Building a Transparent, Action Driven Health System Strategy with Warner Thomas

0:00At Insight Global Health, we are dedicated to helping you and improving health care for everyone. That means building stronger teams and delivering sustainable solutions that truly make a difference. We offer a full spectrum of talent and technical services and deliver cross industry expertise to bring you innovative best practices to solve the problems that we face in health care. We're not just promising you results, we are delivering them. Visit us at Insight Global dot com. This is Laura Deerda with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by Warner Thomas, Chief Executive Officer at Sutter Health. Warner's a pleasure having on the podcast today. Great to be with you. Absolutely. Now, I'm excited to have you here today. I know we're going to be talking through leadership and a good number of things. So, but before we begin, could you briefly introduce yourself, your role and tell us the scope of Sutter Health? What's kind of currently, um, commanding most of your attention as a leader? Yes, uh, Presency of Sutter Health. Sutter Health is based in Northern and Central California. We're a large integrated delivery system with, you know, hospitals throughout Northern California.

1:05We have a 12,000 physicians in our network, you know, about 6,000 of those physicians and clinicians are in medical groups, which kind of ground our organization. We have a large contingent of independent positions with, you know, very strategically aligned IPAs as part of that large home care platform. So, uh, 12 largest home care organization in America and a growing and evolving population health and, and global risk management capability as well. So, um, but yeah, cover a large geography, about 13 million people in our primary service area. That's amazing to hear and you're really cool to have an understanding of the entire organization, everything that you do and that is integrated within the whole enterprise. So, when you think about all of the different, um, areas that you lead, what is top of mind for you? What are you really thinking a lot about today in planning on as you're prioritizing for the future? I think one of the things we'll talk about today is, you know, it's part of the talk I'm doing here at Becker's is the fact that in today's environment, our point of view of the future,

2:14you have to have a large geographically distributed, ambulatory oriented network, which is always going to be grounded with hospitals. I mean, you're always going to have hospitals, but this idea of having a geographically dispersed, ambulatory network, strong alignment with physicians and clinicians is a critical component to the system. We're invested significantly in that area, but it has to be coupled with a digital ecosystem that allows patients to move back and forth and people expect digital connectivity today. And it's not just test results, it's test results, it's online appointments, it's remote patient management, remote patient monitoring and, you know, we're continuing to build our digital front door, but we spend a lot of time thinking about the evolution of this system, how it integrates together and how we really use that to differentiate ourselves in the in the areas that we served. That's amazing to hear, and you know, a lot of change happening right now, and especially this last year has been marked with a good amount of change involving within the healthcare system.

3:21So can you talk about a recent decision or pivot that's required mostly their ship conviction from you, particularly when it comes to aligning the people resources and capabilities? I mean, I think we made a pretty large pivot when this team got to suitor health and really re looking at our whole capital allocation strategy and moving a lot more of those resources into the ambulatory environment. You know, certainly there's inpatient investment we continue to make and and filling gaps in our network, you know, we recently announced a big project on the Santa Clara California area because we had a real gap in that area from a hospital perspective. And so we're investing significantly there, but this idea of being very strategic around capital investment, making sure we're doing it to differentiate ourselves and serve our patients in a better fashion. You know, part of that's our center of excellent strategy and advanced care complexes, which are, you know, things like cancer centers, neuroscience centers, sports and orthopedic centers that we have all this great capability, but putting it together.

4:28In one location in an integrated fashion is really what patients need and that's what we're providing to them. That's fascinating here, you know, I know bringing more in that ambulatory strategy is something so many health systems are trying to figure out today and really put the structure around it as you've been talking about. So as a leader when you're making this ambulatory expansion and kind of thinking about the health system differently than just the four walls of the hospital or hospitals within the network, what does that take from a leadership side as well as, you know, the teams to build the right inventory strategy. Well, I think part of this is you have to build a strong team and you have to make talent management, talent assessment talent development, a key part of what you do. That's a key part of what we call our operating cycle and our operating rhythm is how we assess talent, you know, how we continue to develop people and we always challenge our folks, you know, what are you doing to make your team better. You know, we've more than tripled our investment and our learning and development since I've gotten to set our health.

5:30And part of that is because we want to have the best leaders and you know, we continue to invest in them. We continue to help them get better and you cannot operate in today's environment without the right leadership and we think leadership is a gating item to our future and that's why we continue to make, you know, big investments in that area. That's helpful to understand and you know, really inspiring to think about putting together that team in place that's going to be propalling you into the future. Now, I'm curious, how do you think when you're thinking through the inventory strategy, what does that do to challenge the assumptions that your team had about the healthcare environment in the past and what did it change about how you approach decision making as well as organizational readiness. So I think one of the things we try to do is, you know, we have a very clear communication strategy. We, we operate with the principle of transparency. We're very clear with our organization about what we're doing and why we're doing it. You know, we have one incentive plan that covers our whole entire leadership team.

