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Welcome to the Becker's Healthcare podcast. I'm Mariah
Taylor, assistant editor, and I'm thrilled to be
interviewing Matt Broom, chief medical officer at BJC
Medical Group, on the podcast today. Matt, thank
you for joining me. I'm excited for our
conversation because you're one of our upcoming panelists
at our CEO CFO conference, and we're really
excited to get a sneak peek into some
of your thought leadership. But before we dive
in, I'd love for you to introduce yourself
and tell us a little bit more about
your background.
Yeah. Thanks, Mariah. I'm happy to be on
today.
You know, my background is that I'm a
general pediatrician
trained at Saint Louis University
and,
then spent some time in the US Navy
as a pediatrician and then went back and
had a career in teaching and academics for
about 8 years or so,
prior to becoming the chief medical officer of
Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital
University Hospital through SSM Health on the adult
trauma center side. And then after doing that
about 4 years moved over to BJC and
now I'm the chief medical officer over the
BJC Medical Group. So,
an exciting career, and I've really enjoyed it.
And, yeah, happy to talk about it.
Absolutely. Can you tell me a little bit
about your most successful project or initiative from
the last year? What did you do, and
what were the results?
Yeah. One of the things about the BJC
Medical Group is that we've got about 700
clinicians. They're over probably 9 markets, about a
150 or so practice sites. And historically
our markets have been fairly isolated. And so
one of the things that we've really targeted
this year is
moving into a service line model.
We've really opened up 7 service lines primary
care, hospital medicine,
cardiology,
metrics,
neurosciences,
orthopedics and gastroenterology.
And what that's enabled us to do is
bring together clinicians
from a variety of markets
united with a single strategy,
a single operational focus and a single recruitment
plan.
And that has helped us build out a
physician leadership structure,
and really
essentially streamlined how we have taken a look
at our medical group and where we want
to go.
It's been a very heavy lift. We've had
to set up service line councils, find the
right leaders, get them in place, etcetera.
And yet already seen some dividends,
even though we're only probably now just about
8 months into the project. So it's been
very exciting. It
is, and that is a huge undertaking.
Kind of looking ahead, what is the biggest
challenge you expect to face in the next
year, and how are you preparing?
You know, one of the biggest challenges I
see in healthcare whether you're, you know, leading
a hospital or a medical group or no
matter what fast facet that you're in
is that we are often very, very lean
in how we do staffing, be it nurse
staffing, physician staffing,
etcetera
and staying ahead of what is the next
big thing that comes either in
how we operationally function, preparing for as we're
all taken taken by surprise in 2020 with
the COVID pandemic or, looking to try to
engage the next generation of clinicians to provide
healthcare across the country who have a different
set of
to provide healthcare
across the country who have a different set
of expectations than maybe those clinicians who are
getting to retire.
And so we try to be
innovative with our staffing models looking ahead forward
thinking trying to really keep our ear out
there to not only what do we see
as far as in our various markets, but
trying to also look through and say, hey,
if this happens, how would we respond? And
if this happens, how would we respond?
Certainly we can't predict everything but it at
least allows us to stay nimble and on
our toes to try to at least keep
up to speed with all the fluctuations
that happen each and every day.
Absolutely.
Kind of on that topic of evolving and
changing,
since you've been a chief medical officer for
quite some time now, how do you see
the chief medical officer role evolving in the
future?
Yeah. You know, the the CMO role,
has evolved a lot. It's gone from what
is traditional as far as credentialing and a
VP of Medical Affairs and managing physician behavioral
issues to really one that engages directly in
strategy and business development.
And
then
also leaning into value based care
and then also leaning into value based care
initiatives.
And I think what you'd also find is
even in today if you interview 1 chief
medical officer you've probably interviewed 1 because that
person's job and role is very different depending
what city they're in, what state they're in,
what kind of services they oversee, etcetera.
And I think that's what it is such
vital role on accountability and authenticity
to kind of bring that not only experience
but business insight to what is required to
make healthcare system move. But you still have
to have somebody who can enlist and engage
with physician leaders and do the right thing
for patients and the clinicians that we serve.
Absolutely.
And what is your advice for those aspiring
to be CMOs one day?
Well, I think the first thing is just,
you know, take the opportunity when given to
you. Right? No one ever knows when the
right role or the right job comes their
way, and it's course never the right time
for anybody to do that and yet at
the same time if you listen, if you
spend time connecting with people, you try to
grow in your respective skill set,
you develop
a mentorship
cadre both peer mentors and others that you
can lean on about various problems then come
forward,
have the humility to ask questions and then
not be afraid to lead
and understand that each of us makes mistakes
each and every day. But how we adapt
to those mistakes and the lessons that we
learn as a result of that
opens up the capacity for that next CMO
role.
The role of a CMO is
it's very it's not only valuable,
but it's fulfilling, but it's hard work. Each
and every day, it's a difficult conversation or
a challenging strategic or operational
problem. Yet at the same time, it's a
great way for physicians to
make sure that the voice of the clinician
is heard in a way that drives business
and operations forward,
which I think is the way that we
have to get into more in healthcare.
Excellent. This has been such an amazing and
informative discussion. Thank you so much for joining
me today. You can catch more of Matt
at our upcoming clinical leadership forum at the
Becker CEO CFO roundtable, November 11th through 14th
in Chicago. We have limited space available for
attendees and sponsors, so contact us at agenda
team at beckershealthcare.com
to learn more.