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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Muhammad Owais Khan, MD, MBA, CPE, CHCQM, FAAFP, FHM, Chief Medical Officer and Designated Institutional Official at Three Crosses Regional Hospital
00:19:10
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- [00:02]
A
Every year, Becker's annual meeting brings healthcare leaders together to unpack the most pressing issues facing the industry. And every year, those conversations shift in profound and unexpected ways. This April, more than 3,500 healthcare executives will return to Chicago for Becker's 16th annual meeting. 795 elite speakers will offer new lessons, new case studies, and predictions about what comes next. Join us April 13th through the 16th. For the agenda and event details, visit Beckershospitalview.com and click on the Events tab in the upper right.
- [00:38]
B
Hello everyone and welcome to Becker's Healthcare Podcast. I'm Mackenzie Bean, Associate Vice President and Managing Editor of Becker's Hospital Review. Today I am so thrilled to be joined by Dr. Mohammad Owaiz Khan, the Chief Medical Officer and designated Institutional Official of of Three Crosses Regional Hospital in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Dr. Khan, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.
- [01:05]
C
Thank you very much and good morning.
- [01:07]
B
Good morning. It's so nice to have you. I was hoping you could kick things off by telling us a little bit more about yourself, your background and Three Crosses Regional as well.
- [01:17]
C
Absolutely. Thank you very much, mackenzie, for having me. It's an honor to speak for Beckers. So I have been working after my residency for the past one decade actually as of right now I did my medical school from Pakistan, after which I did my training in Family Medicine from East Tennessee State University in Bristol, Tennessee, graduating in 2016, after which I did my Master's in Business Administration and Healthcare Law from King University in Bristol, Tennessee. I worked for a few years with Indiana University as well as Union Hospital in Terre Hauten, Indiana, after which we decided to move to Las Cruces El Paso area here in the Southwest region. During this time I did my board certification in Hospital Medicine through American Board of Internal Medicine as well as my Certified physician Executive course through a AAPL which is American association for Physician Leadership as as my certification in healthcare Quality management through American Board of Quality Assurance. I've been working as a Chief Medical Officer for almost five years this summer at this brand new, beautiful and amazing hospital. And actually Beckers gave us five stars during 2024 season as well in New Mexico as well as Dio, which is I'm the head of the graduate medical education program here for Internal Medicine for the past two and a half years and very pro that in New Mexico to start a third internal medicine residency program which is focused to help cater to primary care in this area and we lack primary care a lot as far as Three Crosses Regional Hospital is concerned. It's a small but a fully acute care 46 bed with 10 ICU beds, 10 ER beds, hospital with almost every specialty. The only thing which we don't do is open heart surgeries. We see a lot of highly acute care patients. One very good thing about this hospital is that it's privately owned by private investors and not through a corporation. So we see a lot of physician input in this hospital. We're very proud to have most of our doctors hired locally without any help of any third party organizations, which I think is very, very helpful to provide excellent care to our patients. Especially in the state of New Mexico, which is I think one of the worst, I think five states in the country to practice medicine in terms of litigation. And I'm very proud to say that I have hired a lot of doctors and very small, successfully started an internal medicine program last year. So that's a little bit about me and my organization.
- [04:30]
B
I appreciate that Over. You paint such a vivid picture of three crosses regional and the landscape that you're leading in. You obviously mentioned a big focus on expanding internal medicine primary care access in your region and the new internal medicine program which is so exciting. Can you talk more about that initiative, rolling it out last year and where you are in that process?
