An interview with Dudley Poppens, Compass One Healthcare, SVP Sales; Tom Funk; Katie Leo, Sg2, as moderator; and Amit Sharma, Sg2, as participant
Watch the full video below or keep scrolling to read.
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This video is part of the Compass One Healthcare x Vizient, Inc Podcast Series.
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Q: How are the current market conditions impacting hospitals today?
Tom Funk: As people think the pandemic is over, we're still facing the same challenges. Burnout is a word you hear all the time that's real. And when you look at our partners at the C-suite level, there's constant change. So, as we start to make change and evolve with what's going on in the industry, the challenge we're facing, and I think many of our partners is just the churn, the burnout, but also the turnover of our folks. So, if we set a strategy or we set a path forward six or 12 months later, we may be partnering with someone else. And that's a real challenge for us.
Amit Sharma, senior principal at SG2: Hospitals and health systems are really challenged by just the sustainability of the current model. One of the things we've talked about with our clients is the days of being all things to all people is not sustainable anymore. And organizations have to kind of pick a path, be different, be unique and have a value prop. We're seeing a lot of systems struggle and be challenged by that. The workforce piece and the financial piece and the challenges around capacity just exacerbate that struggle.
Dudley Poppins, senior vice president of sales at Compass One Healthcare: When you're running next to nothing margin, it's difficult to invest in growth and it's really difficult to do the kinds of improvements that I think most of these clients would like to accomplish. So, I think the financial headwinds are huge. I think there are others around workforce that continue to pull back on the ability to grow the business in the way they want. And I think finally, we're really focusing these changes in systems of care. The system of care is probably one of my favorite frames of reference because it's such a visual representation of a health system. But as the move to the outpatient side comes more and more heavily, as they begin to look at different ways to serve disparate patient populations, we've got to be on our toes, too, in order to be able to serve them as best we can.
Q: How are these market conditions affecting the priorities of health systems?
Sharma: It's interesting, given what's happened over the last few years, that as a health system, you could conceivably have 25 or 30 things to work on as an organization. And as we think about how successful organizations get through what they need to work through, it's actually about focusing on fewer things and fewer priorities and doubling down on clinical care, quality safety volumes, financials, and really focusing on your core clinical business as where you need to spend your time as a hospital leadership team and an executive team. As the center of gravity in health care today moves outside of the hospital, it gets even harder to prioritize and focus because you've got the acute care business, you've got the ambulatory business and a lot of pressures. But what we've seen organizations do well is focus on 3 to 5 things and acknowledge they cannot do 25 things. That's where partnerships and other organizations and teams and vendors provide support along those lines. And that's critical to success in today's environment.
Q: What is the role of strategic support services like Compass One in an environment like this?
Poppins: I think for us, this is a bit of an evolution. We're typically hired opportunistically in order to solve a very particular problem at a very particular time. And I think we are operationally really good at solving that problem. Where we stop short is continuing to grow along this continuum of your transaction, now you're sort of in this middle partner phase where you might or might not grow to this very strategic partnership, which is such an important piece for all of us to grow in to. So, I think we can do more than just the base service lines. That's the big thing here, is that the table stakes are doing those basic services really well. You can't do anything from a growth perspective until you do it right. Once the base is in place, we should be able to accelerate. And I think that's a collaborative effort between us and our clients in order to be able to get to that next level and continue to drive the process forward. What it should lead us to is that we should be a much bigger, better sort of outsourcing model that's focused on the things that matter today. And we're starting to pivot to where it's headed tomorrow and then the patient experience along with the caregivers. I think that's the other piece we have to pivot even harder towards.
Funk: At Compass One, when you take a step back, we were about 66,000 associates. That's today. We're still roughly 15 to 18% short staffed in our hourly staffing ranks. We've quickly realized over the last 24 months, the folks that left us and left healthcare aren't coming back anytime soon. What we've had to do to execute on a lot of what Dudley said is that you can't replace everyone with robots, at least today or not quite yet today. We really had to focus on that in our core competencies around people. And getting back to the basics around recruiting, hiring quickly. Speed to market in terms of getting them hired and getting them trained is more critical now than before. We've had to really take a hard look at our standard operating procedures around those things and really put a greater focus on not just taking care of patients, but really taking care of our people. So, we've really focused on creating a better employee engagement model, a better employee experience model. With all that, we are looking at technologies to replace that 10-15% of folks that we don't have. We've had to become more efficient. We've had to become more lean, and we're taking care of more patients. And we don't see that equation changing. And so it's a combination of getting the blocking and tackling done in terms of recruiting, hiring and retaining folks and then looking at creative ways to implement and integrate technology that will supplement that short staffing challenge that we will probably always have.
