Kathleen Wessel (Host): Healthcare is evolving faster than ever.
Rising patient expectations.
Workforce shortages costs demand more than transactions, which is why
partnerships between hospitals and MedTech innovators are more important than ever.
Hello and welcome to a HA Associates Bringing Value, a podcast from
the American Hospital Association.
In this series of podcasts, we speak with a HA associate program.
Business partners check out on their efforts and learn how they support a
HA hospital and health system members.
Join us as we explore how hospitals, health systems, and MedTech vendors
are transforming traditional supplier relationships into strategic
partnerships that drive innovation, improve outcomes, boost efficiency, and
build a stronger sustainable future.
I'm Kathleen Watson, vice President of Business Management and Operations with
the A HA, and today I'm joined by Dr.
Stephanie Duggan, chief Clinical Officer at SSM Health.
Stephanie, welcome to the podcast.
I.
Stephanie Duggan, MD: Thank you so much for having me, Kathleen.
Kathleen Wessel (Host): This is a big topic for us, and I think we
could take this in a lot of different directions, but I'd like to really
use our time together to explore and dig into how you and your organization
align with partners for success.
again, big question, big topic to kind of dive into, but I'm gonna jump right in.
You know, acknowledge that there's a perpetual, the field is
perpetually looking for innovative strategies and solutions.
And so from your experience, when you're evaluating potential
partners, what key factors do you consider essential to assure
alignment with your goals and values?
Stephanie Duggan, MD: Well, I think it's really important that we take
a minute and define partnership, because partnership is a very different
implied relationship than a vendor.
So I can work with any number of vendors from the chief clinical officer
seat and have satisfactory results.
But a partnership implies that both myself And the person with whom I'm
working, or the company with whom I'm working will have sustained
excellent results because we won't do anything that won't benefit the other
person or company in the partnership.
So when I'm looking for hospitals, for vendors, for, other clinicians,
I want to look for those with whom I want to develop a true partnership.
So when I think about the relationships that really work, they're the
ones that are built on traditional and values that will continue to
grow and benefit both companies or people within the partnership.
Kathleen Wessel (Host): So important to make sure that there's alignment there.
thank you for kind of stepping us back and, and really helping us
identify, those core elements there.
I really actually wanna maybe jump back a little bit further and just learn more
about you and kind of your role within SSM how you, operate, in this space.
Stephanie Duggan, MD: so I always wanted to be a.
A physician.
I have my 12-year-old book report, stating my life as a physician.
I don't have anyone in my family, That is a physician.
So it's been a journey to learn how the health system works, how it operates,
how individual clinicians fit in.
when I did my training in Detroit, I thought I would be a pediatrician,
but as I've learned throughout my years of experience that the
medical field truly picks you.
And the first day that I entered into the emergency department, being someone
that can't stand, even r rated movies.
because of all the blood and gore, I was captivated.
These were my people and I loved the experience, And so became
an emergency medicine clinician.
Really loved to fix things, never imagined doing anything
administratively, and I think that's really important is that you're truly
present in whatever path or part in your career that you find yourself.
as a practicing emergency doc, a hundred percent.
I embrace the challenges, embrace the learnings because you really
have to learn how to coordinate what you need for your patient from the
administrative team, what you need for your patient from the nursing team.
And it really is a team sport when you are practicing as a clinician.
So as I became known as the Fixer, I really wanted to make throughput better.
I wanted to make the medical executive committee function more effectively,
and I was very blessed to be able to given opportunities where I could
continue to grow and continue to learn.
And so I practiced fully for about 15 years And then became
a Chief Medical Officer.
But I still maintained my clinical practice because in the emergency
medicine world, I could practice four or five days a month as well
as do the administrative duties.
So I feel very blessed, that I was a Chief Medical officer for five years.
Then I became a Chief Clinical Officer and started learning about all of the
different aspects of how complicated the business side of medicine truly is.
How do you care for a patient And then truly get.
Paid, how does the hospital get paid?
truly how is coding an end-to-end process and, You know, continue
to learn all of those aspects.
And then after being a chief clinical officer, I was in a physician where
I was asked to take on a CEO role for, three hospitals, including
the one where I had first been an emergency medicine physician.
So learned about the CEO role as well, had that role during COVID, which.
As a practicing clinician to be a CEO during COVID, I felt so blessed
because I understood the science.
I understood how to protect people, And we had great community support of what
we needed to do to keep the patient's And the hospital safe as well as our staff.
So I really enjoyed that aspect as well.
and finishing that role up, the opportunity to become the chief
clinical Officer over the national system for SSM, was the next step.
And I have thoroughly enjoyed that.
I've been in this role for two years and I have the entire clinical enterprise.
for which I'm responsible.
So quality and safety nursing And the medical group.
