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This is Laura Dierda with the Becker's Healthcare
podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by
Lisa Stump, executive vice president and chief digital
information officer and dean of information technology
at Mount Sinai Health System in the Icahn
School of Medicine.
Lisa, it's a pleasure to have you on
the podcast today.
It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you,
Laura.
Now I I'm really looking forward to our
discussion and learning more about what you're doing
at Mount Sinai Health System and some of
the cool things you've got ahead. But before
we dive in, I'm wondering, could you tell
us a little bit more about Mount Sinai
and what makes it unique?
Sure.
So the Mount Sinai Health System and Icahn
School of Medicine,
is truly an exceptional educational and clinical enterprise.
We have almost 50,000
employees, including
thousands of clinicians and researchers.
We have, our phenomenal schools of medicine, biomedical
sciences, and nursing, which are among the world's
best.
We are nationally ranked and recognized for providing
expert care, across a variety of specialties,
to our patients across the region in our
eight hospitals, more than 400,
clinical practices
and through partnership with community affiliates.
So, it truly is a special place, you
know, I'll say right at the top here,
I've just joined the organization in the last
three months,
and the culture of that commitment to each
other, to our community, and to the world,
to me is what makes Mount Sinai truly
unique.
That's amazing to see here. And it seems
like a great place to be, a a
really amazing community to have around you, with
your teammates as well as the community, like,
that you're serving. So I know you've recently
joined the health system, but I'm wondering, is
there anything you could talk about in terms
of an accomplishment that you're most proud of
from the last year?
Yeah. You know,
after spending twenty eight years with my prior
employer,
making the transition,
I I would say I I dived in
early to try to really understand
the strengths of the team,
really understand
the needs of the organization
and align those two. So in just the
last three months, I've had the opportunity
to,
reorganize and restructure
my leadership team
to position us for what I think are
the really necessary priorities and goals in the
coming year and to set us up well,
to operate in in the environment that we
serve.
One of the early
priorities,
that emanated was around our data,
and the way that we are leveraging our
data assets.
You know, on the one hand, I would
say another one of the, I think, unique
benefits,
or accomplishments here at Mount Sinai,
we have an an incredible high performance compute
environment,
probably one of the largest in the country,
actually,
that supports the research
that is conducted, through the Icahn School of
Medicine here at Mount Sinai.
On the other end of the spectrum, though,
when it came to operational
and managerial
reporting,
that was done in a very distributed way.
And so I've had the opportunity to stand
up a new
enterprise wide data team
that is working to leverage those data assets
in a more meaningful way to help the
organization understand how we're performing,
where our opportunities
are for improvement, and whether or not we're
actually moving the needle.
And so creating that easier access
to information,
not just separate stores of data, has been
a really early
win, I think, for the organization and for
me.
That's amazing to hear. You know? And, certainly,
just a true testament to, your ability to
come in, and learn about the team and
then grow and and accomplish things right off
the bat. I think it was really,
special to hear about how, you know, you
mentioned being able to jump in, learn from
others who are already, within the system, understand
the priorities, and then really, get yourself into
a position where, there's a strong performance with
this data. Now when you look ahead for
the next twelve months or so, what are
some of the big growth opportunities you have
your eye on?
Yeah. So, you know, again, I think we're
we're starting from a really strong place,
but I think some of the biggest area
of growth will be in
clinical innovation and artificial intelligence.
I've had the opportunity now to,
participate
in
the selection of our first
chair of artificial intelligence and human health.
So we've created a,
formal department in the Icahn School of Medicine
dedicated to AI and human health.
I had the opportunity to participate in that
search and now onboarding
that that leader into the space
and partnering him,
and our new chief clinical innovation officer
with a really strong team in our digital
health space in my in my division here
in IT. We call ourselves DTP, actually,
digital and technology partners. So really structuring a
center of excellence around artificial intelligence,
digital health, and clinical innovation
focused on our patients and consumer experience,
really taking a hard look at the experience
of our employees,
and whether or not we've made that
as seamless and frictionless
as we can.
We are looking at the experience of our
researchers, our faculty, and students,
and, you know, really
and the care team, of course, and looking
at new AI technologies in that space as
well.
And so I think the those are the
biggest areas of growth. How do we
become a much more agile,
rapidly learning health system to adapt, adopt, and
create,
new tools in the in the space of
AI.
That's really cool to hear. And, you know,
I know AI has been such a huge,
change and transformation for the health care industry.
Great
to know that you've got the somebody leading
the AI, the chair of AI and human
health coming in to,
be part of those efforts. I'm wondering from
your perspective, you know, so much is,
happening and change is happening so quickly. How
do you really,
decide what to focus in on it and
where it makes the most sense for you
to spend your time, effort, and resources
when it comes to AI and, transforming the
way you're doing things at Mount Sinai?