Sharma: Are we a vendor or are we a partner? I think health systems today, more than ever, are looking for a partner. And the definition of partner and the execution of going from vendor to partner is a lot easier said than done. It takes time, it takes resources, it takes effort, it takes commitment. But there's real payoff there as you think about the value of a partner from strategic support services compared to a vendor where you're kind of in that cost equation game, and that's the race to the bottom. That's a tough place to be. But our clients are looking for folks that are aligned with them at the highest levels about the strategy of the organization and then I think more importantly, how does that strategy alignment turn into account management and the personalization and the commitment of resources to see that account every single day and see it through every single day, both in terms of people, but also in terms of technology and resources to support that. Our hospitals and health system clients are struggling with a lot on the clinical front. They should have trust that that's taken care of and that their partners are managing that and if there's an issue, they'll bring it forth. They don't have to ask about what's going on. They should know exactly what's going on at all times.
Q: What does this mean for self-operated hospitals? Can Compass One really do it better?
Funk: Of course we can. With everything that our partners in these health systems are facing outside of support services, we are trying to have conversations around being more of a strategic partner and through that we're trying to focus on what their core business is and allow us to help them where we are great and where our core businesses are. We're finding insights into where we operate environmental services. We're seeing better outcomes around infectious disease control versus self-operated hospitals. Again, that might sound like a quick data point, but when you kind of follow that thread, if we're able to deliver those type of outcomes that will ultimately allow our clinical care providers, our nurses to operate at the top of their license because they're not worrying about those things. They're not cleaning rooms. That's our job. And we've got incredible insights and data points that help support that. On the on the food side, same thing when you look at our expense control. When you you're at the size and scope of our healthcare arm, Morrison Healthcare, we can provide not just cost savings but efficiencies and expertise. It's not about being efficient. It's about being effective. The combination of those things, I think, is how we can help provide more value to the self-operated hospital. And they're struggling today. We know that. So, if we can get in the door and have the conversation at more of a strategic level, not a transactional conversation, I think we can make a huge impact for them.
Q: Efficiency has long been a focus for support services, but what about enabling the effectiveness of clinical support teams? Efficient doesn't always mean effective. Can you comment on that?
Poppins: Efficiency tends to leave you with the impression of lowest possible price, right? That's what it feels like. And in many cases, unfortunately it is because it's not the most effective result over a long period of time whether it is on the financial side, the experience side, the caregiver side. It typically cost long-term more to make a very short-term financial decision today. So, I think we need to help educate folks to look at the long-term value, the outcomes, the KPIs that we're going to drive. That's part of the whole data piece. We have to start really taking a look and dig deep so that we understand how we're operating our business in order to drive better KPIs for folks. We've done some really fun work with SG2. It's been terrific and we've got some different examples such as our EVS programs are supporting the clinical staff in a way that results in a 22% reduction in hospital nurse turnover. This is validated and vetted information. So, you know, the partnership between the clinical team and Compass One is reducing the burden by 3%, plus we're seeing greater efficiency in our star accounts as well and the efficiencies translating to effectiveness. When you kind of think about those two frames of reference, there's reductions for certain, but they're not financial reductions per say. These are really just being very effective with the right resources in place.
Q: What about cultural integration? Is this important?
Sharma: I think it is. To me, cultural integration is not a do it once and then dust it off in three years. It's regular touchpoints, a regular conversation about what's working, what's not working, understanding the values of the organization, how does this align with how we do business. It's got to be a regular dialog. And I think that's part of building a partnership. There's got to be an investment of time by leaders from both organizations to say, where do we fit? Where's their resonance? Where's there some disconnect and investing to work through that because you're never going to find a perfect match, but it's about putting the effort into figure it out and find common ground and understanding and a path forward. So, I think cultural alignment is really important. What that does is set the framework for how you would manage an account, right? If the C-suite of an organization is only focused on dollars and cents, that helps you think through how that accounts can be managed. If there are other attributes and other elements, you can craft your account management and planning approach to meet with where the organization is culturally and how they react and respond.
