- This is Laura Dedo with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast.
I'm thrilled today to be joined by Dr.
Abraham Barda, who's a system chief of hospital medicine
and regional Chief Medical
and Quality Officer at Baystate Health.
Dr. Barda, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today,
- Laura.
Thank you very much for having me
and for Becker uh, health for this great opportunity.
- Absolutely. And well, I'm looking forward
to our conversation and learning more about
how you're growing and developing at Baystate
and some of the things you're doing around
value-based care as well.
But before we dive into that,
can you tell us a little bit more
about yourself and your background?
- Absolutely. Um, uh, Abram Barda, I'm a clinician
with capital C and an executive by trade.
Um, um, currently the system chief, um,
and the regional chief, uh, medical
and quality officer for Baystate Health in Massachusetts.
Uh, Baystate Health is, uh,
a five hospital system in western Mass.
We serve collectively around 900, uh, thousand patients,
uh, throughout western mass and, uh, the New England area.
Uh, we are integrated teaching hospital network, uh,
with an academic regional site of UMass, uh,
Chan Medical school.
Um, like everybody who, uh, been in clinical medicine, um,
uh, clinician, I practice inpatient medicine,
hospital medicine in an academic setting.
Um, uh, after I, um, finished my, uh, clinical training, I,
uh, took, uh, a little bit more of, um, uh, the task
of learning about clinical research, the outcome, uh,
specific research of healthcare delivery that led me
to more quality training, to more finance, um,
and MBA training,
and led me to think a little bit about how we can
redesign the system, um,
and make it better for our patient,
make it more patient centric.
Uh, I moved across couple, um, uh, systems in Massachusetts,
uh, mass General, um, uh,
Brigham Women's Hospital in Boston,
and now I'm Baystate where, uh, I see, uh, more
of the system level, uh, function
of the healthcare delivery.
- Well, that's amazing to hear.
And you know, certainly some great experiences
that you've had throughout your career.
Could you tell me about the most successful project
from the last year or two?
What did you do and how did you measure results?
- Great question, Laura. Um, for the past year, I've been,
uh, quite, uh, consumed by how we can systemize
and standardize and the, the, the whole notion here,
and I'm gonna hone in more of the inpatient delivery
of the care and not just take the whole system and,
and try to rethink about the design, is, uh, how we can, uh,
focus on the patient throughout their journey, um, in that,
in that complex inpatient, uh, services that we do to serve,
uh, uh, the best interest for the patient.
So my goal here is, uh, uh, to, uh,
make sure we have a patient flow governance.
Uh, as a background, we all talk about hospital capacity,
how we can manage the access to care for the inpatient.
Uh, my job was, um, uh, to be part of bigger team
to think about that, um, the crowd, uh, uh, status
that we have always in emergency, um, department,
and how we can take that
and, uh, aim to deliver the best quality care
and implement, uh, stages for the patient to come
through our emergency department from any of our sites
and go through a care delivery for the inpatient
and aim to reduce length of stay,
get the right patient in the right bed for the right care,
and always measure that quality, um, the,
the value-based care where we deliver the best quality for,
uh, the reasonable or the lower cost to reach that value.
Um, Laura, we've been, we've been measuring it with
multiple, uh, tools.
Uh, the outcomes, what we, what we always focus on,
but I challenge my team to also think about the processes,
how the patient could initiate care earlier, IE when, uh,
any of us would go through the emergency medicine, uh, part,
how we can get to that patient faster, uh,
for any reason they could come, we can measure
that in the minutes and
how we can get the patient in the right bed,
and how we can gauge that team, uh, to initiate care faster
and how that lengthy stay will start look better.
Um, at the same time, we wanted
to also focus on the patient.
So we always measure patient satisfaction, uh,
the standardized metric.
And then, uh, when I take it a step further,
we start looking at the satisfaction for the caregiver
for nursing clinicians, the frontline providers.
You can optimize the system,
but you also need to keep your team in the middle, uh,
while you're looking at the safety
to experience the clinical quality and,
and the value as a, as a whole.
Um, we build a platform for, uh, the measurement where, uh,
our senior leadership would be also engaged in
that performance and we can get more direction, uh,
to optimize.
So, um, that, if I had to summarize it, the two s models,
systemization and standardization would be the combination
of, uh, bring the excellence in operation,
bring the digital health,
and how we can measure that, uh,
throughout the phases of care.
And of course, the importance of having
that layer of quality.
Um, we will be also, uh, uh, sharing our experience in terms
of the patient flow governance
and our outcomes that we led here at Baystate Health.
- Wow, that's great to hear.
