← Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
James Newman, Vice President of Patient Logistics at Virtua Health System,
00:13:42
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- [00:02]
A
The most important healthcare decisions don't happen in isolation. They happen when leaders come together. Becker's 16th annual meeting brings together more than 3,500 hospital and health system executives this April in Chicago. With 800 speakers from Ascension, Cleveland Clinic, Common Spirit and more, the conversations get real. Leaders will share how their scenario planning for policy shifts brief, breaking through value based care barriers and building clinical teams that translate new ideas into real world care. Join top decision makers in the room April 13th through the 16th. For the agenda and event details, visit BeckersHospitalReview.com and click on the Events tab in the upper right.
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B
This is Laura Dardo with the Beckers Healthcare Podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by James Newman, Vice President of Patient Logistics at Virtual Health System. James, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
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C
Thanks Laura, I appreciate it.
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B
Absolutely. Now I'm looking forward to our discussion because I know there's so much happening in healthcare today and in particular you're doing some cool things at Virtua. But before we dive in, can you tell me a little bit more about yourself and about the health system?
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C
Absolutely. So my name is Jim Newman. I'm the Vice President of Patient Logistics for Virtua Health in South Jersey. So Virtua is a South Jersey based health system. We have five hospitals and seven emergency departments, around 16,000 colleagues, 3,000 plus medical staff, clinicians, just over 400 care locations and near close to 380 primary and specialty care practices. So we're fairly inclusive health care system. My area, inpatient logistics is a is a pretty broad area. It's exciting area. Right now I am responsible for a many departments consisting of our our transfer cent, our centralized bed management and capacity management team, as well as our EMS team covering mobile intensive care services in two counties in South Jersey as well as our Medical transport division, our AHA training center for our health system, our clinical and EMS training center, and our integrated dispatch center for those areas.
- [02:30]
B
That's great to hear and you know that's a lot to be accountable for and so it's just fascinating to hear everything that you're thinking about and working on on a daily and consistent basis. I think first and foremost I was wondering what are some of the trends you're watching currently?
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C
Right. So I think you probably talk to many healthcare leaders and I say probably everybody is answering the same today. And when I was thinking about this question, I was going to go a different direction with it, but you really can't. And I think the simplest answer is looking at AI and how predictive AI and clinical decision support, as well as generative AI is going to impact us and how we can really build that into our workflows. But as I was thinking about this, all of those areas that I just spoke about are going to be hugely positive impacts on healthcare. And as leaders, I think we're responsible to look at them, but I think the other area to really focus on is the operational efficiencies that we can get out of AI and how we use it. And as a leader, when I look at that, if I can lean into AI tools that allow me as a leader to have less screen time and how it can help me lead more focus and have more time to build strategy and really more time, face time with my colleagues and my people, that's where I think as leaders, AI is really going to be impactful to our workflows. And I think the other area that, the other trend that we really look at here at Virtua is care at home and trends that we can watch in how care at home can really have positive impacts on patients from our hospital home area to our post discharge management service lines as well as mobile integrated health. And really how we can use those areas to impact length of stay, readmissions, capacity and cost to our patients.
- [04:45]
B
That's helpful to understand, I think. You know, everything you mentioned, obviously AI is huge in technology. Digital transformation is coming on strong for healthcare organizations across the, across the spectrum and figuring out how it can those tools to be more efficient and effective. I know that's going to be extremely important, especially in this next year when, you know, resources are continuing to be compressed within the healthcare system. But I wanted to ask you a bit more about the other trend you talked about too, the care at home. That's something that we hear a good deal about from hospitals and systems and more and more are trying to stand those types of programs up. And so what have you learned through your care at home program? How did you create it and what has been some of the pivots you've made there to keep it successful?
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C
Yeah, I think, I think the biggest thing to keep in mind with care and home models is there's no cookie cutter design. We at Virtua, we really focused on hospital at home as our foundation, but from there we've adapted and built programs that really meet the gaps in care in our region and have focused on the challenges that we have at our health system and improving the care that we provide. So, so, so my biggest advice for, for anyone looking at A care at home model is look at the trends that other people are or other systems are using and adapt them to your program and your specific gaps that you have in your system.
- [06:22]
B
Got it. That's helpful to know now. What are some of the things that you're most focused on and excited about right now? What have you been most proud of in the last six or 18 months or so?
