Hi, everyone. You're listening to the Becker's healthcare
podcast.
I'm Erica Carbajal with the Becker's hospital review
team. For today's episode, we're joined by doctor
Chidag Choudhary,
vice president and chief medical officer of Cleveland
Clinic,
Martin
Health. Doctor Chowdhury, thank you so much. Welcome
to the podcast.
Oh, thank you for having me. I'm delighted.
Yeah.
Well, to start us off, what is the
single most important goal that you'd point to
that you're focused on in your first year
as CMO of Cleveland Clinic Martin Health? I
know you joined recently.
Yeah. Absolutely.
So just a little bit of background.
At Cleveland
Clinic Martin Health is a three hospital system,
that includes,
Martin Cleveland Clinic Martin North, Martin South, and
Cleveland Clinic Tradition Hospital.
I was lucky enough
to serve in the role of vice president
chief medical officer of Cleveland Clinic Tradition and
now in this expanded role over all three
hospitals within the within the Martin Health System.
What that allowed me to do is, one,
get a good understanding
of
how the hospitals are functioning and how they're
interconnected
with each other.
And because at the end of the day,
what we wanna provide is a strong foundation
of clinical care,
and we wanna be able to deliver this
consistently,
reliably,
across both counties that we serve, which is,
Martin County and St. Lucie County.
Now what does that mean
for somebody who does not work in medicine
who who who might listen to this? What
that means is if someone comes in as
a patient,
where it doesn't matter as to which facility
that they walk into, whether it's the hospital,
whether it's one of our outpatient sites,
that they experience the same safe,
timely,
and coordinated care every single time. What we
want them to that experience needs to be
absolutely standard irrespective whether it's outpatient,
inpatient,
and it doesn't matter as to which site
they they interact with us.
Looking
into
how do we go about
making this happen,
and everything starts with data.
We look at our capacity. We see as
to how we're using it,
quality and safety outcomes across the board,
and then what our communities are asking off
us, whether it's the hospitals or the ambulatory
sites.
Where is the demand?
What,
so which services do the patients need?
And if there is any variation in the
care that we are providing across these sites
and how do we meet those needs?
When we start after starting with data, our
next piece is working with our
team of teams.
It's our physician leaders, it's our nursing leaders,
our operations leaders, both on the inpatient side
and the ambulatory teams,
fully coming up with some concrete priorities.
Things like standardizing
our key clinical pathways,
making sure access is streamlined,
and then sequencing what our capital and program
investments are going to be
so that we're not just reacting to the
current volume and the current demand,
but what does a community need
right now and what will it need for
the next five, ten, fifteen, twenty years into
the future.
So we've started with data. We've got our
teams together. We have a plan. We
on the capital capital plan, be able to
meet the needs.
And then
there comes the next step.
How how are we doing with our our
plan?
And a few early markers of that are
really around
targeted quality metrics.
Were we able to onboard the new specialists
and the new primary care doctors that we
wanted to wanted to start at these sites?
And how are we coordinating?
Because you know care is getting more and
more complex especially in
the state of Florida where Cleveland Clinic Martin
Health is.
We have an older patient population,
people with very complex needs.
How are we being able to meet these
complex
care requirements,
not just at that one site of interaction
at one of our ambulatory sites,
but
being able to act make sure that these
patients are able to not only meet their
primary care needs, but any of their consultative
needs at any
of our other ambulatory locations or if testing
needs to happen on the inpatient side.
So overall, I would say looking back at
this first year of serving in this role
over
the three hospitals,
I think we have really raised the bar
when it comes
to reliability.
We have planned for some very thoughtful growth
and made real progress.
Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. I think it's
it's always interesting to hear just about the
theme of, you know, consistency
in in the care experience and in care
delivery
and, you know, so much that goes into
that in terms of clinician alignment
and analyzing the data,
so much strategy and planning. So interesting to
hear about. Thank you for sharing.
I know you mentioned your previous role as
CMO at Tradition Hospital, and there, I know
you helped expand
key programs like the comprehensive stroke center and
helped recruit specialists to strengthen cardiovascular
and specialty services.
One of the things that we hear a
lot about is the competition for specialists, especially
sub specialists. So as that intensifies
nationwide,
what strategies have you found most effective in
attracting and retaining the talent that is actually
needed to build and sustain
those types of programs?
Absolutely. That's a that's a great question
and very timely to
if I was to look back at
my week this week,
we have I've sat down and interviewed
two possible,
cardiologists
that we would like to to join our
team.
