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This is Laura Virdo with the Becker's Healthcare
podcast.
I'm thrilled today to be joined by Mark
LePage, senior vice president of medical groups and
inventory strategy at Trinity Health. Mark, it's a
pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
Laura, it's great to be with you and
looking forward to our conversation.
Absolutely. And, you know, this will be a
great conversation. I know we'll be talking about
some of the things you're doing at Trinity,
the ambulatory side, the ways that you're continuing
to expand and grow, within the broader system.
And so that's a really exciting topic. I
know it comes up,
as something that a lot of different organizations
are looking at and trying to figure out.
And so it'd be great to learn more
about what you're doing at Trinity. But before
we dive into that discussion,
can you tell us a little bit more
about yourself and the health system overall?
Yeah. I'd be glad to.
So,
currently, as you said, in my current role
at Trinity Health, which I've been in for
3 years, I oversee our medical groups and
ambulatory strategy.
In that role, I oversee our 15 medical
groups, which are really positioned across the country.
Within the medical group portion of Trinity Health,
we have about 2,800,000
members that call our primary care providers their
home.
And we employ 7,000,
physicians and advanced practice practitioners as part of
our medical groups.
As I said, we're organized into 15 regional
medical groups that really span across the country
from Fresno
all the way to Albany and down to
Fort Lauderdale,
and a number of sites in between.
And as you highlighted,
during your introduction,
a lot of our focus right now is
how do we continue to evolve our approach
into,
ambulatory care and the medical groups that we
oversee are a big portion of that. Prior
to my current role, I did have the
opportunity to lead our large medical group in
Southeast Michigan, IHA. I did that for 4
years with Trinity Health before my current role.
Well, that's fascinating to hear. And what trends
are you watching currently?
You know, there's a a number of things.
I think first and foremost, you know, as
we're looking at at, the demographic trends in
the country,
The country is aging and it's aging fairly
rapidly. And so in most markets, most parts
of the United States, the fastest growing segment
of the population is
the age segment that's traditionally retired, so over
65.
And we think this is gonna have some
unique challenges
for us in health care as we think
about that.
In particular, we know that those folks
that are aging
are gonna require more care. So we're gonna
have to figure out how to deliver more
care with a workforce that's roughly the same
size, as it is today because we don't
see a lot of growth in most of
our markets in the traditional working age population.
So that's certainly something that we're focused on.
We realize we're gonna have to deliver care,
in different ways than we have before in
order to meet the
demands of the population that we serve.
Along with that,
a lot of our
payer mix is going to be shifting toward
Medicare
as that population age
shift occurs over the next 20 to 25
years. And so really it just is gonna
require us to be very
operationally efficient.
And it also is gonna require us as
we transition
away from the acute care settings more toward
the ambulatory care settings to think about how
we best position those ambulatory,
sites of care for our patients, in this
aging,
demographic.
I think that makes a lot of sense
and, you know, it's really fascinating to think
about those demographic trends. Now what else are
you seeing?
Well, certainly, you know, within the, the overall
provider community including both physicians and APPs,
we've talked a bit about burnout for a
while now in healthcare and we certainly see
that as administrative burdens within healthcare
have increased. And so we're trying to think
about
how do we make our practice locations
and our practice environments as optimal for the
caregivers,
as we possibly can. And and a big
part of that is really thinking about how
do we,
lessen some of that administrative burden on our
caregivers
so that they can do what only they
can do, which is really to provide care,
at the frontline level to our patients.
We're thinking one of the things we're thinking
about is how do we leverage some of
the artificial intelligence tools to help offload some
of that work off of our caregivers
so that really they can spend more quality
time and more intense time with our patients,
which is really what we want them to
be able to do in the first place.
I definitely appreciate that too. I I know
in so many places across the country, having
that ability to focus more on the patient
and clinical care side is really a a
lot more fulfilling for health care providers.
Now looking at, as you mentioned, some of
the demographic changes as well as, provider wellness,
what are you most focused on right now
and excited about?
Really about,
well, a couple of things that like I
said, the, we've got a a tool that
we're using right now, Nuance DAX,
that is helping with documentation,
for our providers. So we're very excited about
that. We're also excited about the other
artificial intelligence tools that are, coming along,
to help us alleviate some of that care
burden for our caregivers.
