← Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
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- [00:01]
A
This is Laura Dardo with the Beckers Healthcare podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by Cody Walker, president at Baptist Health Medical Center North Little Rock. Cody, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
- [00:10]
B
Happy to be here, Laura. Thanks for having me.
- [00:13]
A
Absolutely. And you know, I really appreciate your time today. There's so much happening in healthcare. It is truly just transformational to think about all the things that leaders of hospitals and systems have to think about today. But before we dive into our discussion about some of the things you're doing in North Little Rock and, you know, your perspective on the future, I would like to see if you could introduce yourself and just tell us a little bit about the hospital.
- [00:34]
B
Yeah, absolutely. Like you said, I'm Cody Walker and I'm the president of Baptist Health Medical center in North Little Rock. My primary responsibility is to oversee a very busy 225 bed tertiary care center that's been serving our community for over 60 years now. Additionally, I have oversight of several departments, including case management and our transfer center. And just more broadly speaking, Baptist Health has been providing compassionate care across the state of Arkansas for the last century. We're a 2 billion dollar company with 12 hospitals and over 200 outpatient locations. And our core mission has been to make our Kansans healthier by elevating how we deliver care. Our biggest win. Yeah, it's got to be how much we've improved in hospital patient flow in the last year. In the last few months, we've launched what we like to call Operation Raptor, which is using predictive analytics in partnership with our friends at Lean Toss, to tackle some of the biggest challenges in healthcare today. Patient throughput and overall length of stay. In the last year alone, we've given back more than 30,000 hours of unnecessary wait time to our ER patients across our four urban facilities. We've achieved a. We've achieved all of this through really a maniacal focus on reducing what we like to call the patient out patient in time, or poppy time, essentially the time that it takes from a discharge order to clean the room and admit the next patient into the same room. We've also made a very concerted effort to increase our overall discharges by 11, collaborating closely with our medical staff. This is an intense focus and it's quadrupled our performance since starting. We're now consistently achieving 30% discharge rate before 11am the success wasn't just about generative AI. It's a profound cultural shift amongst our teams. No matter the amount of technology, culture change remains a contact sport, if you will. But being a part of this change, the resourcefulness and dedication that our teams have shown has honestly been a highlight throughout my career. You know this, but ed boarding has reached a crisis level across the nation. We hear it amongst our colleagues very frequently and it was recently highlighted by the American College of Emergency Physicians in a letter to Congress. AHRQ then prepared a response to that letter on behalf of Department of Health and Human Services by way of a summit conference back in October of 24. They outlined many, many ways to address the current situation, but we're employing a lot of those and more in this past year. And Laura, you're familiar with the resilience and creativity that healthcare workers possess and I know you hear lots of stories of success throughout the country and I'd like to say that this group is truly remarkable for what they've achieved. We've recovered about 10,000 opportunity days and length of stay, which has essentially created a capacity of a 30 bed unit without spending a dime on new construction. This has resulted in kind of the halo effect of reduced ED diversion, optimized length of stays, which has created capacity for more transfers and downstream revenue impact and getting patients ultimately home on time to recover and stay there while we recover or make access for other patients who need us. Now. It's been a true testament of teamwork for our entire staff and that's what I'm most proud of in this past year.
- [04:14]
A
Wow, that's an amazing journey that you've been on and results that you've already achieved in the last year. I think it's incredible and critical, as you mentioned, to having the technology and the right infrastructure in place, but then the right teams and leaders who are able to create that culture change and embrace what you need in order to provide better care and more access for your broader patient population. So I'm just floored by everything that you mentioned, mentioned here and it's fascinating to be able to learn more about, you know, that journey and how you're able to continue to grow and develop there. From your perspective, what are the top two to three issues that you're focused on right now? Where do you see most of your time being spent?
