← Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Expanding Tertiary Care Access in Chicago’s Western Suburbs with Kyle Glass
00:21:04
Loading summary
Transcript17 lines
- [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 Alan Condon, back with another episode of the Becker's Healthcare Podcast. And today delighted to be joined by Kyle Glass, regional CFO and senior vice president of UChicago Medicine Advent Health. Kyle, a pleasure to have you back on the podcast with us and I know looking forward to seeing you in person at our upcoming Beckers event. For those of our listeners who mightn't be as well acquainted with yourself and the unique makeup of UChicago Medicine Advent Health, do you mind giving us a little bit more background into your role and your experience at the health system?
- [01:05]
C
Yeah, sure. First, thank you again for the invite to be back on the podcast. Big fan of Becker's, what you guys do from healthcare information and pulling folks together. So I had the privilege to serve as CFO for our UChicago Medicine Advent Health Partnership here in Chicago. Been with Advent health for several 17 years now at this point, the last two years here in our Chicago relationship, which is kind of a unique model between an academic health system and a really strong community hospital based system. And so we're very excited about the partnership of what it brings to the Chicagoland, particularly the western suburbs area. Really feel like it combines the best of academic medicine delivered close to home in a community hospital system. Part of what we're excited about is the ability to provide comprehensive community hospital care right where consumers live, work, play in the western suburbs, but be able to deliver on those high level tertiary academic services close to home there. When patients need to have access to this more acute critical service lines, there's a clean pathway for them to translate from our system directly into the academic center at Hyde park and then back to our suburbs for follow up care. It's really making it easy for the patient. I think it's the goal of the partnership and we're about three years into that relationship at this point. It's gone very well there as we look at building out more comprehensive service lines here and really how we grow that footprint in the western suburbs.
- [02:29]
B
Fantastic. Well, I've got some questions here that we're going to dive into, but I guess maybe just kind of following off from where you left off there, Kyle, like you said, three years into that relationship, it's quite a competitive market, the western suburbs. Quite a lot of activity going on there. Some big names, some big systems. Can you kind of give me three years into that relationship? Two, three years down the line? Where are your biggest focuses in terms of growing that footprint, like you said, and kind of those partnerships?
- [02:54]
C
Yeah, you're right. Competitive area. A lot of growth out here in the suburbs, probably. It's a great place to live and work here in Chicago. And so when you look at our focus is how do we expand access to sort of to some of the tertiary service lines that patients are looking for. A couple key areas that we're excited about in the future, oncology being one of them. So UChicago Medicine being a top 10 program in the US how do we take the best of their oncology care and provide that right here in our suburbs? The ability to have patients have access to advanced research and clinical trials to really advance their care. The subspecialized oncology care, whether you have prostate or breast or colorectal or take your pick of those cancer areas, when you want that care that's specialized to your specific cancer area, you should have access to that right here in your community. And then making that easy for the consumer. The ability to navigate from one stop to the next in your care, from your medical oncologist to your radiation oncologist to your surgeon, if that's part of your treatment plan, coordinating that with your primary care, all that seamlessly for the patient and ideally very close together in the same location, is really what patients and consumers are looking for. Cancer is a big enough disease as it is. How do you make it easy to navigate for patients and their families candidly excited about the continued growth of our neuroscience service line and what that looks like going forward. The ability to actually advance to provide advanced level neurosurgery, neuroscience care right here in Hinsdale in particular, and the growth of that program, the expansion of some of our key orthopedic partnerships across the western suburbs, again, making that easy to access. How do we help patients get in more timely for care, but also help keep patients healthier by providing access to non surgical options within our network for care. The last thing I'll touch on is how do you provide advanced access? I think one of the things that patients and consumers struggle with the most, how do I get in timely? So I need to see my primary care and I need to See my specialist, I don't want to wait 30, 60, 90 days to get in. How do you expand your footprint for primary care? Put it somewhere close to where the patients are and then get them in timely and then help them navigate to the next level of care with the same level of speed. Patients are really looking for that as they shop around for access. I think both the university and Advent Health are very excited about how to deliver that differently in the suburbs.
