← Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
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- [00:00]
A
This is Laura Deardo with the Beckers Healthcare podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by Megan Gillespie, Chief Executive Officer at Sutter Santa Rosa Regional Hospital. Megan, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
- [00:11]
B
Thanks, Laura. It's a pleasure to be here.
- [00:13]
A
Now, I'm really excited to have you on the line because I know there's a lot of cool things that you're doing at Santa Rosa Regional, and we'll certainly be excited to get an opportunity to talk a little bit about how you're thinking about the future. But before we dive in, I'm wondering, could you introduce yourself and just tell us a little bit about the hospital?
- [00:29]
B
Sure. I had the opportunity to relocate to Sonoma county back in October of 2023 from Illinois. I'm originally from the east coast, but Illinois was where I was residing prior to relocating. I currently have the privilege to serve in the role as CEO for Sutter Santa Rosa Regional Hospital. We're a part of the bigger Sutter health system, and we're really uniquely positioned between urban San Francisco and the very rural geography of Northern California in Win country. So it's just an interesting place to be, and it lends a lot of opportunities for us to really look at how do we open up access for care?
- [01:11]
A
Absolutely. That, you know, it sounds like a great opportunity. Just continue to grow and build and serve the community. So I'm curious, what's your biggest winner success story from last year?
- [01:21]
B
So we've had a lot of great milestones from this past year, but probably one of our biggest wins was really focusing on where we had to open up access, where patients needed care. Our community was uniquely challenged, and I knew that moving into Northern California and Sonoma county, but I didn't realize how truly constrained access to care. And I learned more and more of that throughout my transition. I'd say one of the first areas that we really focused on was growing our teams because we needed our people to be ready to open up access and care for those patients coming in where the demand was high. We focused initially on the portals of entry where our patients were most frequently coming in to access health care. Our emergency department, our patients that especially needed access to vital infusion services, timely surgery. I want to pause because we were also recognized and earned recognition for being the top 10% in the nation for surgical care from health grades this past year. Our team is really proud of that. It was also significant because patients were waiting a long time to get access to surgical care. And we've really opened those Doors up. The other spaces may be not as acute, but just as important. Access to imaging, access to lab. So really looking at those portals of entry and making sure that our teams were hired in those spaces to handle the demand that was needed throughout our community, that makes a lot of sense.
- [02:59]
A
You know, really seems like a smart way to tackle a big problem for I know so many hospitals and health systems across the country is just trying to figure out how they can really serve the patients better and make sure they have access to needed care. What are the top two to three issues that you're focused on right now?
- [03:17]
B
Well, it is definitely continuing the access. And you know, when I think back to just to summarize what we just talked about before we shift into that, you know, if we combine the touchpoints for emergency department infusion surgeries, accepted emergent transfers into our hospital, our team impacted patients with enhanced access, more than 9,100 instances last year in 2024 compared to 2023. And we're on track to raise that bar again for 2025. So access will be a continued issue that we're going to continue to focus on as we open up and figure out how do we connect that care better for our patients and make it easier for patients to get access to care. That I would say is probably number one for sure. I'd say within that top realm, it's as a system, how are we able to make it easier for our team to provide the care delivery? And that's a lot of that is going to be generated through innovation, through technology, but also really looking at our systems and working as one system one Sutter Health, looking at what do we need to offset to our ambulatory sites, how do we support the demand across our different geographies and make sure that we can care for more people across the different communities. And the last thing I'll say about that topic is the underpinning for all of that is really around our people and our culture. So making sure we have the right people on our teams, making sure they're supported to do their best work, and being able to retain that talent, I'm going to tag this in as another win. We had a lowest historical rate ever for turnover while achieving the highest headcount this past year as well. So our people are really the ones to give credit to for making this access happen for our communities.
- [05:17]
A
That's amazing to hear. Certainly a huge testament to them in what you've been able to accomplish over the last couple years. Now, where do you see some of the big opportunities for growth in the future.
