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Welcome everyone to the Becker's Healthcare podcast series.
I'm Moriah Muhammad, writer and moderator with Becker's
Healthcare. And I'm thrilled to have with me
today Colleen Blackburn,
director of the cardiovascular service line at OSF
Health Care. Colleen, welcome to the podcast. We're
very excited to have you join us today.
To get us started, would you mind please
introducing yourself and telling us a bit about
your background?
Sure. No problem. Like you said, I'm currently
serving as the cardiovascular
service line director at OSF Saint Francis Medical
Center in Peoria, Illinois.
OSF Health Care is a large hospital system
with our headquarters in Peoria,
Illinois, and we really service throughout the Illinois
and Michigan,
states.
I graduated from Illinois State University in 2006
with my bachelor's
of science in nursing, and then I completed
my nurse practitioner degree at New York University
in 2011.
And since then, I have done nursing and
nurse practitioner. My background has primarily been,
within oncology, kidney and liver transplant,
and ICU
critical care management.
Wonderful. Wonderful. Thank you so much for giving
us that, that background on you. So with
all the things that you're currently doing in
your in your role today, what are some
of the 3 biggest issues in, cardiology today,
would you say?
Yeah. Being an operational manager in in cardiovascular
and within the cardiology
sector can be pretty challenging, I think, especially
in the post COVID era.
We saw, during COVID, volumes
and staffing drastically decreased, and now we're slowly
rebuilding up to that. And we know over
the next 10 years, our volume and anticipated
growth of patients is only gonna continue to
grow with the increase of, the elderly population.
So when I really look at what are
my 3 biggest concerns or 3 biggest issues,
you know, I'm looking at how do we
integrate technology,
specifically I AI. Obviously, that's on everyone's mind.
I'm also really looking at that volume growth.
How do we get in front of that?
How do we serve our patients, making sure
that they get timely access to care as
well as good quality care. And then thirdly,
and again, I think on most operational managers,
you know, mind is staffing.
And we're really doing a lot of work
looking at how can we eliminate call within
our procedural areas, create better work life balance,
and really thinking outside of the box.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you so much for
giving us that that insight. I think,
you know, we report here at Becker's a
lot and, you know, COVID 19 is something
that I, you know, take very seriously.
And I I've been seeing kinda the states
where it's rising and falling.
And AI has definitely been a big hit
in health care and in the health care
sector for sure. As she does publish an
article asking executives what's the biggest, disruptor
in health care, and most people did say
AI.
So how do you see heart care evolving
over the next 18 months or so?
Yeah. I think with that and and on
the topic of AI,
obviously,
many companies are knocking on our door. There's
lots of new products, newer products out there
with AI and just new technology, especially within
our procedural EP cath lab sectors.
People are knocking on the door, and and
the hospitals
are, you know, for the first time really
looking at how can we integrate those into
our system, into our hospitals.
But one thing, as you as you mentioned,
it is also a disruptor. How are we
going to do that? And I think we
need to do that really mindfully,
looking at when we look at these products,
what's the goal? And are we looking at
it as a workforce or or workflow efficiency?
Or is it more patient centered, and we're
looking at reducing readmissions or mortality risk? Or
is it more diagnostic in nature and, you
know, heart failure prediction or MI prediction tool?
We really need to understand what our goal
is for the products we're bringing in, and
then look at different vendors and select the
best one to fit that need. I think
we could get really wrapped up over the
next 2 to 5 years,
with just so much attention with AI and
so many new products, just picking a project
and trying to make it work because it's
cool and neat and new and, you know,
exciting.
But we really need to do our due
diligence and be mindful about the products we're
bringing in and make sure that they're still
high quality and going to meet our operational
and patient needs.
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. That definitely makes a lot
of sense. And you know what? We talked
a lot about technology and and AI.
Is there anything else that's making you excited
about today or anything that's making you nervous,
whether you're seeing it in the news or
anything that you're currently seeing in your organization?
Yeah. I think what else what we're really
seeing that's exciting, like I mentioned, is that
volume growth. And we're at an opportunity here
at Saint Francis Medical Center where we need
to start expanding some of our procedural cap
lab and EP suites.
And how do we do that? It's really
challenging.
Like most facilities,
we can either build up or add new
suites to our existing
hospital system, or we're also looking at ambulatory
surgical centers. So, really, are we gonna put
that here at the main center, or do
we need to start looking at alternatives
like the ambulatory
surgical centers to offset some of that volume?
And those are difficult decisions to make as
operational leaders. There's positives and negatives to both.
Having everything at one central location from a
works and a workflow and staffing perspective is
really efficient.
But we also know we don't always have
just the geographical footprint to build out new
surgical suites.
So how are we going to tackle that
over maybe the next 2 to 3 years?
I think it's gonna be one of the
major challenges we have here,
at our organization.
And I think that's probably true across the
nation. A lot of a lot of different
ideas about how do we grow. Do we
offset that,
to an ambulatory surgical center, or do we
really grow here?
And at the bottom line, it's where is
the best benefit for the patient and maintaining
that high quality of care. That's our top
priority, and I think we really have to
focus on that as we make these bigger
plans.
Absolutely. Thank you so much for those final
thoughts, Coleen. This has definitely been a very
informative discussion. So, again, I wanna thank you
so much for coming on, Becker's, and I
look forward to connecting with you again soon.
Thanks so much. I appreciate it.