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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Darian Harris, CEO of Mills-Peninsula Medical Center at Sutter Health
00:09:25
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Transcript15 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hello, this is Naomi Diaz with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast. I'm so excited to be joined with Darian Harris. Darian, thank you so much for joining us today.
- [00:09]
B
Thank you so much for having me, Naomi. Really excited to be here with you.
- [00:12]
A
Awesome. I am excited to be here with you as well. I would love to start off just with our first questions just so we can get to know you. Can you just introduce yourself, tell us a little bit more about how you got into health care and a little bit about your organization as well.
- [00:25]
B
Absolutely. So, as is the case with any military kid, it's been an interesting journey, both professionally and personally. Couldn't be more proud to do what I get a chance to do. I'm the CEO of Sutter Health Mills Peninsula Medical center out in the greater Silicon Valley division of our Sutter Health Organization. Personally or my professional journey, I've gotten a great opportunity to work at some incredible organizations in all four corners of the country. Originally from North Carolina, but have worked from Mass General to Kaiser Permanente to a proud University of Washington husky Masters of Healthcare Administration alumni, and have learned a lot about the incredible successes and best practices from across the country. And I'm proud to get a chance to put them to great use in service of our communities out in California as a part of the Sutter Health Organization.
- [01:13]
A
I love that. I felt the passion in your answer there too, Darian, and such an extensive history from everywhere, all the organizations you've been at. I would love to pose for our next question. A successful initiative in the last 12 months. So what's something that you took on that you're particularly proud of, and what impact has it had on your organization so far?
- [01:31]
B
Absolutely, I appreciate the question. There's a lot to be proud of at Sutter Health. We serve more than 3.5 million patients in our communities. And I think it would be a surprise to probably many of your listeners that even in my hospital, which is a 301 bed hospital with two campuses in the greater Silicon Valley, access is still quite challenging for our community. And so when I think about really what our mission is, which is to serve our patients as well as our caregivers and our people, really the great success that we've had in advancing access to care in our community has been one that I think both myself and our entire team are really proud of. And a great example of that, actually, in this past year, we have one of the most rapidly aging communities in Northern California, in the Peninsula area. And so one of the ways that we've Expanded access to care is actually our cardiovascular center of Excellence efforts. And so everything from opening a brand new cutting edge telemetry unit on our inpatient hospital, to launching one of the most innovative cardiothoracic robotic surgery programs in Northern California, to rapidly expanding access through some great collaborations with our medical group, recruiting new clinicians that increased access to our cath labs by more than 30% in this past year has been pretty incredible. And with the tremendous support of our president and CEO of Sutter Health and the system executive team led by Warner Thomas, we've secured almost $100 million to actually further expand our Cardiovasc center of Excellence work within our existing hospital. So incredibly proud time to be at Sutter Health, certainly at Mills Peninsula Medical center, and a great opportunity to better serve our community with greater access to care.
- [03:18]
A
Wow. I mean, that's definitely expanding access. And I love that initiative that you mentioned there, Darian. And I know you mentioned that getting access as that challenge there, but can you think of any other significant challenges currently facing healthcare? I know we could probably do a whole podcast on that, but how is your organization kind of addressing that challenge as well?
