We're here today with Sarah Minky Baptist Health Jacksonville.

She's a senior director and enterprise IT Ambulatory Network and innovation about this health Jacksonville for our listeners about this health is a health system based in Jacksonville, FL.

The operates 7 hospitals and 200 ambulatory clinics.

The system has 1100 beds, 2400 providers and 15,000 employees.

Sarah, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you for having me.

I certainly appreciate it, Jordan.

Sure.

So, UM, we're going to cover 2 main topics today.

One is gonna be the patient voice collaborative.

Where?

Baptist Health Jacksonville has been seeking patient input into driving it initiatives, and then we're going to be discussing business systems transformation.

So just to get started here and the patient voice collaborative, I understand you've partnered with class recently and you've surveyed patients on technology perceptions and utility of technology.

I'd love to hear some of the lessons learned.

Some of your objectives, what kind of led to that initiative?

And I think our listeners would be really interested in kind of how that has impacted your execution of your IT strategy about this health, Jacksonville.

Yeah, absolutely.

So we were approached by class one of five organizations that were selected to partner or at least a offered to partner and develop a development of an inaugural survey for the patient voice.

So long time we've gotten feedback related to encounter based care and other different surveys mechanisms to essentially define what our Net Promoter score is.

But we've had little insight into how patients perceive the technologies that were deploying across our organization.

Sometimes you think you're doing the best for your patience.

So with respect to, hey, we're gonna deploy this new app or you're gonna have the ability to see your physician on online.

And we think that it's going to be something that's highly desirable and this right here has given us a little bit of that deeper insight that led us to go are we really meeting the patients where they need to be met?

Are we providing them with the tools that are necessary with what they perceive as their best way to engage their clinician?

So this definitely allowed us the opportunity to dig into some of those insights based off of, of course, our end was small.

That's.

It's the first survey, so it's really establishing our baseline here, but it certainly I think opened up the curtain a little bit behind what our patients are thinking and feeling and how they want to participate in their care from a technology perspective.

Yeah.

So when we're talking about the survey, I think some of our listeners may be interested in learning who created this survey, how was it implemented, who's responsible for implementing it?

And then what was the fiscal note attached to that survey was there that there have to be a budget allocated, you know, which departments kind of had to check off on what topics would be included?

How did that hold process work?

Sure.

So I can start with the easy one, so fortunately from a fiscal perspective, since this was inaugural, we got to participate for free, not to say that that would be something that other organizations might have a dollar or price tag associated to at some point in the future.

Yeah.

If this does really gain the traction that we think it's going to, but class, the patient voice collaborative segment in particular helped to orchestrate, but a A, I would say a collection of things from the five different organizations that help to inform and structure their survey.

So we actually had the unique opportunity to draft out questions and and and put that together as as a cohort.

Hmm.

So with and where these other organizations from across the United States.

They were, yeah.

So, you know from Kansas to California to Florida and you we had the broad spectrum of I think the country represented in geographic areas, which I think was telling was some of our survey results when we compared our organizations, we had the social sentiments here in in Florida, I touched on some of the you know, hey, we think we're deploying the right technology solutions, but it was it was very informing that our patients don't necessarily want to engage with their providers by way of a digital modicum.

Umm, how so?

We.

I'm in.

I'm interested in the findings, but before we get to the findings I'm interested since we're on the creation of the survey, kind of what we're.

Could you give us a taste of some of the flavor of the questions?

And did you find any variance in the objectives of the different of the four other organizations?

Sure.

So for example, there was a California based organization and what they were doing was very transactional in nature.

Like I want to get in.

I want to get out and like the fastest way to see my provider, whereas with our patients in particular they said absolutely not.

This.

And.

We wanna see our patients, our providers in person versus that very transactional relationship here in the South I suppose.

Umm.

And and I've been here in my entire life.

We're a bit more, you know, soft and and I, I would say desire that that soft touch from our physicians and having that face to FaceTime is you know significantly important.

OK.

Interesting.

So there are regional differences in kind of the responses.

So.

So I think what you're what you mentioned earlier that you wanted to learn from patients, consumers to align to meet their technology to meet their needs with your technology stack, I suppose.

And you're interested in creating a more human centered design and that learn what patient perceptions were you've previously had?

Patient reported health outcome surveys you've had, but he just scores, but never have you previously gotten patients insights on what they want from their technology.

So what were some of the key findings?

It sounds like you have some regional disparities with whether they have a preference or seeing meeting in person versus just having a quick transactional encounter with their provider.

What were some of the other findings that you found from this survey?

So you know what we found as far as our our patients, there was a, you know obviously the desire to communicate and meet with your your provider and in person.

We also found that the desire for increased flexibility around managing their own care was highly desired.

You know, interestingly enough, there was a shared sentiment amongst all the organizations and I think this is a struggle that many of your listeners can relate to is that is self scheduling.

So you know, finding that sweet spot of being able to do that on demand care versus I'm gonna pick up the phone, call the provider, hopefully get in to be seen within the next couple of months versus when I need it at that point in time.

