- This is Scott Becker with the Becker's Healthcare
- Podcast.
- We're thrilled today to be joined by a
- brilliant leader. We're joined today by Jennifer Venator.
- Jennifer Venator is a is a a nurse.
- She's a master in in science in nursing.
- She's got several different titles.
- She's also the executive director of surgical services
- at Providence Saint Jude Medical Center in Fullerton,
- California.
- We're gonna talk to her about
- operations,
- operating rooms, logistics,
- access to surgical care, and a lot more.
- Jennifer,
- to kick us off, can you take a
- moment to tell us about yourself and about
- your career and work in health care?
- Thank you, Scott. Thank you for having me
- on today, first of all. And, gosh, that
- sounds like a long list of things to
- talk about. But, just a little bit about
- me. I am an OR nurse by background,
- so I I've spent the past twenty years
- of my life serving in surgery
- in some capacity.
- I've taken care of patients at the bedside.
- I've helped educate our teams,
- and I've been a leader in multiple different
- areas.
- Currently, I am the executive director of surgical
- services at Providence Saint Jude Medical Center in
- Fullerton, California,
- where my responsibility
- is
- honed around all surgical
- and GI procedural areas.
- And so my responsibility
- is really to help our patients have access
- to care.
- And surgical excellence has been a passion of
- mine for for a very, very long time.
- I strive for to help create an environment
- in which we can provide the highest quality,
- safety,
- latest technology for our patients,
- and we wanna make sure that our surgeons
- and care teams have the best environment to
- do their best work.
- But a big part of my job involves
- data, and data just
- drives a lot of the decisions
- that we make as a team, as a
- leadership team day to day.
- Thank you. Let's talk about that. You spend
- a lot of time
- on working on patient access and supporting your
- surgical care teams,
- and and and trying to make sure you've
- got the right throughput
- and making sure everything works well in the
- best for the clinical team and for the
- patients.
- Talk a little bit about how that data,
- you know, be more reliable
- post perioperative
- data
- has changed your ability to lead and how
- you lead and how you make decisions day
- to day?
- So data as a whole is very important.
- Right? And,
- I like to work smarter, not harder.
- And what has really been very helpful in
- the past few years, you know, health care
- is changing, and we have the advent of
- of new technology
- helping us with our data.
- And it's it's really great when you have
- easily accessible data at your fingertips.
- It gives me a very clear picture of
- our operations
- without having to manually assemble a story.
- So, you know, prior to, you know, having
- access to this type of technology,
- our teams were doing a lot of deep
- diving
- in, you know, pivoting spreadsheets and doing things
- very very manual tasks to try and tell
- the story
- about what was happening in our department.
- And so now when there's a clinical question
- or a question about our efficiencies,
- I can quickly look.
- The team can quickly look and figure out,
- you know, where's our capacity?
- Where do we potentially see opportunities to improve?
- Where are we very successful?
- And so,
- instead of relying on somebody's opinion
- or, you know, a one report from one
- dataset or another report from another dataset,
- we really have one source of truth for
- what's happening with our teams.
- And since we implemented this, we have seen
- multiple
- changes and advantages
- in our case volume,
- our patients' access to our department,
- improving measures, you know, as far as, you
- know, our efficiencies,
- how we're starting our rooms, how we're starting
- our cases,
- and how we're overall just allowing access to
- our department. So very important, and,
- it it has gotten easier over time.
- And let me ask you this question. You've
- been at Providence for literally twenty five years,
- I think,
- or more. And and we always talk about
- people that have been at the same place
- for twenty five years or that kind of
- way at the time.
- They both have to be very competent,
- and they both have to be likable. Because
- you you can't get somebody for twenty, thirty
- years
- and make too many enemies because sooner or
- later somebody throws you out or you get
- upset with somebody in service. You gotta be
- both competent, very good at what you do,
- and likable, which is remarkable.
- I'll take you back to the subject at
- hand. How has the use of data changed
- over the last twenty five years in managing
- surgical care, managing surgical throughput,
- and and and how you manage your teams?
- Yeah. You know, data hasn't always been reliable.
- You'll have a a system or a report
- that's built by one person,
- in in the past, you know, years and
- years ago where where,
- actually, we couldn't really rely on what we
- were seeing.