- [03:39]
B
I think that's a great question. And I think you highlighted so many examples of probably a four hour podcast that we could do on the many challenges facing healthcare. But I think in that vein, actually taking a step back, one of the biggest challenges facing healthcare is actually the fact that we have so many adaptive challenges, but we need to solve them in a very technical timeframe, which is very short. Right. And so I think fundamentally, that's one of the biggest challenges facing healthcare is how do we solve these really complex moving targets, from access to workforce shortages, to increasing aging communities that need greater levels of complexity on both the ambulatory and inpatient side. How do we create a workforce and a leadership infrastructure that allows us to make more thoughtful decisions, have the skill set, and tackle some of these adaptive challenges in a shorter amount of time? And so we're tackling that in a couple of different ways. I think first and foremost, it starts with investing in our people, investing in leadership development. Really proud of the organization's work in that regard. There's a quote that says the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is today at Sutter Health. We're planting a lot of trees, you'd say, building off of that leadership capability around addressing those complex adaptive challenges. We're going to be tripling the size of our graduate medical education programs at Sutter Health over the next few years. We're also investing heavily in the digital infrastructure and thinking about not only how we connect our patients with greater access through digital platforms with our physical infrastructure, but also alleviating the burden on our clinicians and caregivers as far as documentation. And a great example of that is our partnership with a bridge platform that helps ambient listening during the visits, allowing our clinicians to reconnect with their patients. And so incredibly proud of the progress that we've made planting those trees and solving some of those challenges. But I think fundamentally it comes down to the leadership competency about how do we solve more complex challenges in any even shorter amount of time.
- [05:37]
A
I mean I love that highlighting great things, investing in your people as well as technology to give that time back with clinicians, with patients through that abridged partnership there. Love those examples. I want to ask next, what is the biggest leadership lesson you've learned so far?
- [05:53]
B
That's a great question. I think as I reflect the biggest leadership learning really over the last couple of years, and I think highlighted in many different respects coming out of the pandemic is the necessity for us to both balance positive restlessness as far as progress and that continuous striving for excellence in getting better with thoughtful pause and thoughtful time to critically reevaluate, strategically think and reprioritize. I think that one of the best quotes I've heard in recent years, navigating the pandemic or otherwise, was, you know, it's not a sprint, it's not a marathon, it's prolonged high interval training. Right? So how do we go through these cycles of really working hard and making progress thoughtfully aligned to the strategic plans? But take the moment, take the the time because quite frequently the best time saver of all is time devoted to thought.
- [06:43]
A
I love that and the analogy just sets it up so perfectly there and really great leadership lesson that I think anyone listening could really take back to their own organizations. I want to round us out and talk about workforce. Obviously we're hearing a lot about shortages even at all our panels at our conference today want to ask. Obviously this remains a number one challenge for many leaders in healthcare. How is your organization working to address these challenges with the workforce?
- [07:09]
B
I think that is one of the cornerstone questions that we're all facing across the healthcare industry. And one that when we reflect at Sutter Health and certainly at Sutter Mills Peninsula Medical center, we recognize we need to be a part of the solution. And so I think as many multi factor approaches as we could take, one of the ones that's potentially most direct in conjunction with us, you know, actively supporting, you know, Charles Drew University in Southern California with tuition assistance. Something we're doing locally at Mills Peninsula Medical center with the support of our system, is we actually own our own diagnostic imaging school and have for the last 60 years. And so part of the exciting piece around that is it's a tuition free program. And so when you actually start thinking about, you know, socioeconomic mobility for those in our community looking to find a path into healthcare, you know, and you reflect on the rising cost of tuition and things of that nature, the reality is we have to be able to provide our community and provide these passionate people who are coming into healthcare not because it's easy, but because it's worth it, a pathway to actually come in and not be saddled with that additional burden. And so to that extent, we're really proud to not only have consistently supported this program, but we've doubled the size of our graduating class in this last year. And with the support of our system executive team and Warner Thomas and others, we're going to be tripling it again over the next three years. And so we're incredibly pro and we think this really represents a great example of how we can think differently about our role in healthcare and providing pipelines for our staff, for our community, not only as engines of health and well being, but engines of economic and socioeconomic development for those who have a passion for serving patients like we do.
- [08:55]
A
I mean, again, just a great initiative and something definitely to be proud of. I mean, I think sometimes when it comes to workforce, it can be roted, reactive decisions, set of proactive. And Sutter seems to be taking that proactive approach to that pipeline. Darian, thank you so much for being on the Becker's Healthcare podcast today. I appreciated your insights and so glad we were able to talk today.
- [09:15]
B
Thank you so much, Naomi. Really excited to be here with you and proud to get a chance to share a few words with your audience.
- [09:21]
A
Thank you so much.