And before I ask them to, you know,
you know, we looked at the CVs before
I ask them, like, please tell me about
yourself.
The first question I ask is, what do
you wanna know from me? And they that
the
every single time the question is, well, what
is your vision?
And that is
where
I feel like what separates us and being
and end up being able to recruit the
the the top talent that we need is
being able to articulate as to what our
community needs,
where the demand is growing,
how they're going to come help not only
expand the program, but really build the program
and be able to take it to the
next level. And it doesn't really matter whether
it's cardiovascular care, stroke care, or any other
complex service.
It's not as it's not simply filling
a vacancy.
That role is far more compelling
for the physician
when they can see how they're contributing,
and
it it also ensures that we're doing the
right thing for the communities that we serve.
And at the same time,
recruitment
is
fundamentally
relational.
We want to get to know as to
what their professional goals are,
what the family needs, what kind of culture
are they looking for,
and
does that align with Martin Health and Cleveland
Clinic?
Because we want them to come, we want
them to stay, we want them to be
happy, their their families to be happy,
because that's the only way we're gonna be
able to deliver on our commitment to quality
and and and safety.
In addition to that,
what
what allows us to be able to really
recruit this top talent is
just the breadth and the scope of Cleveland
Clinic
because it allows people's careers to evolve.
There are different leadership opportunities, whether it might
come in academia,
research,
publishing,
on an operational end, and then getting involved
in any any any quality program.
So it allows people to evolve not only
as
clinicians,
but but but the person as a whole
and really, like, add to,
what what they what they're looking for depending
on whichever
chapter that they they are in their lives.
Another place that gets overlooked sometimes is
when a new physician or a new surgeon
starts,
how do they feel
when it comes to support?
What I'm what I mean by support is
do they have the appropriate nursing support?
Operationally, are things working that they the the
way that they should?
Are are ambulatory teams making sure that the
referral patterns are set up, the support staff
is there, and that there's a good
onboarding plan.
We want our doctors to and our clinicians
to feel
supported
and productive from day one.
We don't want someone to come and then
try and spend the first six months trying
to figure out how to how to navigate
the system.
And I can give you another very concrete
example, you know, focusing on the cardiology piece
is
we're recruiting cardiologists.
We have recruited our, you know, we've really
grown our neurology, neurosurgery, neuro interventional program.
And it's not just to meet the broader
growing cardiovascular and complex care demands of this
region,
But it's really making sure that when we
are meeting these needs,
we are also ensuring that our patients receive
the most advanced care
close to home. They never have to get
into a car and have to drive by
the Orlando or Miami to get this care.
That we are going to be able to
provide this care to them here at home
within their communities
locally
on the Treasure Coast.
So it's a very
intentional
program focused on finding the right cultural fit
and having our, physicians, our surgeons, our clinicians,
our nurse practitioners, our peers, anyone who joins
really feel that their work is impactful
and that we're committed to committed to them.
Yeah. Doctor Chaudhry, and I think you raise
a great point too that we don't often
hear a ton about just, you know, when
it comes to
discussions around
recruitment is that the piece of
having painting the the picture for physicians and
having them see their involvement
in in decision making and kind of the
bigger picture
and painting that for what that looks like
for them and how valuable that that can
be.
I know earlier in our discussion, you mentioned
just, you know, demands for care growing and
care becoming more complex. I think especially acute
in Florida, where can the state continues to
see such population growth, especially among older adults.
So can you expand a little bit on
how Martin Health is thinking about
which specialty services to expand locally versus when
to leverage Cleveland Clinic's broader Florida or system
wide network?
Yeah. Absolutely. I think this is what helps,
for us to be a part of a
large
global academic health system
is needs that we can meet locally
and then what we can lean on on
our worldwide expertise,
for
specialties that we might may not have currently
or or have,
and and being able to make sure that
our patients have access to them.
So focusing on Florida,
Florida
in general
and the Treasure Coast in particular,
specifically the St. Lucie County area
has really experienced some very rapid population growth.
It has become incredibly popular,
during and post the the COVID pandemic.
And as you know, it's
generally an older population,
multiple chronic conditions,
and the need to be able to provide
complex
care I mean, care for complex clinical conditions
in a very coordinated manner.
First step for us, again, you know, going
back to,
the the first question is around understanding
data.
Where are the people moving to? Which neighborhoods
are growing?
What conditions
are do people need the services for?