That those are things that we're excited about.
In addition to that, we're thinking about,
how do we as you mentioned, we and
I as you mentioned, we're thinking of our
transition from, acute care to ambulatory care.
And one of those is,
what Mike Hlebowski has spoken about our our
CEO,
which is our community division and really thinking
about how do we set up an appropriate
governance and operating model
for our community division, which, includes our medical
groups as well as our efforts around ambulatory
surgery centers and ambulatory imaging sites.
I could imagine that takes a lot of
work and time and effort and planning as
well as resources, but, truly, it seems like
it'll make a big difference for the community,
you know, once,
everything is fully in place, you know, and
and you're able to live out that strategy,
that vision of what it looks like to
have that type of community support in in
full ambulatory network.
Well, looking back over the last 6 months
or so, what are you most proud of?
Well, there's a number of things I'm really
proud of. I I guess I'd highlight 3,
three things.
First, the medical groups across Trinity have been
doing incredible work on hypertension management.
We've partnered with the, American Medical Association, American
Heart Association's
MAPBP
program,
to really leverage some of their best learnings
around hypertension management.
And we've seen incredible results and across across
our medical groups, our rate of blood pressure
control is getting,
up toward 80%, which is really quite remarkable
when you consider that the average across the
country is probably closer to 45 to 50%.
So really incredible work, and we're continuing to
improve those overall rates of blood pressure control.
So very, very, proud of all of the
work that's gone into that on the part
of our medical groups.
In addition to that, you know, thinking about
our work on access because we know that
the experience that our patients and members have
is really tied to their ability to get
into our practice sites
when they want and need care.
And so really, as an organization doubling down
to make sure that our patients can get
in and be seen when they wanna be
seen for care. And so that's been a
big effort, and we've made,
really incredible progress on that
as we've
increased our our rate of fulfillment in a
way that we measure that access by about
8.5
percentage points over the past year.
And then finally, I'd mentioned the fact that
from a stewardship perspective as all of us
in healthcare have really faced this
inflationary environment that
we're continuing to face,
really
dramatic improvement in our overall
operating performance with a
significant improvement in our operating margin across all
of Trinity Health Medical Groups,
to the tune of 8 percentage point improvement.
So really a lot of things to be
proud of and and and the medical groups
are doing tremendous work across Trinity Health.
That's amazing to hear and and really impressive
on all fronts when you think about, as
you mentioned, some of the quality improvements and
things you've been doing around that hypertension management.
And then 2, and not to forget the
financial aspect of it, in in having that
improvement within the operating margin, I think so
much, you know,
sometimes it can get lost in terms of,
having that ability to have the strong financial
back bone in order to do everything else
you wanna do to be innovative on the
clinical side, it seems like it would make
a really big difference.
It really does. And and and I think
all of us in health care are facing
a lot of headwinds. And so,
you know, declining reimbursements
and frankly
declining rates of Medicare reimbursement. And so it
really is imperative for us to be able
to continue to live out our mission that
we steward our resources
as well as we possibly can. And that
really just demands
a heightened level of operational
performance and rigor across all of our medical
groups.
Fantastic. Well, before we wrap up here, I'm
wondering what advice would you give evolving leaders
today? What is really important for them to
know and understand as they grow into the
health care space?
I think a couple of things. You know,
I think for for leaders evolving leaders who
have who come from a clinical background, I
think it's really important to make sure
that you bridge into the sort of business
and financial sides of overall health care delivery,
because I think that will really,
amplify the voice of our clinician
leaders, across health care.
I think for folks that aren't that, you
know, are leaders, evolving leaders, but haven't been
historically
involved in care delivery, getting close to care
delivery, you know, at the front line to
better understand it, I think will help facilitate
their understanding of,
exactly the the different challenges that are being
faced across health care right now.
And then I think more generally just saying,
you know,
be brave. Right? Step into the discomfort and
find those troublesome problems
or opportunities for improvement and step into those.
Those they're the the the most challenging things
to solve, but they're also the most rewarding
things to solve. So I encourage
I'd encourage,
bravery in in stepping into those problem areas,
within health care or within the health care
system.
I love that. Mark, thank you so much
for joining us on the podcast today. This
has been such a fascinating conversation, and I
look forward to connecting with you again soon.
Thank you so much, Laura. I really appreciate
it.