Yeah. It's a great question. You know, I
I always bring people back to,
we need to ensure we understand what problem
we're trying to solve,
clearly define it, and be sure it's a
problem that needs our attention right
now. Right? The pace of change and the
development of lots of tools and AI models,
the the they're coming at us fast and
furious to your point,
and we can't give every one of them
our attention. And so ensuring we're solving very
real problems
for our patients, for our clinicians, for our
organization
really helps set the the key priorities around
how we frame and focus our energy.
That's great to hear. Thank you so much
for going a little bit deeper there. Now
I know there's a lot of opportunities,
ahead, but also challenges.
What are some of those big challenges or
headwinds that you're anticipating for the next year
or so?
Yeah. As I said, I think the pace
of change is probably one of the most,
significant
challenges.
Even good change is hard. Change is hard,
for all of us. And,
you know, our organization
as a whole
is undergoing,
I would say, you know, transformative
change deliberately.
We are looking at transforming our basic operating
models. We've tended to function,
as I said early in a in a
fairly distributed
model, across the enterprise.
We have new leaders, myself included, but I'm
not alone
at that level. There are other new leaders
in the organization or leaders who have been
here a long time, but are now functioning
in new roles.
And so
that's a big change.
Just within my span of control, I'm coming
in as a new leader, in our digital
and technology partners. I've reorganized my leadership team,
and some of the teams underneath them, to
create
a workable structure.
All of that is change.
And then we're on this rapid pace of
implementing and introducing
new technologies and new systems. And so
really paying close attention to
the change management,
and the cognitive burden that that we're putting
on,
you know, ourselves,
and our peers, I think, is something that
we're very focused on.
Absolutely.
It seems like, you know, as you mentioned,
the there's always new things happening, always new
things occurring, and change can really be hard
for people. And so,
is there anything that you found that's worked
really well to maybe lessen a little bit
of that anxiety that comes with a lot
of
change? You know, I've I I always like
to break change down into the sense I
can't
and,
overwhelm people.
You know, you have to present that clear
vision,
so that people get excited and buy in
to the change,
but then not overwhelm people with so much
detail
right up front. Right? And then break it
down into those digestible bites,
and celebrate the wins along the way. So
when those first two or three milestones have
been accomplished, right, that we laid out,
celebrate those,
clarify that that's now set us up to
move to steps four, five, and six
so that people can see always their eye
on the end game,
understand what's necessary,
what they need to commit in the near
term, and then remind them of the progress
that we're making.
That makes a lot of sense.
Thank you so much for for, explaining that
a little bit to us. Now before we
wrap up here, I'm wondering what is the
number one thing that you're doing right now
to set Mount Sinai up for long term
success?
Yeah. You know, Laura, I'd bring that right
back to the data. So, you know, as
I said, we're we're under a major sort
of transformative
effort,
and
it's data that needs to guide a lot
of the really challenging decisions that we all
need to make as leaders, and clinicians in
the organization.
And so,
you know, I'll I'll go back and say
we're we're today, and I'm just starting to
get our arms around it with a structure.
There's a long history here of those
distributed
data sources.
Right? Lots of individual
departments or teams
have their own,
you
know, source of data or or datasets and
databases.
They've then done analysis and produced their own
reports and dashboards.
And then you get really intended,
really smart people in a room, but each
with their own set of data that's conflicting.
It's really hard to then make an informed
decision.
And so I think one of the biggest
things we'll do to set the organization up
for success
is have a clean set of organizational metrics
that are tied to the goals that we
need to achieve
with a clear and viewable
set of the definitions,
around those metrics.
That that's the only way. We're we're again
gonna know where are our priorities. Right? Where
do we need to focus our energy
to improve
operations and outcomes
and then understand if our efforts are making
a difference? So putting strong governance and making
data readily accessible
in a common viewable place.
You know, again, it's only been three months,
but as I've started to
communicate that to key stakeholders across the organization,
there was an initial, you know, concern and
trepidation around
somebody else, you know, analyzing the data that,
you know, I've done myself for years.
But very quickly, people see the benefit of
that common
source of truth that we can all operate
from.
And with so much change, again, so quickly
without data, you know, we could quickly lose
our way. So,
I I think that's that's gonna be a
really significant impact.
That's really helpful to know and amazing to
think about, what it takes to to really
bridge that gap and and make that change
and then to have a a data driven
organization with those metrics and with the information
really being put to work in the smartest
way possible.
Lisa, thank you so much for joining us
on the podcast today. This has been a
really fun conversation, and I look forward to
connecting with you again soon.
You as well. Thank you, Laura.