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This is Alan Condon back with the Becker's
ASC podcast, and I'm delighted to be joined
today by Caleb Miller who's a senior vice
president of Carle Specialty and Ambulatory Care. Caleb,
we're delighted to have you make your debut
appearance in the Beckers Podcast.
For those who might not be acquainted with
you or your organization, do you mind just
giving a quick little bit of an insight
into your role and your background?
Yeah. Absolutely. So I work for Carle Health,
which is a integrated delivery system, in, the
state of Illinois.
I've been with the organization for 19 years,
as you know, to serve as a senior
vice president for specialty inventory care.
I have
responsibilities to oversee our medical group,
both on the specialty side and on the
primary care side.
I've worked closely with our physicians and our
other administrative leaders to
deliver our customers, our patients,
a
high quality care that they need and deserve.
Perfect. Thank you so much for the brief
little intro. So
Caleb, I'd love to spend some time, obviously,
no secret to you, any of our listeners,
the many trends, many challenges health care is
facing. We also see
a lot more procedures,
complex
procedures, and multiple specialties moving away from inpatient
settings towards outpatient settings.
What are the 2 or 3 key trends
that you're really following, paying close attention to
in the ASC space today and why?
I think in the ASC space, I think
there's, 2 things that are, pretty prominent for,
all organizations. I think the first thing as
you noted, the the shift from,
cases from the hospital setting to the outpatient
ASC setting,
we saw a tremendous,
up tick in that
from COVID driving
those trends.
I think what everyone's kind of interested in
is or will we still see that same
rapid growth? Will we still see that
immediate change that we saw during that time?
And I think we are and we have
been. And so we're really excited about that,
as an organization because we know that when
we get patients into those spaces, that's more
of
a controllable environment from their patient experience standpoint,
from efficiency
standpoint
And, that's probably one of the biggest trends
that we're seeing also within our organization that
kinda aligns with what we're seeing nationally.
And then I think, you know, that you
need enabling,
resources, you know, to help kinda support,
that trend and, you know, that cut that
brings in the technology space.
So how will it help us, you know,
kinda bend the cost curve of health care?
How will it help us drive efficiencies?
How will it help us improve the patient
experience with their care? And how do we
leverage all that, in the most cost effective
and efficient manner. And, we've, you know, those
are 2 areas that we're extremely focused on,
not only with our AC environment, but a
lot of, activity that we have within our
medical group.
Got it. Yeah. And so, obviously, technology comes
into play quite a bit here. When to
your point in terms of improving the patient
experience, in terms of making streamlining your operations,
making them a lot more efficient,
are there any technologies
either on the surgical side or on the
operational side that you're looking to implement, I
guess, to really help your operations in the
coming year?
Well, we are we are epic shops. So
we've been trying to leverage every potential,
resource that we have within our our epic
platform.
We've used a lot within the OR marketplace
over the last year
to drive our
schedule utilization
within the operating room. We wanna make sure
operating rooms are
full
at all times if we possibly can. And
so we've seen a tremendous uptick with that.
We've also leveraged some of the patient,
facing
interfaces that we're able to do within the,
the portal environment there. So how do we
make sure they understand you know,
post of their, post, their surgical visits? And
we've really leveraged a lot of that. Try
to also put some of that back on
the patient, not
from to, pass that onto them but also
give them more control over that,
patients that have control of their healthcare are,
more engaged with their healthcare. And so we've
been doing a lot of patient facing, interactions
that, you know, through the our portal and,
trying to continue to leverage that
through the our portal and, trying to continue
to leverage that and, you know, give, the
patients more control of their health care.
Gotcha. Gotcha. And then I wonder if you
could spend the moment just giving us a
little bit of insight into maybe surgical technology
that any kind of, whether it's on the
robotic side,
AI side, in your operating rooms, what do
you really see as, the technologies on the
forefront of surgical care over the coming years,
especially when it comes to the outpatient setting?
Yeah, I think,
what we always look at is, how is
this going to benefit,
the patient, that's kind of where we start
at baseline
and,
we've tried to leverage,
be innovative the same time, smart as it
relates to with our advancements.
We were one of the first organizations, you
know, within the nation to bring the DaVinci
robotic system into our our ASCs. We did
that because we needed to expand access
and be able to bring those cases in
into the lowest cost care setting,
in order to, you know, support that technology.