So, never a dull moment and really, enjoying also being able to develop, the
partnerships And the value partnerships with companies such as Siemens.
Kathleen Wessel (Host): I never get tired of listening to the origin stories of how
people, how their careers have evolved.
You know, kind of what sparked the interest at the beginning.
So I appreciate, your 12-year-old book report, that started all of this.
That's amazing.
thank you for sharing.
Stephanie Duggan, MD: Thank you for asking.
Kathleen Wessel (Host): So where have partnerships had the greatest
impact in your organization?
can you provide examples?
Stephanie Duggan, MD: partnerships are the backbone on which we can continue to
grow and expand our clinical excellence.
So I'm gonna give a very specific example.
When I joined SSM, there was a partnership called a Value partnership,
value-based partnership with Siemens Healthineers that had just been started.
And when I came into my role, then I inherited and became the chief sponsor
for that and So, it was a new kind of partnership that I had yet to experience.
As I said earlier, the people with whom I choose to work, I make sure that our
values are aligned because as long as you can talk through your challenges,
you can solve anything and continue to get what your patient's need.
So I inherited the value-based partnership.
I didn't really know exactly what it meant.
but as I began to get to know the team, I learned that they had a
continuous improvement to, they called it because we have continuous
improvement teams at SSM as well.
So the CI two teams came in.
And they evaluated some of our processes, within our radiological suites,
particularly our MRI Times, and they said, Hey, you guys have some, opportunities
to match your times of busyness with your times of staffing, as well as to really,
standardize your blocks of times in which you're actually caring for patient's.
So instead of having some blocks be 15, some be 30, some be 20.
Make all of the blocks standard at 20.
And they did a whole time study case study.
Came and presented it back to the executive team, And we found through
that partnership and through listening to their suggestions, we'll be able to
add about a hundred MRI spots, to our system without adding any staffing,
without changing what we're doing, but by adding in the standardization that
our partners have experienced by their learnings throughout the entire world.
And so that to me is where we both are gaining value and we're also most
importantly improving access for our patient's, which is what we need in
order to truly move healthcare forward within the communities that we serve.
Kathleen Wessel (Host): Yeah, that's a wonderful example.
Thank you.
You know, in what ways have some of these partnerships reshaped and improved
your AP approach to patient care?
Actually, this one example like really helps illustrate some of
that, but I'm thinking kind of beyond what you thought was possible.
Stephanie Duggan, MD: That's a great question, Kathleen.
And one thing that we're very excited about that we will have, nearly
online, by April, is we're going to be partnering with remote, MRI scanning.
So we have many rural hospitals and difficult to get staffing kind of
fully, at the level that we would like.
So sometimes you try and schedule things together, but sometimes when you are a
community that may only have a single MRI and a single tech, if there's a
complicated exam or an exam that your tech isn't really sure exactly how to
administer through this remote scanning, we're going to be able to log in and
have our tech be able to direct the scan.
with another tech that's supporting them, but the tech that really understands how
complicated And the testing that needs to be done will be able to run it remotely.
And so that will actually open up the experience for more patient's
and through the timing work we've already done, hopefully will have more
access through those spots as well.
so that being able to do a remote LED scan is going to be transformative
for the rural communities So that's something that we're looking forward
to, through our partnership by April.
Kathleen Wessel (Host): so what, kind of distinguishes a truly
strategic partnership from some traditional vendor relationships?
You mentioned some of this before, but how are you measuring whether it's
actually moving the needle on clinical, operational and financial outcomes?
Stephanie Duggan, MD: So before I get into the actual measurement, I want
to share another example of what has meant a lot to SSM because we are
struggling And we wanna make certain that we are able to care for our.
Communities and make certain that we have enough staff to do that.
through the partnership with Siemens, we've really leaned into a rad tech
opportunity where Siemens can help partner with us to help support
some of that and where we're able to actually help develop the curriculum.
And so when I think about a value partnership, it's about
solving the problems that we see throughout the healthcare system.
And to me That is really a hallmark of the difference between the vendor who's
coming to sell me a product and a partner who's saying, where are your pain points?
Not just with equipment, not just with processes, but where are your
pain points that are going to make care for patient's more seamless?
And how can we help?
So having enough techs is a big pain point for not only SSM, but I think
everybody out in, the country and, you potentially throughout the world.
We're all struggling with that, so having a partner lean in and help us
with that has been really fruitful.
Now as far as our metrics, I've already mentioned one that I'm very excited about
and That is that we'll be able to open up more than a hundred MRI access spots.
So that will also be an incredible gift for us.
The second piece where we're continuing to really improve is
by having standard equipment.
We're able to streamline the training for our staff.
When you have multiple different forms of MRIs, multiple different forms
of CAT scans, your staff have to be incredibly nimble on what they're doing.
the third piece is with protocolization.
