← Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
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- [00:02]
A
@ Athenahealth, we know your ambulatory practice wants healthier a healthier business, healthier care teams and healthier patients. But the complexities of modern healthcare tech make it hard for you and your care teams to focus on what matters most. That's where athenahealth can help our AI native all in one solutions reduce administrative burdens, streamline billing and payments, and deliver critical insights when clinicians need it most. That means fewer clicks, more time for patients, and stronger bottom Practicing medicine is complex, but running a practice can be that much simpler. With Athenahealth, see how simpler is healthier at athenahealth.com.
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B
This is Laura Dardo with the Beckers Healthcare Podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by Emily Jacques, President of Northwestern Delano Hospital. Emily, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
- [00:56]
C
Thank you, Laura. Thrilled to be here.
- [00:59]
B
Now I'm excited for our conversation because I know there's so much happening in healthcare today. And you know, truly it's been fascinating to hear from leaders on our podcast talk through all the different changes and transformations they're going through. But still, you know, a lot to be excited about as well as get in line for the next couple of years. So I'm looking forward to learning more about how you're thinking about things and looking in the future as well. But before we dive in, I'm wondering, could you introduce yourself and tell us just a little bit more about Northwestern Del Nor Hospital?
- [01:29]
C
Certainly. Again, really glad to be here. Emily Jacque I'm I've been at Del Nor for the past year, which is a 159 bed community hospital, a part of the Northwestern Medicine Health Network community of hospitals in the west suburban greater Chicagoland area. So the far west suburbs of the greater Chicagoland area. I am originally from Michigan, but have been in Chicago for about 20 years and been working in healthcare kind of in the Chicagoland area since. But it's been a wonderful, wonderful time for me to be joining the Northwestern Medicine team, the leadership team, and it's just a privilege and an honor to lead at Del Nor Hospital, a community based hospital, like I said, in an academic health system. With our anchor, Northwestern Memorial Hospital in downtown Chicago, we very much function like a community hospital. We're level two trauma, level two nicu, have a very comprehensive set of services, including a robust surgical platform, very busy cancer center, interventional radiology, interventional cardiology, and this really busy cardiology program in general. And I like to say it's a hospital that acts bigger than it is.
- [02:56]
B
Oh, that's wonderful. And you know, it's just extremely important community that you're serving and certainly a great kind of visual of knowing, you know, how much you are doing there in every, all the services that are available. So that's amazing. I'm curious, you know, being new to Northwestern now, what's your biggest winter success story from the last year or so?
- [03:19]
C
Well, that's a great question and something I've spent a lot of time thinking about. So Northwestern Medicine operates on a fiscal year that starts in September. So we are right at the beginning of our, our new fiscal year for Northwestern and for Delor. And I actually joined Delore in August of 2024, so right at the beginning of the fiscal year 25. So as a leader, for me, one of the things I'm most proud of is acclimating to a new health system into a new hospital, a new community. One that I am just so incredibly proud to serve. I would say, you know, we had a. We had a. We're in a part of the far west suburban Chicago market that's an incredibly growing community. So parts of it can feel and are more rural than others, but there is a great flight to this part of the state and the suburban surrounding area. So we're preparing for population growth, we're preparing for more people, more building more business, joining our community, which for us is a really exciting time. It's really incredible to see north. So Del Nor Hospital came together with Central DuPage Hospital back in 2013 as cadence, the health network of Cadence. Cadence joined Northwestern memorial system in 2014. So there's just been an incredible alignment and investment on our campus at del nor since 2014, which is really positioning us for growth. So, yeah, I mean, for me, me it's been as a leader and for anyone listening who's taking on a new leadership role, I'd say personally the success for me has just been acclimating to this new community in this incredible new hospital that I am privileged to lead for Delnor. There's so much to celebrate. They're a top performing hospital in both inpatient quality metrics as well as engagement metrics. They have seen year over year growth and an incredible retention rate for our workforce. So we've been doing a lot of Our fiscal year 25 look back and there's a lot to celebrate.
- [05:38]
B
That's amazing to hear. You know, really cool to understand how the hospital developed and you know, the support from Northwestern too, making a big impact on the community and services that are there now in looking at where you're at today, what are the top two to three issues that you're focused on? What are you thinking about as you're making decisions that I know will impact the future?
