Hello everyone. I am Maria Mohamed, a writer for Becker's Healthcare.
Thank you so much for joining me today as I speak with Lindsey Thompson,
Network Director of cardiovascular programs at Honor Health Lindsey,
it's so nice to meet you. How are you today?
I'm good. It's nice to be here. Thank you for having me.
Of course. Well, to begin, um,
could you please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your background?
Yeah, so my name is Lindsey Thompson, as you said. Uh,
I am the network director at Honor Health for cardiovascular programs. Um,
I oversee a variety of the sub-specialties in the service line, um,
that includes building programs and, um, overseeing staff and, you know, many,
many other things as we all know about our roles in healthcare. Uh,
my background is I have been with this system for,
I just had my 20th anniversary in June. Um,
I've held a variety of roles along the way and, um,
I started out in radiology as a rad tech, uh, for several years.
And then, um, I really needed something more, uh,
than just kind of taking chest x-rays and, and sitting in the or.
So I decided to go back to school and from there I was an ecotech for, um,
about six years.
And I really kind of hit my stride and found my passion at that point in
cardiology. I knew I wanted to stay, um, in there it was,
was home to me and it felt good.
I was doing something good and I loved the work that we were doing and the
trajectory for cardiovascular was just endless, um, at that point in time.
So I moved to service line about four years ago, um,
and have been kind of just growing in my roles, um, since then. And then, um,
you know, outside of work, I have some hobbies. Um,
I'm a mom to two kids that are seven and four. Um,
and then I also really, um,
have grown to enjoy the outdoors and just disconnecting in that time.
So my husband and I recently bought an Airstream and we've been enjoying
that, um, the last couple of weeks, so that's good. Um, and then professionally,
um, my current role, like I said, I cover CV programs. I also, um,
am now entering my second year as the American Heart Association's chair for
their Inspire ed campaign in the Phoenix area.
So that's been a really good kind of passion project for me of promoting, um,
awareness in the community, um,
amongst women my age who don't always understand that we have a real great
risk for cardiovascular disease even in our thirties. So.
Got it. That's incredible. Congratulations on 20 years, by the way. Um,
so to go more, Yeah. So to go more into like your expertise and experience,
um, for you, what are the top three biggest issues in cardiology today?
Yeah, you know, that's a good question and I feel like, you know,
three is so hard to narrow down at this point because cardiology is
such an evolving field, and we've really came so far. You know,
you look at the last 10 years of how things have evolved and it's actually
really incredible. So, but some things have stayed the same, right?
So one in six people will die of heart cardiovascular disease,
one in three women will actually die from a cardiovascular disease problem.
And so that itself is really pleaing a huge emphasis on, um,
cardiovascular care in, um, our patients that we serve in the community.
People are growing older baby boomers and things like that,
but also people are living longer and so their care that they need at the end of
life is such a big, um, it's a longer spectrum now.
So really it's kind of been a moving target, um,
to kind of keep up with the technologies and things like that.
So I would say the,
a big one is really just the newfound emphasis on cardiovascular.
Um, the other thing I would say for a top issue really since covid,
it's been cost, um, providing value and um,
being able to provide top tier services that are cost efficient to, um,
patients, payers, and those things.
And then I think the other piece is to remain relevant
and continue growing in cardiovascular. I feel like we've had to get, um,
better, um,
and more creative in providing access to care and providing more creative ways
that we provide care that are much more personalized to patients because
patients have a choice now. It's not just, you're not the only hospital within,
you know, 15,
20 miles of them and people are willing to drive for services that they and,
um,
physicians and staff that they like and that they've had good experiences with.
So I think those are probably the biggest three for us right now.
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for sharing those stats. Um, and you know,
I definitely agree with the fact that, you know, patients are,
they want to be comfortable in the place that they're getting care.
Um, and kind of speaking of the care,
how do you see heart care evolving over the next 18 months or
so?
Yeah, you know, 18 months, um,
it's one of those things that seems like it's such a long time, but it's also,
you know, we know now it's really not, it's very short time period.
