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- [00:00]
Ed Marks
Do you foresee changes in the next couple of years in general, for the role of the clinical physician leader, working with technology?
- [00:08]
Dr. Rob Bart
AI is a tool, it is not a solution. These are just tools and each of us needs to become very well enabled in how to leverage those tools to become solutions for what we do. They need to understand what the impact of artificial intelligence will be in the part of the business they oversee.
- [00:30]
Podcast Narrator
Welcome to Digital Voices, where healthcare and life science leaders explore the real work behind transformation. This podcast is about people, leadership and the conversations that move healthcare forward. Now, your host, Ed Marks.
- [00:45]
Ed Marks
Welcome to another edition of Digital Voices. Thank you so much for participating with us and engaging with us. We know you have a lot of different choices. So much great content out there. You chose some time with us and it's going to be worth your while because we have Dr. Rob Bart with us. Rob, welcome to Digital Voices.
- [01:01]
Dr. Rob Bart
Thanks for having me, Ed. I'm looking forward to our conversation today.
- [01:05]
Ed Marks
Yeah, this is going to be so much fun. I think everyone knows you already. I was trying to think back, Rob, the first time we met, but we've, we've engaged with one another for many, many years.
- [01:13]
Dr. Rob Bart
Yeah, I was also trying to think of that, Ed, and I can't recall where we first met, but you're right, we've had many good conversations over the years, different con conferences, some social interactions that I think we both enjoyed. So it's. So it's actually good to spend a little extra time with you.
- [01:32]
Ed Marks
Yeah. And I always ask, you know, what songs are in your playlist. But as I ask that, I also see that you've got a rhythm, something I'll let you share what it is. A case behind you. So tell us about that hobby.
- [01:46]
Dr. Rob Bart
So it's a ukulele. So it ties into where I grew up. I grew up in Hawaii and in the fourth grade, when I think a lot of schools on the mainland, you might learn to play the recorder or something, some instrument. Right. The whole class does. In Hawaii, when I was growing up, it was the ukulele and I stuck with it for a little while, lost it for a good long 40 plus years. But I'm actually back taking lessons. And so I keep it here. If I have some downtime and I need to clear my head, I pull it out and practice. But I've enjoyed actually getting back to, you know, trying to play music.
- [02:30]
Ed Marks
That's awesome. And so I imagine you, you're able to sing some Hawaiian songs.
- [02:35]
Dr. Rob Bart
I know a lot of Hawaiian songs. I will tell you that. I will Be an instrumentalist, not a vocalist. That's just reserved for me. And maybe my shower, I can relate
- [02:47]
Ed Marks
to that as well. And what about life? Message or mantra? Are there sort of quotes or words that you live by?
- [02:53]
Dr. Rob Bart
I think my father had a. Definitely had a big influence on me. And I think when I think about someone who lived their life with high integrity and credibility, I think about my father and I think that is what sort of drives me, you know, at the end of the day, with all the decisions or interactions I've had, if I've been able to maintain, you know, my integrity, maintain credibility for what I need to do within the organization I currently work upmc, then I generally feel pretty good about what I've accomplished or sometimes not accomplished.
- [03:34]
Ed Marks
Well, Rob, I can tell you you're making your dad proud because that's your reputation in the industry. You're. You're known as one of the. Not just a great leader, but just a great person. And so I'm sure he's. He'd be very proud of who you are today. So, speaking of which, tell us your story, like, where we know already you grew up in Hawaii. How did that happen? Like, are your parents Hawaiian?
- [03:54]
Dr. Rob Bart
No, no, no. So my mom grew up in Hawaii. My dad grew up in Wisconsin. When she went to college, you know, there were, there were a number of universities that you could get in state tuition at that, the state of Hawaii funded. So she ended up at the University of Wisconsin and met my dad there. And I think my dad was in medical school and my mom was an undergraduate. Other than maybe going duck hunting, he wasn't going to miss much about being in Wisconsin and so moved to Hawaii with the exception of three years that when he was doing some training at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland. So that's where I grew up and how I ended up there. So. But I mean, my, my father, for growing up in, you know, the upper Midwest, adopted everything related to Hawaii as much as possible. He really lived that Persona and really grew to love the state of Hawaii.
- [04:55]
Ed Marks
Yeah, that's awesome. I love to visit there myself, so I could, I could understand that. And like, do you surf? Like, did you pick up surfing?
