The Reverse Mullet Healthcare Podcast
Ellen Brown, Justin Politi, and Dave Pavlik bring their 90 collective years of healthcare experience to BP2 Health where they're on a mission to effect real change in the industry. Connect with BP2 Health Here: https://bp2health.com/contact/
The Reverse Mullet Healthcare Podcast
Amplifying the Quest for Rural Healthcare Solutions with Dr. McGill
On the Road Edition - Live at ViVE, Episode 3
Ever wondered what it takes to truly revolutionize healthcare in our rural communities? @BP2 Health had the privilege of hosting Dr. McGill, Chief Transformation Officer at Community Health Network for an On The Road At VIVE edition of The Reverse Mullet Healthcare Podcast. Dr. McGill brought to the table his insights on effecting REAL change in rural America. Our conversation wasn't just eye-opening; it was a dive into the real-world struggles of rural healthcare, from the chronic shortage of primary care doctors to the opportunity to leverage technology and partnerships for solutions.
He cites a few staggering statistics including a county in Indiana that has a community that is void of primary care altogether and the fact that 90% of the care is delivered in places like Community Health Network. He also shares insights from the book “Things Never Change” that include an approach of focusing on how to effect REAL change on the healthcare requirements that won’t change such as quality, outcomes, access and cost transparency and then make a few strategic bets outside of that. This instead of fixating on the next shiny object or predicting what the next transformation will be. This episode delivers what you’ve come to expect from The Reverse Mullet Healthcare Podcast – the interchange of ideas, the laughter, and the candid discussions to show that learning can be as entertaining as it is impactful.
Here we are once again at Vive for the On the Road at Vive edition of the Reverse Mullet Healthcare Podcast, and I am Ellen Brown, one of the co-hosts. I'm Dave Pavlik and we are here with Dr McGill who, I think, is still wondering why he's here. But, there is a legitimacy to why I reached out.
Speaker 1:And it was. It was not noisy, I didn't. I legitimately only reached out to a handful of people. We have this podcast booth for I think what 10 or 12 guests in total, and so we were very picky about who we picked, and I wanted to have rural health care coverage. Even though you weren't the first one, you were number one on the list.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm glad I was 11 of 12. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:You were not 11 of 12. So tell us about yourself.
Speaker 2:Well, first thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:In all seriousness, I appreciate being on. It's always great to be able to tell our story at Community Health Network. So I serve as the Chief Transformation Officer at Community. Community is, like it sounds, a community-based health system based in Indianapolis, indiana, 16,000 employees. We do everything except for transplants or pediatric subspecialty. Five main hospitals and four smaller hospitals. Market leader in behavioral health, market leader in women's services, market leader in oncology, market leader in primary care. So as the chief transformation officer, I have responsibility for everything from IT and analytics, pop health, value-based care, informatics, clinical and nursing informatics. And then I have some operational responsibilities of things like home care and hospice and palliative care, geriatrics, care in the home, and then all things partnership transformation. So partnerships with Epic and Microsoft and digital companies across the board.
Speaker 1:So tell me about what your panel tomorrow.
Speaker 2:The panel tomorrow is really the focus of how do we use technology to advance rural health care, specifically with the Medicaid population. So I feel like I'm just riding side saddle. On this distinguished panel we have the chief medical officer from Alaska and a gentleman who used to run Medicaid at the National Liver.
Speaker 1:I tried to get him.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And he, I was noisy to him.
Speaker 2:He said no, yeah.
Speaker 1:He didn't say no, he didn't answer Well.
Speaker 2:I'll give you a shout out tomorrow.
Speaker 1:Please do On the panel. I would love that. And then.
Speaker 2:I'll guilt him into saying Can you wear the mullet on?
Speaker 1:the panel. No, it's not you it would be awesome. It would definitely add to my credibility well, the health people love it because we get to wear this like cool sequin jacket because of our mullets there you go. It's really like we got to, I literally got to don the coveted sequin jacket that's got health and blazing I saw somebody with that earlier.
Speaker 2:I was very jealous.
Speaker 2:I was jealous it's so, so cool so we're talking technology and how we can address, you know, change. But it's more than just technology for rural health care. It's how do we affect policy, how do we affect payment, certainly with provider shortages, how do you really address the needs? And you know, I think you're going to hear that Alaska has been doing this for a long time because they have a lot of rural health care. Indiana, believe it or not, it's hard to believe, but there's counties in Indiana that don't have a primary care doctor in them.
Speaker 1:I'm not surprised at all.
