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- Welcome everyone,
to the Becker's Healthcare podcast series.
I'm Maria Mohammed, writer
and moderator with Becker's Healthcare.
I'm absolutely thrilled to have with me today Dr.
Vender Carr, chief Medical Officer at Vinta Health
Central Valley Network.
Dr. Carr, it's very nice to have you on the
podcast today. How are you?
- Good, thank you, Maria.
And, um, I appreciate you taking, uh, my, uh, voice up
to your audience on this podcast. Yeah,
- Absolutely.
I cannot wait to ask you these, uh, these questions today.
Im sure you're gonna give some great insight into what's
happening right now in healthcare.
Um, but to begin, would you mind please introducing yourself
and telling us a bit about your background?
- Absolutely. I'm good weather, Carr.
Um, I'm an internal medicine physician by training.
I've been, um, you know, out of med school
for 20 plus years now,
so I've been a doctor for all that time.
I did do some, um, um, I have some background in master's
with a master's in health administration.
And then I went ahead
and, um, you know,
started working here in the Central Valley quite some time
back, uh, in California
and really have, uh, evolved through my journey, uh,
as a physician leader, both with a physician medical group
as well as, uh, through
Adventist health physician leadership,
and have been in this role as a Chief Medical officer
for about close to three years now.
- Wonderful. Thank you so much for giving us that insight.
So to begin with the questions of the podcast,
the first thing I wanted to ask you is,
can you tell me about your most successful project
or initiative from the last year?
What issues were you trying to solve
and also what drove the success?
- Uh, some of the key projects
that we have worked on in this past, uh, year
or so have been a really, uh, top decal patient safety, um,
also, uh, top decal inpatient quality when it comes to,
you know, mortality, readmission care progression, which is,
um, how efficiently we drive the patient's care while
they're in the hospital and patient experience.
They're, um, you know, now that's a broad, broad, um,
topic here, but I think if we narrow down to, um,
it comes down to having a culture of clinicians
that care about doing their best
and making our organization high performing
and ability to drive performance through, uh, learning,
you know, continuous learning process, identifying
where the issues are and improving upon them when we know
that there, uh, there are processes
that we need to improve on.
- Wonderful. Thank you so much
for giving us that background.
And as you know,
the clinical workforce has changed a lot in the last few
years for obvious reasons.
Um, what challenges are you still facing
and how do you see the clinical workforce evolving?
- Yeah, we continue to have issues around, um, being able
to recruit, uh, high good talent, being able to bring in,
uh, folks that are highly, uh, trained
and talented in their different workforce, in clinical, uh,
workforce in the Central Valley in California.
And we're not much worse than other places.
I realize that, um, you know,
every different area has its own challenges,
whether it's related to competition for that same workforce
or whether it's related to the demand.
And so understanding that,
I think this trend is likely going
to continue over the next several years
because we're not seeing that many higher number
of graduates from nursing schools
or from um, medical schools.
Uh, we do see that, uh, radiology is one
of the key challenges from physicians, um, that continues
to be an issue that is, um,
really affecting us across the board, uh,
from just about every CIS hospital in
the Adventist health system.
We know that we, uh, want to do
better in attracting talent when it comes to radiology.
We also have issues around O-B-G-Y-N, um, being able
to attract and keep good OB physicians in our communities
because patients want to deliver close to home.
And if we're not able to provide high quality OB services,
we're gonna have a challenge being able
to get the patients maternity care
delivery care right close to their homes.
Um, cost of keeping labor
and delivery, uh, units open is very high,
and being able
to recruit OBS has become extremely challenging in these
past, uh, several years.
I don't see that letting up anytime soon.
We're not increasing the number
of graduates from OB residencies either.
Um, we do feel like that is one area to explore, is to, um,
uh, identify how we can train more, uh, OB
and those hard to recruit, uh, specialties
for gi We're having a lot
of difficulty getting GI just about in all our markets,
but definitely here in the Central Valley, um, this is a,
um, challenging area mostly
because the, the kind of work it is,
it is high intensity work
and it takes a long time to train a GI physician.
We're looking at extending, uh, the, those kind
of specialties with advanced providers, both in their, um,
clinics as well as, you know, for, as for ob gyn,
adding midwife programs, helping make this a team approach.
And I think that's where really healthcare is going is we're
gonna have a team approach, um,
and we will have to develop algorithms where
we know there's, there's a spectrum of disease process,
there's a spectrum of, uh, healthcare delivery.
How do we best use our resources in a team-based approach,
whether it's virtual
and physical in person, whether it's, um, you know,
high-end, highly trained, high end specialty,
or there's advanced providers to support that specialty.
All of those things will come down to
how we best use team approaches
for delivering good quality care at bedside.
- Absolutely. Thank you so much for giving us that insight
and background to how you're trying to solve this issue
that many people are having.
Um, but before I let you go, doctor, the last thing I wanted
to ask you is, what is your best advice
for aspiring physician nurse leaders?
- Uh, I, my main advice would be
Invest in your workforce.
Um, build trust within your workforce
and really identify processes that help improve the ability
for people to perform better.
You know, when we look at our systems and our processes
and we make things efficient for people to come back to work
and be able to do what they are passionate for, what they,
uh, signed up for,
then we make everybody's lives, uh, so much better.
We improve our retention, we improve our culture,
and that's really what our main, uh,
focus has been here in the past,
in my role in these three years, is to help drive a culture
that improves people's ability to do what they do best.
And that's by driving the processes around them
and helping them overcome those obstacles much more
faster and smoother.
- Wonderful. Thank you so much
for those final thoughts, doctor.
This has been a very amazing and informative discussion.
So again, I wanna thank you so much
for coming on Becker's Healthcare.
We really do appreciate it.
I look forward to connecting with you again soon.
- Alright, thank you. I appreciate your, uh,
time from with me today.
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