Leading Through Change at Strong Memorial Hospital with Deirdre Salanger

0:00This is where health care leadership comes together. Becker's 16th annual meeting brings more than 3500 hospital and health system executives and nearly 800 speakers to Chicago April 13th through the 16th. This series of events includes keynote conversations with Dallas Cowboys legend Troy Atman and former president George W. Bush. For the agenda and event details, visit Becker's Hospital Review.com and click on the events tab in the upper right. We're looking forward to hosting you. This is Laura Dierdo with the Becker's health care podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by Deirdre Salinger, chief operating officer at Strong Memorial Hospital. Deirdre is a pleasure to have you on the podcast today. Morning Laura, happy to be here. Fantastic. Well, I'm excited for our conversation because I know there's so much happening in health care right now and it's truly innovative time. So I'm excited to learn a little bit more about what you're doing at Strong Memorial as well as your perspective on the future. But before we dive in, can you tell us just a little bit more about yourself in the hospital? Sure. So my name is Deirdre Salinger, as you mentioned, I'm the chief operating officer of Strong

1:03Memorial Hospital, which is part of the University of Rochester Medical Center, which is part of the University of Rochester Medicine, more broadly. We're primarily located in Rochester, New York, which is not quite as far west as Buffalo and not quite as central as Syracuse, but more net finger lakes region. And Strong is the region's only level one adult pediatric trauma center. We're a busy place. We discharge over 43,000 patients. We have heavy transfer requests volumes every day. We have close to 120,000 ED visits, and we perform over 46,000 surgeries. And we have an expansive, ambulatory network of primary and specialty care services as well as urgent care. We are academic. Our faculty are part of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. And we are so fortunate to have the School of Nursing where we collaborate and partner on many things. And we actually just celebrated our 100-year anniversary for the Medical School and Nursing School in the hospital. So we're really proud to be part of our community in this way. That's great to hear. You know, what a great legacy to have 100 years of serving the community and really doing

2:04a great job there. Now, could you tell me a little bit more about the last year? So what was the initiative that you led? What did you do and what were the results? Yeah. So the last year was not an average one for me. I came back from a maternity leave, and I started a new job with a new organization. So the role I'm in today as a COO of Strong, I started last summer. So I suppose you could say I've been an orientation, learned in the organization, the people, the culture, that expansive network I mentioned, and just asking a lot of questions. There are certainly things I've had to jump into at first, such as regulatory readiness, given the nature and timing of those things, and some major capital projects we have going on. But as I've come to understand the priorities and where we are as an organization, I've spent significant time assessing and we're appropriate, really implementing the structure to achieve and support our initiatives. I love that. I think it's so critical to have that kind of base and then being able to understand what's needed today as well as think through the future, which can be a challenge with how quickly things change right now.

3:05But especially as you're getting onboarded and really getting acclimated in thinking through all the projects that you had, what are some of the most helpful ways you're able to do that? I know right now there's so many leaders that are going through a similar process as you are doing in jumping into new roles and taking on new leadership. So what advice do you have for them, I guess, to really make sure that making the most of the time and giving acclimated as quickly as possible? Yeah, you know, when I think about some priorities, really regardless of where you are, first and foremost, we cannot provide healthcare without our people. I think COVID taught us that in a more acute way, as well as with the great resignation that followed with that. And I would say our leadership style priority is supporting and engaging our workforce. And this means enabling team members to perform their job and to do that well in a way that allows them to feel good about the work they do when they're here. So for example, how we interact with the electronic medical record is an area of focus for us, as well as retention of recruitment strategies, and there are many things that go into that.

4:05But building a stable workforce that feels productive and safe at work is important. You know, I would think about this as well from what I consider a balancing act between access and capacity. And when I say access to capacity, I'm referring not just to the ambulatory setting, but are in patient services in the post-acute network. These topics are, I would say, really foundational at this point for most health systems, I think when you talk to colleagues across the country. And when I consider headwinds that we're actively managing and dealing with, and what I've had to get up to speed on pretty quickly are those financial pressures and uncertainties. These conversations at the federal level and the state budgets, they acutely impact us on the provider side. We're closely watching the 340B discussions, actively planning how best to support patients, who we know will be impacted by changes to Medicaid funding, and of course, being a university based academic medical center, the funding impacts NIH are real. We also have major capital commitments that are necessary for us to continue to provide modern healthcare and to meet our community's needs. And you know, all that said, I do think strong as well, positions to handle and take these

5:08in stride. That's great to hear. I think as you mentioned, you have so many of the areas that you talked about are critical for organizations across the country, whether you're looking at EHR implementations or interactions and then thinking about recruitment or retention on the workforce side, and then 340B, I know comes up in so many of our different conversations. And so having that kind of backbone and then looking forward is so critical. What do you think you'll have to do, the hardest thing you'll have to do in the coming year will be? It's always challenging to say doesn't plan with resources. As I say that, healthcare will always revolve around people and the human nature of what we do. But the amount of change we are experiencing in healthcare right now is really requiring us to consider the right investments. Our challenge is that the demand is now and we have to meet it. So building in and planning flexibility so we can more nimbley adapt is really going to be critical as we manage investments and costs. As I think about the way we train people, that's probably going to have to be reimagined, the roles we hire into and what we expect them to do. Again, we anticipate that to be changing as we move down the path with digital tools

6:11and whatnot. So all of it is exciting work, albeit challenging, like you mentioned, and hard. But I do think we're going to rise to meet the occasion. Absolutely, that's amazing to hear. And you know, certainly always a challenge, but love a good challenge to be able to come out on the other end. Where do you see some of the best opportunities for organizational growth as well? I've kind of been alluding to it, but I really think leveraging digital tools and some of which most of which we may already have access to, but in doing so, we can really enable access in a way that makes sense for our patients and a work experience that is efficient and what I would say frictionless for our team members. So keeping the patient and workforce experience top of mind is going to be a beacon for us as we continue to be innovative and serve the region in our community. I love that. Dear Dr. Thank you so much for joining us on podcast today. This has been such a fantastic conversation really helps get the pulse of everything that's on your mind and then certainly how you're planning to move it forward. So I appreciate your time today and I look forward to seeing you as well at our annual meeting

7:11and I'll be speaking on our panel. So this will be a lot of fun to catch up and keep the conversation going. Thanks Laura. I really enjoyed this.