Hosted by Quint Studer with special guest John Hallick

John Hallick, founder and president of MET Crusaders and co-president of Biomarker Collaborative, joins the podcast to share the story of his journey into patient advocacy. In February 2018, John was diagnosed with stage IV non-small cell lung cancer. Several weeks later, the genetic tests came back, and the cancer was determined to be driven by the MET 14 skipping alteration.

After learning from doctors that while there are many support groups for genetic alterations, there was none for his, John took action. He drew from his background as a serial entrepreneur to set up a patient-centric advocacy group for people with his particular genetic alteration.

You’ll hear about:

• John’s story from his diagnosis of stage IV metastatic cancer to his treatment to where he is today
• MET Crusaders, the advocacy group John founded that’s dedicated to helping patients with the MET alteration live normal lives
• Biomarker Collaborative, a comprehensive body that represents all the advocacy groups, and their work connecting patients with the resources and support they need during what is likely the most traumatic point in their life
• How others can find support and resources
• Most importantly, you’ll meet a courageous individual who is using his own serious life challenge as a springboard to help, educate, and support others.

https://biomarkercollaborative.org/

About John Hallick

John Hallick is a serial entrepreneur of several companies, all based around data warehousing, data mining, and individualized communications management. In December 2017, John developed what he thought might be the flu. It was diagnosed as an upper respiratory infection, and he was prescribed an antibiotic. After several weeks, the symptoms didn’t go away, and he went back to the doctor’s office. The second diagnosis was bronchitis, and he was prescribed prednisone. Again, the illness never went away. In January of 2018, he flew a helicopter four hours from Madison, WI, to Louisville, KY. The drive back to Madison was eight hours. He coughed on and off the entire drive back home. The next day, he went back to the doctor, and they decided to take an X-ray. The X-ray showed he had a mass in his right lung. As a note, nine months earlier he had a normal chest X-ray.

At the end of January 2018, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, performed a complete workup, including PET scans, CT scans, brain MRIs, bone scans, and blood work. On February 1, 2018, at age 67, John was diagnosed with stage IV non-small cell lung cancer. Several weeks later, the genetic tests came back, and the cancer was determined to be driven by the MET 14 skipping alteration.

His initial treatment was a combination of carboplatin, Alimta, and Keytruda every three weeks. John experienced all the normal side effects, including losing 65 pounds and half his hair, hearing loss, neuropathy on the bottom of his feet, no energy, and a significant loss of red blood cells. He was given two units of blood to get his red blood cells back into range. After four treatment sessions, carboplatin was removed from his treatment due to intolerability. After a total of five months of mixed results, it was decided for him to have one additional treatment and look for a clinical trial. After the last treatment, the immunotherapy started to work, and the tumors shrunk about one-third.

Now John had to make the decision of whether to stay on the current treatment plan or go on the trial. John decided to go on the capmatinib phase 2 clinical trial in July 2018. At first, the tumors shrank and then became stable. Targeted therapy returned his quality of life. Like all TKIs, capmatinib stayed effective for over three-and-a-half years. John trialed a MET antibody with limited success and is back on chemo and immune therapy.

Hosted by Quint Studer with special guest Katie Boston-Leary and Hunter Joslin

Quint’s guests in this podcast are Katie Boston-Leary of the American Nurses Association (ANA) and Hunter Joslin with Joslin Insight, a customer insights and strategy consulting firm. The two have joined forces with Healthcare Plus Solutions Group (HPSG) to initiate the national Models of Care Insight Study. The goal is to look at new and alternative models of care being implemented across the US to help ease the nursing crisis and close the gaps/disconnects between nurse leaders and frontline nurses. Ultimately, the team hopes to generate not just short-term fixes, but share longer, sustainable solutions with hospitals across the country.

The actual survey will go live January 27th, with the hope of receiving responses from every hospital in the country. This podcast overviews what has been done so far, including highlights from listening interviews that were held late last year.

Themes discussed in the podcast include:

• Creative ways to tackle nursing staff shortages, including the role and impact of travel nurses (and how best to optimize them).
• Building workforce pipelines. Discussion includes residency and transition to practice programs, an emeritus campaign (which bring retired nurses back), and a boomerang program (aimed at re-recruiting nurses who have left).
• How to better engage the existing nursing workforce (including how to create a sense of belonging with nurses across the spectrum of credentials).
• Stabilization of management teams (due to the industry’s huge influx of new nurse managers).
• How to close the competency gap with newer nurses.
• Determining which practices can be scaled and how to create a collaborative approach between nursing and management for rolling them out.

