← Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Jennifer K. Mendrzycki, JD, MHA, FACHE, President and Chief Executive Officer of TMC Health
00:19:13
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- [00:00]
A
This is Laura Dirdo with the Beckers Healthcare podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by Jennifer Mendrazicki, President and Chief Executive Officer of TMC Health. Jennifer, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
- [00:11]
B
Thank you so much, Laura. It's a pleasure to be here.
- [00:14]
A
Now, I'm excited for our conversation because I know it's such a unique time in healthcare right now, and you're doing some very innovative things at TMC Health, and so I'll be interested to learn more. But before we dive in, could you tell us a little bit more about yourself in the hospital and health system?
- [00:29]
B
Sure, I'd love to. So I have been here in Southern Arizona now for 16 months, serving as the President and CEO of TMC Health. I actually came from the East Coast. I was born and raised in New York and spent about 17 years in New Jersey prior to moving out here 16 months ago. It's certainly. The time has certainly flown by and it's been an absolutely amazing journey and I have fallen in love with this community and with this beautiful landscape. So I'm very grateful to be here. TMC Health is a nonprofit system with its base in Southern Arizona. So we are anchored by Tucson Medical center, which is a tertiary care facility here in Tucson. We also have two critical access hospitals, one in Benson, Arizona and one in Wilcox, which are both two of our rural communities. And then we have a large and growing primary and multi specialty care medical group through TMC1. And that has been growing exponentially over the past about two and a half years. So it's really, it's a great health system and I'm just absolutely thrilled to be part of this beautiful community.
- [01:38]
A
Well, that's amazing to hear. And, you know, it seems like just what a fascinating journey within the healthcare and then an important community that you're serving. I'm curious, could you tell us a little bit more about your biggest winner success story from the last year?
- [01:51]
B
Sure, I'd love to. So I'd say the two biggest wins that we've had this year. The first would be the launch of DAC's copilot in all of the clinics and centers within our medical group. We did that back a few months after I started here. And it has really been a game changer, not only for our ability to continue to see patients and expand our access to patients, but also for provider satisfaction. We've been hearing from all of our physicians that started on dacs, and we now have all of our primary and specialty physicians on DACs right now, they have all told us about how much it's really impacted their lives. Not only their productivity and allowing them to be able to expand the care that they provide to their patients, but also allowing them more of a life and being able to go home. And I know I've heard other people say pajama time, which I love, but we've got our providers now who are able to be at home with their families and have dinner and participate in kids activities and at the same time be able to expand the time that they're able to spend with their patients. And I've certainly heard from our patients, including my own family, who have been with providers who have used it, what an impact it's had on them. They feel like their providers are actually talking to them and spending time with them and engaged with them instead of being focused on a computer. So we have been thrilled with the experience that we've had with Dax Copilot. So I'd say that's one of our two biggest wins this year. I'd say the other is the opening of our TMC Health Cancer Center. So we opened our cancer center back in April. So it's about four months now that we have had it up and running. And it's really been wonderful to be able to provide that access to high quality local cancer care for the people in our community. It's something that's very personal to me. I had a sister in law who passed away from cancer when she was very young and watching her have to commute to get excellent cancer care was very hard. It was hard on her, it was hard on all of us. And so our ability to be able to do that for our community is not only very personal to me, but very personal to all of us here because we love this community and want to see it thrive.
- [04:11]
A
Well, that's an amazing story and certainly an inspiration to think about how meaningful it is to have that access to care to make sure that the care is high quality too and really leveraging technology in a variety of ways in order to stay connected and improve their productivity as well as take care of those caregivers. And so I appreciate both examples that you shared because it's truly a transformational time in healthcare today.
- [04:35]
B
It is. It's exciting.
- [04:37]
A
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And you know, when you're looking at all of these different changes and different opportunities, how do you see your caregivers really adapting to those types of changes? What have you seen and been able to do from your teams and culture perspective? That's Made a difference for them.
