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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Building a Culture of Safety and Leading Agile Hospital Transformation with Dr. Mayank Shah
00:22:33
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- [00:02]
A
This is where healthcare leadership comes together. Becker's 16th annual meeting brings more than 3,500 hospital and health system executives and nearly 800 speakers to Chicago, April 13th through the 16th. This year's event includes keynote conversations with Dallas Cowboys legend Troy Aikman and former President George W. Bush. For the agenda and event details, visit Beckershospitalreview.com and click on the Events tab in the upper right. We're looking forward to hosting you in Chicago.
- [00:32]
B
This is Laura Dearda with the Beckers Healthcare Podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by Dr. Mayank Shah, Vice President and Chief Medical Officer at Advocate Condo Medical center, part of Advocate Aurora Health. Dr. Shah, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
- [00:46]
C
Laura, thank you so much for having me and looking forward to our exciting conversation talking about healthcare.
- [00:53]
B
Absolutely. And you know what a huge topic and important time to be speaking on these things. I think there's just so much happening in the healthcare space. I'm excited to dig into some of the things you've been doing at Condell Medical center as well as how you're thinking about the future. But before we dive in, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and the hospital?
- [01:13]
C
Absolutely. So Advocate Condell Medical center is a 275 bed facility located in the Lake county area in Libertyville, Illinois. We are the only level one trauma center in the entire Lake County. We serve roughly 16,000 inpatient visits annually as well as over 200,000 plus outpatient visits throughout our facilities. We see significant number of anywhere from 1400 to 1500 deliveries a year. We have a significant number of patients and community programs that go beyond that and we're part of the Advocate Health system that offers over 6 billion in community benefits annually to the communities that we serve. So it's great to be part of a larger system and also very focused on the service that we provide to our local community. For myself, I've been the vice the Chief Medical Officer at Advocate Condell Medical center for the last two and a half years. Prior to that I led the Medicaid plan in Illinois as the Chief Medical Officer and prior to that I was part of the non not for profit health care system leading as the CMO of the Physician pho, essentially the partnership organization with our aligned physician groups within the organization. I also had in the middle a stinch with Cigna Healthcare and leading their primary care practice at home for about three years. That's kind of my background. I've worked both on the payer and the provider side. And it is extremely wonderful to be part of organization at Condell. Not only focused on delivering outstanding care to the communities that we serve, but really thinking about all of the healthcare impacts and how do we navigate through the dynamics of healthcare changes that we're seeing today.
- [03:15]
B
I love that. I think that's so cool that you've gotten the experience both on the provider side as well as the payer side and now able to bring that into your current role and really make an impact on the community. Now, based on the last year or so, could you tell us about an initiative that you led? What did you do and what were the results?
- [03:34]
C
Yeah. So you know, coming into an organization, you know, there's always purview of what is the role of the cmo. A CMO continuously wears multiple hats at the hospital. If you asked me this, you know, about 10 years ago, the focus for a CMO was purely on the quality of care and clinical programs at the hospital. That is no longer the case. I think the CMO really needs to be a diverse role looking at all aspects. But the first and foremost accountability and responsibility we have as a CMO is creating a culture of safety and quality. And I'm very proud to say that Condal has achieved both of that in the years that I've been here. When I started at Condal, we were a leapfrog C grade organization and we have moved towards an A organization. The last three grades they we have received are all A's, straight A's, you know, for, for Condell. And that speaks to the amazing quality of care provided at Condal and being able to show, demonstrate and capture that has been sort of the pride of accomplishments at Condal. I would say the second and more again important that the quality perspective, from a safety perspective, another important aspect is creating this culture of safety. And what that means is being attuned to anything that puts patient safety at risk. Being on a journey of a high reliability organization which means continuously pursuing safety challenges, safety reports, and looking at all of those tools and tactics such as preoccupation with failure and integrating those tools into our day to day operations so that we could be the safest possible. As you know, there's 400,000 deaths predicted every single year from safety incidences occurring at our hospitals across the country. Our primary goal is how do we minimize that. Hospitals should be a place of recovery, not a place of incurring injury. And that is a fundamental principle we hold very dear to our heart. And so promoting that culture, creating that movement within our teams to navigate and continuously pursue quality improvement and safety improvement has been some of the best outcomes I think we've been able to accomplish in 2024 and 2025. And the outcome of this has been that Condell currently leads the entire advocate health system in terms of our safety reports that we submit month after month and year after year. And that accomplishment came from working together as a team and leading the efforts to create the culture of safety.