So I would say the biggest, um, thing that we are seeing here in the,
um, Phoenix market is, you know,
there's a large shift into the ambulatory space.
And so for us and for, I know, you know,
really everyone in the market right now,
everyone is really placing a huge emphasis on how are we gonna provide these
services in that ambulatory space? How are we going to, um,
make it a place where physicians wanna practice? Um, because now, you know,
if you have private practice physicians,
it's very lucrative for them to go open their own lab and perform those, um,
simple, you know, more, uh,
easy access procedures like CRM devices and um,
diagnostic cast services. So, um, providing space for them to do that,
um, and making sure that they want to, you know, provide, uh,
care with us and partner with us, I think is a big one. And then placing,
you know, a big, there's a big need on, um, like I just said before,
of getting creative and how we provide the care, making sure that, um,
we are making it a good place for, um,
physicians to practice and patients to, um, come get their care.
So I think ambulatory and then again, getting creative in how you, um,
provide access to care and how you deliver care, making it,
we have like kind of a saying that we used for heart months, um,
I believe is two years ago was like making heart healthy personal. So,
um,
trying to provide little personal touches that make the patient experience just
that much better with you as an institution is critical right now.
Got it. Thank you for sharing. And before I let you go,
last thing I wanted to ask you about is what are you excited about today?
And also what is makes you nervous in the field?
, You know, um, I think today in general,
you know, what excites me is really the work in front of me. Um,
you know, I, I'm super passionate. I've been extremely loyal to, um,
the place that I have worked with on our health for, you know, now 20 years.
And, um, I think the exciting part is that, uh,
the reason why I moved to service line, right, is that no day is the same.
It's not mundane. Every day is different. Um, every day there's a new challenge,
whether it's, you know, juggling physician dynamics or, you know,
roadblocks for building a program or things like that.
So I think that's part of the excitement of working in, um, administration,
at least in cardiovascular services, um,
on a programmatic or service science side, um,
is you still get that operational piece, but it's, it's not as, um,
mundane in the day to day.
There's a lot of room for creativity and a huge emphasis on creating strategy.
And I think that's the thing that really excites me for our field is you,
like I said,
think about how far we've come in just 10 years and then looking at the future
of like just the research and the things coming out for patients.
And it's, it's, the op opportunities are really endless.
It's just how far are you willing to push the envelope on, um, you know,
being that at the forefront of providing the care.
And I think the PA thing that makes me the most nervous is,
I would say there's two things. Um, the,
one of the biggest ones is really partnering with everyone
through, I think Covid, you know, was really tough on everyone, you know,
staff, physicians, administration, you know, personally, right?
Everyone had every, all the dynamics with that.
And I think that it maybe kind of put an emphasis on,
we kind of lost our, why we're here in the first place,
why we went into healthcare and what,
what drove us to CHO choose cardiovascular services in the first place.
You know,
we really chose this field to make a difference in people's lives and create
impact on our community that we're in. And I think, um,
working with everyone and trying to get back to the why are we here and not
just the, um,
moving the widgets along along the pathway is probably one of the biggest
things, um, biggest challenges.
And then I'd say the other piece is really the high cost, um,
of things right now of, you know, building materials and inflation.
So trying to keep up with the ever growing salaries and, um,
remaining relevant in the market so that you can, um, employ a high caliber,
um, staff and um, so that you can attract really great physicians, um,
you know, and, and pay them the their worth. Um, but you know,
really the juggling that, that side of things.
So I think focusing on providing the value, um, and then, um,
making sure that you're finding,
being able to afford to be relevant in the market and provide that
care that our patients really need.
So I think those are probably the two biggest things.
Yeah, for sure. Well, thank you so much for those final thoughts, Lindsey.
That is all I had for you. So I wanna thank you for speaking with me today. Um,
and to hear more about Becks Healthcare, please visit our website,
becks hospital review.com. And thank you again, Lindsey.
Thank you. Have a great day.
You too.