- [04:58]
B
Yeah, you know, I like what Peter Banko said the other day. It's access, access and access. And that's, that's really the same for us. But I'll add some additional focuses of ours as well. You know, access is more than just generating new revenue, it's life saving. Right. I love what Dr. Omar Lateef and the team at Rush are doing around reducing the death gap in Garfield park and some other neighborhoods around the west side of Chicago. Kaufman hall released a premature death rate graph due to preventable and treatable causes by state. And to be honest, Arkansas did not really fare well in those ratings with some specific opportunities and infant and maternal mortality. We've got several leaders here within Baptist Health taking action to change that, but currently, you know, several, some of the folks that we've honed in on around people, processes and technology. And so first, just about people, you know, it's about keeping them here. Like a lot of healthcare systems, we're facing some staffing challenges and we're really focused on attracting new talent, making sure that our current employees are happy and engaged, giving them lots of opportunities to grow in their careers, being a place where they can promote and stay with us because it's just a great place to work. We've partnered with some local high schools to encourage students to get into healthcare, creating pipelines for them upon graduation to become LPNs and really jumpstart their ability to join the workforce. We bring them into our campus and travel to their classrooms to provide real life leaders and highlight more than 300 different types of careers that exist within our hospitals. We spend a lot of time looking at ways to advance our own people through clear promotional pathways while exploring ways to reduce onboarding birding along with new ways to dynamically schedule the shifts that really work for everybody. You know, the next thing around processes, we mentioned just a little bit of that in the previous answer, but we're continuing to make all of our clinical processes super efficient. I mean, that's the goal, while ensuring top notch quality. Despite all of our improvements, there still remain several pockets of opportunity. And we're constantly looking at all those ways to streamline what we do without ever cutting corners on why we're here, and to provide high quality patient care. That means leveraging our data to find areas that we can improve, adopting best practices, and then just listening to the front line because they've got the best ideas. There remains an incredible amount of waste in healthcare. You know, we're a big operation and we pride ourselves on the complexity that we have. But there are a lot of opportunities if we really take a moment to look under the hood, whether it's keystrokes in the EHR or boarding hours like we've mentioned, waiting room time in our outpatient centers or in our hospitals or in our clinics, or just sheer minutes that are spent on hold to schedule an appointment, you know, as leaders, we've got to take ownership in these opportunities to optimize all of our assets, our human, technological and facility assets, with a sense of urgency. Our goal is to eliminate anything that doesn't add value for the consumer, to simplify access to all of our care points. Healthcare's got so much opportunity to learn from other sectors. We've actually been drawing on inspiration from the airline industry and some of their sophisticated logistics recently have, you know, the hub and spoke flight patterns and specific ways that they, you know, focus in on turning around aircraft to get it back into the air. A lot of the theories they've optimized have direct application to healthcare operations. We're looking at rideshare analytics and how they link supply and demand weeks ahead of time. We've got some similar data now that can aid in staffing beds for future demand. We spent a lot of time researching public utility sector, specifically how energy divisions model load placed on the grid through variable forecasting. And this ensures that when you or I flip on the switch in our kitchen, the light is always available. Imagine if healthcare could be that reliable. How can we create processes behind our equivalent light switches so that healthcare can be just as dependable? We're exploring recent advances in the space industry regarding cost reductions, reliability, and automation. This philosophy is what underpins that Operation Raptor initiative. And thus far, we've reduced the bedside nurses documentation burden by 30 minutes of shift through virtual nurse implementation and other reductions inside of our EHR arena. Ultimately, we aspire to be the most reliable and predictable and efficient health system in the country. And with our recent efforts, we focused on acute care. But now we're shifting that attention to the ambulatory front. Like many others, we're heading down that ambient listening path to uncover more opportunities and better engage with our patients versus engaging with the ehr. But ultimately, our big goal is to be, you know, that, that bhag, that reliable, predictable, efficient health system. And we know that healthcare is an infinite game. And though it's. There's not an annual hospital operations award ceremony, we're competing against ourselves and our personal best. You know, recently our efforts have been focused on that hospital side. But like I said, we're gonna, we're gonna shift it to our clinics. And then the last issue, I'll wrap it up, is we've really focused on bringing new technologies to improve patient care. And healthcare world is changing so fast with new tech entering our inboxes every day. Over the years, I've heard it said that when looking to implement new solutions, that we should employ this EHR first strategy, essentially that notion that if our EHR vendor offers a solution that we should, we should consider it before looking to the outside. But we've really got a. And we're starting to do this, shift our focus from EHR first to consumer first. And we're actively looking ways to implement a new digital front door, all aimed at putting that consumer at the forefront, making it easy for patients to get care, you know, improve access through a virtual first lens while making our day to day operations run smoother. You know, I can get my groceries delivered to my front door the same day with a few clicks from my phone. How cool would it be if we could, if a prospective patient could self schedule a primary or a specialty care appointment in less than 60 seconds. There are new entrants to primary care that are close to pulling that off. And we in the traditional health system enterprise can do that. It requires challenging the norm, simplifying the steps, bleeding anything that is unnecessary, accelerating the process and then automating it. And that's our goal. I hope to come back and share with you soon how we're able to achieve it.
