Care Delivery_Geoffrey Roche: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Manav Sevak:
Welcome to the Memora Health Care Delivery podcast. Through conversations with industry leaders and innovators, we uncover ways to simplify how patients and care teams navigate complex care delivery.
Manav Sevak:
Hey everybody! This is Manav here from Memora Health, one of the founders and the CEO. Really excited to record today’s session. We have a pretty unique and interesting guest on Geoffrey, which thank you so much for coming on. If you want to introduce yourself quickly, would love it.
Geoffrey Roche:
Absolutely, well, thanks for having me. Geoffrey Roche, I serve at Core Education PBC as a senior vice president of the National Healthcare Practice and obviously started out, actually started my career in healthcare, served in a community hospital in Pennsylvania, have led numerous departments, also served as a senior advisor to the president and CEO, and I’ve also been involved as an advisor to numerous digital health startups. So pretty much all things healthcare, I’m always happy to contribute.
Manav Sevak:
That’s great, that’s great, and appreciate you coming on. Maybe, you know, the work that Core Education does is obviously a little unique compared to some of the other folks that we’ve had on the podcast, and it’s because of a combination of a lot of different experiences that you’ve had in healthcare. I would love to just start by hearing a little bit about your journey. So how did you end up in healthcare in the first place? What does that look like over the past several years and now how has that brought you to Core?
Geoffrey Roche:
Yeah, so I started my healthcare journey in June of 2008. And my mom is a nurse, and so certainly a lot of influence certainly came from my mom. But actually, when I was a senior in college, my academic advisor said to me, you know, maybe you want to do a field study at a hospital system. And at the time I had actually done a lot of work, was an intern on Capitol Hill, had done work actually in politics. And he said, you know, I think you could find some value in sort of the public affairs, business development side of healthcare. And so I spent an entire semester at what was then Lehigh Valley Health Network and then actually fell in love with sort of the administrative side of healthcare, and so was fortunate right after graduation to start at what was then Pocono Health System in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. I served there for almost ten years. I was fortunate to be part of that organization because it was the type of healthcare system that was growing. We had a lot of exciting initiatives and I was really blessed to be a part of amazing work. You know, some examples particularly that I always highlight are, I led the development of an integrated behavioral health primary care setting at two outpatient healthcare centers. I led, with my senior vice president, the development of a new emergency room, a new cancer center, numerous other projects like that that obviously have a lasting impact on that region, and really was blessed to be a part of some amazing work even around population, health and social determinants of health, etcetera.
Manav Sevak:
That’s awesome, and maybe if you had to … that, I think one thing that’s always interesting to hear, you’ve had a chance to operate in a lot of different organizations, right, shared services, organization, healthcare delivery organization, looking at it from the educational perspective as well. What is maybe the one thing that you’ve learned from all of those different experiences in healthcare that you think is still kind of not broadly understood? So what do you think is kind of a unique insight that you have about the industry that you think a lot of people in the industry are still learning or are a little oblivious to?
Geoffrey Roche:
You know, it’s a really interesting question. I think, I was just part of a conversation recently with other healthcare leaders, and we were talking about kind of a similar element. And if I had to answer that, I would definitely say healthcare is the type of industry where most people really join to serve, whether you’re clinical or nonclinical. In fact, I can remember when I first joined my senior vice president at the time said, you’re never going to want to leave healthcare because it’s all about serving patients and serving others, and there’s a certain element of that, that’s really true. But I think if there’s one thing about healthcare that I think makes a lot of people still scratch their heads is that healthcare knows what our problems are, we just don’t always solve them. They go on forever and ever and ever instead of just solving them. And sometimes I think that’s just the culture of healthcare, sometimes it’s the people in healthcare, but overwhelmingly, this is a topic that comes up all the time in my work today, but even in my healthcare times, I mean, there were things that I can remember dealing with back in 2017 that we’re still dealing with now and we still haven’t made a decision.