The data and the ideas generated by the Models of Care Insight Study are meant to improve working conditions for nurses and care for patients. By creating better places for nurses to work, organizations can help relieve caregiver stress, elevate staff well-being, retain the best talent, and improve patient outcomes. To learn more about the Models of Care Insight Study and/or to sign up as a participant, visit https://healthcareplussg.com/models-of-care-insight-study/. 

Important Dates for the Study:
January 27: Survey launches.
March 20: Quint Studer and Katie Boston-Leary will present findings at the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) 2023 Congress on Healthcare Leadership.

Hosted by Quint Studer with special guest Brooke Montoya

On this podcast, Quint has an in-depth discussion with HR Practitioner, Brooke Montoya, and discusses her time as the director of human resources for Monticello Health Services, which was recently ranked as one of Modern Healthcare’s Best Places to WorkTM for 2022.

Creating a workplace that people want to be a part of requires a lot of things to happen at once. The leadership team has to be on the same page and be really transparent and consistent about what they are trying to do. All the employees need to feel heard and feel like they are included in the important things going on in the organization.

In order to make that happen, Monticello created the “culture committee,” whose primary role is to create cohesion and consistency across the organization. When done right, it can really accelerate your employee engagement efforts, as it provides diverse perspectives and valuable insight into where the leadership team should focus their efforts.

Brooke feels the number-one reason they made it on the Best Places to Work list is because they have been effective in aligning their values with the values of employees. The culture committee makes that possible.

Brooke explains that flexibility and adaptability go both ways, and that they have put together a myriad of programs and offerings for employees to make them feel appreciated, valued, and cared for. “The idea is that if we are there for them in times of need,” she says, “they’re there for us whenever we’re in times of need.”

At Monticello, they have operationalized the word “care,” and in this podcast, Brooke will share some of the specific and really creative strategies they have used that make people feel consistently valued, supported, included, and appreciated, and the role the culture committee has played in developing these highly effective programs.

*The game referenced is called Mind The Gap.

About Brooke Montoya

Brooke Montoya is a dynamic HR Practitioner with over ten years of experience in healthcare human resources management. Having had the opportunity to lead several organizations as the head of HR she has proven success in creating cultures of collaboration and implementing change to achieve workforce excellence. Brooke possesses experience in several aspects of human resources, including recruitment and retention, employee engagement, employee relations, and performance management. She believes that building relationships, leadership development, mentorship, and coaching are key to creating healthy workplace cultures.

Brooke holds a bachelor’s degree in human resources management as well as her PHR certification.

Brooke passionately pursues continued learning in all areas of leadership. She is currently enrolled in the master of science in management program at Tarleton State University. Her mission is to inspire individuals and companies to be the best versions of themselves by sharing her knowledge through teaching, coaching, and mentoring. Her most recent achievement is helping to lead her Monticello team to becoming one of Modern Healthcare’s Best Places to Work.

Hosted by Quint Studer with special guests Bob Page and Tammy Peterman

When times are tough (or even when they’re not), culture is everything. In this podcast, Quint talks to Bob Page and Tammy Peterman, executives at The University of Kansas Health System and coauthors of the book Proud But Never Satisfied: Ten Transformative Actions for Healthcare Systems. The academic health system has had quite a journey of transformation. In 1997, they had the lowest patient satisfaction ranking in the nation (a dismal 5th percentile). Now, for over a decade, they’ve been nationally ranked as one of the best hospitals in America by U.S. News & World Report. 

Bob and Tammy talk about how their emphasis on culture has helped them sustain these results. It created a strong foundation and the consistency to get through some rough patches over the years, most recently COVID-19. And they believe culture will carry them into the future. Here are a few of the insights they share:

• You must have “guardians of the culture” to maintain the consistency.
• Communicate early. Don’t make people wonder what the plan is. Make sure they have the information they need to lead their team.
• When the message stays consistent over time, people know what the core expectations are. This is invaluable.
• Recognizing the value of the entire team (frontline care providers and those who support them) is critical. Leaders should spend most of their time rewarding and recognizing others.
• Always think, What can we do differently? What can we do better? It’s important to be aware of that creative tension where you want to feel really good about where you are but also keep improving.

About Bob Page and Tammy Peterman

Bob Page and Tammy Peterman are coauthors of Proud But Never Satisfied: Ten Transformative Actions for Healthcare Systems (Huron Consulting Services, LLC, 2021, ISBN: 978-1-62218-111-7, $30.00).

