← Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
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- [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 Scott Becker with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast. We're thrilled today to be joined by a brilliant leader. We're joined today by Matt Brown. Matt serves as the president for the south region of Common Spirit Health. He's also the CEO of St. Luke's Health Texas. He's had a magnificent career at a great faith based system. Matt, we'll talk today about trends, what you're watching, what you're excited about. I know you're doing a ton of robotic heart surgeries at St. Luke's Health. Talk a little bit about first yourself, introduce yourself and tell us about your role in your career.
- [01:08]
C
Sure. Thanks for having me today. I really appreciate the time. I've been with Common Spirit for six years. I was the transformation officer for the first five and a half and since August officially I have been the South Region president, which is multiple states, Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio for Common Spirit. And we're about $8 billion in revenue and several hospitals, ambulatory facilities and employed docs and independent docs. My career has really been kind of two paths. Grew up in academic medicine and at both Barnes and Wash U and the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and moved over to the consulting side where I did a lot of transformation work and turnaround work as a partner at Navigant that's now Guidehouse and have been, like I mentioned, with Common Spirit for the last six years. And it's been quite a journey and we're really excited about where we are and where we're going and what is.
- [02:14]
B
It like coming back out of consulting and back into leadership of the health system. And now you had spent serious time in health systems before going into consulting. It seems that when people just go straight to consulting dental leadership, sometimes challenging. Was it incredibly helpful for you that you had spent several years, a decade or so in health system leadership before consulting and then back to health system leadership?
- [02:39]
C
I think it was helpful, you know, that my early career was helpful both in consulting and then making the transition from consulting back into healthcare leadership. You know, being a consultant, talking to Clients about similar situations when they're opening command centers for, you know, events or trying to squeeze expenses to a level that they've never operated before to, to make margin to invest back in themselves. You're a lot more credible if you've done it. And so that was very helpful. And then making my transition back, the transformation role of Common Spirit was a lot of consulting. So it was kind of consulting light, working with the different regions in Common Spirit. And then as I transitioned back, I had a couple of fairly lengthy interim roles both at market and region levels and missed it too much. I missed being part of a larger team in a geographic area really working on the day to day. So it helps with the transition. But more than anything, I was ready to get back. I really enjoy the team part of it.
- [03:46]
B
Thank you. You work across several states, Texas, Georgia, several others. What are some of the trends you're watching across the region that you're involved in and across Common Spirit as a whole, which is a magnificent system, the largest, about the largest not for profit faith based system in the country. Commonspirit in total, what do you see as trends you're watching across the system and across your region?
- [04:09]
C
Yeah, so you know, we have a really dynamic executive leadership team at the Common Spirit level that's fairly new for the most part. You know, we really had to transition after the merger of Chi, Dignity. And one of the things I really like is their focus on competition at the market level. And so we've been very focused over the last few years, especially since Wright has joined, to be very competitive in markets. And there's obviously trends across those markets, but we've really found out to do that you have to think differently than what we've done in the past. Right. So we were very acute care heavy. And what I'm excited about in our markets is becoming essential to patients, employers, payers, providers in a way that we've dipped a toe in in some markets, gone a little further in others, but get really aggressive in bringing care to the consumers becoming essential. And the payers are telling us that's what the employers want and the employers are telling us that's what they want. So things like ambulatory proliferation around markets, access points, differentiating your product on service lines in a more competitive way. Those are the things that kind of have gotten me up in the morning over the last several months is how we build each a plan in each market to really be competitive. And what competitive means is building something that our consumers really want to be a part of and be in our network and we better do it. You know, it's got to be more than just big box acute care going forward.
- [05:51]
B
How important is it in each market to be really good at something, to sort of choose? Here's what we're going to be great at, here's how we're going to really serve consumers. How important is that market to market? Do you have to be great at something in each market?
- [06:08]
C
I think it's important to be great at something in each market and I think actually in sub markets within the markets, you have to be great at things. So we, we just talked last week, we had strategy reviews for each region with the Common Spirit team. We really need to talk about, okay, what's the identity of this care setting in this part of Houston? Houston is a huge market, 7.8 million people in the metropolitan area. So to think that you can be all things to everybody in northwest or southwest Houston is probably not good enough for today's consumer. They want to see that you are a center of excellence in cardiac care at the Texas Medical Center. And when you get out into the suburbs, we're going to do a lot of diagnostics, maybe a few interventions. But boy, we're really, really good at open hearts downtown and they know where that care is going to be even in the sub markets. And we're really excited about what we've done in cardiovascular and multiple markets in the south region, Arkansas, Tennessee and certainly Houston. But we need to feed kind of the, the big hubs with very specific, very competitive and very differentiated service lines and identities in the outlying markets to get access to the consumers where they want it.