- [05:23]
B
Yeah, I mean it's such a. To your point, I mean two fantastic institutions coming together. New Chicago Medicine have been held very competitive market. I loved some of the key focus areas and service lines that you're focused on. Like you said, oncology, neurosciences, orthopedic care. Really expanding access to some of those territory service lines. When thinking about your market now more broadly, it's been a big, a lot of activity there in terms of what we've seen with Prime Healthcare recently acquiring I believe nine hospitals in and around your market from a mentioned, I believe they're planning to acquire one more entering a market where they've never had a presence in before. We're starting to see some systems kind of take a little bit of a, a page out of that playbook in other geographies across the states. But how are you looking at that move by a new entrant, a new competitor, a large one like Prime? Obviously you differentiate yourself in quite a substantial way. We meet with the, the partnership with UChicago Medicine. But does that come into your factoring at all in terms of a competition standpoint, growing your service lines? How do you differentiate yourselves from other big nonprofit systems coming into your market?
- [06:33]
C
Yeah, it's a great question. I think you're always obviously watching what your competitors in the market are doing and making sure that you're matching your service levels to meet the demand from what the consumers are looking for and, and not falling behind in the market. At the same time, I think the larger focus is continuing our growth strategies that we'd already laid out. And from a brand perspective, if you feel strongly about the quality of care we provide and the differentiators that we provide within our system, you're not necessarily focused on what someone else might be choosing to do in the market versus the strategies that you know that you have that will help drive growth. And a lot of that being the focus around putting the consumer at the center of care. So you've probably seen, if you know anything about Advent Health, that whole person care is core to what we provide. And when you put the consumer first in what you're doing, the rest falls in line behind that. And so when you're focused on how do I make this easy for the consumer to get the right level of care, make it easy to navigate along the way and make sure I care about them as a person, then that's your focus of the system and less so on what others in the market might be focused on. If anything, how do you make sure that the overall market's served as it needs to be? And sometimes it actually involves relationships with other systems, other organizations too, because the ultimate goal should be how do we make the community better, how do we drive a different level of care for the community as a whole. And that's where our focus is largely at versus just trying to match or adjust to or pivot based on what someone else in the market is. It's how do we actually focus on the needs, the consumer. And if you're focused on that, the rest seems to work itself out pretty well.
- [08:10]
B
Focus on your control was on your own, your own strategy, your own market, rather than growing for the sake of growth like other systems maybe trying to do, but potentially some downfalls in terms of strategy down the line, which you've all seen there, I guess. Last follow up on this, Kyle, before I kind of jump to some of these prepared questions that we have. I think with your CFO or your strategy hat on kind of looking more broadly, when we think about hospital consolidation, kind of recent quarters and what we expect for that for the coming quarters, no doubt there's some real challenges out there in terms of the expiration of the enhanced premium tax credits of the ACA subsidies, Medicaid cuts coming down the pipeline at the end of 2026 into 2027. No doubt that's going to drive a lot of the hospital consolidation on the independent hospital side, large system snapping up some community hospitals and whatnot. I guess, kind of. What's your kind of prediction? I guess. Do you, do you anticipate more of this happening across the board? What does that the independent hospital and the large academics as these trends starts to take place to accelerate. Excuse me. In light of some of these financial challenges coming down the pipeline.