- [06:13]
B
That's so impressive to hear and come from where you started with the organization to where you're at today. And being leapfrog a and leading advocate health within the quality care and improvements is really impressive. I'm curious, from your perspective, when you look at the changes that you've been able to make over the years that you've been with Condell and you know, what especially has made a difference? I'm curious, what did you learn, I guess, during that process and you know, anything that surprised you or things that you feel like really made a difference to accelerate that focus on high quality in patient safety?
- [06:56]
C
You know, Laura, that's a great question. And I would say that one of the, you know, despite healthcare advancing so much in the last decade, I have to say that we continue to work in silos within the healthcare delivery space. And I think many times we lose the vision and purpose of our work until we come together and until we're able to ground ourselves in that vision and continuously validate each other that we are moving towards that right goal, I think we lose that purpose and that vision along the way. And this is what leads to a lot of burnouts that we see a lot of discouragement and dissatisfaction where people change careers and a lot of people shifting from hospital to outpatient to different areas within the healthcare market. And I feel that was the fundamental change that we were able to make as leadership team at Kandal is really aligning with our goals of creating the highest quality and safety environment for everyone, whether it's our teammates, whether it's our patients and families, or whether it's our providers and how do we create that culture of safety? It really started with creating a vision and a mission, a purpose and having grounding ourselves in that we call it condal kind. So what that means is really grounding in that principle of what our identity should be. Who do we want to be in the market and with our patients and communities that we serve. And once that definition was clear, it was very easy to get our teams aligned to do the right thing and not only doing the right thing, but also creating new ideas and new opportunities to create this culture of safety and quality. So I would say that the fundamental change was really grounding ourselves in that vision of our identity and how we wanted to show up every single day at work and in our communities.
- [08:55]
B
I love that. Thank you so much for digging a bit deeper there. Now, Looking ahead in 2026, what are some of the big priorities and headwinds that you're focused on?
- [09:03]
C
Another great question. I think the biggest challenge that we face is a lot of uncertainty in the healthcare market with the shifts that are occurring on the payer side, with some of the regulatory changes and shifts that are occurring. One of the key things that we need to build in healthcare going forward is a lot of agility, moving with speed when it comes to change adaption. And I think that is one of the biggest headwinds that I see for us in 2026. We need to build the right infrastructure so we could be far more agile in healthcare than what we have been in the past. To give you one example, in healthcare there's a belief that, that when a new study or a new treatment option comes out, it takes 10 years for us to adapt that into mainstream practice. That can no longer be true. Right. Going forward, our healthcare, our delivery, our knowledge is changing so rapidly that I think we need to be a lot more agile than waiting for 10 years to adapt those changes. And so how do we create that agility from ground up? I think that is one of the biggest challenge that we face as an organization and as healthcare market. And so we look forward to partnering, we look forward to learning best practices and we look forward to innovating in this space so that we can continue to adapt and change. It requires a very different mindset from our physicians, from our frontline teams, from our workers, and then also requires an enormous level of collaboration. I was shared an image that change management is like a rider that is riding on top of an elephant. And an elephant has three parts, right? We consider the head of the elephant, we consider the body of the elephant and the tail. The head is sort of your leaders that are continuously helping you navigate through change. They're the visionaries that help you at the front line. They're the ones that are quickly adapting to change and defining the path that you're going to walk on. Then the body is sort of the rest of the, the, the system, the provider, the teammates that really drag along with the change process. And then your tails are the people that are normally resistant to change. They want things to be the way they are. And so when we think about that body, it's really thinking about how do we create an infrastructure that supports all three parts of the elephant right of course ahead we leverage the opportunity and the motivation that those leaders have to create the vision and the path. Then we create how do we motivate and invigorate the body to continue to move forward. And then how do we address those people at the tail that really are reluctant to change and bring them along through the journey so that we don't leave any parts behind and that we create no abrasion and we create a holistic moment towards that change. And then we want to do that with agility, with quickness, with with fast paced approach, with the number of changes coming our way. And so I feel like that is one of the biggest challenges and barriers that we continuously work through. And we're adapting and pivoting and building in 26.