- [04:55]
B
I am so proud and impressed with our providers, our physicians, our nurse practitioners, our medical assistants. We really did the rollout of the DACS copilot in partnership with them. We didn't come out there and say that this is what we're going to do and you need to do it because we're telling you to do it. We really went to them and said, here's a tool that we think could be helpful to us who would like to partner with us on this. And we were able to get a couple of early adopters, physicians who wanted to give it a try and they really helped us champion this throughout the medical group. They started it and they had such a good experience with it. They told their colleagues and we really work together as a team to try to roll this out for the benefit of our providers, but also for the benefit of our patients. And I think it was those first few early adopters that were really transformative to allow us to be able to move this out throughout the medical group. So I'm very grateful to them. Anything good always starts with a team approach. And we really, that's really the tack that we took was really in going to our physicians and our nurse practitioners and saying we think that this could helpful. Let's pilot this in one area and see if it makes a difference. And the most amazing part is that when we brought in the cancer center, a large group of physicians and nurse practitioners that came over to us when we opened the cancer center in April, we gave them the option of giving it a try. And we had a couple of our providers who were early adopters who helped them and learn about DAX Copilot and help walk them through it. And now we have a group of our cancer doctors that are on this tool as well and they're, they're really enjoying it. Even though in the beginning I know it was a little, you know, a little nerve wracking and they weren't sure if it was going to be the right thing for them. But we've had ones that have, have picked it up and really enjoy using it. So I, I think I really owe a lot of the, the kudos to not only the team that helped to support them, but also the physicians who are early adopters because they really helped us scale this across the medical group.
- [07:08]
A
That's amazing to hear and thank you so much for sharing with us. Now, when you're looking out into the entire healthcare landscape today, what are the top two to three issues that you're most focused on? What is top of mind for you when you're thinking about the decisions that are upcoming?
- [07:22]
B
Wow. Well, I'd say one of the first ones is certainly operationalizing the TMC Health Cancer center. Working hard to try to ensure that there's an integrated, high touch experience for our patients. That I would say is one of the biggest focuses as we sit here today. I'd say the other one is really aligning our system around a shared culture and strategy. So we've spent a lot of the past 16 months, I've spent a lot of the last 16 months learning about the organization and about our employees and about our community. And then all of us as a team have spent a significant amount of time around building our strategy for the next three to five years, really looking at where are the areas that we think we need to grow to match the needs of our community and how do we make sure we are able to continue to provide the care that our patients and our communities need in the face of some challenges that will come to all of us in healthcare in the coming months and years. And so the way to drive a good strategy is to have a great culture that helps to drive that strategy. And so right now what we're doing is rolling out to our organization some, some of this culture that we're going to try to inculcate throughout the organization, really focused on speaking up, problem solving, innovating, making sure everyone feels empowered to ask questions and be curious. And that is going to help to drive our strategy in the next three to five years. So really trying to working in the next several months to create some clarity and some connection from the frontline to leadership around what our culture is, who we are, and then how that's going to help us get that strategy to where we need it to. And then I would finally say, as with many of my colleagues around the country, we are also preparing for the impact of one big beautiful bill. We're modeling financial scenarios and trying to build some resilience as we anticipate changes to not only state directed payments, but also rising uncompensated care. And what's really important to us is making sure that we can continue to be here for our community and provide the care that everyone has come to expect from us and make sure that we're here for the long haul, that we're able to continue to give everyone the care that they need.
- [09:46]
A
Absolutely. I think that is such an excellent point. And in particular looking at whether it's the one big beautiful bill act or any of the other Policies and legislations coming off of the state or national level. There's a lot of change in that respect for hospitals and health systems and healthcare providers in general. And I know sometimes when there are periods of, of lots of change, there can be anxiety as well. And so when you talk about the culture and talking about keeping people focused on, you know, what they need and how they can really be nimble and flexible and overcome these challenges, you know, where do you see, what have you seen as being successful from your perspective on keeping that focus and just maintaining the right kind of culture even through some of this high, potentially anxiety inducing times?
- [10:38]
B
I would say there's two things. One is really remembering our mission, remembering who we are as an organization. Why were we started 80 years ago? What was the purpose of why we do what we do? And our mission is to provide exceptional care with compassion. And that will always be our mission and we will never waver from that. And so making sure that we all remember every day, coming back to why do we do this every day? I've spent a lot of time in the past 16 months going out and meeting with all of our employees and sharing with them. The reason why I chose to move into healthcare. I spent my first career was as an attorney and my second career is healthcare. And I purposefully moved into healthcare because of the experience I had with my sister in law and her cancer journey and ultimately losing her to cancer. It really made me realize that I wanted to do for others the wonderful things that had been done for her and for all of us and her family. I tried to in the past 16 months ask people what's their why. And I think tying us back to our mission and our why allows for us to be grounded in what we're doing and it reminds us why we come to work every day. Why are we doing this work? There are times where it will be difficult. But if we can remember our mission and why we do what we do, I think it enables us to be able to be creative and envision what the future can look like. And I think that that's another piece to this is really around that shared culture and that concept of making it easier for our patients and making sure that we are providing care that is timely and easy to access, fast and flexible. I think that it allows us to be more curious and come up with new ways of providing care so that we can be here for our patients for the next 80 years.