- [09:17]
C
Yeah. The headwind you touched on there around the legislative change is obviously a big area of focus and we're all watching that closely to see how that lands. And you look at the state of Illinois, for example, the number of patients we have enrolled in Medicaid today, the number of patients we have enrolled in the ACA plans, you look at the reduction in that enrollment. Starting this year, the enrollment numbers are coming out, as well as some of the cuts in the federal funding that support some of the expanded programs the state actually is deploying, it will mean hospital systems will have to adjust their strategies. And unfortunately, patients will be impacted by that. Anytime you have these legislative changes, ultimately people are the ones that feel that, consumers are the ones that feel that. And so a lot of the work's going to be around managing how you adjust your strategies to fit with a new reimbursement environment, is in some of those places and still focus on how you provide the right level of care to the patient. Know that they may have less choice in the market or less access to other systems because their status might be different. Not having access to the Medicaid resources or again, the health insurance resources that are provided when you're an exchange plan member. As far as how it relates to hospital systems or healthcare providers, there are a number of providers that that's their core business model and that exist in communities that need that level of service. And so with the health system, the larger health systems have to figure out in Illinois, across the country, is how do you help make sure patients don't lose care in those communities when that's their core reimbursement model. So in communities where we have one of our facilities in a community that's 50% Medicaid based, and when patients start losing that coverage and that hospital's financial reality looks very different, how do you not make patients drive two hours over the next community for basic level care? Because hospitals aren't viable. And so I do think it will drive more consolidation in the health care industry. A lot of policies you see coming out are pushing that direction because it becomes more and more difficult to operate as a standalone hospital or as a smaller system. I also think it will, it will reduce access to care. Ultimately, when you start taking away the resource that help people get access or get into clinics, get into hospitals and have access to care in the outpatient setting, it negatively impacts what happens when they have to come through for more emergent level care. Ultimately, the health of the community suffers. And there are going to be a number of places you see across the country that, that are dealing with different reality. And the downside of that is it will mean patients struggle for access and struggle to maintain the same level of care. And so much of healthcare where the cost issue is that by the time you get to the inpatient setting, it's the most expensive option for healthcare. And so how do you actually, when you reduce the resources that provide access to that outpatient services and force those patients to come through the ED for their only level of access to care. It'll drive costs back into the system in a different way, but ultimately not keep patients healthier or communities healthier. So it's a little hard to envision what the win is long term, but the system will obviously have to adjust. And I think there are individual hospitals and or health systems that are looking at very grim reality over the next two to three years as some of these impacts fully roll into the model.
- [12:45]
B
Yeah, it's unfortunate you've already seen a handful of hospitals close just in January this year already. Doesn't seem like there's much respite coming down the pipeline from a financial standpoint. But I guess all eyes on the primaries. Maybe at the time of recording we're awaiting a Senate vote on funding and whatnot. So no doubt some all eyes on what's happening on Capitol Hill for potentially some rollback of some of these cuts that are coming down the pipeline. I guess it ties directly into our next question. Kyle, in terms of we may have already touched on it a lot here, but in terms of are there any other kind of big priorities aheadwind specifically for you at uChicago effinghealth this year that you're focused on or a lot of what we just touched on there?
- [13:24]
C
Yeah. So obviously you can't ignore what we talked about with the legislative impacts and the exchange plan changes and all of that. And so we'll be watching that closely. And what happens to the members that we have in our communities and how do we actually start to prioritize resources to help them get navigated to where they can get access to care or can get signed up for the right type of coverage that they need? A lot of that's about educating patients. Obviously in our current environment too, you're seeing patients being a little bit more hesitant to come in for care, depending on what their status is and see how do you provide the right safe environments to make sure people get care when they need to and again have access to resources, priority standpoint? We touched on some of that earlier, too. Patient access remains at the top of our list. How do we make it easy for the consumer to navigate, move throughout our system, find us when they need us, and then get to their next level of care? Ideally keep them out of the healthcare system and keep them healthy where they're, where they're at. A couple of key technologies. We're really excited about that. We're rolling out this year a streamlined referral process that makes it a lot easier for physicians in our network to be able to move patients through the system with a lot less friction within the software that we have today. And that's something that we're excited to deploy later this year. Focus on a lot more access for patients to their families when they're in facilities too. So deploying more smart room technology across our platform so that providers can have access to patients whether they're, they're in the hospital or in their office, but also families have access to their patients in their facilities. Again, how do you make the experience better for the consumer and your providers, if at all possible? And really excited about the continued evaluation, expansion, if you will, of AI platforms. The challenge in the healthcare system is we're not graduating to produce enough physicians or nurses. And that's not getting better if you look at the outlook. And so how do we actually help make our clinicians more efficient, help make our patients better educated? By putting the right tools out there that take care of some of that basic work and a lot of AI resources out there that just streamline the process, balancing that against making sure that the care that's provided is appropriate, still has the same quality level of physician supervision, nurse interaction, all those things, but utilizing the software to make that work easier and a better experience for the patient ultimately as well. Clear areas of focus as we move throughout the next 12 to 18 months and really look at an ever changing healthcare landscape.