- [05:58]
C
Yeah, I mean, what a dynamic time, right? To be a leader in healthcare, especially in the hospital and health system side. First and foremost, we can't do anything without an absolute laser focus on our quality performance and our health outcomes. So we're. This is something that we talk a lot about at Delnor about staying consistent. We've had really strong performance. We're actually, we've been the number one or two performing hospital in our Vizient cohort for our health outcome performance all throughout the last fiscal year. So for us, it's about not just getting to that top decile performance, but staying there. And how do we invigorate our leaders around staying excited about continuing to have that strive for excellence. So without strong quality performance, nothing else matters, quite frankly. So that's always a top issue that we're focused on. I'd say every health care leader and hospital president is really thinking about the financial landscape, especially in the state of Illinois. We have some incredible challenges ahead of us with a Medicaid program that really expanded over the last several years that could see some federal changes coming down the pike. So we're thinking a lot about how we, how we manage those headwinds coming our way, how we start to look at our growth and think about where smart growth is while also serving our growing community. And that's something that our executive team meets on a bi weekly basis just to make sure we're kind of all connected around our outcome performance, our engagement performance and our financial performance. The third thing, and I would just be remiss if I didn't mention it, talking a lot about both employee and clinician wellness, how do we support our workforce, how do we support our clinicians and our physicians? An incredibly trying time to be navigating some of the challenges that we have. But the healthcare sector is no stranger to challenges and we know that we're up for them. We just want to make sure our team is taking care of themselves along the way.
- [08:20]
B
Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. And I think all of those issues seem like really important for you as a leader to be tackling. And I'm curious, when you talked about some of your growth initiatives, what smart growth look like, could you go a little bit deeper there and you know some of those aspects or areas where you see some of that opportunity for growth?
- [08:44]
C
Absolutely. So I would Tell you, you know, we're super proud to be a part of the Northwestern system. And the academic medical center downtown has a much different strategic roadmap than say, a del nor hospital in the same health system, but out in a much different market. We can't be, should we be everything to everyone? So what we're thinking about our investments at Delnor, you know, how. What do, what does our community need? How do we best serve our patients? Is there a growing need or demand for services in our community? And what do I mean by that? I'd say things that are really specific and unique to Delnor. It is a busy outpatient and procedural surgical platform. So people like to come in for their scopes for small procedures. We have a very, very busy diagnostic imaging suite. Some of our scanners are some of the busiest scanners in the state of Illinois, but we're poised for that. We have really good parking, we have really good access, and that's something we're proud of. I'd say that's a part of our business that we're really trying to think about. How do we stay efficient? How do we continue to provide access and grow in spaces and places where our health system and our community need us to? And that's certainly the outpatient, elective surgical, procedural space. We also have to think a lot about throughput. We have, we are a certificate of need state in Illinois. So it's not easy necessarily to add capacity where we feel like we might need it. So how we think about efficiency and access becomes really important when we talk about the emergency room or our inpatient bed utilization and our length of stay and our throughput initiatives. We have to just be really careful about how we're filling our hospital with and with what kinds of patients and procedures and post operative admissions to make sure that we can see that kind of throughput we need while again continuing to meet kind of this growing demand in that far west Fox Valley market of the suburban Chicagoland area.
- [11:06]
B
That makes a lot of sense. You know, it is really a fascinating time to think about how all of these different factors are converging to really, you know, need creative solutions into how you can make sure patients are have access to the services as well. As I know you mentioned earlier in the conversation, looking at clinician wellness and supporting the workforce, not overburdening them to make sure that, you know, the demand is met. And so it seems like just a really important time to take a step back and look at the hospital and systems holistically and then figure out where you can create some of that growth.
- [11:43]
C
It really is. And I'd say the thing that's fun about where we're headed is that growth comes and looks, looks, looks like different things along the way. It's not just about filling your hospital or your modalities with patients or with volume. We want to make sure our patients are getting to the right location at the right time. Something that we're really trying to manage closely at Del Nor and across Northwestern Medicine is access and wait times. We want to make sure our patients, if they're having a hard time getting into a certain specialist or a certain service, how are we proactively managing that and working across the inpatient and the hospital environment with our medical group partners, our physician partners, and our ambulatory functions, just to make sure that, you know, patients are not getting lost as they're trying to navigate that service. Like I said, we know we can't be everything to everybody. That's where being a part of a health system can be really valuable. If we can't serve you. At our hospital in Geneva, Illinois, in the Fox Valley, we have a lot of great options at one of our sister sites who might be specializing or reserving beds for certain kinds of conditions and disease states as well.