Bob Page is president and CEO of The University of Kansas Health System. Page has guided its transformation from an institution with the lowest patient satisfaction ranking in the nation to an organization consistently recognized among the best comprehensive academic medical centers in the country by the Vizient Quality and Accountability Study since 2006.

Tammy Peterman, MS, RN, FAAN, is president, Kansas City Division, and executive vice president, chief operating officer, and chief nursing officer at The University of Kansas Health System. The organization achieved Magnet status four times in a row—to date—and “Best Hospital in Kansas City and Kansas” consistently under her leadership.

About The University of Kansas Health System

The University of Kansas Health System is a premier academic health system providing a full range of services, from routine primary care to advanced care for complex conditions. With over 1,100 staffed beds, the system includes facilities located across the Kansas City metropolitan area, as well as hospital and clinic locations in Great Bend, Lawrence and Topeka, Kansas. During the past fiscal year, the health system cared for more than 355,000 unique patients, coming from every county in Kansas, 96 percent of counties in Missouri, each of the 50 states in the U.S., and nearly 30 international locations. The health system appears on many best hospital lists and is recognized for its quality and service, provided by an outstanding team of staff and physicians. For more information, visit https://www.kansashealthsystem.com/.

Hosted by Quint Studer with special guests Kay Kennedy, Lucy Leclerc, and Susan Campis

When Kay Kennedy, Lucy Leclerc, and Susan Campis started the research for Human-Centered Leadership in Healthcare, they had a long list of survey questions. However, it really came down to these two questions. First, describe the leader you’ve had in the past or currently whom you would follow to the ends of the earth. What does that leader look like? The second question was to describe the leader you’ve had in your current career and your life who made you want to leave a position or leave the profession. All that research and those conversations led them to create a body of work called “Human-Centered Leadership,” and it’s all about being high-touch in a high-tech world.

It’s not just a theory; it’s a philosophy, an approach, and a lens through which to see the workplace. They operationalized all their research into specific behaviors leaders can use to create these cultures of excellence, trust, and caring, and that are going to bring about the outcomes we’re all looking for.

At the center of Human-Centered Leadership is the idea that great leaders not only hit the metrics, but they also stay balanced and healthy in the process. Once you really understand the impact your own wellness has on your team, you can create a culture where well-being is a priority for everyone.

They are big believers in the butterfly effect. If a butterfly flaps its wings in South America, the changes can resonate to cause a tornado in Texas. If every leader makes one small change—wherever you are in the world and whatever the size of your environment, whether it’s a small unit or a system—that energy emanates outward and can make a big change. So flap your wings!

Contact information: team@uleadership.com

Website: https://www.uleadership.com/

Hosted by Quint Studer with special guest Nicole Stec

Health systems are providing employees with more well-being resources than ever, but most have a utilization problem. This week’s guest is Nicole B. Stec, director of well-being for Banner Health based in Phoenix, AZ. In this podcast, Nicole discusses Banner Health’s system-wide comprehensive well-being strategy called “MyWell-Being.” Banner has figured out that the ticket to increasing utilization of these services is to lower the barriers to team members accessing them—in other words, you take the service to the person, instead of trying to take the person to the service.

In this podcast, you will learn about:

• Banner’s “five-pillar” strategy that represents the different dimensions of well-being: physical, mental, intellectual, social, and financial. It all adds up to well-being for the whole person.
• How they worked with their EAP to embed onsite and virtual counselors within their 30 hospitals across the system to help team members struggling with stress and burnout during COVID.
• Creative strategies they used to create a private, discreet experience for employees and achieve a higher utilization of services. (For example, counselors hand out business cards with QR codes people can scan to quickly and easily make appointments, and they can make appointments during work hours, without using PTO.)

Ultimately, Banner’s emphasis on well-being underscores its belief in investing in its most valuable asset: its people. Having a great well-being program helps with recruitment and retention and creates a better, more meaningful work experience…which is what today’s employees want.

In addition to being the director of well-being for Banner Health, Nicole is a national speaker on employer on-site clinics and well-being strategies. For the past ten years, Nicole has worked in community and corporate health settings, designing and implementing population health management strategies for organizations, including healthcare systems, small businesses, the U.S. military, and local government.

In her current role, Nicole is responsible for Banner Health’s system-wide well-being strategy for 55,000+ team members located in six states. Nicole recently implemented the Banner Strong Center for Healing to support the mental well-being, healing, and recovery of healthcare workers post-pandemic. Nicole has also increased Banner’s team member well-being engagement to more than 50 percent in the past two years with the introduction of a holistic well-being approach and new wellness technology.

