Hello, everyone. This is Scott King with the
Becker's Healthcare Podcast.
Thrilled today to be joined by Rachel Feynman,
vice president innovation
and managing director over at TGH
Ventures.
Rachel, how are you doing today? I'm great,
Scott.
Having a good Friday.
That's as it should be. We all need
a a good Friday. It's starting to get
cold here in Chicago, so I will I
will take it. And, thanks so much for
joining us. We have a lot of kinda
big topics and and and trends going on
in health care we're gonna dive into. But
before we do that, I was wondering if
you could just please tell us a little
bit about yourself and your background.
Sure. Happy to. So I'm coming up on
five years here at Tampa General.
I started
here
brand new with TGH Ventures, and it's been
an exciting time to build up the fund,
professionalize
our innovation function here, and lead a team
around this at TGH. And I think we've
made a great impact building a portfolio of
over a dozen direct investments
at the at the hospital. And I kinda
came into this a little bit uniquely as
a former practicing attorney
turned health care professional. It's been a great
journey,
though. Well, that that's really interesting background. Let
me ask you about that kind of lens
as an attorney,
getting into a a health care leadership role.
How do you think that's, I don't know,
giving you an edge or just kinda giving
you a different perspective in the industry?
So while it may not be formally part
of my title, I certainly feel like I,
you know, I use it every day. One
of the things I think as a an
investor, whether in health care or in any
other
industry
is and and an innovation generally, you really
have to have an unending
sense of curiosity
because we really fly high across the entire
organization. You know, one day we're diving deeper
on utilization, around imaging on the inpatient side.
The next day, we're focused on ambulatory
care navigation.
And so, you know, we're not we're not
your expert in any one area. And so
we really need to make sure we have
that
ability to ask all of the questions, dive
in deep where we need to. And, you
know, I think I definitely
bring that from my background as as an
attorney.
Not to mention looking at and negotiating deal
documents, which is directly relevant to the work
that I did in my many years as
an attorney.
Yeah. I think that's great. I think your
background ties in perfectly, and we definitely need
some curious and and creative people in health
care with everything going on.
So speaking of being curious, I'm curious,
to ask
and hear what are the things you're kinda
monitoring
in health care in related to,
some opportunities and headwinds?
Well, I think like everyone else, we are
monitoring,
the regulatory
environment
and the uncertainty
around all of that. You know, that is
something as we start to approach midterms, as
we're coming cautiously out of the government shutdown,
it is, you know, it remains something that
is directly relevant to the work we do,
where we place investments, partnerships that we land
on, and how we think about about our
growth. And, you know,
there there is only so much certainty to
be had right now, and, you know, and
that's driving a lot of of what it
is that that we do.
You know, that that being said, while that
may
be a headwind,
there's aspects of that that I think we
can think about, from a tailwind perspective.
And be as long as we're nimble and
we're able to quickly react, I think we
can end up on the right side of
of any which way the regulatory
winds may, you know, may blow. But,
without a doubt, opportunity
remains the explosive
growth in tech and and AI
and making sure that
we are leveraging
this new,
you know, new round of technology
to support our team members,
clinical and nonclinical,
and continue to provide the best care we
can to our patients by taking advantage of
those accelerations
in in technology.
You mentioned growth. How are you thinking about
adding growth and value to your organization?
Well, I think this is a time at
TGH,
frankly,
of a lot of growth overall. And so
for our team, it's making sure that we're
continuing to scale
some of the really great,
innovations that we've brought to bear over the
last couple of years and make sure that
we continue to drive those for,
for for the organization's growth. We laid in
a modern RTLS
system at TGH last year. And so this
year will be about really scaling that across
the system.
And that has been able to provide
a lot of,
a lot of efficiency gains for our team
members and being able to locate equipment more
easily. We're bringing it into the perioperative
space,
because we know that having our ORs run
on time,
impacts
everything for us. So being able to, you
know, really help with the surgical tray
tracking and optimization in the OR space,
leveraging computer vision there and being able to
scale that as we build out a new
tower,
with,
you know, with new ORs.
All of that really kind of thinking about
how we scale
innovation we've laid in
to match the growth of the of the
system overall.
What do you think is one risk or
investment
worth making this year?
So I thought a lot about this, and
I think one of the things as we
think about,
you know, all of the challenges that academic
health systems like TGH face. You know, we
talked about regulatory uncertainty
and some of those things. One of the
things that we have
that is always
an investment worth making is in ourselves and
our
brand and
the value
that we bring to our patients.
In our market,
and that is ever expanding,
our brand means something very significant to our
patients. So doubling down on consumer centric
care
that, you know, we we partner with others.
We bring our brand forward. That brand that
our patients can trust is something that I
think is always an investment worth making, and
we continue to do as, you know, as
we grow here and and we think about
new innovative
models of delivering care to our patients
while leveraging that,
Tampa General brand that is,
is well trusted
and and and very valuable to us as
care providers.
And the last thing I wanted to ask
you, Rachel, is where do you see the
best opportunities for growth in the future?
So I I think this coming back
to the explosion of AI, you know, it
just feels like
you can't
talk enough about where and how that is
going to impact growth.
I think
for us, the best opportunities
are to really thoughtfully layer in
AI, whether
it's agentic
voice agents
in our experience centers,
or it is thinking about
back office administrative
functions.
I think this or or really on the
front lines clinically
as we roll out ambient listening
and and other,
other solutions that really help our our frontline
team members and our our providers.
I I think that's really where the best
opportunity
for,
growth is,
for us because we're gonna be able to
do a lot more with less and put
those resources where they need to be in
enhancing,
care for our patients.
Well, Rachel, thanks so much for joining us
on the podcast. I think it was a
great conversation, and I look forward to working
with you again soon. Thanks so much for
having me, and have a great weekend. You
too.