So that was definitely a shared sentiment.

Additionally, I'm another interesting thing was on patients that did not see themselves technologically savvy.

I guess my per se I'm is that they felt that organizations were essentially shoving the technology, you know, to them without getting their input on.

OK.

Yes.

Hey, this makes sense.

I mean, we have so much opportunity organizationally to tap into, you know, patient experience counsels and really have them serve as that incubator even with our employees, right, our employees, our patients, we have this built in incubation tank that we can you know trial these things out prior to deploying to the broader public.

So you mentioned there's a number of different responses.

It seems like it varied across different organizations, but patients generally wanted more communication with physicians, more appointment flexibility.

I'm wondering how these survey responses have affected Baptist Health, Jacksonville, IT strategy and vision.

Absolutely.

So it's actually, uh, a great question and it's something that, you know, one of the key things after we've concluded the survey, we evaluated the responses and have backed it into our strategic pillars.

So making sure that we're carving out those core Nuggets that we can make a market difference and how we're deploying our technology solutions into the patient populations that we serve, but also ensuring that it aligns with our organizational strategy.

Right.

UM, I'd like to pivot now to the other topic that we were going to discuss today on the topic from with organizational strategy, I'd like to talk about business systems transformation in particular, enterprise resource platforms and workforce management.

I know that you have two initiatives right now and it's not even necessarily being led by it, but it is critical to both ERP and WWFM and I'd like to know kind of some of the integration challenges kind of what your current state is, what your desired future state is and how you're going to get there.

Sure.

All right.

Well, this is always a fun filled on diagram, so I'm gonna this is gonna be part of our why?

OK. You know, with that ERP and and WFM in particular and and by the way, we're just off the heels of our EPIC implementation.

So we went live back in August of 2022 and had this year Cadillac of an EHR platform.

And you know, this is what we have in our our business space today.

So just really quickly, I'm gonna flash this up.

As you can see, this is a very complex transaction area environment that is not going to be nimble or flexible enough for what we need.

With the growth trajectory that Baptist Health is on, so when I think about, you know, this is just one application, all of these lines and everybody knows our HL 7's, our eftps, again, I go back to very transaction, airy business models and we need to be able to flip that script and have solutions that are going to match nicely to our EHR and complement it where we can make informed business decisions.

While on the instream provide cost effective and quality care.

Let me pause for a second.

For our listeners are listening to this podcast and are not viewing the video right now.

Sarah sharing a a slide of an application profile for PeopleSoft and it has a 2-3 concentric circles of PeopleSoft in the middle, and then it has about 50 smaller circles with different arrows in the periphery.

All pointing into PeopleSoft.

So Sarah, so your your, your current state, you said your you have this epic implementation, you have a lot of high growth trajectory.

I guess there's M&A activity, there's expanding your market share, your current state, you have bifurcated systems, you lack integration access to robust analytics that drive data driven decisions and you're looking to unify your platforms, maybe moving to new vendors.

But I'm interested kind of.

How are you going to get from here to there?

All that's the perfect segue.

So without uh, you know, any initial investment in really rethinking your current state, you have to take that deep dive analysis and understand how the operations or your business processes are running today.

So we have invested a significant amount of time over the course of this past, I would say 10 months.

It's.

Just looking at policy and procedures, understanding what our pay practices are and really doing some partnered work with operations.

Let me get to the next one.

So this is another lovely depiction of some of the the pre work that has to be done in order to.

Sure.

Really put in a system and solution that is going to make a difference in the way I'm we're we're doing business overall.

Healthcare, you know, of course, you know we're in it for the patient, but you also have to have the on the financial and business mindset that you know you have to, you know, meet your margins as well just as any other for profit business would.

So would you mind describing this slide that you're presenting to us and kind of your pathway forward to unify the different platforms either through work day through Ukg Pro and how you're reconciling the business end of running Baptist Health Jacksonville with providing care to patients?

Yep.

Absolutely.

So I'm for folks that are not seeing the visual.

As you know, there's a a common theme from time to time that folks reflect an iceberg, and this certainly is an iceberg.

And and it is just a small part of that equation.

Much of what we're doing as far as the legwork is centered around on realigning our processes and policies, procedures.

So for example, we have 20.

I think it's 28 different attendance policies that we need to get down to one.

So if we continue to move forward with these, uh, you know, fragmented, you know, processes or fragmented policies, we're never going to get to that accountable leadership that is so desired to make sure that we're effectively running a business.

OK.

So on that journey, once we essentially unpack everything, align the IT part should be pretty easy.

So when you have all of those business processes and rules well defined, it's gonna make for a much more simplistic and seamless implementation.

So I'm hearing that there is a lot of fragmentation across the organization and prior to doing a large business system transformation, you're looking to standardize certain policies across the organization.

I'm sure there's a lot of pushback, a lot of kind of territorial defensive postures that you may see from different departments.

How politically do you navigate the imposition?

Is it a top downstairs position?

Is there a committee that everybody's kind of slowly coalescing together?