And so we have 23 different acute healthcare hospitals, And we have
many more protocols than that on how we actually deliver the care.
And so through Siemens help and looking at what some of their best practices
that they've seen throughout the country And the world, we are actually able to
continue to learn what best practices.
Something else that we are really actively working on is, we call it Project One.
Project One is a massive three year project that we are working with our
Epic, partner And we are taking our epic systems that we have throughout
the hospitals, throughout our ambulatory sites, And we are converging them all
back to what's called Epic Foundations.
we have so many disparate ways of charting and looking at things, not because anybody
was trying to do anything or to change things, but we kind of allowed a lot
of, non-standard ways and workarounds.
So when something new comes out with Epic.
we're not able to get to that because our system is not standard
to the foundational level.
So some of the cool AI technology and things like that, until we
standardize our entire system to the foundations, we're not able to
access some of the newer technology.
So That is also another partnership that we're continuing to improve upon.
Kathleen Wessel (Host): at the time you're doing And that some of that
organic development seems beneficial until you need to pull everything way back.
Stephanie Duggan, MD: It is moving a lot of cheese and having a partner
that supports you, provide sites where this has worked well in the
past, is really incredibly helpful.
you know, when we kicked off our, project one, we had almost 400 people that
traveled up to Verona, Wisconsin, And we were able to get everybody in the room,
talk about all the new things that we were going and really show the benefits of
consistent care, consistent documentation, because it helps your entire healthcare
experience from the patient side to have everything more consistent.
Kathleen Wessel (Host): Great opportunity to pull all of that together.
so you referenced some workforce challenges, but so much focus
on workforce and rethinking care delivery, what examples stand out where
partnerships help speed things up?
Like adopting technology or improving processes or even,
opening new care locations.
Do you have examples like that, that you can share?
Stephanie Duggan, MD: So I think sometimes it's hard to be an expert in your own
backyard, so partnering with other people that have a really broad look across.
the continuum of care can really help accelerate the pace at
which your organization is able and willing to make the changes.
So when I talk about Project One, That is a huge, huge undertaking for us.
And at the same time, we're also continuing to work in a project
that we call Ministry Acceleration.
where we are partnering with various other, companies in order to be able to
accelerate some of our standard processes, such as length of stay, work, throughput
work in the emergency department.
Because 23 different acute care hospitals, getting them all to
kind of row in the same direction.
Can be challenging.
So we use our partner, relationships in order to accelerate those changes
by helping have more boots on the ground to do the change when we have an
actual process that we've standardized.
Kathleen Wessel (Host): Great.
examples of trying to pull all of those, items together.
one kind of final question I wanna drill into is, what type of strategic
insights can you share with other hospital leaders to ensure that
initiatives like these achieve long-term impact in sustainability?
how do you really kind of lock in for the future?
Stephanie Duggan, MD: that is such a great question, and I'm gonna admit
that I may have a, a slight bias.
but I really think longstanding sustainability comes in when the
clinicians And the operators can really link arms and understand
what the vision is together.
I think too often, sometimes we lean into operations and neglect hearing
that clinical input when you're trying to decide where you need to go forward.
So one of the things that we are doing at SSM is called Clinical Programs 2.0.
So we had clinical programs And we were working with them a little bit.
So you have surgery, you have emergency department, you have hospitalists.
But what we've done in clinical program 2.0
is we've been a little more prescriptive in that we're
taking only bedside clinicians.
We're not taking our administrative clinicians, our administrative.
Serve as executive sponsors of the clinical programs, but say in emergency
medicine, we have three regions at SSM.
So we have two doctors coming from our St.
Louis region, one academic and one community, one physician
coming from Wisconsin and one physician coming from Oklahoma.
So all of those emergency medicine docs get together and talk about what is our
evidence-based best practice, And then we can bring in our other value partners.
To help support that work and say, here's some of the national best practice on what
that looks like, And then they can decide And then take it back and integrate your
medical executive committees and your other operators at the local ministries to
be able to actually do the implementation.
Once the system best practice consistent care has been agreed upon.
in order to really have things, stay in place, we have to capture the hearts and
minds of the people providing the care.
Really, when you think about partnerships, the old adage that
if you want to go fast, go alone.
If you want to go far, go together.
Kathleen Wessel (Host): I, love hearing the, examples from a system like yours
on how you're pulling things together.
I think it's so helpful to share these examples with other a HE members so that,
we can learn from some of your successes.
Dr.
Stephanie Duggan, thank you so much for joining the podcast today and
sharing insights with a HA members.
if you would like to learn more about anything you've heard on this podcast
today, please visit us at sponsor.
And if you'd like to learn more about Siemens Health, who
STEP has referenced on the.
www.siemenshealthineers.com/en
n dash us.
This has been AHA Associates Bringing Value Podcast brought to you by
the American Hospital Association.
Thanks for listening.