Care Delivery_Lara Burnside: 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.
Matt Troup:
Hello everyone! This is Matt from Memora Health, one of the medical directors and co-hosts of the Care Delivery podcast. I’m excited to be joined today by Lara Burnside. Lara, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. Would you take a minute to introduce yourself to the listeners?
Lara Burnside:
Absolutely. Matt, thank you so much for having me. I am a healthcare professional. I’ve been a healthcare professional for about 25 years. I have spent my entire career focused on ways that we value and honor those who walk through our doors, whether they are working in the healthcare system of any kind, or they are receiving care or their loved ones are receiving care. There is such an important need in my mind for helping people feel comfortable when they come into a really high anxiety-producing environment, so that is where I have spent my entire career thus far and will continue to do that as I continue this journey.
Matt Troup:
Yeah, that’s excellent, and I really love your background and the take you have on really making a welcoming environment for patients. And we know how stressful the hospital is, I always think about my family and friends who say they can never work in a hospital, they never want to go to the hospital. It just feels like a space that isn’t welcoming, but as healthcare providers and workers who dedicate our life to this work, we try to make it as welcoming as possible. That said, where over your career have you tried to change that framing of what it means to be in a hospital or to walk through the doors of a hospital?
Lara Burnside:
Yeah, so back in 2002, I began working for an organization that partnered with hospitals and healthcare systems around the country, and I spent about 12 years traveling to different hospitals, a couple of hundred of them over time, all sizes from very small to very large academic medical centers, very complex medical centers, and medical systems, and had an opportunity to work with, I think, some of the best leaders there are, those who were really looking for creating a culture that was one that felt different than perhaps what you just described, which I think has been the norm, one that was really interested in creating a space where it was easier for healthcare professionals to perform the work that they are so passionately driven to perform, but at the same time use different techniques or words or tools or processes and systems that allowed people to realize that when they came in to receive care, they were the most important thing at that moment. So I got really lucky in that initial, dozen years of doing this work. And then for the last almost ten years, I guess I’ve worked as a hospital executive, most recently as a senior vice president and chief experience officer at a public healthcare system. And just being able to experience the way that patients experience their care and be a partner to our caregivers and to the team, to be able to do that in the best way possible has been really what my career has revolved around. In December, I left the healthcare system like many executives, and I’m doing executive coaching and consulting along these same lines with a specific emphasis with clinicians being mainly physicians and advanced practice providers, because there is such a huge burnout rate for that group of individuals right now, and I feel really called and driven and the fire in my belly burns for being able to help that because I don’t want to lose the bright minds that are, really have that calling to go into healthcare to begin with.
Matt Troup:
Well, as a clinician in the past, I really appreciate that fire that you have to make the experiences better and allow clinicians to return back to that passion that they have for medicine. You mentioned something that I feel is a bit of a hot take at times for me, coming from the clinical world, is that the patient experience and the clinician experience can’t coexist. And as somebody who was a chief experience officer, which I love that title, by the way, I think it’s needed in healthcare, how do you see the interplay between those two types of experiences and can you solve for both at the same time?
Lara Burnside:
You know, it’s such an interesting thing. I’ve spent, most of my career, whenever I start talking about patient experience with those who serve patients on the front line, I think their initial inclination is really to feel sick in their stomach. And, you know, I think we so often talk about your score, your score, your score, your score when really the only score that you all are really interested in is what’s your blood pressure, what’s your heart rate, right? Those numbers matter. When it comes to the other, I think what’s been unfortunate is we have so pushed the score that we’ve forgotten what the support actually looks like and the art of mastering your craft in patient care. And so as I have built my career, my goal has been to support clinicians and help them understand how doing certain things actually impact the way that patients get better or the way that patients can participate in their plan of care. So rather than it being about a score, it’s more about a partnership and about how can we support you through this journey so that you understand what’s important to a patient and can do things that will help move the needle when it comes to the way they experience their care. But the ultimate outcome truly is around creating an environment that feels good for the physician or the clinician and also feels good for the patient, and you can coexist those, but there’s an art to that. And taking the science of medicine and connecting it with the art into really being able to master the way that we care for patients has been my calling truly all these years, and what I will continue to do until the day I decide to retire, which will be probably many years from now, because I love this work so much.
Matt Troup:
I love that passion, Lara. And that said, like, where have you seen the biggest improvements when you think about, can you frame it that way? What’s been responsible for those big improvements? What pain points still exist that you still find yourself calling out?
Lara Burnside:
Well, I think you and I have both probably experienced over the course of our career a disconnect between executives and clinicians, and there is a circular impact that happens when it comes to running a healthcare system. Part of it is the clinical side and part of it’s the operational side, and being able to connect what executives are thinking, feeling, needing, wanting, desiring in order to be able to run a profitable healthcare system has to connect with what our clinicians, physicians, nurses, respiratory therapists, lab, environmental services, nutritional services, it doesn’t matter whether it’s support or ancillary services or those who are serving at the bedside in a clinical aspect, all of those have to come together in order for us to run a viable healthcare system. There’s a balance, it’s sort of like the same connection of when we started with technology in the healthcare system. Technology has to be coupled with this very personalized care because it’s the combination of high tech, high touch that really gives you the blend of a really amazing experience. Well, it’s the same thing when it comes to executives with physicians or leadership with physicians. One can’t exist without the other, but traditionally, we haven’t combined those together in a way that was really meaningful. And so what I believe I bring to the table is that aspect of I’m willing to hear your side of the story, I’m willing to share my side of the story, and when we connect those things together, we can actually run something that’s quite amazing and ultimately the right thing to do for our patient.