How are you able to take an amalgam of different policies where probably many people wanna stick with their own policy and they want the other departments to change?

Exactly.

I've right?

That's a quandary.

I think that we're all contending with from time to time, but fortunately we've had strong top down leadership that sees the importance of doing this work.

We have tapped into our key executive leaders ranging from our physician enterprise, our Chr O is our executive sponsor for the overall business transformation effort, which I think is a critical piece of like getting all of the the parties to work together and you know making sure that hey, we've got to come to some common terms.

So there will be some degree of compromise.

I think a huge part of this Jordan is going to be centered around change management of which we're not underestimating.

We're starting to change management now and we're still rounding out our Phase zero around our transformation efforts, which I think is a huge.

I'm a critical piece that is gonna position us for success going forward.

What is your timeline to one identify those new vendors, contract with them, standardize all your processes across the organization and then fully implement and migrate to these new solutions.

Yeah.

We're on a 30 month timeline, so we're also accounting for some of that work and we've been very transparent with the vendors we've selected.

As you mentioned, work day and and ukg so they know that these transformation efforts and alignment efforts are underway.

So they have been a significant piece of what's our hard line in the sand to have this work done by.

So I would expect majority of this work to be done within the next 12 to 13 months.

This past.

So we can make sure that it stays in line with meeting our our target implementation of spring 2026.

So it's interesting that you have chosen to do this organizational wide policy standardization effort on the heels of an epic implementation.

It sounds like you gave everyone a year and a half to kind of adjust to the new epic workflows, and then we're going to go into a new initiative.

I wonder if there were any lessons learned from the epic implementation that you're able to apply and help streamline your business transformation efforts.

Absolutely.

So that was one of the first things that that we tapped into unfortunately, fortunately or unfortunately, I think it depends on how you phrase it.

I I lived and breathed the command center, so I got to see that frontline.

I was responsible for managing that, so seeing all of the different issues that were funneling in, whether that was in particular role based security, right, that's always always always one of the gotchas.

So we are, you know, in lockstep with our information security team to ensure that they are pulled in early on.

So we can make sure that role based access and everything is ticking tied before we even get to go.

And that's one piece.

Epic has also afforded us with a number of different I I I would say communication pathways.

So when you think about or if anybody's gone through a go live with Epic, Go live readiness assessments and making sure that the entire leadership team top down to our managerial or even team lead levels has a full understanding and visibility and to you know the and the the critical pieces that will be the the success factor, right.

That.

So making sure that everybody knows what those risks are and what our mitigation tactics are, and we're applying that, we've done that in actually a couple of different implementations ranging from construction to now our business systems transformation that will be essentially a standard going forward.

Sounds like visibility and transparency into key metrics and definition for success.

And what the risks are was key to the success of their transformation.

Absolutely.

So we are approaching the end of this podcast episode.

I'd like to ask if if you want reflect on our topics of incorporating patient boys into IT development, strategic initiatives and also kind of the lessons learned from your business systems transformation use case going forward in the coming 2 1/2 years, you've mentioned about standardization, visibility, transparency with patients.

You said they're interested in having more in person interaction.

More flexibility and scheduling any kind of surprises or unexpected lessons learned that you think might benefit the listeners to this show right now?

Yeah.

The one thing I I would touch on is, you know, making sure that and like I mentioned, there's a lot of partnered leadership that has emerged.

You know whether that's dialed leadership with administration and physicians.

I think that his blood over into, you know, project work where you have it that's now taking that back seat versus, you know being the person that's driving the effort.

I think by default for many years it has been pegged as.

You know who's going to lead an effort versus it being operationally driven?

I am I prefer to be a trusted advisor that's going to help inform and guide our our operational partners.

That's going to, you know, ensure that they're successful.

Their teams are successful versus me having the glory and accolades for putting something in that was not going to be well received.

So that's the one thing that I would share.

That's Evan.

Creasing importance is making sure that you're that trusted advisor for your business partner, and that's what the respect to project management.

So thinking about, uh, you want me to touch on patient voice and you know, I I believe that it is A and necessity to understand what your patients and the population that you serve and you know desire I can tell you as a parent of a child that was a high risk cardiac kid.

Yeah.

Yes.

I'm having those key pieces of information at my fingertips to alleviate and allay some of the anxiety that I was feeling as I was navigating and extremely complex healthcare journey.

And I take it very, you know, personally and seriously to ensure that we're really looking at that and I'm approaching it from a different lens outside of what the organization desires to push out to those that they serve.

I appreciate your insight, Sarah.

I I see a commonality to both of your responses about the lessons learned, which is essentially you put yourself in someone else's shoes, whether it be the operational business owners across the organization or in the patient shoes as the parent of a patient of a child with certain needs.

So I appreciate the the level of empathy that you offer and and how that can drive it strategy and vision.

So thank you for joining us for our listeners.

This has been Sarah Meinke about this health Jacksonville, the senior director at Enterprise IT Ambulatory Network innovation.

So thank you, Sarah.

So much for joining us today.