- [04:58]
C
Yes. So to start a GME program is a very difficult task as a brand new hospital, privately owned, with having no help from a big corporation. Our funds were very, very limited with very limited resources. But I think thanks to my program director, my core faculty and our administration, whatever support they could give, we were successful in getting our first program and got approval for 24 residents across three years just at the very first attempt with a few areas for improvement, which is very natural. And I think it was a huge success for this region, for Doniana county, for southern New Mexico, Because I am very hopeful that with the culture I have created in my hospital, I will hopefully be able to keep my residents after they graduate to practice here, to stay here. Despite the dwindling healthcare landscape and despite the difficult litigation laws which are in New Mexico, I am very, very hope that I will be able to keep people here who can practice good medicine, evidence based medicine for safe patient care. And by the way, and our population deserves that. So I'm very, very hopeful. We are in our second year of matching our residents and I'm very hopeful we'll get again a very, very good cohort. My medical staff supports us tremendously. They thought we will never be able to get it because of the limited resources, but now that we have it I think the entire med staff, all the subspecialties, the community doctors, everyone supports it because they all know that the doctors here who live here are getting older and we need newer blood, newer people who will stay here and yep, that's it. So I'm very pleased with our results in providing high quality care to our population.
- [07:21]
B
It's quite an accomplishment to be proud of. And you mentioned retention here being a big piece of the puzzle for a thriving physician workforce. Can you speak a bit more to that culture that you've worked to build? You know, what do you think is really going to keep those new early career physicians at the hospital?
- [07:41]
C
So culture is something very important. I mean, if you check my LinkedIn, I'm a very strong advocate for mental health and burnout in physicians. Physicians are one of the, some of the few or very few tough people who tough out everything for the amount of training they go through, the aggressive hours, the no complaint culture. During this process, they forget that they also have a heart, they also have a mind and a body they have to cater to. And they don't realize that burnout, they are already burned out, it's too late. And they have mental health conditions or they have physical problems. And one of my aim is to prevent that, to identify that and to support my staff, my medical staff, my residents, before they even reach burnout. How do we do that? I have worked in a lot of bigger corporations and unfortunately, healthcare in the country, in the United States is very, very corporate led, which is all about numbers. And I know and I'm very well aware that healthcare is a business as well. We have to make money to stay open, but we have to listen to physicians if we want to give excellent patient care. If you want to be profitable, we have to listen to the doctors, we have to be patient with the medical staff. When I was doing my big, my project for my certified physician executive, I presented my whole, whole project and I to the people who, who gave me, awarded me the CPE title. And my project was pretty much that in every hospital I have worked at, it's all about take care of patients, take care of patients, patient satisfaction scores, you know, all and, but nobody ever talks about, we need to take care of our doctors as well. Because if you're not going to have doctors, how are we going to take care of our patients? And I was like, I work in on an inverse model which is at the very bottom. Rather than having, you know, talking only about patients, I want to talk about doctors to take care of our physicians. Their Health, their satisfaction, their well being. Because if I'm going to talk, I'm going to take care of that. They are going to move mountains to provide excellent patient care. Once they provide excellent patient care, your patients are going to be happy. They'll keep on coming to your hospital, they'll give you excellent reviews, you will end up getting better insurance contracts, and you will ultimately be profitable and will be able to sustain your hospital. So if we look at it in that aspect, I think, I think no hospital will have problems. And I think that's what I have done here in my capacity. It's been almost five years as cmo. When this hospital started, we literally had only anesthesia and podiatry as a subspecialty. And now I'm very proud to say we have over 15 surgical and internal medicine subspecialties and we are very, very happy to take care of all our patients. We are working on getting a primary stroke center certification. We just got our initial Joint Commission accreditation. And I'm very proud of the work we all have done here. Very grateful to my medical staff who listens to me and who works as a team.
- [11:41]
B
Absolutely. And going from two to over a dozen of those subspecialties is amazing. What was key there in terms of, you know, recruiting those specialists and like you said, making sure they feel taken care of. What does that really look like in practice? Is it, you know, physician surveys, physician councils? How, how do you achieve that in your day to day?
- [12:03]
C
So you know what, it's a very good question. We have done zero physician surveys. But what, you know, what I do, you will never find me in my office because I'm all, either if I'm in a meeting or I'm, or I, I, I'm, I'm, I'm still clinically active as well. I'm only 39 years old. I came into leadership way earlier, but I talked to my doctors. We did have all the subspecialists here. They were tired of working in hospitals. It was just conversations. It was reassurance to them and it was proving to them that when they come to this hospital, the culture will be different. Do we have our problems and hardships? We absolutely do. But I'll tell you, I'm very proud to say that, that in my hospital, we have rarely used a physician recruiter to recruit probably two doctors, if that, in like orthopedics or cardiology. We have recruited doctors all the way from the Northeast coast to Nevada, the West coast, through contacts, through our, through our personal contacts into this highly Litigious state of New Mexico because of our culture. And the culture is listen to the doctors. They are important, they are crucial. If you will not have a physician, you will not have a hospital. And I think we are very successful. We do have our hardships, we do have our struggles. I personally have a lot of struggles in the C suite, as anyone can imagine. But I don't give up. And I go home happy and I sleep happy that I've done a good job for my people.