- [12:16]
B
That's amazing to hear. And I think it's so prescient to have that understanding of the mindset that needs to shift within your teams and looking at that nimbleness and the agility, especially knowing what is coming down the pipe and how quickly things and changes and best practices need to be adopted. And I appreciate the mental model too. When you're talking about the elephant and everything else has, you know, a really helpful image when you're thinking about, you know, how you're moving forward. I'm curious, what do you think the hardest thing you'll have to do in the coming year will be?
- [12:48]
C
Oh, there's many hard things coming our way as we think about the headwinds. But I think the hardest thing is, you know, what's happening from the government side, what's happening with our payer limitations. And as parts of the healthcare markets get squeezed, it truly becomes our accountability and responsibility to meet the needs of our community. So how do we expand our scope beyond what we're doing today to continuously look at that need and address? To give you an example, many hospitals are struggling with their margins. Although advocate is doing really well overall. We continue to think about what happens when there's limited resources in our community. Whether we're talking about social resources, whether we're talking about access to healthcare, whether we're talking about payer specific resources with things like affordable Care act at risk and lot of uninsured and uncovered care increasing in our markets. How do we continuously think about the challenges of meeting those needs, keeping our communities healthy and productive and continuously look at those opportunities of Prevention before the cost of care gets out of hand. Those are the key headwinds that we continuously think about being creative in our model, thinking through opportunities for expanding the scope of how we think about revenue generation, and then continuously thinking through how do we fund that revenue to benefit the communities that we serve. To give you an example, in the Chicagoland area, Advocate Health has committed to a $1 billion project and putting up a hospital in the south side of Chicago. Again, this is an area that's been avoided and neglected. It's called a healthcare desert. You've heard stories about the age discrepancy that we see across a single street in that neighborhood. And so trying to figure out how do we serve that community, leveraging our scale and scope to continuously meet the need of our Chicagoland communities that we serve, and how do we think about the global benefit that we create across the entire country? So those are some key challenges that we continuously think about. I think the unpredictability in the healthcare market with the regulatory changes, a lot of changes in the health, the dynamics of what's happening out of Washington can truly impact our local delivery in a significant way. And so building cushions and ability for us to bounce back and be agile, to create programs and meet the needs of our community is constant thinking that we do as a team.
- [15:29]
B
I love that. And I think in looking critically at some of those things that you mentioned, how are you making sure that as you've got all these dynamics happening, whether it's financial, whether it's, you know, some of the other headwinds that you talked about, and then looking at the change management that we've been discussing for those folks who are the tales, who are, you know, at the end that want things to stay the same and are really resisting some of these changes that are going to help you accelerate growth and development and transformation, how do you work with those folks to really bring them along and get them into a position to see that big picture and why what they do every day is so critical to change a bit?
