← Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Scaling Mental Health Access, Reducing Burnout, and Tulsa’s Growth with Carl Hoopes
00:12:41
Loading summary
Transcript24 lines
- [00:00]
A
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Healthcare Podcast. I am thrilled today to be joined by a great leader. We're joined today by Carl Hoopes. Carl's as good a person as they come. He serves currently as executive vice president and chief operating officer of Grant Mental Health in the greater Tulsa area. He'll talk to us today about mental health, I hope at some point about how Tulsa compares to Oklahoma City and a lot more. Carl, can you take a moment and introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your career and then a little bit about grand mental health?
- [00:35]
B
Scott, I'd love to. First of all, I want to say thank you for having me. So I am a native of Colorado. I've spent my entire career in healthcare. I started out as a clinician in behavioral health, working at small psychiatric hospitals. I then kind of ventured into acute care hospitals and moved into large academic healthcare systems. I'm a lean black belt. I've spent a lot of my career solving problems at the root cause level, teaching people lean systems, developing leaders. And most recently in the past year, I joined Grand Mental Health in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We have 2,000 employees. We serve 18,000 clients, primarily a Medicaid population, providing addiction recovery services, outpatient service, crisis stabilization, and outreach programs.
- [01:29]
A
Thank you. And take a moment. You had done a tremendous job at Stanford. You've been at a couple other systems. You had a great career. What brought you to Tulsa into the mental health area? What made that so exciting for you?
- [01:43]
B
Yeah, I think what it was is when I was looking, I wanted to be somewhere that was great for my family and that the mission really aligned with who I am and my values as a person. When I look at grand mental health, the mission is to improve life. And at its core, that's what I'm looking to do. Whether I'm in behavioral health, whether I'm in a large healthcare system, I want to make things better for the people we serve. I don't think you could go somewhere and feel the mission more closely than you could at Grand. A lot of the people who work here have been served by grand in one capacity or another. They felt moved and touched by the services. Their lives were transformed in many cases. And then they came to serve at Grand. And so it's a. It's a pleasure to be here. When I got to Oklahoma, I wasn't exactly sure what to expect, having moved from Colorado most recently. But what I found is there's a lot of hospitality, people who really care about each other, a little bit of a slower pace, which makes an easier Quality of life for my growing family. So couldn't be more thrilled to be here.
- [02:49]
A
And what does it look like today in terms of being able to staff mental health in a time where there's so much of a crisis in staffing and labor? How do you manage through that to figure out how to make sure people get the care they need?
- [03:05]
B
It's a great question, Scott. And I think this is something that I discussed when I was at your Behavioral Health Summit. And a big part of that is burnout. So when we're surveying our staff, what we're finding is that there's a significant component of staff that got burned out. That got burned out post Covid. There's just been a lot coming at them, and there are more people to serve than people that we have to serve them. And so what we're doing to work on that is redesigning the work. It's not just about building a pipeline. It's about fundamentally changing the way that we work. So we've done that in a few fundamental ways. We took a look at what our client care teams look like. So that is when you come in, we used to say, well, you're just going to need all of our services. There'll be, let's say, a team of five serving you. And so they have that a large burden of staff that need to serve each individual client. We've redesigned that workflow to better assess and get more nuanced to say, well, here's the core component of people that you need. We can add to that care team as needed based on what you need as an individual. But we're not going to give everything all up front at once. That's reduced the burden to our clinicians. I think the other one that everyone is looking at is things like ambient AI that is built in as a baseline for our workflow. That's really helped in many areas to reduce the amount of burden that people have administratively, I'm really working to solve a lot of their problems, to be able to get data quickly and functionally so that they can see if they're winning or losing and not spend a lot of time searching through the vast arrays of data that we have to be able to get the information that they need. And so really redesigning the workplace to be more comfortable for our employees and more conducive for them staying and reducing that burnout.
- [04:50]
A
Are there new technologies that you're using that you're particularly excited about? I don't want to hear about anything you hate because you and I don't want to get sued. But are there technologies? I don't care if they're a sponsor of Becker's healthcare or not. Anything you're doing or using that you find particularly interesting and helpful, you know, thus far.
- [05:06]
B
So we actually, our CIO is homegrown, our own telehealth behavioral health platform. What's really unique about it is that he has spent hours of his own dedicated time. This is Apex Care, listening to the voice of our clinicians. So as he rolled out this app, he went, goes into chats, he's in teams, live talks with people. He's listening to people close to the work who use this app every day. They're telling him from whatever level they are, some of the barriers that they're seeing. He's adding that to the next level of changes that he's implementing. So when he goes and updates that app, it's based on real time feedback from people really using it and they really love it. So I'm really touched. When I'm going around and talking to people, I don't even ask them, they'll come up to me and say, hey, the work we're doing with this app is making my work easier, it's making it better. And it's amazing to have Ronnie, our cio, actually listen to me and then I see it come to fruition and my work is better. That that app is really scalable. Right now we'll have 18,000 people under it, but tomorrow we could double that and it would be able to handle that functionality quite well. So I'm really proud of that.
- [06:16]
A
That's literally so positive and remarkable. And talk about, as you look at the rest of this year into next year, what are you most excited about and focused on? What's, what's big on your thought process, what are the big priorities and what you're most excited focused on?