Matt Troup:
Oh yeah, I totally agree with that perspective. And do you see this as bringing more of those types of users into the decision-making process? I know digital technology represents a solution to a lot of these problems, but there’s also a lot of friction involved with adopting new technology. How have you navigated that in the past, both maybe with patients and with clinicians?
Lara Burnside:
Yeah, I think technology or behaviors or new tools or new ways of looking at things, they’re all a piece to the puzzle, and I think change is hard for people. And when we address what that change is or how to navigate through it together, we link arms, we walk through this healthcare journey together, that’s when we start to really bring the brightest minds for the best solutions. And when we have clinicians and we have operators at the table together and we’re willing to listen to each other, we’re willing to discuss what can we do, what can’t we do, but what might some other solutions be for those problems, that is the start. And yes, you have to have clinicians sitting at the table. Without that, there’s no way that you can actually get the perspective of what it’s like to serve at the bedside. I’m not a clinician, I will never be able to know what it’s like to administer a medication or know what it’s like to go in and have to deliver really bad news or sad news to a patient or to a family. And while at the same time, those things, I can’t help with those directly but indirectly, as a leader in healthcare, I can support the way that we do that, so I can help teams understand how to do that, I can build leaders that understand the importance of that, or I can participate and support our caregivers when they’re going through some of the hardest times of their lives, which is what my role was through COVID and back in 2020 when we didn’t even know what COVID was. We set out at that point in time to provide emotional support for our care teams, and that became just this amazing platform for us to be able to retain people who would have otherwise potentially quit. At that time, we did about 2500 emotional support encounters a week. So knowing and understanding the hurt and the pain that our care teams were going through then just really ignited this whole passion for me to do what I do and what I’ve done through my career even better, because you guys deserve that. And if that’s my give-back to healthcare, then that’s where I’m called to serve.
Matt Troup:
Wow, that is really impressive, what you just called out there about supporting staff through the COVID period and certainly felt a lot of that too, being a frontline clinician during COVID. And I wonder how has that perspective continued now that, you know, we’re kind of coming on to the other side of the pandemic, do you still feel like maybe you’re at the health system you were at, or other health systems, are still retaining a lot of that clinician-focused, clinician-first type of mindset?
Lara Burnside:
I hope so. I think that’s where we need to be. You know, the AMA just came out with their study recently that was, responded to by about 2500 physicians. And I’m sure you’ve read it, I’m sure everyone’s read it, but when you look at burnout rates going from 2020, about 38%, and in 2022 or ’21, you know, we’re at 63%, it’s the highest I’ve ever seen it in my entire career. And we’re also seeing work-life integration drop. We’re seeing depression rates increase, we’re seeing professional fulfillment just in, why would I even want to be a doctor again? Go down not just a little, they’re going down 20 percentage points or 30 percentage points. And so when you think about it, all of us who are in medicine have a calling. And I’ve talked about that a couple times in this podcast because I think it’s really important for us to remember. And when health systems pay attention to the calling of the clinician and the needs of the patient, and we keep that patient in the center of every single thing that we do, coupled with the clinician or the employee need, and we can raise the way that our employees, whether you’re a clinician or an operational employee, but we change the way that they experience their environment, our patients and family members experience the environment differently. And when you create an environment of pride in your workplace and you create an ownership mindset and one where you can find joy in the midst of a lot of really hard stuff, and when we do this in a way that is supportive of one another and we take care of our teams in just the way that everyone deserves to be taken care of, then we start to see things shift and change. So it’s interesting because we spent all these years doing this work for well, like I said, I started in it in 2002, we’ve spent all these years and what I’m finding now when I have conversations with CEOs is that because workforce is hitting the top of their concern list, they’re really interested in going back to some of these basic techniques, basic behavioral components that start to create this journey for our caregivers and our patients that is exceptional. And how to do that is not rocket science, it’s just really hard to do every single day. And so what I do and what I have done all these years is help break that down into simple steps so that whether you’re taking care of a patient or you’re leading that charge, you can do that in a way that’s really effective and that’s not complicated. We don’t complicate an already complicated system, but we take simple steps to be able to create a space that is meaningful and that’s fulfilling for our caregivers and our employees as a whole, but also one that allows our patients and families to partner in their care.
Matt Troup:
Yes, your call out of finding the joy in medicine and remembering that this is a calling for a lot of us, even those that aren’t clinicians, even just in healthcare, it’s a calling too, right, to build an infrastructure that supports patients and the providers and.
Lara Burnside:
Takes work, you know, that doesn’t just happen, but there are very specific ways that that can happen and very specific ways that we know by research and by doing this in a number of places that make that a reality, and the magic then comes to life.
