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This is Laura Dirdle with the Becker's Healthcare
Podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by
Saad Etesham,
who is the president and chief executive officer
at Atlantic Health. Saad, it's a pleasure to
have you on the podcast today. Good morning,
Laura. It's a pleasure to be here with
you.
Absolutely. Now I appreciate your time, and I'm
excited to dig into some of the cool
things that you're really doing today and and,
you know, what you're looking forward to in
the future. But before we dive in, I'm
curious. Can you tell us a little bit
more about yourself and your background?
Sure. My, background you know, my journey to
health care started at a early age.
Really,
the impression on wanting to be in healthcare
was related to my grandmother's battle with ovarian
cancer and how she was treated and cared
for.
So that left a lasting impression on both
my brother and I, who's now a neurointensivist.
So that was the genesis into the y
in health care.
And, and it was a summer job. It
was only supposed to be a summer job.
I was 20 years of age
in Dallas, Texas, and the heat in Dallas
and Texas is just,
I mean, it is crazy. So,
summer job turned into a PRN all year
round job while I was, undergraduate at Baylor
University.
And and during that, two years
working as a phlebotomist,
a summer job into PRN,
the CRNAs, the nurse anesthetist,
convinced me to go to nursing school.
And so upon graduating, I went to nursing
school
and, became a nurse. I ended up being
a open heart nurse, charge nurse, house supervisor
at Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas.
That led to,
a job in a for profit world as
a director of, nursing of medical and surgical
units. And during that time, I had gotten
my master's degrees as well.
So,
truncate that a little bit. I've been on
the for profit side and the not for
profit side. On the not for profit side,
I've been some, larger health care systems that
you may know of. Baylor Scott and White
before the Baylor
Scott and White merger, Texas Health Resources,
Ascension Health,
and then on the for profit side of
health CEO,
COO, CNO
type roles.
I've been in a c suite for the
last twenty two years and most recently,
coming from Novant Health to Atlantic Health.
I've been in small hospitals,
98 beds, all the way to a coronary
thousand bed hospital where it was a level
one trauma,
transplant,
burn center,
lots of research in GME, UME programs.
So that's my background. And,
what led me to Atlantic Health was,
the desire to be at an organization
that,
embodied the values of focusing on their team,
focusing on the community,
commitment
at the highest level to quality and safety
outcomes.
I needed an organization that had complexity, and
so research was very important to me.
And, Atlantic Health had that. We have almost
446
trials
that are underway. We got 148
peer reviewed publications,
46 investor initiated studies going on, 37,000,000
in grants,
and then two, really proud of that, two
physician led FDA approval, so that was important.
And then also graduate medical education at undergraduate.
We have about 350
residents at, Atlantic Health.
And then, the board. The board was just
fantastic. It's a competency based board, so I
was looking for that. So all those things
culminated me saying that's the right place and
that's where I wanna come. So that's why
I chose Atlantic Health.
Absolutely. And that's amazing story. And, you know,
really, truly, coming into health care and,
at the ground level and then seeing how
you built your career around serving patients and
serving others, being part of the really important
growth within communities,
that health care institutions serve. And so that's
great to hear, and I appreciate too you
walking us through
the decision to move from Novant to Atlantic
Health, because I think it's critical. And especially
now, you know, there's so much,
riding upon health care leaders today that it
is important to find that right culture fix
and the fit in the right organizations
in order to make sure that you can
thrive in your career, as a health care
leader. So from your perspective, I know, you
know, you've just joined Atlantic Health in July,
but could you tell us a little bit
about, the health system and its biggest win
or success story from the last year or
so?
Sure. Clinic Health
is a combination of six hospitals. We got
24,000
team members. We serve a population. New Jersey
is nine and a half, 9,000,000.
We serve a population of 7,500,000,
across 14 counties in New Jersey, one in
Pennsylvania as well.
We got over a million unique encounters
across 550
sites of care. We have more than 7,000,
700,
affiliated physicians. We have the largest ACO,
in New Jersey, if not the Northeast
that I'm validating that, but definitely in New
Jersey.
And then I've talked about the the,
trials. Our hospitals, if you look them up,
Morristown Medical Center ranks,
among the best in the country by US
News and World Report
and same for Overlook as well.
So that that's, where we are. But what
makes Atlantic Health unique really is the culture,
is the people,
and is the commitment to the community. And
you,
measure that through a proxy lens of the
foundations and how successful are our foundations.
And our foundations have a long history, sustained
history, philanthropic
support from the community. So,
Atlantic Health is thriving,
here
in Northern New Jersey, and, it's seen as
one of the best health care systems in
the state of New Jersey.
That's amazing to hear and really a testament
to the commitment of the whole team, for
greatness and then to just building on, how
they can serve the community better on a
consistent basis.