- [05:29]
B
I think this is such a hot topic right now with healthcare. I think about for the first time in history, we're having a revolution that's not dependent on human or animal power, similar to our industrial revolutions we've had in the past. We are solidly in an innovation AI technology era that is moving at light speed. We're moving faster than we ever have before and at the same time, I think we're moving the slowest we're ever going to move. When we look ahead to the future, there's such a pace that AI is driving in healthcare and I think that ability for us to take advantage of, how do we leverage that compilation of data and take advantage to predict how do we drive better health care, how do we drive better health care outcomes and shape population health for the better? I think it's a loaded question. I think I could talk about that for eight hours, which I won't because I know we don't have eight hours. But I think as we move forward with that light speed pace, the challenge is going to be how do we preserve that humanity in healthcare and help to ensure that we're empowering, adding that value added activity back into health care. You know, having our clinicians help shape how we're using those different technologies, how we're using AI and give people back the most value part of their profession, you know, the joy in the work that we get to do. One example I just want to share quickly is having the opportunity to watch one of our emergency department physicians in a physician and triage role. And that's where our physicians are caring for those patients and helping to triage what track they're going to go into to get whatever care they need. And we're using something called a bridge and it's ambient listening for our physicians. And he used it so seamlessly without having to type while he's doing his assessment, while he's caring for that patient and in his words, it's bringing the fund back and what he gets to do. This is why he became a physician. So he's not having to stay hours after his shift to catch up documentation, he's not having to stare at the computer, he's able to care for the patient and the note is generated and all he has to do is validate, maybe tweak it here and there, but it's done.
- [07:58]
A
I can imagine that's such a relief and burden lifting off his shoulders. And certainly for all clinicians that are able to use that type of Technology, it makes a big difference, not only for clinical care, but then happiness and just ability to live their lives as well. Perfect. Well, I'm curious from your perspective, given all this change that's coming about, whether it's technology driven or, you know, patient population, communities, what they need in order to thrive, what do you think it will take as a leader in order to build a great organization in the next five years or so? What do you need in order to continue to be able to serve your community well?
- [08:36]
B
There are so many answers to that question, but I'm going to go back to kind of the theme that we've been talking through throughout this whole conversation. And I think it comes down to culture. It's a perfect storm right now in health care. There's definitely more pressure, there's decreasing reimbursements, there's increased demand. We have 11,000 people aging into Medicare every day. I was just on the phone talking to my parents who are on the east coast, and my dad was working on getting an appointment. That was a struggle. So it's a real problem that people are dealing with on a daily basis. Decreased availability of health care professionals. That pace is definitely not equaling the pace of people aging into Medicare. So I believe that as we move forward, in order for organizations to thrive, we, we really have to understand and execute on that importance of intentional investment in developing our people and being really focused on the culture that we're creating. I think that's going to drive the advantage and I believe we're probably going to start to see a separation of healthcare organizations that get that right. Obviously I might be biased, but I feel like Sutter Health is very much getting that right because it is the foundation of everything. Those places that are able to recruit and retain that talent is going to empower that progress to happen with more agility and at a higher speed than the others. That's just what it's going to come down to. As a system. We have access to something that's fairly new, but we're actively using it called our Innovation center. And it's really a focused area where we can partner with across our organization. And obviously a lot of our IT and technology team can partner with change makers to help shape the future and pilot things that are scalable across the system, like the abridged documentation that I shared that we're using in our emergency department here. And I just think it's an exciting time more than ever before. So it's an honor to get to be a part of it.
- [10:51]
A
It's amazing to hear. Megan, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. This has been such a fun conversation and inspiring as well. I look forward to connecting with you again soon and definitely will be excited to continue the conversation at our CEO CFO Roundtable. I know you're a speaker and certainly will cover a variety of these topics there too, so I'm looking forward to it.
- [11:09]
B
Yeah, thank you. Me.