6:33We have one set of, you know, AIP metrics that covers our whole organization. We really align around all those things. So, you know, we continue to have, you know, ongoing communication on a monthly basis that all leaders. We do town halls across the organizations. We keep people up to date as to what we're doing. So I think this idea of, you know, being transparent, being open, being clear and making communication a key part of your strategy. You know, we really view that leaders need to be master communicators. They need to be able to motivate people, communicate clearly and have people understand where they're going. That this concept of clarity is critically important to the success of any organization. And so those are some of the key tenants and key foundational things that we do as an organization. That's helpful to understand. And I love that idea of transparency and communication. And I'm curious, you know, transparency can be a great tool, but it can also.

7:34My surface information or things that are hard to communicate or things that people don't necessarily want to hear. So is there anything when you are being open and transparent that makes you nervous about that strategy? Or is it pretty straightforward from your perspective? Yeah, I think, look, I mean, we often have to communicate things that are not wildly popular. And many times we communicate things that there's half our organization that thinks, you know, that that's a great idea and half a dozen things, it's a great idea. And so, you know, I think part of this is that that's why transparency is important. If you can explain why you're doing something, the rationale behind it. People may not like it, but they if they understand it, they can understand the rationale behind it. I think it's when people here we're going to do this and they have no reason or no understanding why. I think that's when they get a lot of questions. So we try to spend a lot of time talking about the why we're doing something and grounding our direction and purpose. You know, we exist to take care of patients and to take care of each other, you know, patients first people always. And so if you use that as kind of the grounding mechanism and you and you can tie your strategy and tie your actions back to what you're doing there.

8:47I think it really helps people to understand what you're doing and why you're doing. I love that and it's so helpful to kind of propel those types of discussions and have that as the backbone of your organization. And right now, I know there's a lot of forces reshaping health care when you think about whether it's policy, technology, patient behavior, just all sorts of things that are coming into the health care space and in making a difference. So where do you believe leaders need to be more decisive in the future, especially when they're thinking about balancing speed risk and having the right teams in place. You know, I think in today's environment where there's a lot of ambiguity, there's a lot uncertainty. I think the key thing is to be action oriented. You know, indecision is a decision. Right. Being frozen and not taking action is a challenge and an issue. You know, I think being action oriented and then reassessing and adapting and and essentially adjusting your strategy or adjusting your actions.

9:50I think is a better strategy than waiting until you think you've got it every single thing figured out and then moving forward. The environment is so complex and it's moving so quickly and there's so many, you know, different variables. Nobody has all the answers. So you have to keep moving forward, keep adjusting. And I think be action oriented and that's one of the things I'll talk about today and in the talk I'm doing here of beckers. I really appreciate that and it can be, you know, I'm sure somewhat paralyzing at times to think about the gravity of everything you're doing healthcare, but that action orientation is actually what makes a big difference and can bring. It seems like the care delivery as well as the healthcare system into delivering what they need for patients. I'm curious technology has become embedded into daily operations within the health system. And how are you ensuring some of the digital investments that you're making are actually supporting rather than straining the workforce. And one of the key tenants of our digital strategy is making work easier for people.

10:55And Laura Wilt, our chief digital officer and her team are doing a great job, you know, continuing to develop and evolve our systems to make work easier. We, you know, realigned all of our nursing systems this past year. Streamed line a lot of the forums looked at the number of clicks, the number of the amount of time our nurses have to stay in the system and, you know, did this with a group of nurses and, you know, we call that our nurse focus, you know, initiative. We've reduced clicks and time the system by 20%. Making work easier for those nurses, allowing them to have more time at the bedside with patients. And so this idea of trying to make work easier, ambient listening. You know, we've got ambient listening in our clinics that we have 4,000 physicians and clinicians, it's making it easier for them to do their job. There's no more time with patients in many cases, they're seeing more patients. So this, this idea of making work easier, I think has to be a key tenant of how you think about your digital strategy.

12:00That makes a ton of sense and is really helpful. I know there can be some anxieties or stress overall, just when you think about technology and bringing AI in and what's it going to do to change jobs or shift responsibilities and accountability. And at the end of the day, if it's actually that support system is super charging the organization, it seems like it's really beneficial on all fronts. Certainly. Excellent. Well, before we wrap up here, I have one more question for you. As uncertainty becomes the norm, what leadership habit or mindset has been most critical in keeping the organization and your people moving forward? I just think this concept of a growth mindset. You know, I think Satya Nadella said it and it was in his book. You know, he wanted Microsoft to be learned at all, not know at all. And I think we want to aspire to that, et cetera, health. I mean, how do we be constant learners? How do we be lifelong learners? And this idea of a growth mindset, continuing to get better, continuing to invest in yourself, continuing to invest in your people,

13:00learning new ways of doing things. I think Becker is a great example of this. You know, a lot of people here learning new things, people sharing information. The growth mindset to me is a way that we can improve health care. And I think it's a critical way that we need our leaders to think about their work in the future. I love that Warner. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. This has been a really fun discussion. I've learned a lot from you and I look forward to connecting with you again soon. Great to be with you. Thank you.