- [05:04]
Dr. Rob Bart
I grew up. I did grow up surfing, you know, always on the water. I swam competitively when I was younger, and then when I was a little bit older, just entering high school, my dad got into sailing, and so I've. I've spent a lot of my life on sailboats.
- [05:22]
Ed Marks
Wow, that's cool. And I know because we've talked obviously many times before that, you had some interesting classmates. So tell us about your classmates growing up in Hawaii.
- [05:31]
Dr. Rob Bart
Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, so I, you know, graduated from high school in Hawaii in 1979 at Punahou School. And I have told. I probably said this to you, that it's hard to consider yourself successful when one of your high school classmates was the President of the United States. And so Barry, or Barack Obama, was my classmate in high school, and he was one of a number of memorable people. There were just over 400 people in my graduating class. He was a remarkable person then. But still, no one actually predicts that someone in your high school class is going to be the President of the United States. But I think that when he became a senator in Illinois, it started to become clear that his aspirations and his opportunities were going to become much greater than that. No, that's.
- [06:22]
Ed Marks
That's pretty cool. Was there another pivotal moment in life that sort of fundamentally changed your trajectory there?
- [06:28]
Dr. Rob Bart
There was. So, you know, I actually. I was actually thinking about getting a PhD, and I was very interested in research. I knew how hard my father worked as a physician, and I. And I just couldn't see doing that, you know. And then I was. I spent a summer actually working in a hospital laboratory, just. I was just washing glassware and things of that nature. But one of the pathologists who worked in that lab knew my father, and he took me to lunch one day, and he said. He said, you know, you can do research if you're a physician also. And I hadn't thought about that. And he said, you can do research as a physician. He said, physicians who do research tend to get paid better than PhDs doing research. And as a physician, you also then get to directly treat patients. And when he sort of framed that, I didn't realize it at the moment, but once I was maybe halfway through medical school, it made me realize, like, that was a pivotal conversation. Gentleman's name was Dr. John Hardman, and he had been a family friend for a while. So it just. That really changed what I decided to do.
- [07:50]
Ed Marks
I think I may know the answer now. Because of your fondness for your father, how did you come to choose healthcare as a career? We know about the research that you just shared with Dr. Hardman. You know, early on, were there early indications? Like, what were you. Like, how old were you when you kind of decided, I kind of want to go in this career?
- [08:08]
Dr. Rob Bart
It turns out that I did write some sort of paper, whatever you want to call it, and in sixth grade, where I sort of clearly articulated that I wanted to go into medicine, into healthcare. And then like most when I became a teenager and in college, I sort of fought against that, which is how I, which is why I navigated to, well, I'll just do biomedical research, I won't be a physician. And then that conversation brought me back into full on into healthcare.
- [08:38]
Ed Marks
And I'm glad that happened. And so, Rob, I consider you and many others do as well, sort of a pioneer in the roles that you've had as a cmio. And it's beyond, it's more than cmio, but for a common framework cmio. You've been doing it a long time. Share a little bit about your career journey to this point.
- [08:59]
Dr. Rob Bart
Yeah. So, you know, clinically I'm trained as a pediatric intensivist. And so which means I work in an ICU in children's hospitals, and which means I live in a world where I'm surrounded by technology and being surrounded by technology and being a high end user of it. I've had a few opportunities, and one of the clear ones was when I was working at Children's Hospital Los Angeles around the late 90s, early 2000s, it was one of the first pediatric facilities in the country to contemplate implementing an enterprise electronic health record. And then, and through that experience, my division chief, Dr. Wetzel, he said, hey, you should be our representative to work on this. And so I got very much into the details with that. And out of that experience grew an opportunity where I became a chief medical officer for Cerner themselves later on in the early 2000s. And But I was able to do that essentially three weeks a month and one week a month I was still on the faculty at USC, delivering care in the pediatric ICU at chla. And it worked very well because the things I learned at Cerner, I could bring back and really move our EHR implementation forward. And just continuing to be in the mix clinically, when I talked with other physicians about Cerner, gave me so much credibility because I was still a practicing physician. And you've interacted with physicians many times who are working for industry. And the fact that they're in industry or clinical practice, but not doing both, there's this sometimes this credibility gap that gets created. And by actually continuing to do both, and even today I continue to practice clinically, which I think is very important in this role. It's odd because you could do clinical care for 30 years, you could stop today, and then tomorrow walk into the same facilities with a different hat on and the same physicians you were talking to as a colleague yesterday will look at you and say, you have no idea what we do. Right. And so the loss of credibility is very rapid from those that continue to deliver clinical care. And so I think it's really important in this type of role to be able to not only represent the clinicians that you work with, but also to be part of that community in delivering care.