Now I know it's a unique time,
in health care right now. And so I'm
curious from your perspective, what are the top
two or three issues you're focused on right
now? What's top of mind for you as
you're making decisions for the future?
You know, as, as a health care organization,
much like other health care organization, we're facing
all similar challenges from the policy impact. How
how did we react to that? And
my approach is instead of letting the environment
control us, we're going to take,
our approach in controlling the environment and the
controllable. So part of that is redefining
how we deliver care and iterating around that
using opportunities,
that we see around population health, how we
can advance care around population health.
We know there's going to be vulnerable populations
in the future that are going to seek
healthcare costs and needs. And before those individuals
show up
in care settings that are the not the
most appropriate for them, we want to reach
out and establish care for them in the
ZIP codes where they reside. So that's very,
very important to us. You know, advancing the
mission and brand of Atlantic Health nationally and
internationally
is something that's very, very important to me
as well.
And then,
you know, we're in the election year, so,
working with whoever is elected, our, governor at
the great state of New Jersey, working with
them and along with my fellow CEO colleagues
in, New Jersey. When we look at the,
graduate medical education report that just came out,
we have of us close to rounding up
1,600 residents that are graduating. Only 474
of them are staying in the state of
New Jersey. Best of them are leaving the
state. So that's a big issue. Retention is
a high priority for us. So I look
forward to working with our governor and my
fellow colleagues and finding ways
on how we can incentivize
the residents to stay and care for,
the population and the citizens of New Jersey.
So that's going to be important
for us as well.
And for me, talent development, upscaling, and upscaling
our team members, leadership development, and retention is
going to be important. There's a work on
talent.
I feel we have some of the best
leaders within the planet health, and it's my
job to create an environment where they're thriving
and there's opportunities for them to grow within
the organization.
So we'll, we'll continue to focus on that
as well. And then more importantly for us
is codifying a common vision around quality and
safety outcomes, consumer experience,
population health, physician alignment and integration,
and and, goes without saying financial stewardship and
performance is going to be very important.
Absolutely. No. I think all of the elements
that you talked about there are really essential
and something that make a big difference for
the success of health systems overall. And I
wanted to double click on the,
talent development, retention, and just workforce
issues that you talked about. I'm curious,
as you look at your past experiences as
well as some of the dynamics in today's
current environment,
what do you see as being some of
the things that will be most essential to
creating that kind of organization where you are
winning that war on talent, for example?
How are you thinking about, you know, building
up the leadership pipeline and just making sure
that the whole system is solid, moving into
the future?
Or I'll just love that question.
One of the things that
hasn't changed over over the many years is
the
team member leaving the organization is directly tied
to their immediate,
one up, their immediate supervisor. 43% of the
time, people leave is because of their immediate
supervisor. And now today's environment, when we're dealing
with six generations,
the the millennials and gen z also wanna
know where does the organization
stand on major issues. So that's very important
to them in a sense of purpose.
So it's important for us to have leaders
who understand how to navigate
generational odyssey of six generations,
and the value systems are very different from
baby boomer
to a Gen Z. So we spend a
lot of time educating them on engagement
of that work force. We do talent development
for our emerging leaders, which is supervisors and,
assistant managers and above. In fact, we just
had one a couple of days ago.
We had 396
leaders in in person and another 300 on,
on Zoom. And we had a full day
packed with,
opportunities for them to learn how to become
a better leader. So that's something we're doing
as well. The other thing we have launched
is succession planning within the organization
at all levels. It's important to have a
bench that's two, three deep,
and, that creates stability as well. And if
for some reason somebody leaves the organization because,
of the talent that we have in their
post, which is okay because we're preparing future
leaders in healthcare.
We have a bench that we could go
into and,
a sports analogy, get somebody from AAA into
the majors.
So that's how,
we're focusing on talent development.
And then it really comes down to the
culture. The culture where people want to work,
where they feel like a family. And it's
important for us to create an environment where
people feel they're heard, their opinions are valued,
and their one up cares about them. If
you can create that environment,
people are gonna wanna come work for you.
And we've been fortunate enough
to be on
the Fortune's Best Places to Work and Healthcare
list for many years, and also Fortune Best
Places to Work general in all,
industries
for sixteen plus years. So, very, very excited
about that history that Atlantic has and commitment
to our team members.
Absolutely. That's amazing to hear, and I really
appreciate,
the focus on having that very clear, robust
bunch of leadership and then, you know, being
able to think about succession planning in a
meaningful way. One other thing you mentioned as
well in there is just looking at the
financial stability and and understanding
what it'll take in order to, you know,
keep the organization financially
secure,
over the next several years here. So how
do we think about that? I know there's
so much uncertainty within the,
broader health care as well as economic and
political landscape. And so how do you plan
for the near term as well as the
the long term,
you know, and deal with the very real
challenges that a lot of health care organizations
have today?