- [07:37]
B
Thank you. And talk about service lines for a second. It seems like there's so much movement back from systems to orthopedics, oncology, cardiovascular. It seems for a few years everybody was under the umbrella of value based care and obviously still important. But it seems like there's so much more focus back to the big service lines, the things that patients really need in mass and that also helped to pay the bills. Any thoughts on that, of what you see out there in terms of oncology, cardiovascular, orthopedics or other lines?
- [08:13]
C
Yeah, I think, I think they merge. I think the service lines and value based care actually merge. And what I mean by that is service lines are extremely important. The payers want to see now that you have geographic access, access and more than just the acute setting. And then you differentiate on your service line in a way that we haven't in the past. How do you take a service line and Differentiate on service quality, cost and then kind of world renowned care, right? So they want, they want all of it. And the consumer is starting to look under the covers, right? It's not just the managed care companies and the employers now the consumer themselves are looking under the covers to see how you compete in those areas. So they want to see value in the form of high efficacy, convenience, efficiency and really, you know, access kind of trumps all. Can you get in there? And we built a system for, for years in service lines that were geared to a certain kind of consumer. Well, the generations that are up now are, they do a lot of research, they do a lot of Internet research. They schedule almost everything without talking to anyone. And can you get your differentiated service line in that space? And the payers are noticing when you do.
- [09:36]
B
Thank you. I'm going to ask you another serious question then I'm going to take you to a different area for one second. The serious questions are these. As a consultant. Well, let me start with as a healthcare leader in systems, your first decade of work, what did you learn that was transferable to being a consultant and then vice versa, being a consultant for a decade and coming back to leadership, what did you learn there?
- [10:03]
C
Oh, that's a great question. I had a great mentor early when I was at Barnes and my early career I was thrown into everything and she was a spectacular operator and let me have access to a lot. So I had as a non clinician I had a lot of exposure to clinical operations and man that served me well when I was a consultant and also kind of financial discipline when I was at Barnes in Washu and her name's Sharon o' Keefe and she went on to be the president of the University of Chicago. So it was really the place and the mentor, right? And then when I was at the University of Tennessee because of the reimbursement structure in the south, what I really learned there was how to build a really high quality product, high patient experience at a very low cost because we, we just didn't have the reimbursement. We didn't have the reimbursement of Barnes and Washu at the time. So those skills, kind of the clinical operations piece from Barnes and Washu and then the doing that in an extremely efficient way at the University of Tennessee kind of led me to my career in consulting. And I really co managed the ops practice at Navigate and that was a skill clients were willing to pay for, especially when we could kind of build it out. And what I learned there, you know, and this was Fascinating. You learn things like how to influence without power because you don't have any power as a consultant. So you have to actually build cases, which is a very transferable skill when you're in leadership. And then in addition to that, the access to multiple clients, watching what they do and trying to actually build solutions that are innovative is very transferable. Back to coming back to healthcare leadership. So it was a, I wouldn't trade anything in my career. The early part of it was very important obviously and I had great mentors and in both Barnes and ut. And then the consulting piece of it, just the multiple experiences and then the soft skills around building cases and leading without power. Very important. And I've fallen back on both of those in this career.
- [12:21]
B
No, I love that. I love it. And let me ask you one final question. You spent time at Truman State University and at University of Kansas, so I'm going to ask you two questions. Harry Truman, is he one of your favorite presidents? Second, is, is Bill Self a good coach or does it deserve to be kicked out of college basketball? Those are the two questions.
- [12:44]
C
Well, those are great questions and I, I got to be careful here. But Harry S. Truman was a great president. He was the ultimate in accountability as you know. And, and my favorite thing about him was he was able to laugh it off when the newspapers called Dewey the, the winner following his appointment as president after Roosevelt died. So self deprecating man with that really believed in accountability and studying and if you, if you can't like Harry Truman then it, then it's tough to like history. So I'll say that. And then so I'm from the Missouri side and it's really hard for me to opine on Kansas very much. I'm kind of a Mizzou fan so I've got to really be careful.
- [13:36]
B
Matt, thank you so much for taking the time to visit with us. What a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you so much for joining us on the Beckers Healthcare podcast. Thank you very much.
- [13:47]
C
Thank you all for having me. I really enjoyed the time and look forward to seeing you all in the future.