- [13:03]
B
That makes sense. You know, in looking at that coordination, making sure the patients are getting to the right place or facility location for their care, are you leveraging technology or how else are you looking at coordinating all of this differently than you have in the past?
- [13:20]
C
Oh, absolutely. One of the really interesting. Well, Del Nor happens to be one of those sites within our system that functions as a pilot for a of things. Upon my arrival, they had launched a partnership with a kind of a robot named Moxie who is at many of our sites helping out with the delivery of either specimen pickup or pharmacy deliveries, just to help our workforce really keep our people at the as close to the patient as we can and save steps elsewhere. We had also launched at Delor, a drone delivery service, again, where we can can move materials, move medication across sites more quickly, and make sure our people are reserved for the work that we need our people to do. When it comes to partnering across our system, we are certainly leveraging telehealth everywhere we can, especially access to some of those hard to recruit medical and surgical specialties to make sure we can have consultation or a specialist weigh in when and where they can. A lot of us will say one of the things that Covid forced us to be better at is our virtual care options, and we're Just all so glad to see that resource and tools still alive and well on all of our campuses.
- [14:47]
B
That is great to hear. Thank you so much for digging a little bit deeper there now. I wanted to look into the future too. What will it take to lead a thriving organization over the next five years, especially given all of the things we talked about today in looking at the different dynamics in healthcare right now and how they could potentially evolve as time goes on?
- [15:08]
C
Laura, it's, you know, I, I spend a lot of time thinking about this and like I said, there is no one working in healthcare that is a stranger to challenge and curveballs. When I really think about what is it going to take, the thing that I'm most passionate about and if you've worked with me, is the functionality and the ability to have a really strong, empowered leadership team. Every single hospital, every single health system has unique sets of challenges ahead based on your market, based on the patients you serve, based on your ability or not to recruit physicians and clinicians and nurses. You can't face any of those challenges without a very strong leadership team with a deep bench. So one of the things that my executive team and I work on a lot is how are we thinking about the leaders we're developing? How are we supporting those leaders, how are we identifying strong who might have an interest in leadership and showing them a path of how and where they can grow? Something I say all the time to my teams is healthcare is the ultimate team sport and it takes everybody doing the best at their role to the best of their ability to get excellent results. And when you see excellent results at a hospital or health system, they certainly do not come by accident. Everyone has a different level of expertise that they're bringing to that team. But it's really, I think the teams that differentiate themselves spend the time and take the time to really develop their leaders. I think one of the things that us hospital folks love about our work is that every day is really interesting and every day presents something new and there is a bit of a seduction to get pulled into the daily fire or the daily project or meeting and everything feels urgent. But if you don't reserve and carve out the time to develop your leaders and really take measure of your leadership team, top decile results just don't happen. So I'm a firm believer that the future is bright. We are going to have so many new tools, so many more new resources, and it's going to force us to think differently about our delivery system going forward. But we'll need to have really strong leaders who can do that.
- [17:39]
B
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. Emily, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. This has been a really amazing conversation and I look forward to connecting with you again soon and seeing you as well at the 13th CEO CFO Roundtable here in November. I know you'll be speaking at the event and really just shining a light on more of those things that we talked about in terms of leadership growth and and how as a community hospital with the academic system, you can really, really prosper. So I appreciate your time today and look forward to seeing you there.
- [18:10]
C
We're excited. I'm very excited. Thank you so much, Laura.
- [18:16]
A
At athenahealth, we know your ambulatory practice wants healthier a healthier business, healthier care teams, and healthier patients. But the complexities of modern healthcare tech make it hard for for you and your care teams to focus on what matters most. That's where athenahealth can help our AI native all in one solutions reduce administrative burdens, streamline billing and payments, and deliver critical insights when clinicians need it most. That means fewer clicks, more time for patients, and stronger bottom lines. Practicing medicine is complex, but running a practice can be that Much simpler with Athenahealth. C See how simpler is healthier@athenahealth.com.