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- This is Laura Dedo with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast.
I'm thrilled today to be joined by Dr. Raymond Roon,
who is the Chief scientist at Baptist
Memorial Healthcare Corporation, Dr.
Osro gba, thank you so much
for joining us on the podcast today.
- Thank you, Laura. It's my pleasure to be with you
- Now.
I know we've got a lot to talk about,
and I'm really excited to learn more about
what you're doing at Baptist Memorial Healthcare.
But before we dive into my questions,
can you tell us a little bit more about
yourself and your background?
- Thank you, Laura. Uh, I'm a thoracic medical oncologist
and a health services researcher at the Baptist, um,
cancer Center in Memphis, Tennessee, um,
where my official title is Chief Scientist for the, um,
healthcare system.
Um, I'm an implementation scientist, um, and,
and director of our multidisciplinary
thoracic oncology program.
I'm also the principal investigator
of a pretty exciting project we have going on.
We call the Mid South Miracle.
I'll be delighted to share some of that with you today.
- Absolutely. Fantastic. I, I think that sounds great.
And you know, I, I'd love to dive right in there.
Can you tell us a little bit more about that project?
Uh, what really you're digging into and what you're finding?
- Yeah. So the Mid South Miracle comes out of, uh,
the problem of where we are.
Um, my healthcare system,
Baptist Memorial Healthcare Corporation,
is the dominant care provider in the Tri-state region
that includes most of Mississippi, uh, chunk
of eastern Arkansas and West Tennessee.
But we spill over into parts of Kentucky
and Missouri and Alabama.
Um, this region of the United States has some
of the highest per capita cancer incidents
and mortality rates.
Uh, so that's the lemon.
The lemonade is that we have taken a population, um,
based perspective, um, bringing existing sciences,
uh, team science, implementation science, population science
to look strategically at the challenge of care delivery
to our very high risk, large volume,
very diverse, um, population.
And, and that has given us this perspective that, um,
building rigorous programs
and building, um, highly skilled teams within the programs,
uh, can actually help us deliver care efficiently
with better outcomes, uh, and better cost effectiveness.
So this is the basic, um, perspective
where the challenge comes
and the solutions that we're applying to meet the challenge.
- Absolutely. That's great to hear it.
And certainly, you know, there's so much, um, opportunity
as you mentioned in that space to continue to grow
and develop and serve the community better.
So when you're looking at this as a whole, what are some
of the big issues that you're
following in healthcare right now?
What's top of mind for you?
- The top of mind for us is how to extend access
to uniformly high quality care
in sustainable cost-effective ways that lead to
good population level outcomes.
That is kind of the big task that we have, um,
tackled and, and,
and we're, um, looking at how
to not only build our programs,
but a, a at train a workforce that is tailored
to meet the demand.
So looking at not just the kinds of people we have,
but the skill sets that they need to be able
to deliver the care that we want to be able
to provide uniformly,
but also how to enhance the care we deliver
by leveraging technology, technology.
So, so deploying robust,
highly functional programs to open up access
to diverse populations while delivering care at a
cost effective enough, uh, manner to be able to
sustain the, the demand, uh,
and the growth of our programs is a very
exciting, um, challenge.
And, and we are looking at how best to leverage, uh,
information technology to,
to enhance the care that we deliver.
These are the exciting things that we're engaged in, um,
looking forward to serving our population better.
- I love that. I, I think that makes so much sense.
And you know, that magic word access, uh,
to high quality care, you know, it certainly sounds easy
or is easier said than done, um,
but I, I'm really interested in particular,
when you look ahead, um, what about
that makes you excited and what makes you nervous?
What aspects do you really see as being, um,
coming together versus areas where, you know,
you're running into a few more challenges?
- Yeah, we get me excited is the early
results that we have seen.
So we, we have been very rigorous in, uh,
implementing these programs, designing them,
benchmarking them, testing them, implementing them,
constantly collecting data to ensure that we know, uh,
at any given point in time
where we are in relation to our goals.
So some of the results we have seen are really exciting.
Um, Laura, I'll tell you, so for example,
our mid south miracle, essentially, we're deploying seven
specific programs across our healthcare system, uh,
to help improve the outcomes of lung cancer patients.
So, so, um, we, we have two,
um, early detection programs, uh, conceptually.
One is conventional lung cancer screening,
but another really exciting program we have is our
incidental lung nod program.
Basically using technology to help us hoover up, uh,
the results of, um, radiologic images that happen
to demonstrate the possibility of a pre-malignant
or malignant, uh, uh, lung lesion.
Uh, which we found to be even more effective than
lung cancer screening by expanding access to the possibility
of early detection to a much wider range of our population,
including people who would never have qualified
to be screened, uh, finding lung cancer early.
Similar to what we find with screening, being able
to deploy, um, multidisciplinary care, uh, delivery
to this diverse population is another program we have
disseminated, uh, tobacco control programs.
That's another one. But also when we find these early lung
cancers, one of the key things that we know we have
to be able to do is deliver safe, effective,
curative intense treatment.