Nicole is a graduate of the University of Southern California (BS), the University of Phoenix (MBA), and the University of South Florida (MPH). She also holds many certifications, including being certified in public health (National Board of Public Health Examiners) and a certified wellness practitioner (National Wellness Institute).

Nicole’s Gratitude Group Presentation

Hosted by Dan Collard with special guests Denise Webber and Jim Ulrich

Being on Modern Healthcare’s “Best Places to Work” list is an honor. But the real reason the designation matters is that preparing for it creates the best patient care possible. Denise Webber, FACHE, president/CEO of Stillwater Medical, and James P. Ulrich, Jr., MHA, FACHE, FHFMA, CEO of York General, head up organizations that are longtime designation “regulars.” Stillwater has been a Best Places to Work organization for eleven years and York for nine years.

In this podcast, special guest host Dan Collard, cofounder/partner with Quint Studer of Healthcare Plus Solutions Group, talks with Denise and Jim about why being with people at the most critical times of their lives creates a responsibility to be the best we can be. Seeking a Best Places to Work designation helps achieve that. The data is invaluable. It gets us focused on the right things, shows us what’s going well, and pinpoints areas for improvement. (Side note: Don’t wait until you’re ready to apply to start this journey.)

Denise and Jim share some of the benefits of being named to the Best Places to Work list:

• It provides a good road map/game plan for success. It really promotes the foundational skills that make an organization run smoothly.
• It creates a great culture that permeates every corner of your organization. (It’s not department-specific.)
• It helps promote continuous improvement as you strive to move up the list every year.
• It gels your leadership team together in a really unique way as it requires a lot of collaboration.
• It shines light on some things you might not normally look at (the demographics of the workforce, for example).
• The skills you develop in the process help you manage the ever-changing healthcare landscape. (Jim says York’s rock-solid culture and strong team helped them navigate COVID.)
• The designation will help you attract talent and organically retain the talent you have. It means something.
• It gives you a great chance to see where you compare to others and helps you figure out whom you can learn from.
• It gives you a great opportunity to celebrate, shine the light on your heroes, and focus on your strengths. It reminds you to narrate to your community how good you are!
• It helps you see you are on the right track. The third-party validation is reassuring to patients, community, and employees.

One of the biggest benefits of this designation is the impact it has on the community. It promotes involvement and ownership. With hospitals often being the largest employer and literally the ones caring for community members, there’s a sense of obligation to make life better for everyone. We don’t just have a seat at the table, we get to help set the table—and being a Best Places to Work organization builds the trust that allows us to do so.

Contact Information:
Denise Webber
President/CEO
Stillwater Medical Center
Cell 405-880-5117

James P. Ulrich, Jr., MHA, FACHE, FHFMA
Chief Executive Officer
YORK GENERAL
(402) 362-0445 Office
(308) 340-1752 Cell
Jim.Ulrich@yorkgeneral.org

Hosted by Quint Studer with special guest Mindy G. Spigel, RN, MSN, CPXP

Anyone who works in healthcare knows patients struggle with anxiety and worry and fear. Yet it’s easy to get so caught up in our day-to-day work, with all its stress and chaos, that we can lose sight of this truth—as well as the fact that employees, too, can be fearful. In this episode, Mindy G. Spigel, RN, MSN, CPXP—author of the new book There’s a Snake on My Head! Strategies for Alleviating Fear and Anxiety in Healthcare for Patients, Families AND Healthcare Teams—explores this critical subject.

Mindy says when we talk to a patient, we need to imagine they have a snake on their head. That snake is fear. If we can’t get rid of the snake first, how will they hear anything we say? They won’t—and compliance and outcomes will suffer. She says in her research study interviewing families about their fears and how to reduce them, the findings boiled down to this: “Keep me informed, keep me safe, keep me comfortable.” She hopes shining a light on this topic will not only lead to better outcomes, it will help healthcare workers reconnect to their purpose.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why acknowledging and reducing fears in both patients and employees matters
• How we can train ourselves to see the “snakes” on people’s heads
• Impactful steps we can take to help reduce those fears and worries
• How to also reduce anxiety for employees (including new hires and transitions in leadership)
• Why we’re still playing catch-up after COVID-19—and how we can rebuild camaraderie, trust, and those critical networks and learning environments

Mindy G. Spigel, RN, MSN, CPXP, is a nurse with over 40 years of experience in healthcare, working in both inpatient and outpatient settings. Mindy has taught in academic and clinical settings and has been honored to speak at numerous national, state, and local conferences.