- [16:01]
B
Yeah, Kyle, I'm so glad that you brought up AI at the end. It seems like I doubt you can go through a conversation at the boardroom level, at the leadership level that doesn't come up. But I mean it is, I mean to your point, without to shy away from it, there is obviously such opportunity there. And maybe if I could just end on one question on AI. AI maybe specifically as it relates to CFOs and maybe the revenue cycle, kind of doing a lot of these podcasts recently. I spoke with CFO at Cleveland Clinic Dennis Laraway, CFO at Mayo Clinic Dennis Dallin recently about the same question in terms of big, big opportunity in AI, specifically in the revenue cycle, it seems like providers are at a plain catch up in terms of what the health plans have been using AI and automation for quite some time. I guess. No easy answer and I don't expect you to have an answer here, but I guess where do you see this kind of AI arms race, for lack of a better term, going when providers are kind of more deeply integrating AI automation into the revenue cycle, playing catch up to where health plans are. No doubt they've got their own tools that they're embellishing at the moment, but where does it all end up? Is it kind of a zero sum game where you'll have AI denying claims? Again, I'm not sure if you have any thoughts on that as it goes two or three years down the line as AI undoubtedly becomes more embedded across the revenue cycle on both sides of the health care equation.
- [17:28]
C
Yeah, I think it does feel at times like a bit of an arms race between what the payers are investing in from tools and resources there on the AI side, what providers are having to invest in for the same thing to reduce the burden of paperwork and documentation. And ultimately I guess maybe I'll start with where I hope it goes then in the future, the systems are automated enough that the interaction between health systems or providers and payers becomes more seamless because of that automation. And so the ability to send information back and forth and reduce just the amount of time it takes to get things approved or things reviewed. There are a lot of resources out there about payers have an access to look directly at the medical record to answer the questions and so it avoids the back and forth. Ultimately, if we end up in a place where that reduces the burden and the friction for the patient, then it's the right place to get to. If it ends up at a place where we're just trying to delay care and put more tools in place to create more barriers, then it's only making the ecosystem more challenging and sort of feeding into the frustration I think people already feel about not knowing what their status is, you know, and it, it probably feels like we're tilting more that direction than anything right now. But my hope is as more and more tools are invested there and companies move into the space on how do we streamline the process, both for providers and for preparers, that those systems talk to each other much better and reduce the amount of paperwork that actually a patient has to deal with or a family member that's trying to navigate care has to deal with would be an ideal state. But today it feels like we're, we're a ways away from that at this point and still trying to figure out the right tools just to combat the tools that are being used against you oftentimes to make that more challenging. So my hope is that we end up at the right place. The consumer and the industry sees that progress as a value add for both the provider and the payer. Ultimately, if you make the process easier. It takes cost out of the model for both of us. But today I don't think we've gotten to that state yet and still have a lot of work to do to get to that point.
- [19:44]
B
Yeah, no, I appreciate it. Really interesting to kind of get where you hope it'll get to ultimately. Would you say you're an optimist, a pessimist, or a realist as it comes to what potentially might happen down the line there?
- [19:55]
C
Yeah, that's about as optimistic an answer as you probably get from a cfo. The realist in me says we might be further away from that than we'd like to be. In the meantime, we're just trying to reduce the burden that patients feel for paperwork, but also the amount of time and effort that our teams are having to put in to the back and forth process where systems are just not connected as well as they should be. And there's a lot more friction points in that process than really should exist. Again, if your ultimate goal is how do I get care to the patient appropriately.
- [20:28]
B
Yeah, yeah. Certainly a big opportunity there and no need some partnership collaboration on the payer provider front to work towards at least some sort of a win, win, win for payers, providers and of course the patient in the middle of it all. Kyle, can't tell you how much I enjoyed this podcast. A real pleasure having you on. Certainly learned a lot. No doubt our listeners will really appreciate this one as well. Really looking forward to having you speak at our upcoming event as well. Kyle, thank you so much for taking the time today.
- [20:53]
C
Thank you for the time. Very excited about the conference coming up in April and appreciate again the work that Beckers does and what this podcast does for the healthcare industry.