So surgical quality, pathology, quality, biomarker based,
uh, decision making for treatment have been major components
of our Midsouth miracle.
And then finally, you know, giving people access to
what I call tomorrow's treatment today,
which you can only do through the auspices
of a clinical trial.
So expanding access to clinical trials across this
huge diverse six state population
that traditionally has been a research desert
is part of the excitement.
And the results that we have seen
so far are very encouraging.
I'll just tell you real quick, we are finding
that the lung cancer patients who receive their care within
our structured program environment have
three times the, uh,
better survival than the aggregate group of
lung cancer patients whose care is delivered
outside these programs three times.
The median survival of lung cancer patients cared for
outside our programs is about 11 months.
The median survival of the, uh, patients
who receive their care within our programs about 36 months.
36. So we, we, we are really excited about this
and looking forward to disseminating this across the land.
- That is really impressive to hear,
and certainly, you know, exciting
that you've gone this kind of outcomes.
And then too, to be able to look ahead and scale
and grow the program to potentially affect more people, um,
seems like it would be a really great
opportunity. Completely.
- I agree, Laura. - Absolutely.
From your perspective, um,
what do you think most effective healthcare leaders will
need in order to be successful over the next two
to three years, especially as healthcare changes
and we learn more about, you know, where, um,
where we can be most effective in helping
people in populations?
What should leaders keep in mind?
- Yeah, that's a great question, Laura.
Um, I think the number one is that we have
to have a population health perspective, uh,
especially in cancer, uh, where there is so much pathology,
so much if you will, misery where there is also so much,
uh, mortality still.
So, so looking at the health of our populations
is got to be somewhere at the heart
of everything we do strategically.
So designing our systems to be able to,
um, prevent, detect early
optimize treatment to get it to the people who need it,
where they need it at the time they need it in the safest
possible way, is a big component of our
strategic mission.
Now, the, the leaders of healthcare systems not only have
to be strategically sound,
but they also have to be tactically astute.
We have to figure out the steps that either take
to actually implement high functioning systems to,
to essentially guarantee us the outcomes
that we, uh, desire.
And one of the things that has to be
hardwired in the DNA of of our leadership has
to be comfort with data.
We have to be comfortable abstracting, analyzing,
interpreting, and then using data to guide us
as we deploy resources, um, across our populations.
And to be able to do that, we have also to be
very comfortable with adopting technology.
Technology has to be somewhere at the heart of the solutions
to the problems that we tackle
- That is so important to note,
and especially from the technology side.
But really, you know, looking at these entire initiatives,
obviously take resources, um, and time and energy.
How do you think about it from the health system level
perspective and being able to actually devote resources,
whether it's time or,
or financial as well, um, to putting forward, you know,
these, these types of population health programs
that are really preventative measures.
Um, but at the moment, you know,
might not have strong funding mechanisms from at least
payers in, in the traditional way
that health systems have brought in
money, if that makes sense.
- Yeah, Laura, that's a great question. I tell you.
So that's somewhere near the heart of the whole Mm-Hmm,
matter, um, be
because, um, nothing is sustainable
if it does not have return on investment.
So, so one of the things that we have
to be very clear-eyed about is what do we want to do?
What investment will need require to do it?
And what is going to be the return on that investment?
I, I think where we run into trouble sometimes is when we
get, um, um, when, when we allow our,
our emotions, uh,
overcome our clear eye pragmatic thinking, um, and,
and it gets back to the model that we use
to figure out when we are making,
when we're being successful, and when we're not.
So, so the, the idea of population health does require
that the reimbursement models, uh, provide us the incentives
to make the upfront investments
because we know we will get these returns.
Because the, the problem is if you don't have return on your
investment, where as a healthcare system
or any other system, you, you will quickly run out of
resources with which to do whatever good you sought to do.
We as a society, um, we have to understand that
and continue to work hard to reconfigure our,
our models of reimbursement in that direction of
wellness care, um, the health of populations.
Now, one of the things that I have been able to articulate
to my c-suite leadership is the, the,
the concept of the model.
So as our contracts are increasingly value based,
one of the things that we're able to demonstrate is you,
you can't just rely on continuous high volume pathology.
Um, what what we want to emphasize is,
is the value to the system of higher levels
of survivorship, uh, delivering high quality care
within structured systems with better outcomes
yields us, you know, armies of grateful survivors,
almost in an annuity system where people survive
and they, they, they're grateful
and they come back for additional care
over hopefully many years.
There is a model there that makes it cost effective
for healthcare systems.
- That's such a great point and,
and really fascinating to think about.
Dr. Osro Giba, thank you so much
for joining us on the podcast today.
This has been a fascinating discussion.
I hope to connect with you further to discuss
and go deeper into some of these points,
but really, you know, great to speak with you today
and really learn more about what you're
doing about this memorial.
Thank you.
- Thank you, Ms. .
Enjoyed our conversation today, Laura.