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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.
Ravi Basal, director of outpatient hip
and knee replacement surgery.
Vice chairman of patient
and provider experience call medical director
and head joint replacement consultants
for NDA Retired Players Association
at North Shore University System Doctors.
Very nice to have you on the podcast today.
To get us started, would you mind please introducing
yourself and telling us a bit about your background?
- Yes, thanks, Mariah, for having me.
Really appreciate it and all that you
and the Becker's team do to, uh, bring valuable information
to the healthcare world.
Um, as you mentioned, my name is Ravi Bial.
Um, my background is in orthopedic surgery.
I'm a hip and knee replacement surgeon.
Um, uh, as you mentioned,
I work at North Shore University Health System,
actually the formerly known
North Shore University Health System.
We had recently had a system-wide name change, uh,
to an Endeavor Health to better capture, um, the, uh,
multiple, uh, systems we are now, uh, uh,
integrated into and with.
So it's now known as Endeavor Health.
Um, as you mentioned, um, in addition to my clinical work
as a hip and knee replacement surgeon, administratively,
I'm the director of our outpatient
hip and knee replacement program.
Uh, I serve as vice chair, uh, within our department
for patient and provider experience.
And then I've also had the privilege of having some, uh,
administrative work with some of our external relationships,
including being the co-medical director
and head joint replacement consultant for the N-V-R-P-A,
which is the, uh, national Basketball Retired Players
Association, as well as a board member
and co-medical director for our partnership
with the Professional Football Hall of Fame Health program.
- Got it, got it. Thank you so much for giving us
that background information.
So to jump right into our conversation today, doctor, uh,
can you tell me about your most successful partnerships?
What issues were you trying to solve
and how did these impact North Shore or Endeavor Health now?
- Yeah, thanks. Um, you know, I think that, uh, there's, um,
some depth to this question.
Um, uh, my direct work is within orthopedics,
but I think a lot of the work that we've done within
orthopedics has been impactful to the system
and in fact, required a larger system and support.
And what I'm getting at is, you know, our, our most
powerful partnerships obviously are with our patients.
Um, we want our patients to have great outcomes,
great experience, and to kind of really be able to get all
of the healthcare that they need
and deserve, um, in a centralized, uh, location for them.
Um, some of these external partnerships
that I've mentioned have helped us, uh, uh, uh, kind
of realize those goals and helped us organize those goals.
So, you know, in terms of discrete partnerships that,
that we are really proud of, I,
I think our NBA Retired Players Association, uh,
partnership, that's probably our most recent is
one that we're the most proud of.
Um, we've had longstanding association
with the Chicago Bears, where our, uh, couple
of our sports physicians are the head
team doctors for the Bears.
We have an affiliation with the Chicago Fire.
We've done work with, uh,
professional Football Hall of Fame, as I mentioned.
Um, but our recent partnership
with the NBA Retired Players Association has really helped
us to realize the full potential of centers of excellence.
Um, and what I mean by that is this, um,
in general within orthopedics, uh, it's very easy
to understand a link to a professional sports team.
Patients want to go where the pros go
because those organizations, physicians systems, uh,
from from, from nuts to bolt have been vetted, uh,
professional, uh, sports organizations would not associate
with, uh, uh, an orthopedic system
that couldn't provide them quality, high level care.
And so patients really understand
and resonate that with that.
One of the interesting things that's gone on
with our partnership, um, with the N-B-R-P-A, um,
has been we've been able to expand beyond just orthopedics.
Um, and there's been a lot of help both on our end, uh,
in terms of, on the Endeavor, health health side.
Um, our chairman, Jason Co, um, our administrative leaders,
Alexis Barber, Dave Raia, um, have all really helped us
to coordinate this along, along with my co-medical director,
Ashish Betty, and I'm the N-V-R-P-A side.
Joe Rogowski and Scott Rochelle have been, uh,
extremely integral to this sort of, uh, coming together.
Having a center of excellence means
that a patient is gonna be able
to get top-notch care in a centralized geographic location.
And, and that makes a lot of sense.
And as I said, our mind goes straight to orthopedics,
but in our experiences with the N-B-R-P-A
patients have needs beyond orthopedics,
especially retired former athletes.
And so we've had the opportunity to really lean on
and leverage the expertise
that we have across the broad spectrum of care.
And frankly, the broad center of excellence is that
nor Northshore Now Endeavor offers.
And, and by that I mean this, um, if, if you want to go
to a single center of excellence for orthopedics,
that's great, but then where are
you gonna go for your heart care?
Where are you gonna go for your, uh, you know,
concussion care, your neurosurgical care?
And one of the unique things about having such a large
and broad system is that we're able to have actually
multiple centers of excellence under one umbrella.
So we have our cardiovascular institute
that's being built out, our neurological institute that's,
uh, that, that exists as well as our orthopedic institute.
So we've had patients that have needed cardiac care, uh,
concussive care, uh, neurosurgical care and orthopedic care.
