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That's the beckershospitalreview.com
events page. See you in Chicago.
This is Laura Dierdahl with the Becker's Healthcare
podcast.
I'm thrilled today to be joined by doctor
Navneet Dang, chief medical officer at Geisinger Health.
Doctor Dang, it's a pleasure to have you
on the podcast today.
Thank you, Laura. It's my pleasure to be
here with you today, at Becker's,
podcast, and, thank you for the opportunity.
My pleasure. And, you know, I'm really looking
forward to hearing from you because I know
Geisinger
is really a leader in innovation,
and you're doing a great many things right
now, that could really be instructive for a
great deal of our audience. And so I'm
excited to dive in. But before we do,
could you tell us a little bit more
about yourself and your background?
Yeah. Sure.
So my name is Navani Dang.
I'm an internal medicine physician by trade,
practicing medicine and has been in health care
for about 20 plus years.
I have been a health care executive and,
joined Geisinger Health about 8 years back.
And since then, I have been in various,
leadership positions within Geisinger.
For last 3 years, I am in the
role of chief medical officer,
and,
oversee
clinical operations, medical affairs,
service line growth, business development in the Scranton
market.
I oversee a Tertiary Care Medical Center in
Scranton,
which is a level 2 trauma center
and also the teaching hospital
for Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine
and,
our various northeast residency and fellowship programs.
We are the busiest medical center in Scranton
area, and, we accept transfers transfers
from all the other outlying hospitals in the
area.
And our vision as a health system is
to make better health easier for our patients
and communities.
We serve in northeast Pennsylvania.
I'm glad to be here with you today,
Laura.
Oh, absolutely.
My pleasure. You know, I I love that
tagline of making health care better for your
communities.
I I think, truly, that is such an
important mission and vision. And, you know, given
your journey and, how you evolved your career,
what do you see as being some of
the top priorities for the rest of this
year? I know health care is in such
a transformational time right now, and so I'd
love to get your perspective on what's top
of mind for you.
Yeah. No. Thank you for the question. This
is this is a great question. So I
will say a couple things.
Patient safety,
journey to 0 harm,
and,
focus on
providing overall high quality care for our patients
has always been top of mind for for
us.
I would say that, for rest of the
year, that is going to be,
our main focus,
in terms of how can we improve,
patient safety for our patients? How can we
reduce
hospital acquired infections?
How can we
make journey to 0 harm a reality for
our patients.
And,
the other
focus for rest of the year,
is going to be optimizing
access.
While we continue to provide
care for,
very sick patients in the in our emergency
rooms
and,
they continue to get admitted in the hospital.
But how can we move the care
upstream
and, make sure that our patients have appropriate
access in the primary care office,
and also
access to specialty care and access to,
screenings
so that we can
move
the care upstream
and reduce our emergency room utilization and also
inpatient,
utilization
for our patients and
communities we serve in Northeastern Pennsylvania.
So the goal is always to,
keep our communities and patients
healthier
and,
see if we can avoid the hospitalization.
But if they need hospitalization,
and ER visits, we are there for them
as well. So I would say those are
some of the key priorities for rest of
the year.
That makes a lot of sense. You know,
really aligns with a lot of what I'm
hearing from leaders across across the country in
thinking about access and trying to figure out
the best way to and most streamlined way
to, direct patients. Like you said, some will
need the inpatient care of the hospital, while
others,
you know, could use more access to specialty
care, primary care, and some
of the other clinical services within the community.
So, you know, when you look at that,
I know that, nationally,
we certainly have the booming shortage of specialists
in health care,
and physicians and clinicians in general.
How do you think about access? How do
you make sure that the patients
know where to go depending on,
what their challenges or what their issue is
and really direct them in the right way
so that, you know, you can be as
streamlined as possible in delivering that care and
making sure they've got,
clinicians as well are optimized
in their time and their schedules too.
Yeah.
Again,
great question.
I don't think there is a there is
an easy solution to this,
But,
our focus has really been on providing,
that team based care approach.
And,
we are really making sure that we are
providing right care,
at the right place at the right time
for our patients and communities
that we serve.
We are really
leveraging
our APPs
a lot
in this team based care approach,
And, we are also leveraging telehealth services,
to make sure that our patients have,
access to care,
at the right place and at the right
time. And we are always
not seeing them in the emergency room or,
you know, in the hospital.
One of the things that,
we have done
in terms of patients who get admitted to
the hospital,
we are leveraging our remote patient monitoring,
tools,
post discharge.
And there is a whole care team who
is able to monitor these patients after discharge
from the hospital
to prevent,
readmissions
and prevent ED utilization
from happening.
So I would say those are some of
the tactics that we have deployed
to make sure that our patients have, the
right access.
Well, that's great to hear. And, you know,
certainly,
some really powerful solutions, it sounds like, to,
kind of get,
the system
systems in place and the right support for
patients as they're going through their health care
journeys, whether it's with the APPs, telehealth, or
some of the remote patient monitoring,
to tackle some of those issues. So that's
great to hear. Thank you so much, doctor
Dang. And along those lines, you know,
are there any other programs or initiatives that
have been really needle moving for you in
the last year or so?