- And, you know,
- working in health care, there's a lot of
- relationship building. Right? And you surround yourself with
- the people that that do a really, really
- great job
- and everybody who trusts each other and collaborates
- well together. And as we as we work
- together over time, we've seen, you know, people
- trust us. They trust our knowledge. And so
- we wanna make sure
- that what we're leaning on is correct.
- And so,
- you know, with data specifically,
- we used to not be able to trust
- it. And and now,
- with the advent of, you know, all of
- these new computerized systems and and patient access
- systems, we're able
- to to look into, like, the real time
- documentation
- in in our patients' charts,
- and, it will pull data for us that
- we know is what actually happened clinically
- because we can track it, and we can
- go back to the source of that data.
- So, it that's been very that's been very,
- very helpful. And,
- when we have that data, when we particularly
- trust that data, and then when others trust
- us,
- then we can have really clean conversations
- about how to improve everything for our patients.
- And and and thinking back in that subject
- of the trust in the data and how
- you work with the data,
- your team now brings together
- operations, finance, business development
- around a very shared view of performance based
- on that data
- rather than working in silos.
- How has that changed the conversation having that
- all in one place
- in reliable and trustable data?
- Change the conversation across your hospital, and what
- have you learned?
- And then how does it help you to
- implement best practices
- having that shared view of the data and
- performance?
- Yeah. So, you know, going back to, you
- know, trust and collaboration
- and working with others. Right?
- Oftentimes
- and and I've seen this happen before where
- where they're you know, these areas, people in,
- you know, the operational area,
- the business development area, and the finance area,
- you know, our jobs are interconnected
- because
- the operational
- leader, you know, it's my job to make
- sure that our patients can come into our
- doors, and and we welcome everybody, you know,
- for whatever need they have. Right? Our business
- development team, you know, they really are important
- because they recognize, you know, what gaps we
- might have and services that we may or
- may not be providing to our community
- and
- help us drive decisions
- based on, you know,
- how we can better serve our community.
- And our finance team helps us keep the
- doors open and the lights on so that
- we can continue to do that work. And
- so working together in collaboration is very, very
- important.
- And data in itself,
- when data is simple
- and everybody understands
- what they're looking at,
- it actually can help us work together to
- collaboratively,
- make decisions on, you know, what tactics we
- need to better serve our community.
- And then that, you know, that kind of
- translates across the bigger groups. So,
- once as far as, like, a health system
- goes, you know, health care's changed. We have
- we have
- multiple large health systems now, and we are
- part of a big health system that provides
- care in multiple different states. Right?
- And when we as collectively,
- as a group of people and as a
- team,
- through Providence have have decided on the source
- of truth for our data,
- that becomes the reliable source that everybody can
- lean on. And then in our local areas,
- what we do
- is we're able to share best practices with
- each other, you know, and what works at
- one place may not work at another place.
- No. Because our community is different. The populations
- that we serve are different.
- But
- when we when we have kind of a
- one dataset
- that helps all of us, that can help
- drive, you know, what the next thing is
- that we're going to work on and how
- we work together collaboratively
- to, you know, create more room for our
- patients.
- So,
- as a whole, you know, I think I
- think collaboration
- and, working together is the most important part
- of how we do this and how we
- drive our decision making.
- Thank you. In increasingly
- using the data
- in one on one conversation
- with physicians,
- surgeons, gastroenterologists,
- How does that look? And talk to us
- about that and how important is the data
- being right to have those conversations go well.
- Yes. If that is a 100%,
- it the data has to be right. Right?
- And once you know it's right and you
- know that it's easy to access
- and you know that you can pull it
- up at a moment's notice,
- when something comes up, you know, and you
- need to have a conversation with somebody,
- you can do it on their terms. You
- know, I can I can sit with with
- somebody, you know, whenever they need to sit
- with me, and I don't need to do
- some complicated meeting or complicated,
- you know,
- data pull? I can sit with them, you
- know, in real time on their terms, and
- we can talk about what the data says.
- And when, like I said, when it's something
- that's accepted widely,
- the the surgeons, you know, our physicians, they
- also trust that data.
- So, you know, one of the things as
- an example, one of the things we've worked
- on, you know, really hard is is creating
- our,
- access to our surgery department, specifically with efficiency,
- and
- data has really driven that. So
- starting on time is really important. If you
- start your day on time, you get your
- day off on the right foot. Everybody depends
- on it. It increases patient satisfaction,
- staff satisfaction, physician satisfaction.