Manav Sevak:
I mean, why do you think that’s the case? Like, I’ll give you an example of, this from my side as well. So I think one of the things that’s fascinating that a lot of people in healthcare still either struggle to believe or for whatever ridiculous reason are out there claiming it’s that healthcare providers don’t, at the end of the day, really care about their patients. I think one thing that we’ve very intimately seen at Memora is that it’s very much the exact opposite. It’s that providers across the board feel as if they would always want to have more touchpoints with their patients. They always want to invest more in building a relationship with their patients. They always wish that they could follow up with them more, but the reality is that they fundamentally do not have the right resources or infrastructure to do so, and at a certain point, that’s just debilitating in their ability to practice the way that they want to. But across the board, no matter how much health systems know, that feels as if they haven’t chosen to make all the investments that they would. They’re starting to get there now, right, and part of that is because it’s the game of prioritization, but part of it is also the same point that you made of, they don’t always make the investments that they know they should, or they don’t always solve the problems that are readily apparent. What’s your perspective on why that’s the case?
Geoffrey Roche:
You know, I think in one way, obviously healthcare is just very risk-averse. And a lot of that, as you know, comes from the fact that it’s the most highly regulated industry in the entire country. At the same time, though, I think oftentimes to healthcare is the type of culture that is greatly impacted by groupthink. And I think at some point in time, we have to acknowledge that while we want to be interdisciplinary in nature, we tend to be a little bit too top-heavy in a lot of decision-making, and we actually need to flip that model and get more decision-making to occur at a different level within healthcare. So I mean, to your exact point, if we look at even electronic medical records, I mean, certainly have they improved care, improved some operational aspects, absolutely. But at the same time, they’ve also taken physicians and nurse practitioners and nurses at times away from extra time with their patients. And so I’m a firm believer that we’ve got to actually be more human-centered in all aspects of healthcare, and to your exact point, we’ve got to get back to some of the elements that really made healthcare special. And if we think about that, that was back in the day when doctors would go to people’s homes. Well, now here we’re talking about health at home again. So it’s just interesting, healthcare is the type of industry where things like flip back, back and forth, back and forth. And I think we’ve got to always treasure some of the special things and not just move off of them because there’s something new trendy out there.
Manav Sevak:
Yeah, no, 100%, it’s a great point. And related to that, you know, as you mentioned, healthcare is probably one of the most, if not the most, regulated industries in the country. What are some other industries that you kind of look to for inspiration and thinking about breaking out of that groupthink? Thinking about human-centered design and new processes or care delivery models that we’re designing that you think maybe industries that you think have gone through that transition of going from a relatively, let’s say, an industry that’s poor at adopting new technologies or poor at, let’s say, moving into very, very innovative models and now has kind of corrected for that. Any ones that you look to for inspiration?
Geoffrey Roche:
Yeah, you know, it’s interesting. I definitely look at the airline industry because there’s some parallels, particularly around human-centered design, and there’s also a lot of parallels around burnout particularly. So I’ve definitely been looking at airlines quite a bit on the burnout issue and culture alone. I mean, if you look at some of the airlines that have been specifically recognized for a lot of human-centered design in just the flight experience, I mean, you look at Southwest, you look at Virgin Airlines, you know, certainly, those two come to mind that they’ve been very thoughtful around the experience. And so, and I think they’ve also been, I mean, airlines from an industry-regulated end are very regulated around the number of hours. And so it’s interesting because, you know, a colleague of mine recently said, you know, how can healthcare, you know, have doctors and have nurses who aren’t regulated in terms of hours of how they provide, in the length that they provide care, yet we have pilots who are literally flying a plane that can only fly for a period of time, or we have truck drivers who can only drive a truck for a period of time, yet we have surgeons that go on sometimes for more than 24 hours?
Manav Sevak:
Yeah, no, it’s actually a great example and it’s one of those examples that I feel like I hear about intimately having a bunch of family members and friends who are in the healthcare industry. So I love that you’re pointing to that as a reference. So maybe as you think a little bit about that, your role at Core is uniquely interesting right now, given all of the workforce challenges that healthcare is having, where part of it is we need to make sure that we empower our care team members and healthcare workers to be able to operate at the top of their license. Part of it is making sure that they have access to the right resources to deliver care, and part of it is kind of educating them around what they should and should not be spending their time and focusing their time in and also learning from them based on their experiences. So just talk us through a little bit around what is Core Education and what is kind of the focus of your role.