- [12:11]
A
I love that. And I think all of those things you mentioned here, just so much going on, but especially looking at whether it's technology, expanding access or really finding ways that you can rethink about how you're delivering care outpatient in the home and simplify those care points. As you touched on the last part of your answer, is so much, much around how you can provide a better experience for patients, better care for patients, and really keep that consumer front and center. So I think it's fascinating to hear all of the different things you're doing on a variety of levels to achieve that goal hospital wide, not only from your vantage point of the C suite, but for the caregivers on the front lines as well. I can imagine that's a huge undertaking, but as you said, an important one as the healthcare system continues to evolve. Now, looking ahead, when you think about growth and development, what are some of the big opportunities that you have in mind for the next few years or so?
- [13:07]
B
Sure. You know, looking ahead, there's, there's huge opportunities for growth and it all boils down to like, like we've said, you know, putting the patient, the consumer first and they're begging us for it to be, to be frank, you know, for a long time healthcare has operated in a way that suited providers within the confines the ehr. And frankly that hasn't worked all that well. And we Absolutely have to shift to being consumer centric. We've got a lot of headwinds ahead, but I'm very optimistic about the future. Despite all the noise, there's incredible resources at our disposal, most more than anywhere else. And it gives us a real chance to solve some of the biggest issues in healthcare. AI clearly is the number one topic across industry today. And I'm sure like many others, AI is, you know, there's so many use cases that can be applied and it's overwhelming at times to think about all of those pockets. You know, whether it's ambient or agentic, treatment and clinical support predictions of all kinds, the list goes on. But within the next year, you know, health systems will have their strategies and use cases in place for what they're willing to invest and try for now. But you know, the biggest opportunity in my opinion is virtual health, outpatient and high end specialty care. Those are the three things in the immediate forefront that I can think of. You know, first, you know, we're going to essentially hit redial on virtual health. It's not the COVID experience that helped to bridge the much needed gap. It's a new focus on asynchronous care where you can gather nearly all the information before the appointment, deliver an efficient and effective care to patients wherever they are. Imagine how much more efficient that makes things for both the patients and the doctors. Right? If we can be running in parallel so that when it's time to engage, we can make it efficient. Because with new players entering the primary care space, health system like ours have a big advantage. We can offer patients a truly integrated network that big box companies just can't replicate. So we got to think about our tech solutions now to retain and earn our loyal patients another big area in our outpatient and ambulatory services. Healthcare is moving more and more outside the hospital and into clinics. And so we're planning to grow our network of clinics by leveraging the health parks concept, where you can get a lot of the services in one convenient spot closer to where you live and work, including urgent care centers, specialized doctor's offices, imaging lab work and therapy, all under one roof. And then finally, it's about developing our specialized services, doubling down on advancing the key specialty areas that just differentiate us from anyone else in the market. Advanced heart care, women's health, neuro and behavioral health is what comes to mind. You know, like I said, that the insurance coming into healthcare in the primary care space, the one thing we can do that can't be replicated is that specialty and High end service line. You know, we have to continue to excel in what only we can do. You know, that's also critical care. We got to invest in technology and convenient access to bring bring in top specialists. So we're, we remain that go to place in the region for those complex needs, make access possible and affordable. We're going to spend a lot of time on how we can level load patients across our system, ensuring that the right care is delivered at the right time in the right place. Arkansas in large parts of rural state. So we have to plan to leverage our transfer center to repatriate patients to our rural facilities that can provide appropriate care close to home that also aids in recovery and reconnecting patients to their communities while promoting patient satisfaction.
