← Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Loading summary
Transcript17 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hello, everyone. This is Scott King with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast. Thrilled today to be joined by Rachel Feynman, Vice President, Innovation and Managing Director over at TGH Ventures. Rachel, how are you doing today?
- [00:14]
B
I'm great, Scott. I'm having a good Friday.
- [00:17]
A
That's as it should be. We all need a good Friday. It's starting to get cold here in Chicago, so I will, I will take it. And thanks so much for joining us. We have a lot of kind of big topics and, and trends going on in healthcare we're going to dive into. But before we do that, I was wondering if you could just please tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.
- [00:34]
B
Sure. Happy to. So I'm coming up on five years here at Tampa General. I started here brand new with TGH Ventures, and it's been an exciting time to build up the fund, professionalize our innovation function here, and lead a team around this at tgh. And I think we've made a great impact building a portfolio of over a dozen direct investments at the hospital. And I kind of came into this a little bit uniquely as a former practicing attorney turned healthcare professional. It's been a great journey, though.
- [01:13]
A
Well, that's really interesting background. Let me ask you about that kind of lens as an attorney getting into a healthcare leadership role. How do you think that's, I don't know, giving you an edge or just kind of giving you a different perspective in the industry?
- [01:25]
B
So while it may not be formally part of my title, I certainly feel like I, you know, I use it every day. One of the things I think as a, an investor, whether in healthcare or in any other industry is, and in innovation generally, you really have to have an unending sense of curiosity because we really fly high across the entire organization. You know, one day we're diving deep around utilization, around imaging on the inpatient side. The next day we're focused on ambulatory care, navigation. And so we're not your expert in any one area. And so we really need to make sure we have that curiosity, ability to ask all of the questions, dive in deep where we need to. And I think I definitely bring that from my background as an attorney, not to mention looking at and negotiating deal documents, which is directly relevant to the work that I did in my many years as an attorney.
- [02:26]
A
Yeah, I think that's great. I think your background ties in perfectly, and we definitely need some curious and creative people in healthcare with everything going on. So, speaking of being curious, I'm curious to ask and hear what are the things you're kind of monitoring in healthcare in related to some opportunities and headwinds.
- [02:46]
B
Well, I think like everyone else, we are monitoring the regulatory environment and the uncertainty around all of that. You know, that is something as we start to approach midterms, as we're coming cautiously out of the government shutdown, it is, you know, it remains something that is directly relevant to the work we do, where we place investments, partnerships that we land on and how we think about our growth. And you know, there, there is only so much certainty to be had right now and you know, and that's driving a lot of, of what it is that we do. That being said, while that may be a headwind, there's aspects of that that I think we can think about from a tailwind perspective. And as long as we're nimble and we're able to quickly react, I think we can end up on the right side of any which way the regulatory winds may blow. But without a doubt opportunity remains. The explosive growth in tech and AI and making sure that we are leveraging this new round of technology to support our team members, clinical and non clinical, and continue to provide the best care we can to our patients by taking advantage of those accelerations in technology.
- [04:16]
A
You mentioned growth. How are you thinking about adding growth and value to your organization?
- [04:21]
B
Well, I think this is a time at TGH frankly of a lot of growth overall. And so for our team, it's making sure that we're continuing to scale some of the really great innovations that we've brought to bear over the last couple of years and make sure that we continue to drive those for, for, for the organization's growth. We laid in a modern RTLS system at TGH last year and so this year will be about really scaling that across the system and that has been able to provide a lot of, a lot of efficiency gains for our team members and being able to locate equipment more easily. We're bringing it into the perioperative space because we know that having our ORs run on time impacts everything for us. So being able to really help with the surgical tray tracking and optimization in the OR space, leveraging computer vision there and being able to scale that as we build out a new tower with new ors. All of that really kind of thinking about how we scale innovation we've laid in to match the growth of the, of the system overall.
- [05:42]
A
What do you think is one risk or investment worth making this year?
- [05:47]
B
So I thought a lot about this and I think one of the things as we think about, you know, all of the challenges that academic health systems like TGH face. You know, we talked about regulatory uncertainty and some of those things. One of the things that we have that is always an investment worth making is in ourselves and our brand and the value that we bring to our patients. In our market that is ever expanding our brand means something very significant to our patients. So doubling down on consumer centric care that, you know, we, we partner with others, we bring our brand forward. That brand that our patients can trust is something that I think is always an investment worth making. And we continue to do as, you know, as we grow here and, and we think about new innovative models of delivering care to our patients while leveraging that Tampa General brand that is, is well trusted and very valuable to us as care providers.
- [06:59]
A
And the last thing I wanted to ask you, Rachel, is where do you see the best opportunities for growth in the future?
- [07:04]
B
So I think this coming back to the explosion of AI, it just feels like you can't talk enough about where and how that is going to impact growth. I think for us the best opportunities are to really thoughtfully layer in AI, whether it's agentic voice agents in our experience centers or it is thinking about back office administrative functions. I think this or really on the front lines clinically as we roll out ambient listening and other solutions that really help our frontline team members and our providers. I think that's really where the best opportunity for growth is for us because we're going to be able to do a lot more with less and put those resources where they need to be and enhancing care for our patients.
- [08:07]
A
Well, Rachel, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast. I think it was a great conversation and I look forward to working with you again soon.
- [08:13]
B
Thanks so much for having me and have a great weekend.
- [08:15]
A
You too.