Contact Mindy Spigel, RN, MSM, CPXP
mgspigel@gmail.com
www.mindyspigel.com

Mindy’s New Book: There’s a Snake on My Head! Strategies for Alleviating Fear and Anxiety in Healthcare For Patients, Families AND Healthcare Teams
Beryl Institute Research
Gratitude Symposium Presentation

Hosted by Dan Collard with special guest Clay Linkous

Like most of us, Clay Linkous—managing director of patient experience for ChenMed—is a product of his life experiences. His approach to healthcare is an aggregation of what he’s learned from his background in exercise science, a full-time ministry role, a black belt in Six Sigma, his master’s in healthcare administration, and his marriage to a critical care nurse. His background has shaped a leader who is driven by compassion, innovation, measurement, and, of course, good outcomes.

In this podcast, special guest host Dan Collard, co-founder/partner with Quint Studer of Healthcare Plus Solutions Group, talks with Clay about the evolution of the patient experience. Linkous says we’ve moved from patient satisfaction (how happy they are) to evidence-based practices (measuring how well clinicians do the things that result in great care) to patient engagement (getting patients more invested and involved in their own care after they leave the hospital setting).

Clay explains that we are now in the patient partnership phase, which means we not only try to affect outcomes at the bedside, but we work to change patient behaviors (diet, exercise, etc.) that are impacting their overall health. This level of compliance from patients requires a trusting relationship with providers. High levels of trust lead to better listening and more compliance, thus better outcomes.

So how do we build this level of trust? Linkous says we start by reducing anxiety by creating more experiences that lead to positive emotions and fewer that lead to negative ones. Clay says that ChenMed has some interesting models in place for building trust. Their approach involves building on some foundational things that have worked well, infusing new learning from neuroscience around human behavior, and learning from organizations outside the industry, like Ritz-Carlton and Chick-Fil-A.

Chen Med is also taking a closer look at the social determinants of health for their patients. By thinking more broadly than traditional medicine and looking at how housing, transportation, and other factors that happen away from the bedside impact the patient partnership, they have been able to get better outcomes.

While they are still innovating and evolving, one thing is for certain. Linkous believes that all of this requires leaders and the care team to feel (and express) a deep compassion and care for others. The old adage comes to mind: People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Hosted by Dan Collard with special guest Thom Mayer

Special guest host Dan Collard, Co-Founder/Partner with Quint Studer of Healthcare Plus Solutions Group  interviews Thom Mayer, MD, an emergency medicine physician, medical director for the NFL Players Association, and author of the book Battling Healthcare Burnout: Learn to Love the Job You Have, While Creating The Job You Love.  He says the Great Resignation is the perfect time to think about who we should re-sign: attracting and hiring high performers is great, but we can’t assume they’re going to stay. We need to focus on keeping them.

During his work as an ER physician, Dr. Mayer learned the basics for retaining the best people. Simply put, “please” and “thank you” matter! At the end of every shift he would personally thank every nurse, every tech, and every housekeeper. And he would ask “What could I have done to make your job easier today?” He says this practice was humbling but also enlightening.

In this podcast he’ll share other insights he has learned from his career. For example:

• A good culture is about two things: 1) making patients happy, and 2) doing the right thing for the people who take care of the patients.
• The concept of leadership is worthless because it’s a noun; it’s something you say. Leading is a verb—we demonstrate leadership by our actions, not our words.
• Every person on the team is a leader—they lead themselves or they lead other team member
• The work of battling burnout begins from within. Every team member is a performance athlete, involved in a cycle of performance, rest and recovery, over and over and over again. This is why it’s so vital to invest in yourself and your team.
• One of Dr. Mayers’ favorite tools is the Love, Hate, Tolerate tool because it forces a lot of reflection
• How do you get a great job (like one with the NFL)? Don’t focus on resume building. Instead, build trust and relationships and your career will take care of itself.

Finally, he’ll talk about why the true key to battling burnout is not about building resilience in people, but adaptive capacity. Those who use the systems and processes have to be the ones who re-design them. That’s why Dr. Mayer is adamant that innovation doesn’t belong in the C-suite.  As Napoleon Bonaparte once said, leaders are dealers in hope. Our role is to create the trust and hope that empowers the frontline people to say “I see a way to do it better.”

Email: thommayermd@gmail.com