- [11:35]
Ed Marks
Yeah, I think you're right about that. So then you eventually make this big move. You're in LA county, second biggest public health system in the country, and then you went over to eventually upmc. Tell us about like what was the draw for you to make that move?
- [11:49]
Dr. Rob Bart
Yeah, so first, you know, I actually never thought I'd leave LA county once I started working there. I was a CMIO there, as you said, the second largest public urban healthcare system in the country, doing good work, you know, for underserved people. And. But part of my, I'm a lifelong learner, like many of us are, and there were just new opportunities to learn about things, particularly here at upmc. One is as I hadn't really had as much contact with the payer side of the industry as I would like. UPMC has a health plan and then UPMC also has a technology business development incubator group called UPMC Enterprises. And I had some exposure to that both when I was at Cerner and also when I was at LA County. But to have that more formalized and sort of readily available to me was also something I was very interested in.
- [12:43]
Ed Marks
Yeah, and then the phenomenal growth that you came into UPMC at the right time and now it's like leading, you know, definitely in the very, very top echelon of health systems. That's, that's pretty amazing. So how do you balance, you mentioned health plan, you know, the payer side and provider side. How do you go about balancing that? Is it hard?
- [13:04]
Dr. Rob Bart
It can be. I mean, it's very clear my primary role is with the health services, which is the delivery of care, the hospitals, the clinics, physicians, nurses, et cetera, etc. But there's some unique opportunities having a, a payer and a delivery system under one roof that, that if we align them, we can really actually align what the patient member needs and wants and gets along with how we deliver care. And so I get the opportunity to work closely with my counterparts on the health plan in working with either development of programs or the technology to support programs that they're working through. It's a little bit different though than, than a model, say like Kaiser, that many of people are familiar With Kaiser being what most of us consider a closed system where all of the patients are members. Depending on the region of UPMC, we have areas that are as high as 50% patient members, but we also have areas that are much lower where 10% of the patients are also members. And so creating programs actually takes a little bit of thought in how you execute them. Well, yeah, yeah.
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Ed Marks
And same with Enterprises, like so tell us about your unique role, you know, having that, you know, innovation hub right there.
- [14:23]
Dr. Rob Bart
Yeah, I mean, so, you know, Enterprises was, certainly had a, had a long storied history before I got here. I think one of the things I worked hard, I noticed when I got here was that Enterprises was sometimes working on really good ideas and projects and incubating companies, but they weren't necessarily getting the type of success with the integration with the clinicians here. It was almost like they would throw it over the fence and expecting someone like me to catch it and run with it. And so one of the things that I worked hard on is I said, look, if we partner on these, we can help what you believe should be successful be successful. Right. And then also working on, Let, let's take a single thesis of if, if UPMC has this challenge in healthcare delivery, then the assumption is other healthcare systems must have it because we are more like other, we should be more like other healthcare systems, not that unique. And then using that theory thesis, let's go solve our problems knowing that those problems exist elsewhere and that could, we could become a launching pad for entities who, who have that same sort of thought. And so we've matured that over the eight plus years that I've been here at upmc and, and certainly I'm, I'm a small component of this, but I think that it's shown in how Enterprises has continued to grow and, and continued to lead sort of the investment side that many healthcare systems have now developed.
- [15:58]
Ed Marks
Definitely one of the first and doing it really well. If we had more time. We go into some of the specifics, but they've done very, very well. I've had an opportunity to interact with them as well as yourself in that capacity. Hey, let's brag one last brag on upmc. Tell us one thing that maybe not many people know about upmc.
- [16:14]
Dr. Rob Bart
I think one of the more recent things that the seed funding for a bridge came from upmc, you know, and so I think overall, I mean UPMC has had some successful opportunities, but you know, in the modern day a bridge is clearly one of the more successful in the ambient listening space out in the market today, you know, and that, that just goes to the structure and the talent. The other thing I would add to that that sort of feeds into this is because UPMC has that history, we tend to attract clinicians, particularly physician clinicians, who have a very strong leaning towards innovation and inventiveness. And I can tell you, having talked with many of these physicians, it's 90% wonderful and 10% somewhat challenging because we can't go and execute on every single idea.