Geoffrey Roche:
Absolutely, yeah, so Core Education was founded by our executive chairman, Rick Beyer, really to, when you think about it, transform higher education at the small to midsize colleges and universities and by doing so impact business and industry. So obviously my focus is on healthcare, and so if you look at pretty much majority of our core academic partners have healthcare programs. And when you look at the ecosystem of healthcare, higher education, and workforce development, I’m a firm believer that the only way you’re ever going to solve not just the workforce crisis that we’re living in today in healthcare, but also the only way you’re going to prepare future pathways into a healthcare career are through bringing an ecosystem solution together because it’s an ecosystem problem. And so our work is really around a shared services fashion, and shared services model, where we work with academic institutions to provide critical support and resources that they would not necessarily be in a position to do so. But they never lose change of control, they always control their own college, they control their own university. We provide additional support to them. So one of the areas particularly that I’m very involved in is we work with them to be more responsive to their industry needs in their market. And so healthcare particularly, we work with them to roll out noncredit workforce development programs that are going to help sustain the employee needs within that region, and then really helping them kind of bridge that gap of what is a sticky employer-healthcare relationship like. Even institutions that have clinical placements aren’t necessarily going the next step to do even more work with healthcare. And so, and then the other element of my work really is to be a part of that at the national level, the conversations around culture and the conversations around learning and education and most importantly, obviously workforce development, really making sure that we’re adding not just thought leadership, but really posing some of those more, I don’t want to say provocative, but challenging kind of the status quo where, for example, just today I was reading an article on Becker’s and I was really encouraged to see that the chief medical officer at Trinity specifically called out that you can’t necessarily address workforce if you don’t look at changing the models of care. That’s the type of work that I like to be a part of, because you can’t just say we’ve got a workforce issue and think we’ve got to build more candidates, we’ve got to retain more, and then you also have to change things, and so that’s the type of work that I also do.
Manav Sevak:
Yeah, absolutely, and it’s weird that, no, not weird, I would say, it’s not unexpected, but also fascinating that we’re stuck in this almost like, stuck between a rock and a hard place where we need to find ways to drive more value, more volume to health systems so that they can continue to maintain financially sustainable businesses, but on the flip side, are losing staff at an astronomically high pace in the healthcare industry. That doesn’t give us the capacity to actually manage more volume, right? So how do we basically make sure that we’re building care models that allow us to, with a limited set of staff or with staff that let’s say, are much more highly focused, still allow health systems to achieve those goals, right? Or deliver higher quality care that just gets reimbursed better, right? 100%, that makes sense. Cool, so the last question I have for you, having been on the health system side, now sitting on the other side of the table, what’s maybe like the one big mandate that you would have for health system leaders right now, right? So if you were sitting in a room of, let’s say, five, six, ten health system CEOs, what’s maybe the one thing that you would really push them towards working on to make sure that they’re really investing in their people and make sure that they’re actually moving their organizations in the right direction?
Geoffrey Roche:
Culture, and I think when it comes down to it, there’s so much to unpack when I say that, but, you know, I think many healthcare systems have done incredible work around diversity, equity, and inclusion, but not enough. We’ve got to do so much more work in that space to truly also look at impacting issues of health equity. But at the same time, when you think of the workforce, a lot of the challenges that are being faced right now in our healthcare system across this entire nation are very much because of culture. And I think healthcare is the type of industry right now that has more multi-generations working in it than ever before. And I think we need to celebrate those differences, find the unique aspects of all the different generations, and figure out how we can bring everyone together to deliver the most, the most superior care that any patient can ever receive. And so from my end, you can’t approach any issue in healthcare today without thinking about culture, because ultimately our patients benefit when the culture is the best, the staff benefits when culture is the best. And if the culture was one that clearly was superior, we wouldn’t see the same levels of burnout. We wouldn’t see the same levels of resignations and people quitting or people quiet, quitting, you know, those types of things, so that would be what I would say.
Manav Sevak:
Yeah, no, it’s a great point. Awesome, well, Geoffrey, thank you so much for coming on. Love to hearing your perspective, and particularly, it’s a fascinating one given the array of experiences that you’ve had, and excited to hopefully have you back on again soon.
Geoffrey Roche:
Sounds good, thank you for having me, and thank you for your work as well.
Manav Sevak:
Thanks for listening to the Memora Health Care Delivery podcast. For more ideas on simplifying complex care for care teams and patients, visit MemoraHealth.com.
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