Speaker 2:So you know, you think about that. I think it's 2024. How do we have places in the United States that are populated? We're not talking about rural, you know, Alaska or rural Montana, where there's nobody living there. We're talking about places where people live and we don't have primary care services or primary women's services, OB and other things. So that's what the panel is about.
Speaker 1:So all right, so let's ask the question right. So we are our focus here. Our focus of our podcast is to create a platform to talk to thought leaders about how to affect real all caps change in health care, because we are all stuck working on the incremental change we have to. We can't throw incremental change out with the bathwater. We would be in real trouble then, although maybe we would do things faster if that happened then, although maybe we would do things faster if that happened. So, but we we you know, dave and Justin and I felt like there wasn't a platform where people felt comfortable enjoying themselves a little bit, talking about something that we all need to talk about, because that's how you come up with ideas is that kind of spitballing and just thinking about it. So tell us what you think could affect real change in healthcare.
Speaker 2:Well, so we've taken the approach. So I, as the chief transformation officer, one of the things that I tell myself, I tell my boss, I report to the CEO, I tell the teams that I lead is, if we're not waking up every day, making people a little bit uncomfortable, we're not transforming anything.
Speaker 2:So it starts with that right, we've got to move the needle and, like you said, it's incremental, but that starts the real change. The other thing is we have to do a better job of painting the vision, which I sometimes think that we do a good job and other times we don't do a good job. We also take the approach of leveraging our partnerships. So we know that we can't do this alone. Right, we're a community-based health system. We don't have a lot of the resources that maybe some of the larger systems have. So how do we do this? Through partnerships, and my value prop in that conversation is 90% of the health care is delivered in the country at places like Community Health Network, not some of the big names that you see, the big logo. So if we can impact change, you can make that change in 90% of the systems, and so that's really the approach that we do. So it's painting the vision. It's who are you partnering with? And then again, how are you waking up every day to drive that change?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, you know, I, I, I couldn't agree more I, you know, we had Febby Abraham on recently and, and, uh, I not the exact same strategy, but I appreciate his strategy of looking at their health.
Speaker 1:So he's very much a proponent of moving from sick care to healthcare and so his, his approach to transformation is slight spin on that variation of partnership, but it's we have to acknowledge that we need to be the quarterback. The health system needs to be the quarterback. They don't need to control all of the assets and they don't need to try to push everything into assets that aren't the best, right. So it's like let's just try to control volume, let's just try and hold on to everything that we can and let's try avoid risk. And, you know, let's try to slow the trajectory as much as possible, but instead saying, hey, let's pull everything together so that we can make that shift more rapidly without breaking the bank, right, and then leveraging some of what we've invested in in order to do that. And so I'm appreciative of we can't do it all ourselves.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Because that also creates a bias that I don't think is necessarily healthy either.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I don't think that. I think COVID taught us some or the pandemic, I should say, taught us some things that maybe we shouldn't be everything to everybody. Quite frankly it's. It's hard for not for profit health systems to be everything to everybody anymore, with the other challenges that we have on payments and volumes, et cetera. So it really is how do we continue to be smarter and deliver more services to more people? Leveraging technology, leveraging partnerships and really trying to understand what we should do and what we shouldn't do. I started listening to a book this morning called Things Never Change and it really it sparked. I was talking about this at lunch. It sparked my thinking about the premise of the book is focus on things that never change, because those are the things that are predictable. And so how do you? How does this? It was it's not a health care book but, it's.
Speaker 2:How do you translate this to healthcare? So Amazon, jeff Bezos, will tell you people are always gonna want low pricing, low prices and fast shipping. No matter what you're selling or buying, low prices and fast shipping. So how does that translate to healthcare? What can we deliver upon that's predictable for the future, so that we can manage? Because I think sometimes we get to your question about driving transformation. We get hung up in trying to predict what the next transformation is, and that's very hard. So how do we again focus on what's not going to change? High quality, best outcomes, access, transparent costs I mean, those things are never going to. Yeah, I shouldn't say never, but never going to. They're always going to be important to people.
Speaker 2:They're always going to be requirements. So how do we focus on that and then make some strategic bets in the other areas?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's awesome.
Speaker 2:Did you listen to that book before or after the latest episode of the Reverse Mullet Healthcare Podcast? Definitely before.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have an episode on change we really appreciate you stopping by, especially since you didn't know what you were walking into yes we do. Thank you for playing along so see we weren't all just silly that's right.
Speaker 2:I appreciate you having me thanks Dr G. Thank you appreciate it okay.