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Ed Marks
Yeah, that's always the conundrum, for sure. So you've been the pioneer, as I mentioned, on the CMIO role and obviously a lot of changes in the last couple years where, what do you foresee, like, changes in the next couple years in general for the role of the clinical physician leader, working with technology.
- [17:31]
Dr. Rob Bart
I think the changes have to do with how technology is going to change. One of the things I'm not a fan of and I think you're similar to this with me, Ed. When a new idea comes along, it seems like, okay, we need a new person in the C suite, so let's go get a cheap, like a decade ago, let's get a chief Digital officer, right? You know, and then, you know, a few years, a couple years after that, it's like, we all need chief Data officers. And you and I know that, that these are just tools. And each of us needs to become very well enabled in how to leverage those tools to become solutions for what we do. And now it's like, oh, you need a chief AI officer. And what I've recently tell people is, do you think that when the telephone became integral to delivering care, that healthcare systems had chief telephone officers? They didn't. They just learned how to integrate that into how we make appointments and how we, how we interact with patients. AI is a tool. It is not a solution. I've told all of our cfo, our cmo, you know, our chief Nurse officer, all of them, they, they need to understand what the impact of artificial intelligence will be in the part of the business they oversee. Right?
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Ed Marks
Yeah.
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Dr. Rob Bart
And so, and so I think part of, I think what we as CMIOS, as well as CIOs, where you came from, need to do is to make sure that we're incorporating new tools as they become important to how we execute our job.
- [19:17]
Ed Marks
Yeah, 100% agree, Rob. You know, it was just funny. Like, I can't give a good example because otherwise people will trace it back to my history. But sometimes the reason we didn't progress is because we kept adding C Suite members and we all loved each other and were after the same mission and vision. But when you have so many people, like for a wide variety of reasons, resource intensiveness and all that kind of stuff, it just doesn't work. And you're right. You just need to incorporate, understand these tools, incorporate them into your daily practice, into your daily workflows, and make sure you have the right people. And you guys have been blessed. We didn't talk about, you know, your counterpart on the CIO side. You know, Ed McAllister, a lot of you people have been there for a long time.
- [19:57]
Dr. Rob Bart
I am blessed. It is worth a moment. Ed McAllister, our corporate CIO has just been amazing support, very thoughtful, very welcoming and keeps me in, in the family circle. Similarly, our Chief Technology officer, Chris Carmody, and he and I are engaged in a project the last couple years, continuing probably for another couple years, that has really allowed us to forge not just a great working partnership, but a true, true friendship. They're really high quality people. I'm very fortunate to be able to work with them.
- [20:33]
Ed Marks
You're obviously a great leader. What do you think are one or two things that have really helped you Rob? So think about this in terms of our people who are engaging with us right now, trying to learn from you. What are one or two key leadership traits that you think have really enabled your success?
- [20:48]
Dr. Rob Bart
I think the biggest one is trust. So I sort of lifted the framework. So in the pediatric icu, I train residents in pediatrics and fellows in pediatric critical care. And many people are familiar that as a fellow you go through usually two or three years and so you go from junior to seniority and you gain more trust. And, and you have to trust people to allow them to learn, but still create the sort of guardrails to make sure they're not going out of that boundary so that the patient is still getting the highest quality care possible. I've sort of adopted a framework that's quite similar in working with. And let's just take the physician informatician team that I work with, many of them, there's a few new ones, but many of them were here when I got to UPMC eight and a half years ago. And creating that framework and working with them, getting them to understand that I don't need to be involved in making every decision. And, and my frequent, the frequent statement I, I say, I've said to them when I got here was if you're making a hundred decisions a week, there's somewhere between probably 2 and 5 that I need to be informed of that I need to know about or be involved in making. But there are many that you should be unable to be able to make yourself. And I need to empower you to do that. The counter to that was, and I said this very clearly to them, I said if you don't adopt making decisions then I'm going to save UPMC a lot of money because you're not actually adding value and extending the opportunity that informaticians have here. I would say that depending on the person, anywhere between six to 15 months it took them to get comfortable and that for them to realize that even if the decision was not the best decision, that I would have a. I would have their back and that we would figure out a way to mitigate and recover. Yeah, right. Because. Because you and I both know that none of the decisions that we all make are 100% the best right decision at the time. It's, it's how you mitigate and recover from the in error decisions that actually is what gives you success.