- [16:08]
C
Laura, that's such a great question and it's so insightful. And what I've learned over the years is oftentimes those people who are resistant to change are resistant either because of a fear of that change creating something that is going to create either more stress or create an imbalance in their own personal life or in their financial life or in their, you know, individual life balance overall. And so how do we address that meaningfully? I think the first and foremost is digging deeper into understanding what matters to them most. We talk about addressing this with our patients, but we need to do that with everyone, whether it's our teammates or providers, our communities, what is it that matters the most to them? And then I think working around seeing the change differently, instead of saying that change is disruptive, I think seeing the change being collaborative and helpful and how can it address and really redesign our workflow to help us in that direction can be a huge way that we begin to uplift. You will still find some people that are resistant. They're going to see how the change is adapted and done with others, and oftentimes leveraging their peers and other people who can really show them that they trust, I think could be a great way. The other opportunity that I see is really redeveloping and building trust in healthcare overall. There's a lot of dissonance and separation that's beginning to occur with administration and people in the front line of care delivery, with how we manage the business of healthcare, with how we deliver care, and the vision and mission of what we do. And sometimes that malalignment as venture capital investments and others get into healthcare leads to a lot of abrasion with how our providers view healthcare overall. And so I think bringing them along and helping them see the good that we can create with appropriate change management and making sure that they have a vision and a stake in the process can be hugely helpful in navigating through, through and bringing everyone along. But it definitely requires a lot of effort. It requires infrastructure so that we can find out those deeper thoughts and deeper concerns and then continuously build our vision around that to support them as well. But, you know, it's an effort. But like I said, if you build it correctly and if you do it the right way, it could be hugely helpful as we navigate through the changes that are coming our way in healthcare. To give you one example, we deployed Dex Nuance, which is our platform for ambient listening and node generation. And initially there was a lot of thought about, wait, this is going to create disruption. I have one more task to do in the day. But once we found those early adapters and they were able to come back and they were able to share with others that it really decreased down their pajama time. The notes were amazing and it captured so many things. And then we started to collect safety events and episodes, like things that were found by ambient AI that perhaps would have been missed by providers who were relying on their memory to document things that we could comment on in terms of patient experience. And what was the patient's perception of that encounter. Like those are deep insights that now we could learn that perhaps we're missing from our prior approach. And once that vision was created and that depth of information was shared, it was very easy to now expand the adoption. So we're still working through that. But it's been invigorating to have the peers promote the change themselves and then create this process of adoption.
- [20:08]
B
I love that and what a great example of how you can really work with those team members and empower that, the growth and the adoption and everything else. I love that example and it's so helpful to illustrate everything you've been talking about today. And before we wrap up, I wanted to just touch on growth as well. How do you see the big opportunities for growth coming through at Condell Medical center and what do you see as being some of the things that your mind most focused on for the next year?
- [20:36]
C
Another great question, Laura, and I think, you know, there's a short term plan and there's a long term plan. As we think about our strategic planning and how we think about growth, I think the reality is that, you know, our perception in our healthcare market has been very hospital centric and that is quickly shifting. As we look at alternative places of care delivery, we look at different models and innovation when it comes to health care, the adoption of AI and you know, shifting of care more in the community setting. I feel there's an opportunity for us to think differently about healthcare and expanding the scope beyond the hospital. And so I think hospitals will in the next few years will really be looking at their model of care and thinking about how do we integrate with a lot more services, preventative services and things that previously affected the bottom line of the hospitals, but truly in the long run benefit us in creating health and wellness in the communities that we serve. I think that shift is coming and that is truly the prominent way that we are pivoting to think about growth for Khandal is truly looking at our community needs and how do we meet those needs through creation of programs and innovation within healthcare delivery model.
- [21:58]
B
I love that. Dr. Shah, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. This has been such an informative and fun conversation and I look forward to connecting with you again soon as well as at the annual meeting in April. I know you'll be speaking on a panel there and really touching on many of these themes and digging a bit deeper. So it'll be great to connect and look forward to seeing you.
- [22:18]
C
Laura, thank you for the opportunity to be interviewed today and I love Becker's for all the great information and best practices you all bring forward to help all of us in the healthcare community. So thank you.