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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Haris Ackerman, Director of Integration and Strategic Operations at Virtua Health
00:08:22
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Transcript16 lines
- [00:00]
A
This is Scott Becker with the Becker's Healthcare podcast. We're thrilled today to be joined by a brilliant leader at a great system. We're joined today by Harris Ackerman and Harris serves as the Director of integration and Strategic Operations at Virtual Health. Virtual Health is a fantastic system, sort of in the greater New Jersey area and he'll tell us more about it. Harris, can you take a moment and tell us about both yourself? I know you've been at Virtual Health for almost more than a decade plus. Tell us about yourself health and then we'll go from there.
- [00:35]
B
Sure thing. Happy to be with you guys this afternoon. So, as you said, my name is Harris Ackerman. I'm the director of integration and Strategic Operations at Virtua Health. We are in the Jersey side of the Greater Philadelphia area and we're proud of it. We are a five hospital, you know, 1300 plus bed health system with hundreds of outpatient locations. We are affiliated academically with Rowan University as of the past couple years, which we're also really excited about. And as for myself, I'm actually an engineer by education and I've been working on the strategy side pretty much since about 2021, 2022.
- [01:18]
A
And let me ask you a question, because the Philadelphia fans are traditionally and well known as very aggressive fans. Whether the Phillies fans, the, the, the Sixers fans, fans. Seriously, the Flyers with the Broad Street Boys. If you're in the New Jersey side of Philly, does that make you a Philly fan? And do we hold that against you guys? You are for you.
- [01:43]
B
Well, hopefully it's for us. We are very much Philadelphia sports fans in this part of the state and we love to be rivals besides just North Jersey and South Jersey. The Eagles vs. The Giants, of course in football is probably one of the biggest rivalries that exists in this state. So yeah, we are proud Philadelphia fans over here.
- [02:03]
A
And the Eagles have literally owned the Giants for several years. The Giants are having a little bit of an improvement this year. Right. Is that the fair statement of that rivalry?
- [02:10]
B
That is true. Or even one to one on the season this year. So we'll see what happens the rest of the season.
- [02:16]
A
Fantastic. So taking us back to strategy and integration and so forth. Talk about strategy and sort of what's, what's in the future.
- [02:24]
B
Yeah, so we've, I think really one of our biggest strategies that's developing is really putting the patient first. And I know there's a lot of health systems out there that do that and we're all working towards, you know, giving the best experience to the patient. But ours has kind of really evolved into what can we do to streamline care in the best way possible. So we kind of remove some of that confusion that tends to exist in, you know, your healthcare journey, if you will, especially for those patients. They might have multiple specialists, they have their primary care doctor, all those things. And, you know, technology has helped with that. Epic and MyChart and all those things are great tools. But we're excited to kind of take it a step further and look at our operations and how we can kind of streamline that from how the patient is actually organizing their care and how we're helping them with that and also where they're receiving care. So we've had a huge push over the past couple years to really get more integrated into the patient's life, whether it's providing care inside their home, with hospital at home and some of our outpatient programs and things like that, to just really try and make it as convenient as possible for patients to want to not only receive care from us, but also seek care from Virtua in the future.
- [03:38]
A
Fantastic. And talk a little bit about, as you look at the next 12 months, 18 months, what are you most focused on and excited about?
- [03:47]
B
Yeah, I mean, like I said, I'm really focused on how different technologies can help us support patients as they go from, you know, their different care areas, whether it's an inpatient stay to an outpatient specialist visit, you know, what have you. So the technology is really cool. Some of the things like different wearable devices that can be placed on the patient when they're, when they're in the hospital. We're exploring some things like that and what that could look like and how clinical staff can use those devices to up the quality of care. And I think we're also just really excited about, and I know this is a huge buzzword and everybody's talking about it, but what can AI really start to do for us? And that's not just implementing AI to say, yeah, we have AI things, but really if something is missed in terms of a follow up appointment, how can AI push that to our scheduling team to help them? How can AI send a notification to a patient to say, hey, you have XYZ clinical thing going on potentially, and this may be a good idea for you to seek care, you should give us a call, and different things like that. So how can it push us more towards, again, making the patient's life a little bit easier and also increasing our quality of care? So that's definitely Exciting. And that technology, as you guys are well aware, since you're always up to date on those types of things, it's moving just so fast. It's really, really incredible to see.
- [05:09]
A
Thank you very, very much. And then in addition, virtual health, sort of, in addition to being sort of the largest comprehensive health system in your world, in your area, also partnerships with Penn Medicine and Rowan and others. Talk about that for one moment, if you don't mind.
- [05:25]
B
Yeah, of course. So the Rowan affiliation is fairly new, that got formed in 2021 and, you know, we're really excited about that with Rowan being a top 100 public research institution in the country. So, you know, really this will, this gave us the opportunity to launch some schools of medicine. You know, whether it's now it's the Rowan Virtuous School of Osteopathic Medicine, we have a nursing school out of there and we also have a partnership in their biomedical engineering department. And we're really excited about that. Not just because of the extended reach that you can get by being affiliated with an academic medical center, university partnership, but also the fact that we can offer real time opportunities for all these clinical folks that are coming through these programs and really get them in the floors and not only build a relationship between them and us, but also provide them with real life experience to the best of our ability as they're going through their educational journey. And then you had mentioned Penn, and we have some partnerships over there. Penn's really supported us with proton therapy, which is really like next generation cancer care. So that started up in 2023. We're one of the only facilities in the area that's doing that over in one of our Morristown buildings, which is a beautiful new building that we, that we built in partnership with Penn. And we're really excited about that because of the options it gives to patients that are trying to navigate their cancer care journey.
- [06:54]
A
That's fantastic. And virtual is a remarkable system. Harris, you're having this great leadership career. Give us a couple minutes on what advice you would give to evolving leaders.
- [07:05]
B
Yep. So I would say, you know, it's. It's one thing that's interesting is I do feel like we're starting to see that shift in generations where people are getting more comfortable with technology. So I do think that it's important for emerging leaders to kind of stick with their gut and think about, you know, what the future is going to look like and how technology is going to kind of change the way that we can do things. And also, you know, I think building relationships with your clinical counterparts, especially like myself, I'm non clinical. So really getting an understanding of what they're experiencing, what their patients are telling them, and kind of basing some of your insights and thoughts and desires for what you want to build in your career off of that, you really, you're not going to, you're not going to go wrong. So building relationships and putting that patient first is really going to take you a long way.
- [07:57]
A
Thank you. I love that. Harris. Next time, hopefully we'll talk more about the Flyers, the Eagles, the Phillies and a lot more, as well as about health care. I want to thank you in all seriousness, so much for joining us. I've always been a big fan of the system. I'm so glad to get to visit with you. Thank you very much for joining us today on the Beckers Healthcare podcast.
- [08:19]
B
Thank you.