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This is Rosie Talago with the Becker's Healthcare
podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by
Greg Bryant, IT director of North Texas Medical
Center. Greg, it's a pleasure to have you
on the podcast today. Well, thanks for having
me, Rosie. We have a great conversation in
store today diving into cut some of the
key opportunities and challenges shaping health care. But
before we get into it, I'd love for
our listeners to get to know Greg a
bit better. Greg, can you please start by
sharing a little bit about your background and
your journey to your current role?
Sure. Yeah. I've been doing health IT for
over fifteen years now. I started working at
a vendor,
been doing consulting, then doing consulting on my
own, and then going back to working for
health systems. That's kinda led me back to,
where I am today as a director here
in North Texas.
Great. Thank you so much for that introduction.
Now that we've heard a little bit about
your background, let's get into the background of
North Texas Medical Center. So could you tell
us a bit about your health system and
what makes it unique?
Yeah. So one of the unique things is
that we're a, rural hospital in a rural
area, but we're independent. We're not affiliated with
any major health systems that you see around
the country.
So that's kind of a a different thing
that
we kinda strap kinda hang our hats on.
We we we still operate as a entity
for our community
and not abide by any other,
other hospitals in the major metropolitan areas.
Great. That's really awesome to hear.
It seems like you have a great presence
in the community that you that you're located
in.
So looking more closely
into
what makes your organization stand out, you know,
being that
strong independent
entity in your community,
let's look at some of the key milestones
that you've hit recently. So looking back at
the past year, I know that you just
started your time there, but what's a recent
accomplishment of the medical center that you're proud
of?
Actually, it's something that it started last year
and is going into this year is,
implementing a virtual environment
and adopting,
using AI,
in some of our
day to day task. We adopted Google Gemini
to be used, which was kind of a
new venture for us, and we're still,
you know, getting more and more comfortable with
every day. The other thing is having a,
a virtual machine,
for our hospital, which cuts down on our
our hardware footprint, which saves money on energy
because you don't have the power of certain
machines. So those are two things that we've
done that we're I'm pretty proud of.
Those are great achievements. It's great to see
the impact you're making with AI and transforming
it into a virtual environment and especially very
cool to see the impact that it's making
on energy as well.
So thinking about how your
organization can continue to grow and evolve, whether
that be in this virtual environment or elsewhere,
where do you see some of the big
growth opportunities for the next year?
I see us growing,
service lines. I think being a rural hospital
trying to attack patients and trying to
get them to not go to the major
metropolitan areas, I I want us to grow
more service lines here to where that patient
doesn't have to travel
forty, fifty miles away. They can stay here
at home and get the same care they
would be,
as opposed to the metro area. Now can
we do everything that they can do in
a big city?
Probably not. But there's some some things that
we can do here that,
could improve our patient satisfaction
and increase our volume, frankly.
Absolutely. Having those
goals of volume and patient satisfaction,
really being that place patients can rely on
in their own neighborhood and community, that's great.
So when you're looking at becoming kind of
that cornerstone
or attracting patients opposed to them going to
the nearest city, how are you preparing to
tackle maybe the challenges
of their decision between the two?
Being we're a small area, one of the
issues we have is, talent acquisition.
It's more of just having enough people, enough
hands to do the job.
Especially in the IT world, you have issues
with
trying to keep patient or keep
employees and staff
in the rural areas as opposed to being
attracted with the higher salaries of a metro
area. So for me, the it's not always
a fight of trying to attract talent.
Absolutely. And what are some of the methods
that you're using to combat that, to really
make people want to
be at your organization?
You have to sell the idea that you
can you can
have more room to grow, which is true,
actually. It's not a really selling idea,
as opposed to being siloed off in a
big facility. I've worked in big facilities, and
you're kinda siloed off to one thing. Here,
you can wear many hats and learn many
things
that you can take with you in your
career if you're just starting out. Or if
you're older in your career, it's gonna be
somewhere where you may wanna retire to and
not have built the hustle and bustle of
a big city.
That's great. I really like the idea of
having more room to grow and wearing many
hats. I think especially for the new folks
entering the workforce,
health care workforce, it's it's a great place
to get a lot of experience.
So,
looking at
the
accomplishments, opportunities, obstacles we've discussed,
when looking at staying proactive,
to really capitalize on more opportunities
and
avoid some of these obstacles.
What's the number one thing right now,
to set your organization up for long term
success?
Well, I think I touched on it earlier.
Our getting on the virtual
platform,
helps us out a lot, reducing energy and
being able to be more mobile and agile
with new systems.
Also, we've really shared of our cybersecurity.
It's always a threat.
And I always say, if not if, it's
not if, but when it happens.
But we do everything to keep that win
from happening
at any point, especially in my tenure. So,
those are the things I'm trying to set
us up for for success is to minimize
downtime, minimize cyber attacks,
and get us on twenty first century technology
to make us more agile.
Absolutely. That's great. And I think that just
being as proactive as possible, especially when you
discuss the cybersecurity efforts,
being mobile and agile is all that you
can do at this time, and I really
like how you said not if, but when,
but, you know, doing everything to prevent that
when. It sounds great.
So thank you so much, Greg, for joining
us on the podcast today. It's been great
hearing your insights on Texas
North Texas Medical Center and where it's all
headed. So thank you again, and we look
forward to collaborating with you again soon.
Alright. Thanks for having me.