Poppins: There's no template that you layer over the top and you suddenly are a match. But I think reading the tea leaves efficiently and effectively is important. There are organizations that will be utterly financially driven and we need to be able to respond to them in a way that lets them see we understand their pain. There are others who are very much in a growth mode who are looking for that next great iteration of themselves. That's a different kind of alignment than with the person that's focused solely on the money side of it. But I think wrapped up in all of this is the importance of our ability to have the right programs, having the right systems and having the data to support the assertions that we make through our proposals and our contracts as we begin to work together. At the end of the day, I think much of culture is trust and they need to trust that we're going to deliver.
Funk: I think one of the questions I get most around culture is around our people. And as we win and are awarded a contract, they're checking off a partnership or even existing partnerships. Our approaches is, a bit of a synthetic self-op model. It's not about Compass One, it's about their brand. So, whether it's the Mayo Clinic or Cleveland Clinic, where we have partners, we want our folks to feel like they work for them. We partner with the hospital leadership, the HR teams and the system’s teams to help drive that cultural integration. At the end of the day, we want them to be proud to work for us, but we want them to be really proud to work within the community where they live and take care of their friends, patients and family and feel like they're a part of something bigger. I think when we lean into that, we see the highest levels of engagement with our people and we see the lowest levels of turnover. Where we have partners that bring us into the fold, so to speak, and allow our teams to feel like they're as much a part of their families as our company, we see outcomes that are almost twice as good. The biggest pain point that we face is employee turnover, period. If we're able to partner and integrate our cultures with health systems, it just generates incredible outcomes and ultimately delivers a better patient experience.
Q: Please comment on any final thoughts on what to look for in a winning partnership.
Funk: As we've grown to the size we have, we're still trying to unlock our economies of scale. We've quickly been able to pivot and really focus on how to bring them forward to our clients. Leveraging those tools we have will help drive those outcomes they want, whether it's financially driven or driving for more cost efficiencies. But I think that leveraging our economy of scale as the leading company in our space is critically important. And we've probably typically shied away from talking about that. We operate within 2652 hospitals across the country, but when you think about what that means to a individual health system, think about what comes with our insights, the data, the dashboards. We have more insights around how to take care of patients and drive patient experience than anyone else just because of our scale and scope. And so what I would say is, people are facing these challenges. They're not in it alone. Leverage us more. I maybe a broken record here, but move us out of the basement.
We're not a vendor. We can be a strategic partner. And when leveraged correctly, we can add incredible value to a health care system or systems.
Poppins: We work with some folks even today who have said the outsourcing thing is fine, but it's not really what we want from you. We want to grow technology. We want to commercialize technology with you. That's pretty interesting coming to an outsourcing company that does housekeeping of food, right? It's a whole different mindset. And there are three or four other examples like that. We work with a client who said, I need to build a brand. I need to change the brand I have today, build a new brand, and I want food to be an integral part of it. That's a different kind of conversation, right? So, I think there are really good green sprouts out there where we're starting to see people view us differently. I hope anyone who listens to this will take a minute just to sort of say, maybe there's more to this than saying, they’re just support services. There was more there.
Sharma: For me, it's about elevating above the table stakes and understanding that the table stakes are kind of what gets you in the door and in the conversation. And you've got to be top flight across that with no gaps because that's what the expectation is. And then it's the willingness to be creative and the willingness to try new things, the willingness to pivot, test, fail fast and meet the client where they are. And if they're moving the needle, just find a way to go along for the ride and figure it out. And I think that the willingness to go along for the ride and figure it out, means a lot when hospitals and health systems are struggling in so many different ways and trying to figure out their own way that investment towards a partnership and that time and resource is substantial.
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About Vizient, Inc.
Vizient, Inc., the nation’s largest provider-driven healthcare performance improvement company, serves more than 60% of the nation’s acute care providers, which includes 97% of the nation’s academic medical centers, and more than 25% of the non-acute care market. Vizient provides expertise, analytics and advisory services, as well as a contract portfolio that represents more than $130 billion in annual purchasing volume. Vizient’s solutions and services improve the delivery of high-value care by aligning cost, quality and market performance. Headquartered in Irving, Texas, Vizient has offices throughout the United States. Learn more at www.vizientinc.com.