Yeah. Thank you. So,
couple things come to mind
in terms of, some of the,
work in 2023.
We have been really laser focused in terms
of providing high quality care, as I said,
in my introduction,
for our patients and communities in Northeast Pennsylvania.
CMS,
5 star is one of our strategic
focus areas
and is also one of our strategic priority.
Because I truly believe that if you don't
measure, you can't improve.
And under CMS 5 star,
there are more than 50 measures
into 5 big buckets of quality,
which are mortality,
readmission, patient experience,
patient safety, and harm measures are also part
of,
CMS 5 Star.
And,
there are KPIs under timeliness of care as
well.
What we did to make sure that,
we are improving our clinical outcomes,
we created a multidisciplinary
structure.
And as a part of
this multidisciplinary
structure, we have multiple teams
comprising of, physicians,
nursing staff, care management.
Again, a team based approach
who continue to look at our performance.
We use Vizient as our,
internal
data vendor and also look at benchmarking across
the industry
so that we are able to focus on
patient outcomes.
And we also focused heavily on
journey to 0 harm initiatives
so that we could improve our
performance and minimize patient harm. As a result
of all these efforts,
we achieved leapfrog a ratings
this year,
from,
in our spring 2024
ratings.
And, this is the 2nd year in a
row
that,
we maintained our CMS ratings as a 4
star,
medical center,
which we are extremely proud of. And that
means we are providing high quality care for
our patients and communities that we serve in
Northeastern
Pennsylvania.
That's amazing to hear. You know? And what
great results in thinking about, you know, the
CMS 5 star hospital league, frog a ratings.
Certainly a great reflection of the type of
carrier delivering in the operation that you run
at Geisinger.
And, you know, one thing stood out to
me about what you were saying and talking
about in terms of becoming more of a
data driven organization,
using tools like business platform and and a
partnership there.
I I know this is a a big
challenge for a lot of organizations as they're
trying to incorporate more data and information into
the care delivery processes and systems. Some,
clinicians, you know, jump on it right away
while others need a little bit more time
or need some convincing.
How easy it has been to really become
more of a data driven culture at Geisinger?
What have you done to,
really bring everybody on board and move in
the right direction when you think about the
type of information and type of data that,
you're producing for your overall team?
Yeah. Thanks, Laura. This this is again,
a great questions.
So one of the things,
that we have done, we wanted to make
sure that how do we
leverage
data and how do we change the data
into information
and create that knowledge sharing,
that is needed for our teams to act
on. One of the things we did, we
created what we call as accountable care unit
model,
where there is a diet partnership
between a physician and a nursing leader,
who continue to look at all the patient
outcomes on their specific unit, whether
it's hospital acquired infections, like central line associated
bloodstream infections,
or catheter associated urinary tract infections,
falls or pressure injuries, all the patient heart
measures
or whether
it's, length of stay or,
any other throughput measures.
And they work together as a diet leadership
team
to drive performance and improve patient outcomes.
I would say that that has been extremely
successful.
Again,
a team based approach
where physicians and nursing teams,
even at the middle management level and at
the unit level,
are driving performance. I would say that has
been really impactful for us.
Well, doctor Dang, it's been such a pleasure
speaking with you. I know we've talked a
lot about Geisinger's, some of the different goals
around patient safety, zero harm, high quality care
for your entire community, and the accomplishments you've
achieved with the CMS 5 star rating as
well as becoming more data driven in leapfrog
a, which is amazing to hear and see
those results. Now I wanted to look a
little bit into the future before we wrapped
up our conversation.
How are you thinking about growth and member
experience going forward?
Yeah. Thanks, Laura. Another great question.
I would say that for me,
we realize
growth has how do we improve access to
care
and
move the care upstream.
Whether it's primary care access or whether it's
access to specialty care
or whether it's access to screening.
Whether it's mammograms,
whether it's,
colonoscopies.
So I think that would be our main
strategic focus
and we are focusing heavily on providing value
based care.
We know that how can we move the
care outside the four walls of the hospital
closer to home has been a strategic priority
for us.
We know that when we take care of
our congestive heart failure patients or COPD patients
and patients
who have other chronic diseases
as a part of our primary care offices
or in the specialty care offices,
we are able to keep these patients healthy
and keep them out of the hospital.
So I would say that,
providing
access
is one of our growth strategy.
And, certainly, that also helps to improve our
patient experience and our member experience.
So that will be our strategic focus going
forward.
It's fascinating to hear. I know that transition
to more care and monitoring in the home,
is huge for the entire health care industry
and great to know when,
that you're thinking through that and, taking innovative
approach of how to achieve quality,
care and outcomes and and use that,
appropriately.
Doctor Dang, thank you so much for joining
us on the podcast today. This has been
a really fun conversation, and I look forward
to connecting with you again soon.
Yeah. No. Thanks, Laura, for your time, and
appreciate the opportunity.