Hello, and welcome to the Becker's Healthcare Podcast.
My name is Chanel Banger. Today, I have
the pleasure of speaking with doctor Victor Navarro,
the chief clinical officer of the central region
of Jefferson Health System, who joins the podcast
today to share insights into his background, trends
he's keeping an eye on, and a bit
more. Doctor Navarro, thank you so much for
joining me today. Oh, my pleasure, Chanel. Thanks
for having me.
Of course. Well, to get us started, could
you please introduce yourself and tell us a
bit about your background and Jefferson Health System?
Sure. Sure will. I'd love to. Thanks very
much. Yeah. My name is Vic Navarro.
As I as you said, I'm a chief
clinical officer for
one of the four regions within Jefferson Health,
the Central Region, which is essentially the Metropolitan
Philadelphia area covering seven health care,
hospital facilities for of of our 33.
I'm a transplant physician by training. I still
practice,
but I have become the chief clinical officer
in the Central Region, and I took this
role in 2023.
My my main responsibilities
are to oversee the quality,
safety, regulatory
programs,
for the Central Region. I also oversee the
medical staff office, and I also help our
critical service lines
to grow from a strategic and even operational
perspective,
as part of a big team.
That includes our transplant programs, heart and vascular,
musculoskeletal
cancer,
women's programs.
So that's my role.
Perfect. Thank you so much for the introduction.
And now moving into the meat of the
podcast a bit, I'm curious to know
what are the trends that you're currently watching
either in transplant
space, executive leadership, or just health care overall?
Yeah.
Sure. Well, I'll tell you,
in talking with my colleagues, reading the literature,
keeping one's ear to the ground,
I think the most important thing we've got
to keep an eye on is artificial intelligence
and technology.
You know, this is a tool that it
seems to be most sort of carefully regulated
and scrutinized at the organizational level. And Jefferson
with this very large system of 33 hospitals
has a robust process for this. But, you
know, there's risk involved in artificial intelligence and
technology, but it's so useful in so many
ways.
It can help with administrative
tasks, predictive analytics, as you know,
very much in diagnostic
support.
And and I think as we move further
and further, AI is gonna become incredibly important.
Actually, it already is important,
for alleviating the doctors and other providers of
of administrative
tasks.
Everything from scribing
to, you know, other things that our that
our front office does.
Jefferson is very deep into and a and
a leader of the pack on,
ambient listening for among our providers in the
office,
now in the hospital, and now it's being
adopted by our nurses.
But I'd also like to see,
our own health system and,
in general,
more patient facing artificial intelligence
technology such as conversational agents
becoming tested and deployed.
Things that might help patients
prepare for procedures.
And that really allows us on the
the clinical end to become more efficient because
we can deploy these processes that will interact
with patients, help them prep, let's say, for,
you know, a a colonoscopy
or another surgical procedure.
And we don't have to take the time
of our of our, operating room staff to
do that. So I think that's one of
the big things. The other thing which I
think we've got to keep a close eye
on is virtual and care and home care.
You know, hospitals at home are very important,
and all health systems
are investing heavily in virtual and remote monitoring.
Certainly at Jefferson where we have a large
health plan,
This is very important for our members so
that we can, after discharge, give them an
opportunity for virtual care to have follow-up soon
after their discharge.
But virtual care is critically important to maintain
access.
I think we've got to keep a close
eye on precision medicine,
whether that's in the area of genomics
or biomarkers.
And it has such a potential great impact
in oncology
and other areas such as brain disease, brain
health, Alzheimer's disease.
And then I think, you know, workforce in
general,
labor shortages are something that we're living with
every day, and employee costs nonetheless continue to
rise. And this puts a lot of pressure
on healthcare organizations.
And so we've got to be increasingly
efficient on how we manage our, our workforce.
Obviously, we're asking our our providers to become
increasingly more productive.
So we've got to be really creative and
be mindful of shifts in workforce.
Absolutely.
A lot of innovative things happening in health
care right now. Thank you for walking us
through that. And now looking forward into the
rest of 2026,
what are you most focused on and excited
about? And then I kinda want you to
look back at the past six to eighteen
months. So can you talk about an initiative,
a project, or something that you or Jefferson
Health has accomplished that you're proud of? Sure.
Sure. You know, Jefferson has become,
you know, as you know, Chanel, a very
large health system, and we have a few
strategic health,
medical centers that are are
tertiary or more quaternary care. You know, centers
that will provide transplant care, for example, or
take care of the most complex vascular procedures.
