term that it's a little. It's a little sleepy compared to the work it actually takes, which can be grueling and very challenging and emotionally charged in some ways. Is there a misconception about change management that you've encountered at any point throughout your career that you think still stands to be defied?
- [09:52]
Amy Linson
I think so. I think that unfortunately, we view change management as sort of a salve in the past, right, to say, yeah, we had to do a downsizing or we had to do something really difficult, and now let's manage that change. I'm talking about going forward in a much more proactive way where we are involving leadership way before the change even happens. We're getting their buy in their agency and making sure that they have the proper tools and communication tools with their teams. These things take a minute. And with all the change going on in the outside, we have to receive the input from our leadership and pause. So a lot of times, I think in our past, especially with two organizations here at PRISM coming together, we've said, okay, great, this is what we need to do. Let's do it now. We're embracing the pause. We're saying, yep, we know, we think this is what's going to happen. We think that this is where we might be and now pause. Do we have all the right people at the table? Do we have everybody we need at the table to be able to manage the execution of this change well so that people's psychological safety stays intact and we still get the good business impact on the other side, Right?
- [11:08]
Molly Gamble
Yeah, that's such a great point. So often seen as a sav. It can actually be a really proactive and recharging way forward too. Yeah. And maybe related, Amy, you know, we're talking about, about leadership, about change management, about the turbulence in the ecosystem surrounding PRISMA Health. But if you had a pause, while it's top of mind, what advice would you give to evolving leaders, especially those pursuing long, healthy careers and human resources and working so closely and in such a strategic way with people?
- [11:41]
Amy Linson
Yeah, you know what? Outside of just all of the traditional stuff, which is do your job really well, make sure you're being noticed for the work that you are doing. You know, growth, mindset, I would say a couple of things. One, be ready to say yes to a couple of things that may not be in your wheelhouse. Because what I'm seeing in pretty much all leadership roles, but especially in the HR leadership role, is that we need to be able to speak to consumerism, for example. We need to be able to run a project really well. We need to be able to think about marketing and communication in pretty much everything we do. We need to have that great sense of financial stewardship. And I would argue right now we all need to increase our competency around technology and particularly in the AI space. So one of the things that we've done here, for example, is very traditionally you would have an HRIS leader and then maybe some leader that does team member engagement. That's one person for us, and it has helped us. And the person who leads it is not a tech person. He's armed with several tech people within his unit. But he is a person who has helped us improve our survey results five years in a row. And we have 900 survey ambassadors that help us get, get the very high participation. And we're leading in team member engagement across the industry. And I think that's because we were creative about it. We weren't traditional about. I think that when you're going to be a new leader or even a leader that's trying to evolve and grow, you really have to be creative, take advantage of all the learning opportunities you can to learn about what everybody else is doing. It's essential. It's essential. You have to be able to read the news today and Understand. Oh, if they do that, it might affect the market. I need to go look at my benefit plan. I think we might be invested in some of those funds they're talking about. We need to have that level of competency.
- [13:52]
Molly Gamble
Right. What you just described there so often health systems talk about taking or reducing, eliminating silos, and it's often in the context of functions or services. What you just described there is like taking the silos away from skills and competencies and areas of expertise, or at least familiarity, as these different technologies and pressure points continue to not only emerge, but really take up more and more space.
- [14:21]
Amy Linson
Molly, I heard something earlier today actually, and the leader of this group was talking about becoming the utility player and that really resonated with this. So utility player, I think that's like a baseball thing. You know, somebody who can play third base, second base, and can pitch or something. That, that all of us right now need to be that utility player because things are coming in so quickly. We all need to be able to. To react together. Aligning the our team with those skills is going to be really important and we're working on that.
- [14:56]
Molly Gamble
Yeah. Well, I think with a leader like you, Amy, it sounds like they already have quite the head start. So I want to thank you so much for being my guest today and the Beckers healthcare podcast. It was great to catch up with you. I know you are one of those leaders who can see the forest and the trees, so I really appreciate this conversation and learn from you today. Thank you.
- [15:16]
Amy Linson
Thank you, Molly. I appreciate the opportunity.