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C
So I would say we'll start with, you know, really what, what I am most proud of both as a department and as, as a health system. And it's really been our focus on, on workforce development. We, we as a health system has, have focused a tremendous amount of time and attention to, to entering colleagues into our system earlier in life and providing opportunities to, to colleagues and potential colleagues really early in their, in their careers. Just an example of that is, you know, we have built programs just in my department that, you know, we can provide opportunities that in the past may not have been available or may have been out of reach to individuals to really enter into a career in healthcare very, very early in their, in their adulthood. And when I go to the graduations and speak to these classes of, in this area, our EMT students, I speak to opportunity and I speak to this being a starting point for their opportunities in healthcare and the career pathways that this has created. And we've really worked hard to create pathways from early entry into healthcare through our EMT to paramedic programs, through our paramedic to RN programs and really everything across the board through our leadership development programs and our tuition assistance programs. And it's really been exciting to see us take a high school student and as they're in high school, help them build into a healthcare career so they have opportunities in life that may not have been available otherwise. So that, that's been extraordinarily exciting and we're really proud of that. And then, you know, just to, to build on your question about what we're, we're really focused on or what. And one of the things that I'm heavily focused on is, is proactive capacity management. I think, you know, every healthcare system around the system around the country is, is challenged with capacity and challenged with, with ED borders and bed wait times and turn times. And we are highly focused on how we look at tools. I mentioned AI and proactive AI, how we can use that to help manage our capacity to reduce ED borders and then reaching beyond the typical levers of capacity management. I think the trends in health care have been very specific over the years on how to manage capacity and you know, we need to understand what, what levers aren't being used and continue to focus on them to, to really learn how to manage capacity in a, in a really unique way.
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B
That's helpful to understand. And, you know, it's so important. I know capacity is a challenge across the board in trying to figure out how you can move patients through the system efficiently and, and then open up capacity to meet the demands of the community. I think your point about being able to leverage AI effectively in this way is critical. How do you work with your teams to make sure that they are using the technology and the tools that they have in the best way possible, as well as knowing what value this technology is bringing back into the organization?
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C
I think a lot of that comes down to the way that we empower our, our frontline employees to, to, to really tell us what's working for them and what isn't working for them. You know, I think, you know, we can, we can provide tools, we can provide, we can provide dashboards, we can provide predictive technology, but our frontline staff, the folks across, our colleagues across the system that are using it, really need to be empowered to, to tell us what makes sense and what is working. And we as leaders are responsible for making sure that we're listening to that and adapting to the changes to really make these tools effective. It's one thing to build the tools and provide them, it's another thing to optimize them in a way that is really meaningful to the organization and the way we want patient flow to operate.
- [11:06]
B
That's helpful perspective and context. Thank you so much for digging a bit deeper there. Now, before we wrap up, what advice would you give to evolving leaders today, especially given all of the changes and in complexity in the healthcare environment?
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C
You know, this is my, this is my area of passion. So I, I would say as, as I mentor leaders, a few things. One of the, the biggest pieces of advice I give to, to new and, and current leaders is to have the courage to fail early, identify issues when they're small, identify issues when they're cheap, and have the courage to admit that there's issues and make those changes to make implementations that much more successful for the long run. I think a few other areas that I as a leader have highly focused on over the years is hire people that are smarter than you, have the courage to hire people that have deeper technical expertise in the areas that you're hiring them for than you do, and build a very intentional and purposeful team. I think so many leaders are afraid to bring somebody on that may know more than them. And I think that's a big misstep for a leader as you're building out a very purposeful team. And then the two last points I'll make, you know, around purposeful leadership is relationships are absolutely your strongest tool as a leader, and never lose that. And then my final mantra is always get me to yes, meaning, you know, it's our responsibility as leaders to recognize the need and find a way to make it happen, even if that, you know, means that there's going to be significant challenges to get there.
- [13:06]
B
That's really helpful to know. Jim, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. I really appreciate your time. You know, it's been fascinating to learn a little bit more about your philosophy and everything that goes into all you're doing, and I look forward to meeting with you again soon. And I know you're speaking at our annual meeting coming up here in April, so it'll be great to have the chance to meet you in person.
- [13:28]
C
Great. I appreciate it.