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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Sarina Rodriques, Associate Vice President of System Lab Operations at Rush University System for Health
00:11:07
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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
This is Scott Becker with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast. We're thrilled today to be joined by a wonderful leader from a brilliant leader, a wonderful institution. We're joined today by Serena Rodriguez. Serena's both at Rush University System for Health. She's also from the Yale School of Management. Serena, a great pleasure to visit with you. I will tell you I spent the morning downtown at the Rush campus, so I was so excited to see you on the schedule today. Can you take a moment and tell us a little about yourself and about your career?
- [01:14]
C
Oh, sure, I can do that. So, as you mentioned, I'm Serena Rodriguez. I am the Associate Vice President for laboratory systems throughout the Rush University System in Chicago. As you of course know, Rush is an academic health system. It's got a really great mission around patient care, but there's this wonderful additional mission we have around education, research and health equity. We are very complex in our environments. We not only support tertiary care, but quaternary care. We have this incredible teaching mission. We're also really growing our ambulatory footprint. We recently opened another ambulatory site on north and Harlem. But we are deeply committed to community access. So in my role, I oversee lab operations across the system. I have a lot of strategy around workforce strength. Of course, quality and regulatory governance is critical to laboratory medicine. We also serve as a reference laboratory for systems throughout Rush. We are looking at some strategies around insourcing laboratory technology. A core program of why I was brought into Rush with my background in expertise in laboratory medicine as a consultant throughout the US Where I did a lot of system work, is to advance the one Rush one laboratory model standardizing to improve safety, efficiency, compliance while still allowing some flexibility around that academic setting. The goal is to have a enterprise laboratory that's reliable, scalable and positioned to support this long term growth. That health's mission is. So this is a little bit about me.
- [03:26]
B
Well, thank you. What are some of the core trends that you're watching currently? What's one of the big things you.
- [03:30]
C
Have your eye on There are several trends that are shaping how we lead laboratories today. The first one would be workforce sustainability. It really goes beyond recruitment. We're focused on fatigue, risk and competency, depth leadership coverage across all shifts and long term viability of staffing. Models that really historically relied on overtime and sort of informal coverage systems are increasingly recognizing this as both a patient safety risk and an enterprise risk. So I'm really focused on local leadership. Even though we are a system, we really need to ensure that all of our employees on all hours of the day are being thought about from that fatigue risk and having presence locally. The second area that I'm seeing a trend around is reference lab and insourcing strategies. Sort of a reassessment of what makes sense to do ourselves. So we have this strong ambulatory presence throughout the Chicagoland area out into Aurora. We're looking at taking care of all of our patients, whether they're inpatient or ambulatory. So we have a strategy for ambulatory growth looking at things like turnaround time, where testing is performed, should it be performed locally at the point of care, and also just that total cost of owning our laboratories, not just at the incremental cost per test level, but how does it impact value based care and outcomes to our patients? Wherever we can, we are looking at strategies to insource testing back in house. We think this will help create better access growth and improve quality. And finally, the third trend that comes to my mind is governance. We want to be sure that we are responsible for how we utilize laboratory testing. So we want to move away from fragmented on site based decision making towards structured governance for test utilization, point of care, testing technology, blood management and quality. So those are some things we're looking at with a external membership approach, not just an internal lab membership approach of using our providers, our clinicians, our pharmacists to support governance around laboratory utilization.
- [06:11]
B
Thank you and take a moment on the sort of as you get into 2026, Serena, where are you most focused and excited?
- [06:22]
C
Building infrastructure is my focus as I mentioned, to do governance work, we need to have the right people hired and engaged. So I'm creating new workforce models and updating the operating standards so that we can have people available to do the governance work as well as being able to bring growth back in house. So that's going to take some infrastructure rebuilding outside of the last six to 18 months. I'm really proud of the progress we've made for system wide support, setting clear expectations and accountability on decision making. We're really aligned with Our regulatory bodies like CLIA and CAP and patient safety is always at the forefront for everything we do. I think creating this workforce stabilization and redesign has helped us get ready for the work ahead. We're also doing a lot more work around. Illinois isn't a licensed state for laboratorians. However, we do hire certified techs. And so creating skill mixing where we utilize certified techs versus different skill mixes with medical lab assistants or uncertified techs. We need them all. They're critical to our coverage. So we're using a lot of that understanding of when we need certification and when we do, when we don't, we also are really positioned to be a growth partner. I love that Rush invests in their programs and they've been really supportive of the laboratories, really proud of that, and it has given us the momentum to continue to grow and invest in our laboratories.
- [08:19]
B
Thank you. And you've had this great both leadership and education career. You're a master's in health systems management, executive education assistant professor. What advice would you give to emerging leaders and talk for a moment about this commitment to lifelong learning?
- [08:44]
C
Oh, yes. Well, first advice I would give, I give to everybody when I'm teaching either a course on financial management or operations is being able to communicate the story to your executives and using financial language that helps to paint the picture. So being a data driven leader is so critical, especially for laboratorians. But across all disciplines, if you can connect volume data to staffing models, quality, risk and cost, you really build credibility and influence very quickly. I think it helps you to achieve those high goals that you're after. I also think that it's really important to invest early on leadership development. And we mentioned governance often here so that you bring in strong leaders who have diverse skill sets so that you have a diverse group of employees or leadership employees. So I think technology and capital matter, but strong infrastructure and capable leaders at every level. Those investments, you know, they are critical to being able to deliver the value. And then I think that another advice, final advice would be, you know, create systems that have sustainable performance. So burnout and turnover are rarely individual failures. They're usually signals of system strain. Leaders who address this proactively, they'll protect both people and their patients. I think staying collaborative and curious, those leaders who listen well build trust across disciplines, not just in their lab space. They're willing to challenge legacy models, really have better outcomes. I mean, we have to be ready for challenging legacy models. This is a whole new world of healthcare today.
- [10:50]
B
Rena Rodriguez, what a pleasure to visit with you. What a remarkable career. Thank you for taking the time to visit with us today on the Beckers Healthcare podcast. Just incredible what you're doing and what Rush is doing. Thank you so much.
- [11:03]
C
Thank you so much for having me.