You know, the approach needs to be future
proofing the organization,
to face any headwinds that we're gonna have.
The ones that we know that are coming
around the corner in a couple of years
and the ones that are unknown. So the
way,
I've approached this in the past and approach
working with the physician leaders, it's really, really
important to engage our physicians and physician leaders
in part of this solution,
which is then looking at service line models
and how do we deliver care within the
service line enterprise model.
Do we create efficiencies through there? And, order
sets and standardization
of order sets that all physicians agree within
a subspecialty
is going to be really, really important.
And then looking at models of care,
what are the venues in which we play?
So it's important to optimize that portfolio
and continue to drive margin through
that optimization.
Another aspect that people forget on the financial
equation is really the clinical
burnout rate. So if we can find ways
to reduce the clinical burnout for our clinicians,
that enables them to continue to
operate at their peak performance. So that's something
that's going to be really important.
Digital, doorstep and integration is going to be
really, really important. Creating an omnichannel experience for
our consumers to access care at Clinic Health
is a way to create patient loyalty and
consumer loyalty.
And, if we can do those things in
a way that,
consumers,
feel valued and feel like they're heard,
and seen as a healed person, I think
that's gonna be a way to, succeed in
the future,
in my opinion.
That makes a lot of sense. And, thank
you so much for going through that. It,
you know, seems so simple yet I I
know in practice, much more complex. So I
appreciate your your thoughts here.
And looking ahead as well, what are some
of the big opportunities for growth that you
see in the next few years in spaces
where you really,
can make a difference?
So not no crystal ball here,
but we all know the environment that we
are operating in is very dynamic and is
going to continue to be dynamic. So,
I'm going to double
down on organizations
that leverage internal talent are those who will
thrive in the future.
Our workforce is going to be critically important,
and,
and part of that is creating a curious
workforce.
A curious workforce
is one that is always looking at things
to look at it, doing it differently, which,
feeds innovation. So that's very important.
Another thing that's important in that internal talent
is creating psychological safety for our team members
to experiment
and, and fail. If they fail, fail fast,
learn from it, pivot, and then adapt and
grow. So if we can create that psychological
safety for,
risk taking to take place, organizations
will continue to do well that, harness that
psychological safety aspect.
And it's my belief that every three year
cycle, organizations
will need to disrupt themselves
and iterate across cross collaborative care delivery models
in order to succeed,
because the environment's gonna continue to, pressure us
from inside the industry and entrance from outside
the industry as well.
This is easy to say, but, in in
practice,
it's much more difficult as remove silos and
create a frictionless system that are directly connected
to consumer convenience.
We we've got to focus on consumer convenience
and then get complexity
of accessing care out of the way. So
patients can access us in a way that
is easy for them. You're gonna you're going
to win that war,
against any competition out there because you're able
to,
take care of the patients in the manner
they wanna be taken care of at the
time they wanna be taken care of and
at the right place, right venue, and at
the right cost.
It makes a lot of sense and, you
know, really, ties nicely into the overall strategy
when you're looking at workforce, when you're looking
at what can make a a big difference,
for the overall growth of the organization, reputation,
and more. It seems like it really starts
with the team there,
which, you know, is a great way,
to approach leadership, especially during these uncertain times.
Now before we wrap up here, I'm curious.
What, from your perspective, do you think will
take to lead an organization,
and make sure it thrives in the next
five years or so? Again, I know no
crystal ball, but I can imagine some of
these principles are stabilizing force,
through some of these these challenges.
Alright. You're absolutely right. Workforce stabilization
is important. I think it's important to focus
on population health and growth of the value
based care, aspect portfolio of the organization. At
this point, we have about 38%
of our
our patient population. The trip, is on a
value based,
contract, risk based contract. That's something that's important
for me to continue to grow and get
to the 50%
and get off the fee for service,
train, so to speak. And then, it's going
to be really important to look at your
portfolio,
what's your portfolio,
and then optimize that and position it for,
for future growth as well. And then you
cannot ignore the quality and safety outcomes because
that's your brand promise. You've got to deliver
on patient,
safety and quality outcomes and also on patient
experience, so we're gonna continue to, double down
on that. And, as I mentioned before, succession
planning, because your workforce is your greatest asset
on any balance sheet as it doesn't show
up, but it does show up when there
is a attrition in your, leadership and you
don't have a backfill strategy.
Those organizations then continue to have a a
lull till they are backfilling that person, and
then it really takes key leaders to be
replaced. It takes about a year,
eighteen months for them to get caught up
on the the culture of the new organization
they're entering. So it's important to retain the
talent that we have so we can continue
to thrive without missing a beat.
Fascinating. Saad, thank you so much for joining
us on the podcast today. This has been
such a enlightening conversation, and I I appreciate
your time. I look forward to connecting with
you again soon.
Laura, it was a pleasure. Thank you for
inviting me.