We've also
done a lot of innovation around
utilizing
technology within the operating room to help support
our teaching initiatives
as well as the research initiatives.
We do have a, emerging technology
committee within our organization that looks at these
different pieces of technology and say, again, how
is it gonna benefit the patient? And,
we brought that in the space, either to
trial it, and to see, you know, does
this really change things? And if it does,
then we, try to bring that in the
organization as quick as we possibly can.
And that's as I kind of noted, that's
kind of helped drive our,
research initiatives as well as our educational initiatives.
And then how do we, you know, kind
of be at the forefront of that and,
you know, get out there and publish and
be seen as a as a organization that
is driving innovation and partnering with vendors and,
trying to bring, you know, advancements in the
technology and share with them on, you know,
what can be improved for the next version
of their technology. That's something that's, you know,
common place with an operating room.
Gotcha. Yeah. So yeah. Fascinating. You're obviously an
epic shop. A lot of benefits that come
with that, especially if it boils down to
the the patient experience, like you said.
Other tools within patient scheduling, patient facing portal
there.
On the surgical side, very interesting to hear
that you got your da Vinci robot as
well recently. I'm curious,
when you think about the future of healthcare,
particularly within your organization, is there something that
you're particularly excited about?
I think with everything we talked about with
the technology,
the advancements that we've had,
just that we've seen just explode over the
last couple of years. I think we're in
a better position now than we ever have
in order to give our patients a better
experience,
and we've seen that.
Whether it be, you know, a lot of
these things that we've had to do, you
know, over the years, it's taken,
resources, you know, as it relates to people.
It also took,
you know, it took so long to get
something in a place or whatever. But with
advancements of AI and, other, you know, technology
advancements, we can do all these things in
a much quicker fashion. So I think, you
know, with that, we can leverage it. We
can also, you know, use those tools in
order to get feedback from our patients, in
a more expedited manner and make adjustments along
the way. And so I think, you know,
we have a tremendous opportunity to drive change,
and that's really what health care has needed
for a long time.
And, you know, we're excited to be at
the forefront of that. I think we are
at the forefront of that as an organization,
and that continues to be our focus. If
it benefits our patients, we,
you know, we'll have it at the top
of our list.
Yes. And it's fascinating to get that insight
into you, your role and CIRL Health as
an organization.
But we're obviously coming to the end of
2024
here. When you look ahead,
2025,
the next 12 months or so, how are
you thinking about growth?
Yeah.
We're thinking about growth in a lot of
ways as kind of mentioned
at the beginning of our discussion here is
what more can we shift to the outpatient
setting?
How can we
leverage the care environment as much as we
possibly can in order to give that patients
the best experience.
That will also allow us to,
you know, keep cases that we need to,
you know, in the ASC setting that should
be there, but also expand those cases,
as well as get the cases in the
right setting to, you know, allow our, you
know, our services that we have on the
hospital side run more efficient too because we
are, you know, we're, you know, putting the
systems of care in the right place. And
so we're extremely excited about
that. I think the other thing that, you
know, we're,
you know, we're really focused on is as
we do that, how do we always plan
5 years ahead? Right now, we're looking a
lot at our our physical footprint. You know,
do we have enough operating rooms over the
next 5 years, and why do we need
to be, you know, to be planful around
that? How can we collate, you know, certain
specialties within,
you know,
our our different entities that we have as
it relates for surgical and procedural care and
how can we collate them to make them
the most efficient as possible. So we've done
a lot of work around that, and we'll
continue to do that,
you know, over the next year. We always
plan 5 years out, because as soon as
we get something in place, it always seems
like we need the next thing in place,
at that time. So we're trying to be
very planful and not just think a year
ahead, but how do we think, you know,
1 year ahead, 3 years ahead, 5 years
ahead, etcetera.
Okay. The the never ending, growth challenge, but
no doubt, exciting to go out to kinda
tackle that. I love that 5 year plan
as well. Caleb, fascinating to get more insight
into you and to Carle Health. It was
really, really pleasure to get to speak to
you today. Thank you so much for joining
The Becker's podcast.
It was my pleasure. Thank you so much
for having me, and I appreciate,
your time as well.