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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Kyle Benoit, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Bayhealth
00:09:39
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- [00:01]
A
This is Laura Dardo with the Beckers Healthcare podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by Kyle Benoit, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Bay Health. Kyle, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
- [00:13]
B
Thanks for having me, Laura. Pleasure to be here.
- [00:15]
A
Absolutely. Now, I'm looking forward to learning a bit more about some of the cool things you're doing at Bay Health and your perspective on the future. But before we dive in, I'm curious, can you introduce yourself and just tell us a little bit more about Bay Health?
- [00:28]
B
Yes, My name is Kyle Benoit. I am the executive vice president and chief operating officer at Bay Health, based out in Delaware. So we have two main hospital sites, one in Dover, Delaware, and the other one down in Milford, Delaware, and then several ambulatory sites, a couple freestanding ERs, a large and growing medical group covering a large portion of central and southern Delaware.
- [00:55]
A
That's great to hear and certainly, you know, an important community to be covering and serving. I'm curious, I know you just started at Bay Health, but what's been your biggest winner success story so far?
- [01:06]
B
Yeah, I joined Bay Health about six months ago in January of 25, and it's been a great transition into the organization. Our fiscal year is July to June, so we just completed our last fiscal year and really a great successful year. We actually saw a great improvement in our employee engagement scores. We saw a reduction in turnover, reduction in our temp labor, a lot of growth, especially in our surgical and imaging platforms as well as oncology. So really had a strong financial year, which is really setting us up well for the start of this fiscal year.
- [01:44]
A
That's great to hear and truly it's really amazing results when you think about everything that's going on outside of the health system, just in terms of some of the really big challenges in macro policy and economic issues affecting health care today. It's great to see such a turnaround. Now, I'm curious, from your perspective, what are some of the top two to three issues that you're focusing on right now?
- [02:07]
B
You know, you're only as good as your people in your organization. And while we saw a great improvement on reduction in turnover and reduction in template labor, you know, we can send you have a hyper focus on, you know, boosting our engagement, making sure we're having a strong organizational culture so that we can create that environment that people want to join and never want to leave, you know, so that we again, continue to see those turnover numbers improve, the template numbers improve, really want to fortify the pipelines we're experiencing a lot of growth in our service area and people are looking to Bay Health, our community, our patients are looking to us to provide that care. So we got to make sure that we have the best and the brightest at all levels of the organization to meet the growing needs. You know, another area, a continuous focus in growth for us is around the outpatient arena. And so we are really looking at growing our ambulatory footprint. Imaging centers, clinics, surgery center, you name it, across the whole catchment. Healthcare continues to accelerate outpatient, and we have a great footprint thus far, but we know there's more we want to do and we have plans in place for that. And then really, when it comes down to how do we best embrace and improve access to care by utilizing technology, how do we optimize our technology within the organization, not necessarily to replace people, but as an adjunct. Right. We want to continue to recruit individuals, but we know we need technology capabilities, AI, what have you, to be able to enhance them, to make them work up to their fullest potential, the top of their license, if you will, and find those opportunities where technology can help make utilizing healthcare easier for our patients.
- [03:46]
A
I love that. I think, you know, it's so critical to have that technology infrastructure in place and ability to modernize as the technology evolves. And I'm curious, for a health system like, for a health system like Bay Health, where do you really see being the space where technology has been most beneficial for you? How do you see investments continuing to evolve over the next couple of years, especially knowing how. How, you know, I guess critical the next few years is going to be?
- [04:19]
B
Yeah, it's evolving and changing by the day. It feels like, you know, we're an EPIC shop. We have an EPIC for our emr and we continue to find ways to introduce newer tools within EPIC and optimize epic not only, not only just for our healthcare personnel, but for our patients as well. How do we, again from my chart, optimize and utilize every component imaginable because we need to focus on making healthcare easy and simple to use. And it's safe to say that Healthcare Times is very difficult to use and a mindset I like to embrace with my end. The team I work with is around how do we kind of have that Amazon mindset? I think the culture here in the United States is around kind of the two clicks, it's on your doorstep. Right. That's what we're all used to if we're shopping on Amazon. And so how do we make healthcare aligned and as easy as is for people to shop online and purchase through Amazon or walmart.com whatever it is they use. Because it's all about ease of access now. And if people have to wait, they're gonna move on to something else or some other care provider that can meet their needs more efficiently. So I really feel like technology not only just epic, but other tools can be an adject to that to help make it easier to use again. It's also we have some shortages in certain key areas. So where can technology be introduced that care is not compromised, if anything enhanced with the team, the team members that we have here on site. But it is evolving quickly. Not everything is necessarily applicable right away, but you kind of got to have that keen, adaptable mindset of what's going to be able to fulfill your organizational missions, your visions, your values, and allow you to enhance the quality of care that you're delivering for your patients.
- [06:02]
A
Fascinating to hear. Thank you so much for digging deeper there now. In looking into the future, what do you see as being some of the big opportunities for growth over the next few years?
- [06:11]
B
Yeah, bayhealth, we really have some great plans underway at all of our care areas. We're going to be doing some significant expansion at our Dover campus as well as our campus down in Sussex county, at the Milford campus. Both enhancing our inpatient surgical platforms, imaging as well as outpatient capabilities. So we really have a lot of robust capital plans over a multi year time frame. Some of it's just to kind of enhance what we have now, but also then others is just to expand our capabilities, additional sites of services, support additional programming. Because again, as I highlighted earlier, we are having a significant population growth in our catchment area and the community is looking for Bayhal to meet their needs and we're committed to do that. And that's why we're going to be executing on those plans starting in short order.
- [07:05]
A
That's great to hear and I know really interesting to have that both inpatient as well as outpatient focus on where you know, your capital planning is going to be in balancing what the right mixes there to, you know, move forward and have that clinical capabilities as time goes on.
- [07:25]
B
Absolutely.
- [07:26]
A
Now, before I wrap up, I wanted to ask you about leadership, especially during times of a lot of change and rapid transformation. What will it take to lead a thriving organization over the next five years or so?
- [07:38]
B
I think more than ever leaders are going to be tasked with. You have to be nimble, you have to be adaptable. The environment is evolving so quickly and you can't get entrapped and sent in your ways and can't assume that, oh, this is the way we've always done it. You know, it's just, it's a necessity of healthcare. I believe it always has been to lead effectively in healthcare, but now more than ever, it's embracing the kind of change mindset and effectively leading your group of individuals. You know, you gotta have be that empathetic, engaging leader as well, because again, as I highlighted earlier, you're only as good as the people you have. And you got to create an environment you want to come to and never want to leave. And you have to do that via being that engaging, effective leader, listening to your people and finding ways to really help them realize their greatest potential. It's just the leadership in healthcare is so dynamic. It always has been, but it continues to. It becomes a necessity now, I feel like, to be effective as we go into the future. The workforce is more dynamic than it's ever been. What people see value in has changed so much in the past couple of years. And us as leaders are tasked with meeting them where they're at to find that value because patients are going to still seeking us for care. And we need to make sure that we have the people, the programming, the high performance quality indicators in place so that people know when they come here they're going to get the best care possible.
- [09:08]
A
That's amazing to hear. Kyle. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. This has been such a fun conversation and I look forward to connecting with you again soon.
- [09:17]
B
Thank you for having me, Laura. I really appreciate the conversation. Thank you again.