This is Scott King with the Becker's Healthcare
Podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by
Kevin Binta,
chief information inclusion officer at Evergreen Health New
York. Kevin, thanks so much for joining us
on podcast day. How are you doing? I'm
doing well. It's great to join you all.
Appreciate you jumping on. I, you know, I
think we're gonna dive into a lot of
the big opportunities and challenges in health care
today. But before we jump in, can you
please just tell us a bit more about
yourself and your background?
Sure.
I'm yeah. Like I said, I'm the chief
information inclusion officer here at Evergreen Health.
Maybe a little bit about Evergreen. It's a
FQHC look alike. It actually started forty years
ago as an organization that provided
social
services for people living with HIV and AIDS,
and it's expanded since we expanded service delivery
to provide things like housing, transportation, behavioral health,
dental, harm reduction services, like our our syringe
exchange program, as well as primary care.
We have about 10 locations throughout Buffalo and
and a Western New York area.
As for me, I started actually about 25
ago here at Evergreen.
I started in that social
care space, and then
maybe about ten years into it, I switched
over to technology and data and, really built
the team
from there. So that's been my background as
far as providing support here and the services
I do.
What accomplishment
in the last year at over at Evergreen
Health New York are you most proud of?
Honestly, it's the, it's probably the the and
in my title, the the and inclusion officer.
Last year, I would say
we had some changes in the DEIB space
with our leadership, so I stepped up just
to help support,
the CEO at that time.
And,
honestly, it was really just setting up some
infrastructure with that team and improving process.
I would say we we found ways to
track success,
through both qualitative and quantitative metrics.
We identified three priorities for that team.
We called it employees, patients, and community.
And then in about
towards the end of the year, about q
four, I handed that oversight over as we
brought on, new team members on board to
support that work. But for me, it was
honestly that work.
The CEO felt like I
the way I ran my team, the way
I supported my team, he wanted he felt
like I could handle that role, and it
would be a natural fit. And I I
honestly really enjoyed doing that work.
I appreciate you sharing. It's nice to hear
about the the personal journey there. What are
the big organizational goals you've set for 2025?
Big organizational goals,
probably gonna
focus a little bit more on the technology.
I would say, generally, it's optimization.
We purchased
different technologies,
throughout the organization, and now we're we're circling
back. You know, we're about year three, four,
five on some of these
different technologies, and we're circling back to those
teams to kinda look at areas that we
can provide some optimization,
things we can do better.
The way I kinda describe it is, you
know, we we bought something that can do
10 things, and we we started out and
said, well, we wanted to only do three
things until we get a good handle on
it. So now we're gonna look at what
other things besides three things that we wanted
to do that, we can turn on and
and see if we can get moving forward.
So those are some of the bigger growth
opportunities for us,
as far as the organization.
And then, I would say the other thing
that's public that we announced,
recently is that we're
putting up a new building,
over in another part of Buffalo,
and,
we're pretty excited about that. It should be
opening,
mid twenty twenty six.
That's great.
What headwinds do you anticipate for the next
year or two?
For me, in particular, my team,
I think the biggest thing for my team
is is leadership development. Honestly, not even technical,
it's just, leadership. I think we've got folks
who are excellent at their technical training, their,
where they stand. But,
as they continue on their career path,
we've just identified that there's there's a few
folks there that
want to be better leaders for their teams.
And so I part of my role, I
feel like, is to make it my responsibility
to find the training, the resources,
all of those opportunities for them to support
their development and growth.
And so that's something that I've always done.
I've got 70% of my leaders on my
team are women.
About 60% of them in in the overall
team are women as well. So I truly
try to make room,
and standing up for them. And,
especially in the technology space, it's it's not
normal
for you to hear, you know, having so
many women in that space and being empowered
to grow and learn and take leadership roles.
You're talking about the the leadership team there.
For you specifically,
have you evolved as a leader?
I think it's for me, I I know
that
two things. One is,
how do I support my team?
I think for me,
there was definitely a shift in in my
approach.
You know, first, you you start out kind
of feeling some of that.
Maybe it's imposter syndrome, like, maybe I'm not
fit for this. And it's it's totally self
focused.
I mean, what what can I do for
myself?
What can I do to be better or
to grow?
At some point along the way, just in
talking with some of my friends, peers, and
and mentors,
I realized that if I focus on my
team, I really enjoy that. I really enjoy
spending time thinking about them and their development
and how I support them in getting in
getting the work done. So that I I
think that was a big shift for me
as far as, my own development
and,
I guess, taking a different perspective on how
I lead the team.
Kevin, thanks so much for joining us on
podcast today. I thought it was a great
conversation. I look forward to working with you
again soon.
Yeah. Thank you so much.