- [06:34]
B
Yeah. So when I got here, I started a new strategic plan. It was really based around operational discipline and execution, making sure we do what it is we say we're going to do, make sure that that's measurable, both in process and outcome metrics. We're hitting those, we're adjusting as necessary. The reason why I built a strategic plan that way is because we want to scale. And now that we've hit those targets, we're going to switch the focus of our strategic plan. That strategic plan is going to move into two big domains that are outside of where we've been before. One, we've just purchased a pharmacy. So we went live with that pharmacy. We are going to serve all of our clients who opt into it with our own pharmacy. We're going to serve the community with it. And there is a possibility of expanding far beyond where we are with a mail order service to be able to provide lots of client services with that. The second thing is going into a for profit telepsychiatry model where we're able to pay or have people who are self funded, self pay, private pay, insurance come to us and get really great treatment where they're at in a very fast manner using the latest technology. So very excited about that. Focus.
- [07:47]
A
Fantastic. And talk for a second about give us the quick contrast between Tulsa and Oklahoma City. I know I teach you up in this some time ago, you know, years and years ago I was there and the Tulsa people sort of looked at the Oklahoma City is not as upscale, a little bit more, less classy and so forth. Since then, Oklahoma City has grown a tremendous amount. They got Tacoma City Thunder and they've grown into a bigger metropolis. What's the take today? Do the Tulsa people still look at Oklahoma City as a second sister or morph equals? What's your take on that? And you could go as easy on this or as hard as you want on it. You're not allowed to offend anybody into the mental health business. So you have to go a little easy. But tell us what you think, Scott.
- [08:30]
B
I think from what I've heard being here, there's been some healthy competition between the cities. I think Oklahoma City had a clear advantage for several years. What I'm hearing now in Tulsa is this is a great place to be. I'm seeing it. There's a massive influx of people coming in. There's arts, there's culture, there's new like concerts coming, sports teams developing. There's a lot of economic and business development happening right here in Tulsa. I'm seeing different companies getting on the national stage here. I mean, I really think Tulsa is coming into its own where, you know, it's a. It's more of a sibling relationship than it is one above the other. And, you know, we're both growing in our own right. I think they're both great places to be. But I'm very excited about the future of Tulsa and the things that are happening here right now.
- [09:18]
A
Let me ask you another question. There's a. There's a TV show the last couple years I don't think I've seen called Tulsa Kings. Tulsa Kings. Do you know what I'm talking about?
- [09:28]
B
I do, yeah. Sylvester Stallone, it's it's absolutely. It's a great show. I certainly watched it. I have not experienced the things that Sly did on that show. I would say that it's a little bit different. But what. What I do believe it did is kind of remind people of Tulsa, kind of put it on the radar, have people pique their interest and say, oh, wait, yeah, wait, hey, Carl, you're moving where that Tulsa King show was. What's it like there? And what I can tell them, honestly, is it's fantastic. The weather's been great. The people are kind, very minimal Mafia activity. So, yeah, I think it's great that there's a show like that that got a smaller. A smaller city, some notoriety.
- [10:11]
A
And I'll ask you one more question. You know it. You grew up in Colorado. Is that where you grew up or where'd you grow up?
- [10:16]
B
Yes, that's correct.
- [10:17]
A
Okay. Okay. So are you able to become an Oklahoma Sooner fan or an Oklahoma State fan? What does that look like? Are you a bolder person? Where. Do you have any allegiances to sports teams? Are you in the running for thinking about, you know, cheering for the Oklahoma City Thunder or the Oklahoma State or Oakland or Oklahoma? Any thoughts there from a sports perspective?
- [10:42]
B
Yeah, Scott, one of the questions I got all the time was OU or osu. I have a simple answer. Cu. So I'm a Buffs fan. I'm a Deion Sanders fan. I'm very excited about the Buffs. When it comes to the Thunder, they're a fantastic team. However, I'm a Denver Nuggets fan, so I'm cheering them all the way. Unfortunately, they did not make it in the playoffs, so now I will watch and cheer on the Oklahoma City Thunder. They're a fantastic team, and it's exciting to have a state where there are teams like that that can really compete, and I can cheer for them as well.
- [11:17]
A
And what about Nikola Jokic? Just an amazing, amazing player.
- [11:22]
B
Yeah, he is fantastic. He puts his heart and soul into everything that he does, and then it's amazing he'll just go ride horses in the off season. And he's not about the fame and things like that. He's just a really solid individual, and I hope they give him a lot more help next season.
- [11:39]
A
Yeah, they need it. Right? And then one more question. As long as we're talking about Nikola Jokic, I know we've gone off path a little bit. Luka Doncic and the Lakers, do you cheer for or against the Lakers?
- [11:50]
B
I cheer against the Lakers. I've never been a big fan of them. I think the Thunder are going to take it, and then I think they're going to have a really hard time against the Spurs.
- [12:02]
A
Got it. Well, that Victor Wembley, I can never pronounce it exactly correct. Wemby, just amazing and amazing team. No, we're with you 100%. We cheer against the Lakers. We cheer against the Yankees. We cheer against all these teams that have been just like so I would chair against University of Michigan, all these teams that have done so well and that are so arrogant about how well they do. We're with you and cheering against Lakers, University of Michigan, a few other places. Thank you so much for joining us today. What a pleasure. Carl, that was a pleasure to visit with you. Thank you so much, Scott.
- [12:37]
B
Really appreciate it.