Matt Troup:
Oh, it sure does. I would love to know, in your time, especially as a chief experience officer, did you ever try to gain insights from other industries? Was there value there in trying to create parallels? Or do you think that healthcare is just so unique that it’s hard to create the similarities with other industries?
Lara Burnside:
I think there are definite things that healthcare has to learn from other industries. Being a healthcare professional, I find it’s easy for me to go into non-healthcare-related facilities and use the same technique, same tactics when it comes to the customer experience, if you will, because it’s really about human experience. It’s difficult to go the other way because I think we become really resistant in healthcare. Like we’re special, we’re unique, right? Like we have this terminal uniqueness. I think what the pandemic showed us, though, was that we really don’t. And at the end of the day, our consumer, if we’re going to use that term, wants exactly the same thing that we’re getting in other industries. So finding ways that we can utilize technology to accelerate care delivery models is critically important. Finding ways that we can communicate with patients in the comfort of their home, or in their business where they don’t have to take off work and go sit in a clinic or go sit at a healthcare facility for hours and hours and hours because we can actually do that via online. I actually had surgery in the middle of the pandemic, and I was thrilled because I didn’t have anybody to take me, nor could they come in and I couldn’t walk. You know, I just had surgery so I was tired and things didn’t go great, and I was struggling as a patient. And so I was so excited when the physician said, we can actually do a telehealth post-op appointment. And I thought, oh my gosh, this is the best thing ever. And being able to do that without having to actually physically get out of the house, which was very difficult at that time, and move into what should be happening all the time and could be happening all the time was really, for me as a patient, I became very aware of the necessary changes that need to be made in order for us to deliver home delivery meds, home delivery labs, all of this home health stuff that we do that really allows us to be able to serve our patients in the best way possible, not even just close to home, but in their homes as well.
Matt Troup:
Yeah, those are such great examples. And it leads me to this next question which you’ve kind of answered already, but these consumer experiences that other industries are starting to really focus on and do quite well with, are you seeing those start to be more prevalent in the healthcare space?
Lara Burnside:
I think we are better today than we were. We’re still resistant and we moved so fast when COVID first hit us and we developed these amazing programs, like even in part of our caring for our caregivers, we developed Zoom family meetings and we developed all of these types of things that would allow us to be able to serve our patient in our family. We telehealth, we even have telehealth in my hospital before COVID hit, and that’s just sort of an expected way of taking care of patients, you know, any type of electronic communication or ways that we can schedule online or any of those kind of efficiencies need to happen. So we pushed really hard when we had to, and then unfortunately, we sort of moved back into that same complacency and we don’t need to be there. But unfortunately, I think so often we go back into where our comfort zone is. And what I would like to see healthcare do is have an incredibly people-minded focus while at the same time improving the care delivery models for patients in a really effective way so that patients are getting the care that they need in the way that they need. Understand that not everyone can do what everyone else can do, and we’ve got to be able to get to a place where we’re realizing that each patient is unique and individual and we need to understand what their needs are in order to be able to serve them well.
Matt Troup:
Yeah, that’s so excellent, Lara. I completely agree. It’s, a lot of the work we’re trying to do at Memora, it’s just, it’s accessibility, right? It’s trying to meet patients where they’re at all times and really take a lot of those consumer insights from other industries and apply them to healthcare. As a final question, I’d like to know what excites you most about healthcare right now. You’ve been in the industry a long time, you’ve seen so many changes, but what still gets you excited about healthcare when you get to work every day?
Lara Burnside:
I think the combination of people and strategy right now is really exciting to me. Looking at healthcare from two perspectives. One, how do we retain, inspire and reignite the compassion and the passion that our healthcare workers have for taking care of patients? That’s number one, and that’s the space where I live. Then there’s this other side of it that has to do with ways that we can make things easier and more efficient for patients and their families. And when we combined that, again, high-tech, high-touch world, we begin to really look at delivery systems that work. And that for me is really exciting right now as we’re finding new ways to take care of patients, but at the same time recognizing and realizing that the human experience comes from humans serving humans and that is sacred and that work is special. And, if we, and I even, as a healthcare professional, can help impact that for our patients, then I think at the end of the day, we have a healthcare system that actually functions well. Keeping the patient at the center of everything that we do, keeping our care teams right there in that core element, understanding that their experience is a direct impact to our patients’ experience, and building platforms and systems that work for both sides will allow us to be able to take care of patients well way into the future.
Matt Troup:
Well said, Lara. That was incredible. I couldn’t agree more, and I’m so glad that you’re also sharing this feeling of trying to keep both patients and providers front of mind and their experiences as a priority. This was such a great conversation. Thank you for joining me today. Lara, it’s been a pleasure, and hope we chat again soon.
Lara Burnside:
Oh, I hope so too, thank you. I was honored to join you and it’s been quite a nice conversation with you and a pleasure to talk with you today.
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.
Sonix has many features that you’d love including automated translation, secure transcription and file storage, advanced search, collaboration tools, and easily transcribe your Zoom meetings. Try Sonix for free today.
