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forward slash beckerspodcast.
This is Gracelyn Keller with the Becker's Healthcare
Podcast, and we are recording live at the
twenty second annual Spine Orthopedic and Pain Management
Conference.
I'm currently joined by John Lucio, who is
the regional chief medical officer at SSM Health.
John, thank you for being here. We'd love
to start off by having you share a
little bit more about yourself, your role, and
your organization.
Sure. Hi. Hello, everyone. My name is John
Lucio. I'm a physician,
and I'm the regional chief medical officer at
Saint Mary's,
health system in Jefferson City, Missouri. Prior to
that, I was in the Navy for twelve
years,
served as a,
flight surgeon and nuclear weapons engineer prior to
going into medicine.
And my current role now is I do,
somewhat clinical,
one day or two days a week, and
then I also involved with
hospital and outpatient operations in Jefferson City for
our company.
Wonderful. Well, thank you for taking the time
to join me. And let's start our conversation
with what trends or shifts you're currently seeing
now in the industry that you think are
most, important for leaders to pay attention to?
Yeah. I'm I'm from the perspective I have,
and my background was that I did have
an outpatient,
practice, and now I have an employed I'm
employed by the system.
And I have a perspective of looking at
what what shifts
leaders need to look at, not from the
outpatient side, but also from a more broader
health care delivery system side.
And one of the major areas that I
I do pay attention a lot now is
our supply chain management. It's a very,
common word tossed around right now.
Last year, it brought to, supply chain became
a very popular topic once we had that
hurricane and we had a shortage of IV
infusions.
And,
throughout even before then, we had, periodic,
supply chain shortages in the most mundane things.
And even since we re partially recovered from
the IV shortage,
we have seen
supply chain,
shortages even with most common drugs that you
would have never expected that to happen.
We even had one,
with disposable blood pressure cuffs for a while.
So it's
I I think it's forced the systems and
the physicians to kind of focus more on
where the supply is coming from,
not put so much effort and, not so
much put emphasis on a single,
supplier for many things that you
need to operate.
And I think that's one been one of
the biggest issues. The second one
is, we're watching very closely the market power
of our insurance companies,
that does affect,
outpatient delivery care, it does affect inpatient delivery
care.
And we've seen that, like, a lot of
the,
the companies have merged and have had gained
market share.
And so we watch this very closely, and
it's very important for
everyone to understand why it's happening.
And they need to start developing better and
and different how to change your relationship with
the payers at some fashion, positive or negative.
This is not a judgment statement, but it's
extremely important that, that they look at that.
The next thing is, of course, the artificial
intelligence. I've since I've been in this conference
for two days, I've seen they mentioned no
less than 10 times a
a breakout session. So,
but there's very the applicability to it is
not just diagnostic, but even we're seeing it
in terms of
automation for billing,
for die diagnostics,
of course. And one of the things that
intrigues me the most is the what they
refer to as health gamification.
And as anybody's heard used that term before,
basically, it's allowing
trying to engage the patients more in their
health and well-being
by,
making it, game kind of format, something that
they're familiar with. And so I've been watching
that to see how how if that takes
shape and if that's gonna be a practical
solution.
The other one is,
basically a lot of labor trends in terms
of how we hire and who we hire.
One of the biggest issues we've had in
the hospital system as well as outpatient is
just
staffing issues.
Problems seem to be endless. It's, it's not
just,
shortage of nurses, but even front office staff
that you typically
would need just to answer telephones and provide
a way of finding for patients. The other
one has to do with getting the right
type of person. And in the past, because
of the shortage, there was a big push
to just take in whoever you
you could get into work and do the
job. And now we've actually become a little
bit more selective with that.
And some of the the strategies we've used,
and that's this is nothing new, is a
lot of times we will look at flexible
hours for a lot of our staffing,
upscaling in terms of,
staff that want to promote their careers and
advancement.
We've even started to embrace more of the,
gig employees population, which are these are folks
that have been normally locums, say, travelers.
And, we tried to minimize that, but we've
discovered that if we don't we have to
have a better
strategy in order to integrate folks like that
into our our organization.
So those are the things we've done. And,
also, too, we even have,
some of the soft skills that people people
call them soft skills, but you really have
to make it a a positive work environment
for the employees. If they're not, then they're
not gonna stay with your organization
or they're gonna rotate out
for, you know, various reasons, even if you're
competitive in terms of salary and benefits.
Absolutely.
Well, I guess we can move on to
outpatient care as this continues to grow. How
do you see the role of ASCs and
orthopedics
evolving within the broader health care ecosystem?
Well, I think it's fantastic, actually.
Orthopedics
and pain management actually lends itself to this
type of transition.
It's a very episodic,
care delivery system, whereas if you can safely
bring the patient in, have the procedure,
post and,
have a safe post op period,
it's a it's a it's a great great
way to treat patients. You don't have subjected
to the hospital acquired infections.
You don't subject them to all the other,
delays in care that you might receive in
a bigger institution.
And so
orthopedic
and pain actually has allowed the
entrepreneurial spirit of many physicians to bloom in
ways that they couldn't have had it in
the past.
And I find this very intriguing because now
you're starting to see more and more discussion
about
developing,
having
other specialties trying to be be more involved
with it. Historically, they haven't been, but typically,
I think there were only four
specialties that were mainly interested in and, outpatient,
surgery centers. Now you're starting to see more
folks that are actually interested in in in
in being involved.
So that's just I I orthopedics has actually
been the groundbreaking, especially it's been able to
do that.
And as we round out our conversation,
many organizations are exploring new technologies, partnerships, or
care models to improve efficiency and outcomes. So
are there any innovations or initiatives that you
found particularly promising?
Well, one of the most intriguing ones are
the, use of artificial intelligence in wearables.
One of the variables that we never discuss
hardly
in health care is really the patient factor.
You know, how do how does the patient,
where where they where where is their accountability
outside of listening to the advice of, a
provider in front of them, which, by the
way, is they only, retain 30% of
how do you get that feedback back to
the patient and allow them to be involved
in their their care? We have heart rate
monitors now already, and,
those things have limited applicability.
But some things like blood sugar monitoring,
exercise
measurements,
blood pressure,
weight, so on and so forth. Those things
can actually help the give the patient feedback
and let them be more involved. I think
that's one of the glaring things we have
in health care right now is that we
do not have good systems that,
allow for patient accountability
and feedback for their own care.
Now the other things that are coming up
with,
some of the new innovations innovations I'm seeing
is sort of the,
implantables, which I'm fascinated with because I'm kind
of a tech guy. We already have
pacemakers. We have deep brain stimulators. But I
think that there's gonna be,
smaller and smaller gadgets that you can put
in bodies, and it makes people healthier. And
they can actually get better feedback,
with their well-being.
Okay. Wonderful. Well, thank you for taking the
time,
to join me. And again, we are recording
at the twenty second annual Spine Orthopedic and
Pain Management Conference.