- [17:07]
A
That makes a lot of sense and it is really amazing to see all the different opportunities that you have from the health system level. When you look at the way technology is evolving, the way that the ideas around healthcare and healthcare delivery are really making a big evolving as well and making a big difference in terms of how you're thinking about health systems, how you're thinking about some of those specialty areas as well as primary care to really make sure that access continues to broaden in the future. Now, when you're looking at everything that it takes in order to create a thriving organization today, I can imagine it will continue to change over the next five years or so. What does it take in order to be a successful leader, especially during these times when things are changing so quickly and access as well as consumerism are top of mind for so many healthcare organizations?
- [18:00]
B
Yeah, that's a fantastic question, Laura. It's a lot, right? It's going to take a few key things in my mind, you know, as things are rapidly evolving and changing, we've got to remain agile. You know, I think that's fueled by a lifelong love of learning and a pretty healthy dose of humble curiosity. You know, outlets like Becker's do such an amazing job of showing us all the incredible innovation happening within our sector and so many leaders out there solving really, I mean, complex problems. To lead effectively, we've got to be willing to invest in ourselves to keep learning and growing. And if you're listening to this podcast right now, you've already taken the first step towards leading a thriving organization, which is great. We have to be really intentional about plugging into these kinds of outlets among many others to understand what others are trying and, and learning from. There's no need to reinvent the wheel, right? We need to be adaptable and looking ahead, anticipating changes in healthcare and be ready to pivot our strategies quickly. In order to do that well, we have to listen more. The better leaders, the best leaders have to be the best listeners and the best listeners ask great questions. We've got to listen to our colleagues, our communities, consumers listen to thought leaders within our network. And once we've done that, well, then let's go out and try something new. I tell leaders all the time, don't let perfect get in the way of progress. If you're, if you maintain a willingness to try something new, you're going to surface groundbreaking approaches for the betterment of patient care and overall operations. We are in a valuable test and learning window with a few crucial months before the wave of uncompensated care arrives within the next couple years. The second thing I'd say is it's about making a deep investment in our people. A company can't be considered thriving if its workforce can't believe in its future. Our workforce is without a doubt our greatest asset. A truly thriving organization will always put the well being, professional growth and engagement of its employees first. That's competitive pay that solid benefits, the opportunity to advance through the organization and creating a work environment that's generally supportive, inclusive and fun. A place where everybody feels valued and empowered. And then the third thing I'd say is we need to be fanatics about access and efficiency things we've mentioned, but by doubling down on analytics to prove it. You know, Ken Kaufman said it well earlier this year that executives need an urgency as an immediate core competency. That struck me, you know, especially now with recent federal legislation, we've got to optimize, you know, on all fronts and leverage our systemness for patient's sake.
- [21:08]
A
It's amazing to hear and you know, true words of wisdom coming out at such a crucial and essential time as this. Cody, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. Been such a fun conversation. I learned so much and truly amazing things that you're doing there in North Little Rock. I look forward to continuing this conversation in November. I know you'll be speaking at our CEO CFO Roundtable and it'll just be amazing to see you in person and have you part of all the conversations that are happening in that space. A lot of connections and you know, just such a really fun time to be there. So I'm looking forward to it.
- [21:41]
B
Yeah, thanks for having me. And I look forward to the conversation as well and looking forward to meeting so many others around the country at the upcoming meeting.