- And,
- in order to do that, we really need
- to understand,
- you know, what the best interventions are
- to to making that successful. Right? And so
- one thing that we did with starting our
- day on time, first case on time start
- was
- created an an automatic report in which
- that report is sent to me, and I
- can send that report off to our physicians
- and the leaders of our physicians. So that
- way, we all can be on the same
- page as far as, you know, the accountability
- piece of it as well. So everybody starts
- on time means, you know, we can accurately
- predict our day so that our patients have
- reliable care. And so, that's been very it's
- been very important to have something that everybody
- trusts.
- No. That's that's so important too. I mean,
- it seems so
- fundamental,
- but getting the search to start the first
- case on time
- makes it much easier to set the day
- up for success.
- And if you have a track record where
- somebody's regularly late and they've just gotten to
- that sort of notion,
- what sometimes they don't realize statistically is where
- they're at,
- and then they have to actually care that
- they're impacting everybody else too. But that's part
- of those discussions. And much easier of those
- discussions, if you have good data, not just
- anecdotally, you know, doctor x, you're always late
- compared to other people. You're causing some trouble,
- and we'd like you on time or as
- close to the time more often. And having
- great data is probably really helpful for those
- difficult conversations. Right. And, you know, the the
- that particular data point is multifactorial. Right? It
- it doesn't always just depend on the surgeon.
- It depends on everybody.
- It depends on the patient being ready. You
- know, how are we gonna make sure that
- our patient is ready? And we're all on
- one team working together for that goal.
- And so it it's and, you know, we
- all contribute to it as well. So when
- we find an outlier or see an outlier,
- we we kind of help with that, you
- know, bringing that awareness, you know, sharing that,
- you know, oh, we're all watching, but we're
- all here for you. We're all here to
- support you as well, and,
- this is what it looks like. So it's
- it's been very helpful.
- Love that. And talk about what is sort
- of next
- in terms of
- data and what you're doing. What what are
- the next things in the agenda for perioperative
- data and and systems and and and sort
- of how you
- can improve optimization
- and any new capabilities that you're particularly excited
- about?
- Yes. Oh, I'm so excited about some some
- great stuff coming up. I like I said
- before, you know, we like to work smarter,
- not harder. Right?
- And the more minutiae you can pull out
- of somebody's day, the better. It can use
- their brain to focus on the important tasks
- at hand, which is specifically, you know, caring
- for our patients in real time instead of
- making phone calls or sending text messages,
- working, you know, hard to to make sure
- that our staffing looks good for the next
- day. There are some great technological advances that
- are going to help us with those kind
- of administrative
- tasks and that administrative burden that our team
- has. And so
- looking, you know, to implement
- across we've already actually already done this across
- all of our procedural areas. So, you know,
- Cath Lab has the same access to data
- as as a surgery department does, and and
- our GI lab does as well. And and
- so that's that's opening up more conversations for
- efficiencies in those areas.
- Understanding what things look like in real time,
- you know, having real time communication in in
- an automated system in which a physician or
- a technical representative
- or the team itself can can receive text
- messages that says, you know, your room is
- running on time, your room is running behind.
- Surgery can be unpredictable. So we're not always
- perfectly on time. Right?
- So that that has that could actually be,
- very, very helpful so that our clinicians can
- focus on what they need to focus on,
- which is our patients.
- And then making sure that we have, you
- know, we have AI tools
- that will help us determine,
- you know, who is the best person to
- help the surgeon with the with the specific
- case. You know, how can we how can
- we put the right surgical tech in the
- room, you know, for this specific very complex
- case? Or, you know, who needs more training,
- and how can we completely develop our team?
- And, I am really excited to see how
- that's gonna pan out for everybody.
- It it it really is, Jennifer Venator. A
- a tremendous pleasure to visit with you. It's
- an incredible sort of
- ability and thoughtfulness
- you take to management and leadership,
- and it and it shows so clearly, and
- it and it's so nice to talk to
- you about it. Congratulations on the mission that
- you're on and quite frankly how well it's
- going.
- Thank you so much for joining us today
- on the Becker's Healthcare podcast. What a pleasure.
- Thank you very, very much. For having me.