And instead of having to send them to four different centers
of excellence, um, the organization, the RPA is able
to send them to one center North Shore or Endeavor Health
and really able to achieve high level center
of excellence care under one umbrella, both geographically
and sort of metaphorically.
- Thank you so much for giving us that insight, uh,
into those partnerships.
Um, as you know,
the clinical workforce has changed a lot in the
last, uh, few years.
Um, what challenges are you still facing
and how do you see the clinical workforce evolving?
How do excellent, uh, excellence models
mitigate these challenges in a healthcare system?
- Yeah, and I think you used a great word there,
which is mitigate, um, there's, I I don't think
that there's a clear, uh, all win solution.
Um, we continue to, uh,
be in a challenging contracting healthcare environment where
reimbursements are going down, uh,
demand for care is going up.
Uh, you know, if we look long term, uh, uh,
and Scott, Scott Becker's talked about this a lot.
The, there's a need for physicians.
The number of physicians is decreasing.
So there's a lot of challenges that we're facing.
Ultimately, we want to provide value, okay?
And, and, uh, that's a complicated term.
The the general, uh, sort of dogma is that, you know,
value is quality over cost.
Now, in healthcare, uh, quality can mean a lot of things.
It means outcomes, uh, it means, uh, uh, patient experience.
It means, uh, the entire flow of the episode of care, uh,
in fact from University of Utah, I believe has quoted, uh,
healthcare value
as equaling quality times patient
experience divided by cost.
So it's a complicated equation,
but this is again, where the center of excellence model, um,
helps when you're able to centralize a large group
of experts in a single physical geographic location,
you're able to realize efficiencies
that don't exist if they're in multiple different centers.
Right? And then if you think about that growing outwardly,
having a system that's large enough
to support multiple centers of excellence, then only sort of
grows or, or, or catalyzes that ability
to have high quality care,
but reduce costs by being able to realize efficiency
and centralization of those services.
So, um, you know, as we move forward, we're gonna continue
to have to chase that, but I think systems like ours are
very well set up because we do have the depth and breadth
and, and just the, the physical presence
and width to be able to really
combine these into focus centers of excellence
that are all under one roof, and then realize the, and,
and leverage the strength of our numbers in order to be able
to help with efficiencies and costs.
- Yeah, that all completely makes sense.
Thank you so much for sharing.
And Doctor, before I let you go, the last thing I wanted
to ask you is, what is your best advice
for aspiring leaders today?
- You know, I, I think there's, uh,
there's a couple thoughts behind that.
Number one is to listen.
Um, you know, uh, I've,
I I've often heard you're given two years in one mouth.
So you, so you listen twice as much as you speak.
And I, and I think there's some truth to that.
Um, if leaders want to be able to bring about change
that's meaningful to the folks that they are leading,
they really need to understand what the challenges
that those folks are facing.
And I often think that when you start to work in leadership,
you have your own ideas of
what you think the challenges might be,
and they're very well intentioned.
You, you really are trying to understand
and grasp the problems
and issues that, that those that you are leading are facing.
But if you take some time to listen, you will often find
that, uh, there are additional challenges
that you either didn't know about or didn't understand
or didn't understand how important those were, um,
for the folks that you are, that you are working
with and, and helping to lead.
So, so really listening
and understanding what the challenges your workforce is
facing, um, I think is the first most important step.
And then, and then second and,
and kind of tied into this is, is to continue
to evolve and be plastic.
Um, you have to have a vision.
You have to have a, a drive and a goal.
When you're a leader, you, you can't just sort
of be blowing with the winds of change.
Um, so you have to have a goal and vision,
but you have to be not so dogmatic that you're not open
to evolution and change, um, when you're presented
or faced with information
that might challenge your initial vision or goal.
So you have to have the drive
and vision for what you wanna achieve,
but you have to be able to navigate around the realities,
um, of situations that may arise
as you're striving towards that goal.
- Thank you so much for those final thoughts, doctor.
This has definitely been an 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.
- Mariah, thank you so much for having me.
And I really would like to thank, uh,
Scott who's had me on the podcast before
and has been a great friend and,
and Ally, um, to, to all providers in healthcare
and really would be remiss if I didn't thank my team at
North Shore, including Alexis Barber, Dave ,
Jason Co, and Ashish Betty, as well as our partners, um, uh,
on the external side, Joe Rogowski, Scott,
Rochelle on the N-B-R-P-A, as well as Mike Lamb, Amy Kramer,
and Jeremy Hoag on the, uh,
professional Football Hall of Fame health project.
So, really would be remiss if I didn't thank those folks.
A lot of the answers that I've given you today are really
because of the mentorship and guidance
that I've received from those people as well.
So just wanted to say thanks to those people.
Thank you to you and happy New Year to you
and the entire Becker's team.
- Yes, thank you so much.
- It's so important for leaders at the top of organizations
to keep learning, stay sharp, grow their networks
to help our audience better do this in a more simplified,
personalized, and meaningful way.
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