- [23:05]
Ed Marks
And I will add humility. You're, you're a super, super humble individual and I think that draws people to you as well. Rob, you're super creative and other than the shower singing and playing ukulele, I taken the easy ones from you like where like you're lose when you need to be re energized or looking for creativity. Is there anything else? What other secrets can we learn from Dr. Robart?
- [23:28]
Dr. Rob Bart
So I think over the last couple years I've reinvigorated my health and fitness quite a bit. Dropped 40 to 50 pounds in the last two years. My goal in 2026 is to drop another 10 to 20 part of it as I used to ride bikes when I was much younger and so two, two years ago I started with the Peloton and then now have a gravel bike and I'm spending as much time as I can like outdoors and, and the thing I like about it is I don't listen to music when I'm riding. I just want to be sort of lost in nature. Yeah. The truth is there's a, not too far from where our home is, there's. There's a large, there's a really large cemetery that has a lot of paths and everything. And it is a really good place to go, spend time and to clear your head. Yeah. You, you know, and I'll, I'll stop and look at some of the, you know, gravestones, et cetera and read them. But there's just something very calming about that environment. I Know, it might seem odd to some of the people who watch it, but it's just, it's a really great environment. It's got miles of trails and everything. So it's, it's just this perfect place that's only, you know, five to ten minutes bike ride from where I live to go, sort of clear my head. And it's so close that I've found even, even something as short as 20 minutes can be quite restorative. So, So I think, I think one of the things that I've been really focusing on is just trying to manage my, my physical and my mental health. I think it is easy to get so attached to the job that you're doing, to forget that to do doing the job really well requires you to be both physically and mentally healthy. And I, I, I hundred percent admit that I, I lost that and forgot that.
- [25:28]
Ed Marks
That's, that's great. Yeah. You know, the cemetery thing reminds you, you mentioned your dad was at Case for a while. New York. Case is a beautiful cemetery. Been around for a couple hundred years, I want to say. And I did the same thing with running in there. It just cleared up. I was a fresh reminder too, like the importance of life, sanctity of life. And you know that we're only here for stewards for a very short time. Rob. I wish we had more time. This is so fascinating. Yours. This is one of the most interesting people I know. We talked a lot about, well, we talked about ukulele growing up in Hawaii, your classmates. We talked about some of your, the things that are important to your foundations, your life, you know, high integrity, credibility, a lot that you learned from your dad's influence. And then, yeah, we went through your story, how you got into healthcare and then how you got into tech, and then learned a lot about your journey so far in your role and how things have changed. And then, then we spend a lot of time on leadership and I love that. Like how to recover is as important as being the right the first time. It's, we don't always, we aren't always right the first time. So how do you recover from that?
- [26:25]
Dr. Rob Bart
That's really good.
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Ed Marks
Talking about delegation, trust, being a lifelong learner, and then also the fitness, the importance of fitness. And I'm glad you mentioned the mental health side as well, as, you know, that was taboo back when we were first starting. And it's just amazing. What, what did we miss? Robert, anything you want to double down on? I'll give you the last word.
- [26:44]
Dr. Rob Bart
Word. People that have had the experiences and opportunities that you and I have had. We need to invest in those who are coming behind us. Love it. You know, and, and if there are people from your audience who want to reach out to me, they, they'll know how to connect with you, Ed. And I'm happy to chat with them. I'm happy that, you know, I, I, I spend time meeting with some of the fellows as they're looking to go out and start their career, you know, and, and other young physicians and, and nurses and others. And I think one of the things I want to do is maybe some of the other things in my life slow down. I want to spend more time trying to help people sort of figure out, you know, a good path forward for them, because it shouldn't be about having a job. It should be about creating a career.
- [27:34]
Ed Marks
Yeah.
- [27:36]
Dr. Rob Bart
Gives you both personal fulfillment as well as fulfilling the role that you need to for the organization you're working at.
- [27:42]
Ed Marks
Dr. Rob Bart, you're an amazing leader, clinician, tech, but most of all, a human. Thank you so much for being on Digital Voices.
- [27:52]
Podcast Narrator
Thank you for listening to Digital Voices. We hope today's conversation sparked ideas, reflection, and connection. Subscribe on YouTube, Apple and Spotify podcasts so you don't miss an episode.