- [13:47]
B
Yeah, that's very inspirational. You've mentioned the unique legal landscape in New Mexico. Do you mind just briefly giving a snapshot of that for any listeners who might not be familiar?
- [13:58]
C
Yes. So New Mexico, unfortunately is one of the worst states, unfortunately, in the country to practice medicine in terms of litigation. These attorneys who work against the hospitals and physicians are very, very powerful in this state. And unfortunately, the politicians don't help us either. So what happens is that there is no cap on a malpractice lawsuit in the state of New Mexico. So we have like literally less than five insurance companies who are left. All the insurance companies have moved, meaning the medical malpractice companies have moved out of New Mexico for the horrible tens of millions of dollars of lawsuits with the juries have awarded to the defendants. They have been, they had, they could not afford to stay here and they left. And we have lost more than 30% of our physician workforce. Either the doctors go and work for the VA or they go and work for a university hospital, which to some extent are protected, but they are not working for private hospitals because of this problem. There is no tort reform. There is nothing like Texas, for example, or Indiana have good tort reforms. They protect their physician workforce, they protect their providers, their healthcare individuals. But not here in New Mexico. And it is, I think a lot of our doctors, a lot of our local societies, New Mexico medical society, are working to reverse or to put a certain cap. Because you can say that I'm going to sue so and so doctor for $100 million of punitive damages. Who can have that? I have personally heard of multiple doctors going bankrupt who would not settle for based on the insurance company. And they went for trial and they lost, did and they had to file bankruptcy. This is not how you deal. No country in the world does that. And if people think doctors make a lot of money, then please go ahead and become a doctor, because I don't tell my kids to become a physician for what I have gone through. So this is a big, big, big struggle in the state of New Mexico. And we are still dealing with it.
- [16:33]
B
Yeah, a significant challenge and I think it paints and you know, even in more impressive picture of some of the success that you have had in expanding your physician workforce. So I appreciate you elaborating. Elaborating on that. Before we wrap today, I just want to turn it to you. Are there any final thoughts you'd like to share about your work in terms of physician workforce or what's coming down the pipeline in 2026?
- [16:57]
C
Yes. So our program, our plan is of course, you know, a profitable hospital, expanding service lines, making sure our patients don't leave Dona Ana county to go to either Texas or Albuquerque to seek care because we lose a lot of patients to change the outlook of the community. That Las Cruces provides excellent health care that southwest United States is as good as any other institution institution in the country. The top institutions in the country. And if you look at Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic, these are two physician run hospitals, their CEOs are physicians, they have heavy physician overlook and they are one of the most successful hospitals in the country. They are community hospitals who have excellent graduate medical education programs and doctors love to work over there and patients love to go over there to be taken care of and they are all five star hospitals. So why can't I make a community hospital which is physician led, which has excellent graduate medical education programs and make it as successful with very, very limited resources? I think I have done that and all the doctors here have done that. And our goal is to expand our physician workforce to hope and pray for medical malpractice, to see if our politicians listened to us, to see that we cannot afford to lose more doctors from New Mexico and just keep on working hard.
- [18:42]
B
Absolutely. I think you're a great case study for community hospitals across the country of what's possible and the progress being made. Dr. Khan, thank you so much for taking the time to share some of your experience on the podcast. We so appreciate.
- [18:54]
C
No problem. Thank you. Mackenzie, thank you very, very much for having me.
- [18:58]
B
Thank you listeners. You can tune into more podcasts on our website. Otherwise, thank you all and hope you have a wonderful rest of the.