And certainly just some fascinating, um, results
that are coming from, um, your initiative to, um, make sure
that patients are getting the right care
and, um, in the right place at the right time.
I think it is certainly something that
so many different organizations, um, are, are aiming for
and, and feel like that's a,
a really an important imperative over the next few years.
Now, when you're looking at what you're at today,
what are some of your top priorities
for the next 12 months or so?
What's really top of mind for you?
- If I had to, uh, share that, uh, with the audience, Laura,
uh, we all thinking about, uh, how the value,
um, uh, care, the, the, the value based care, uh,
that we are aiming all to deliver.
Uh, the goal here is for us, the challenge,
everyone in the system after we've seen many, many slices
of the data that we could do a safe care in the hospital,
you're probably familiar with, uh,
many studies retrospectively collected outcomes, um, about
how we could do what we do better in terms
of the quality and safety.
So, uh, that would be absolutely in the core of the mission
of how we can care for the patient with the best, uh,
approach, patient centric, cost efficient,
and the sustainability of healthcare delivery,
especially in the light of, uh, uh,
what we're seeing in terms
of the financial instability subsystems.
Um, I, I would like always to, uh, say innovation,
but that might hold me back a little bit
because we want to make sure that we're meeting, uh,
the standard of care, to say the least.
As a clinician, I always hold myself accountable
for standard of care and then make sure that is, um,
systemized across our system.
So, like probably everyone in the country, we're, we're part
of integrated teaching academic network where we need
to have the complex patients, uh, in a specific, uh, uh,
beds on specific services.
So the systemization is, is the second layer of my priority
where, uh, let's be sure collectively that we're, uh,
delivering the care that, uh, decision to treat the,
the team buildup would be matching, uh,
what our patients they're asking for and how our providers
and, and, um, um, stakeholders,
they're also part of that engagement.
Uh, we've been faced with a lot of, uh, burnout.
Uh, we want to make sure we also care for the team.
So in the core of what we do, uh, is, uh, value-based care,
uh, the layer of the systemization and the care delivery
and the access to the care
and what brings it together is our wellbeing, our,
our approach to make sure we build a sustainable healthcare
in the community, in, uh, the teaching hospitals
and academic medical center, and have it as a continuum.
- That's amazing here.
And absolutely, you know, just so critical, um,
as you were saying, to have that standardized
and systematized, um, approach to care
and quality of care to achieve
the outcomes that you're looking for.
Um, I, I think it's so crucial and helpful to see
and think about how you're looking at that
and building strong teams and systems for the future.
Now, before we wrap up here, I'm wondering,
how do you anticipate your role
and teams will change in the future?
We've talked about some of the changes happening in the
healthcare space, and certainly, um, a lot of, you know,
the, the challenges as well as opportunities, um, can,
can really be helpful,
but also are transformative on the health system level.
- Um, that is, that's an excellent question
because I, I would, healthcare will not be static.
We need to be, um, uh, dealing with that agility of
what our patient needs, how the environment around us,
and especially coming out of, uh, the covid zone.
And, and again, we're gonna go back
to the financial stability and the access
and sustainability of our, uh, industry.
Um, personally, I see, um, my role
and my team, there will be more system level where we need
to look at the system as a whole.
We need to, um, innovate more of that healthcare delivery.
Uh, for, for, um, specific, um,
examples is, uh, how we can, um, lower the cost,
how we can, uh, sustain the nursing staffing,
how we can build a team that we know we, uh, uh,
all suffered during covid
and how that would look like for the patient side.
Uh, the regulations also that coming,
that would also require us to, uh, think about how we can,
uh, do better and how our, uh, trends and, and,
and the, the patient coming to, uh, our hospitals,
to our clinics, to our urgent care will be cared
for 24 uh, hours.
The, the one thing, um, the one thing glad
that I would like also to share that, uh, that, uh,
chief uh, medical, uh,
and quality officer role is also evolving.
There, there, um, many articles, uh, about
how we can also bring, uh, more of that, uh,
system level thinker
and be able to connect the way we do, uh,
throughout our meetings, throughout the Becker platform, uh,
to, uh, rethink and bring it back home
and say, okay, this is working, this is not working.
How we can change and, uh, keep innovate what we're doing.
- I love that. Dr.
Barta, thank you so much for joining
us on the podcast today.
It, it's really fascinating to hear how that chief medical
and quality officer role, um, you know,
really is important on the system level
and has been growing in how you can think strategically
and make an impact on patients.
And then too, to look at, you know, on the value side,
the outcomes and, and the quality.
Um, just really being elevated is so refreshing to hear.
Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.
This has been a fun conversation
and I look forward to connecting with you again soon.
- Thank you very much for having me, Laura,
and I hope we connect very soon.