And which services are patients currently having to
travel to receive that we can
meet these needs locally.
After that, we ask ourselves two key questions.
Where is it essential to build this local
capacity
so our patients can receive
timely, high quality care that's
close to home?
And where do where is it better for
us to tap into the breadth of the
Cleveland Clinic network, whether it's in Florida at
Western
or across the enterprise,
in in in Cleveland, Ohio
for this highly specialized
coronary services.
So in some areas like emergency care, stroke
care, cardiovascular services,
medical services, general surgical services,
we offer these robust local capabilities right here
on the Treasure Coast at Tradition,
Martin North, and Martin South,
which means, you know, investing in the right
specialist, the right technology, the right care models,
really make you know, really leveraging our our
nurse practitioners, our physician assistants,
with the with the physicians and surgeons
so that our patients don't face any delays
when it comes to accessing care, especially in
sensitive situations
and making sure that they stay
connected
with their
local
healthcare team and their local communities.
In other areas where it makes our sense
to leverage our broader network,
that's where we coordinate referrals, whether it is
with our other Cleveland Clinic Florida location in
in in Western.
It could be in person or it could
be through virtual consults with sub specialists
and
arranging seamless transfers for highly complex procedures where
a patient might
travel to have a specific complex procedure done
at Western, but we can do all the
pre
and post care.
We want it to be like from
the patient's perspective, their interaction with us,
it should feel
like one
connected
system.
We share our protocols. We communicate freely.
And at the end of it all, we're
always keeping
the patient at the center of it.
We wanted our ultimate goal is
high quality care
right here on the Treasure Coast,
make it easy for our patients to access
the full depth of the Cleveland Clinic expertise
when they need it,
and without
the burden of have of them having to
navigate it on their own all on their
own.
Yeah. Absolutely. No. That makes a ton of
sense.
Doctor Shoudry, last lastly, I just wanted to
ask you about
quality and safety. I know that will be
a core part of your portfolio as CMO
as well. So as you look across Martin
Health's three hospitals and outpatient footprint, where do
you see the biggest opportunities to strengthen that
reliability
and care delivery?
And perhaps what specific
metrics or initiatives
will you be watching most closely?
Absolutely.
High reliability,
to me, that means that our patients can
count on us
to deliver
safe, effective,
and compassionate care
every time. Not just most of the time,
every time.
And it really starts with our Cleveland Clinic
culture of making safety a non negotiable
expectation.
We make sure our caregivers feel safe to
speak up about any concerns,
any near misses,
so that harm will not reach any of
our patients in our care.
It's across the board. We don't have a
single
meeting, whether it is any of
our tiered huddles in the morning or an
executive team meeting,
without talking about quality,
patient safety and patient experience
first.
That remains first and foremost in our minds
and that's the first thing that we discuss
before we step into any other issue that
we're gonna talk about.
And as I look across our hospitals, our
outpatient sites, I continue to, you know, we
find opportunities to further standardize this care
for high risk conditions and specifically around
sepsis.
Our
hospital
system, Cleveland Clinic, has
partnered
with different
technology firms.
And one of the in specific, our partnership
with Bayesian
for our sepsis detection
algorithms,
which means that we have it embedded
in our clinical workflows in the hospital,
helping our clinicians recognize when someone is at
a high risk of developing sepsis
so that we can respond to that sooner,
we can
start the diagnosis sooner, we can start treating
them sooner.
And the reason why that is important is
for anyone
who has developing sepsis and then developing septic
shock, which means that they're having
changes in their blood pressure or their mentation
because of this overwhelming infection,
for every hour that we can get that
antibiotic
earlier,
every hour reduces their mortality
by seven percent.
That is what that this is how we
want to
leverage artificial intelligence,
really strengthen our clinical workflows,
and improve patient outcomes at the end of
it. What this does is it reduces variation
and it helps our teams respond quickly and
consistently
every single time.
Yeah. Doctor Chowdhury, and I love what you
mentioned just about
the culture and and how important that is
in quality and safety. I think it it
echoes a sentiment that
we hear often lately, especially from from clinical
leaders is just that, you know, a lot
of teams can be good at quality and
safety initiatives, but culture is truly what drives
the day to day,
improvements and sustaining that focus.
Absolutely. I could not agree more.
Well, doctor Chowdhury, thank you so much for
taking the time to join us on the
podcast today and share your insights with listeners.
Oh, thank you inviting me. It's really been
really been a pleasure talking to you, Erica.
Yeah. Thanks again.