Certainly in the central region where I'm located,
our tertiary
slash quaternary facility, which is Thomas Jefferson University
Hospital,
is bound by city streets and, you know,
height restrictions. And it's an older facility,
yet still very, very productive and very packed.
And so one of the most important things
that we've done over the past six to
twelve months
is to look at our assets, our bed
capacity within Thomas Jefferson University Hospital as well
as other hospitals within our central region. And
start to guide our patients
from our emergency department, for example, to one
of our other hospitals for care that might
not be required
to be rendered in our university hospital. You
know, for example,
a patient who has an aortic dissection needs
to be within the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital
walls. However, many other patients who might have
heart disease,
other infectious diseases,
vascular problems
could very easily and be taken care of
very well at another hospital, for example, Methodist.
And so we've we've developed,
we've developed great processes
to,
redistribute so to speak in a compassionate way
where patients understand what's going on and are
in agreement to some of our other facilities.
And I think this is gonna be key
for the future, particularly for
health systems that like ours where you've got
very, very many hospitals, you're just, you know,
distributed in in large areas, but you've got
to figure out ways to provide high acuity
services.
And you can't do that in every space.
You've got to figure out,
where these high acuity specialties can operate in
the most efficient
and highest quality way. And that may just
be one or a few hospitals within these
large health systems. So it's really incumbent upon
us managers to figure out ways to keep
those patients,
coming to these high acuity hospitals,
to keep the capacity there for them
yet to not prevent or create barriers for
patients who may have lower acuity disease but
still need hospitalizations
while they can be taken care of at
some of our other hospitals. So managing capacity
is something that I think we've done well.
And at Jefferson, there's certainly more to do
because we are undergoing tremendous renovations
of our emergency room and and building new
units and and our floors to create capacity.
But until that's all said and done, we
do have to you know, we we are
always on top of keeping patient capacity at
its absolutely optimum.
Absolutely. That's amazing to hear. And
I'm curious to hear from your perspective as
the practicing clinician and somebody that's worn different
hats throughout the Jefferson Health System. What advice
would you give to evolving leaders looking to
have that same impact and drive in the
careers as you have?
Oh, well, thank you. That's a very nice
question.
I have been with Jefferson for a long
time.
It's actually connected in some ways since 2001,
and I've seen the landscape of health care
change both locally, nationally, and I think Jefferson
is responding really well to it.
My advice is that any health care leader
has to be committed to being flexible.
Things change on a dime within, you know,
week by week, month by month.
New regulations appear, you know, new processes may
appear that improve efficiency. So one must really
be flexible and open to change.
And realizing that sometimes you don't know what
you don't know, and you've got to be
open to what other people have to say
and what other health systems might be doing,
particularly systems that are operating in a similar
demographic in our situation in urban environments.
So flexibility is important as is resilience because,
you know, change can be tough. But, you
know, change is important. It helps us grow,
and it also makes us stronger. So I
think one has to
commit to be resilient
and to be communicative and resourceful with one's
team because there is a lot of talent.
Sometimes that talent is hidden and we have
to coax it out of people, but really
a lot of good ideas,
and focus can come out of our our
various team members.
I think that's the most important advice I
can give, to be flexible, to be resilient,
and to look within for strength. There are
a lot of pressures out there. You know,
we mustn't worry about what other health systems
are doing, at least not too much. We
have to really worry to be sure that
we're continuing to provide high quality, you know,
mission driven care.
Yes. We must focus on volumes and we
do that through making the best use of
capacity.
But I think living the mission of your
organization is another important piece of advice I'd
give.
Excellent advice. Well, doctor Navarro, I wanna thank
you for your time today. But before I
let you go, is there anything else that
listener, Chanel?
Well, no. I appreciate that, Chanel. You know,
I think,
Jefferson, as as I've said a few times,
is a very large health system with hospitals
in many different venues, and I think this
adds to the depth and dimension of what
we can offer from the from the extent
of the Lehigh Valley where the Lehigh Valley
Health Network has become part of Jefferson to
now New Jersey as well as metropolitan
Philadelphia.
The high acuity advanced specialty services that we
offer and system line efficiencies, I think, will
be a model for
similar
diverse health systems such as Jefferson.
Got it. Got it. Well, that's a great
note. And on, Doctor. Navarro, I wanna thank
you once again for your time today and
for sharing your insights on the Becker's Healthcare
podcast. Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye
now.