- [12:42]
A
I love that. That makes a lot of sense and is truly words of wisdom in times like these. And from the business perspective, are there ways that you're seeing or potentially try to bring in additional patients or financial stability to the health system? What does that look like from your perspective?
- [13:03]
B
I would say a couple of things. First and foremost, and I said this when I first arrived here at TMC Health, my biggest priorities are quality, safety and the customer experience. Patients come to us because they expect that the care will be of high quality, that they will be safe, and they expect a good experience. And I think that over the years we've certainly tried to achieve that. I don't think we're there yet. I think we still have more work to do. And so that is something that we will continue to work on in the coming years. Customer experience. And I say the word customer for a really important reason. I think sometimes when we say patient, we allow ourselves to believe that we can put up with a certain level of discomfort and frustration. And I think when we focus on the word customer, we realize that people have a choice. They can choose to come to us, but they can also choose to go somewhere else. And so if we're creating an experience for them that is one that they enjoy and that they feel is. Is meaningful to them and that they are truly the focus of what we're doing, I think that it enables more people to want to come and seek services from us. It's that patient centered access, which I think we use that term so often. But I'm not so sure that we always really think about the patient and their experience and how easy it is for them to access care. We really want to make sure that it's flexible, fast and tailored to their individual needs. And I recently, in the past couple of months, lost a favorite uncle of mine and I was responsible for his care and I was navigating that care from here in Arizona to him in Florida. And although the care was very good, it was incredibly hard to do. And that's me being in this line of work and knowing the tools at my disposal. It was still incredibly hard. And it really shined a light for me on the experience that our patients have and making sure that it's as easy as possible for them to access. So I would say that that's a big area that will allow us to grow in the next few years, is really focusing on how do we make it as easy as possible for our patients and our community to get the care that they need. I would also say that our experience with DAC's Copilot has been so great that we are really looking to leverage a lot of digital integration not only for our patients here in the Tucson community, but really trying to connect our rural sites to our urban sites and allowing our rural hospitals to operate, operate at the top of their license and helping them manage capacity across our entire health system. And then I think it's continuing to grow some of our specialty services like oncology, and make that closer to where people live so that they don't have to travel far for that care. I think that's what people are looking for. I think those are some key pieces to what we're going to be focusing on for growth in the next few years.
- [16:07]
A
I appreciate your candid analysis there. And it definitely makes a lot of sense to have so many different areas that are truly then bolting back to and boiling down to where you can have some big growth opportunities, but at the same time keeping focused on the quality side of things, the customer experience, and just making sure that, you know, the entire organization is focused on those key aspects to providing great care. I think before we wrap up, I wanted to get your sense. What will it take to lead a thriving organization over the next five years? What is really important as leaders are going through so much, whether it is technology transformation or any of the other challenges we've discussed today.
- [16:50]
B
That's a great question. I think it's going to take a few things, some of which I've already mentioned. So I think really staying grounded in our mission and our community focus, I think for everyone in any organization, staying grounded in your mission and your community focus while still being able to adapt quickly to external change, I think will continue to be really important to lead a thriving organization. And it's up to us as the leaders of the organizations to ground our teams in that mission and community focus. I think building a health system that really is centered on the customer, not just saying it, but really focusing on how do we make it easier for our customers to get what they need from us and make it easier to navigate. I think that is will be necessary to leave a thriving organization in the coming years and I'd say really empowering our teams to speak up, problem solve and innovate together. Curiosity is so important in the work that we do because that curiosity not only leads to making sure that we're providing quality care, safe care, but it also allows us to be innovative and to come up with new ways of providing care to our patients, which I think we're going to have to do in the coming years as well as and just really trying to evolve into a more nimble, sustainable organization. I think that that's always what we're trying to do, not only here at TMC Health, but I think all of my colleagues across the country are trying to do that. And I think that's going to be even more important in the coming years, is really to remain nimble and find ways to be sustainable.
- [18:34]
A
I couldn't agree more. Jennifer, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. This has been a really fantastic conversation. I'm leaving very much insp about the future of health care and look forward to connecting with you again soon, especially at our CEO and CFO Roundtable in November. It'll be fantastic to have you there speaking and just being part of the overall discussion on where healthcare is headed.
- [18:55]
B
I'm very excited to see you in November, Laura, and I thank you for today. It's been wonderful.