- PNC is proud to support Business Forward, where community leaders discuss the issues confronting business in Central Illinois.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to Business Forward, I'm your host, Matt George.

Joining me tonight, Michelle Conger.

Michelle is Chief Strategy Officer of OSF HealthCare, and CEO of OSF HealthCare, OnCall digital health.

I might have added an extra health in there but.

- It's all right.

- But welcome Michelle.

- Thank you, thank you.

- That's quite a title.

- Great to be here.

- Now I'm excited to have you on, I do a lot of pre-work and some are easier than others, yours is very, very interesting.

So let's just start off, are you originally from Mid-Illinois or Peoria?

- I'm from Peoria, yeah, I was born and raised here.

- [Matt] Oh, nice.

- Yep, went to Woodruff High School and went to ISU and U of I.

So I've stayed in this area.

- Well, go Illini.

- Yeah.

- That's awesome, so OSF HealthCare is an integrated healthcare system that's owned and operated by the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis.

I say that because you hear a lot out and about that the sisters, you always hear the sisters.

So explain that so everyone knows exactly what that means.

Is that the board or is that.

- It is, yes.

Our sisters are very active in our board and the president of our health system is a sister.

And so they attend all of our board meetings, set the culture for OSF.

I really do believe it's different.

That's one of the reasons why I've stayed there as long as I have to be honest with you.

So they're lifeblood of the organization, - They're lifeblood, and so in your position, do they drive the strategy?

I guess you have to work very close with them, right?

- Yes, I do.

Well, they sit on the board, so the strategy I work for our CEO, I mean, he's obviously really driving the strategy.

- [Matt] Okay.

- But in the role that I have, I work directly with him and we facilitate this with the board of directors.

- [Matt] Okay.

- Determine what the strategy's going to be, and then help translate that to the remainder of the organization.

- That's pretty cool, so the headquarters are here.

- [Michelle] They are.

- For OSF HealthCare but you have locations all over.

- We do, we have 15 hospitals.

- [Matt] Okay.

- So the farthest North is actually in Escanaba in the in the UP, so that's a small, yeah.

That's a small, critical access hospital.

The rest of our footprint is in Illinois.

So in Northern Illinois, we do have a hospital in South Chicago.

And then we go all the way down to Alton, Illinois, which is really just adjacent to St. Louis.

- So I'm originally from Danville, Illinois.

And so there's a small hospital there and it was called Lakeview Hospital as I was growing up.

So as part of like what you do when you're looking at strategy and I'm guessing the CEO, he or she at any time of any company has different markets or takeover opportunities or affiliations, whatever you'd like to call 'em.

So when you look at a small hospital, like in Danville, and now I was driving by a couple years ago now it's OSF.

And I just smiled and I went, oh, okay, that's cool, well, at least now a system with that much power behind it actually is in my hometown where my mom still lives.

And that's how you think of things, right?

- [Michelle] Yeah.

- But how do you from a strategic standpoint say, that hospital in Danville fits perfectly into our model?

- Well, healthcare's changed a lot over the last 10, 15 years.

It used to be that you could operate a small independent hospital fairly easily, but just the amount of technology that it takes, the access to resources, clinical and otherwise, very, very difficult to do that as a small hospital.

So a lot of times we've had independent relationships, and the number one thing we look at is really culture.

- [Matt] Okay.

- Does it make sense for that organization to partner with OSF in some way or another?

And we still have some independent hospitals that are partners of ours that remain independent.

A lot of times though the people who've come into the system, we've been long term partners with them.

And over time they've come to the realization that they need a deeper partnership, and so then they have been brought into, and made part of the healthcare system.

- So with a system like yours it's so vast, and you see a small hospital like that, and you said that, it's almost like you look at the culture, but how would a culture like that gel with a culture that is just the way it is, it's big, right?

- Right, right.

- Like how do you look at that from your lens?

- Well, I think we are a Catholic organization.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- So I think there has to be a recognition that kind of partnership with the values that our organization has.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- I mean, do we have the same point of view about what healthcare's gonna look like in the future, whether that's small the board that exists there, they're usually involved in a lot of those conversations, and then you kinda work through that process and come to some sort of mutual conclusion that it does make sense.

I mean, our goal is to keep healthcare as close to a person's home as you can.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- So it's not to drive volume into Peoria, I mean, it's really, how can we augment and develop the services that, that community needs.

- [Matt] Gotcha.

- And that's a lot of the digital work we've been doing, is to help us extend those capabilities in a different way.

- Well, this wasn't one of my original questions, but I'm gonna ask it.

So now, because I think a lot, you hear a lot about rural areas struggling with healthcare.

So that's probably on your radar, what you're talking about.

If you're 35 miles away from the hub of Peoria, and you don't have access to this, strategically, you'd be thinking, I would think, I'm asking you the question but strategically you're thinking, how do we cover this area over here, and then this area over here, is that how you go about it?

- Oh, yeah, that's a big part it.

- [Matt] In a simplified way.

- Yeah, yeah, well, it's not easy to recruit.

If you think about just the changes in the last two years, in terms of talent, you have to think about how to scale clinical talent and bring that to those communities where perhaps we're not gonna have a neurosurgeon in a small community, but how do you think about access to neurology, how do you bring teleconsults so that we can serve that community in a different way.

- Yeah, that's pretty cool.

So when people hear OSF HealthCare, they always just think of hospital I think, right?

But you have many other lines of services.

Talk about some of these other services that you have.

- Sure, healthcare in the past used to be very hospital centric.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- I mean, that was just what everybody thought of.

- [Matt] Right.

- Was the hospital.

I mean, I think that if you think about the transformation of healthcare, one of the big areas that we've recognized, you have to get way upstream in working with the community and working with individuals before they get to a hospital.

- [Matt] Right.

- And so we've consistently built services in the ambulatory environment.

I would say those probably started more in a traditional sense, what you think of an ambulatory center, where you get X-ray where you see your doctor, where you can see specialists, things like that.

Now we've taken that even farther upstream and really are thinking about those digital lines of business, and how do we do things like remote patient monitoring?

How do we expand home care?

So I like to think of healthcare as having made a huge circle.

I mean, if you think about healthcare in a long, long time ago, it would've been focused more around your home, and services coming to your home.

And then we got really subspecialized and really good and it was all about you coming to a hospital.

And now I think we're going to make a full circle and those specializations aren't gonna go away, but they're going to be really reserved for very acute needs, and we're gonna bring more back to your home.

- Okay, so does that include telehealth?

- [Michelle] Oh yes.

- Does that include telepsych?

- Yes, yes, all of those kind of capabilities.

- [Matt] Okay.

- When we talk about digital health or telehealth, we really think about it on a continuum.

- [Matt] Okay.

- Okay, so that's everything from, perhaps it's just text based health.

So for instance, if you're being discharged from one of our hospitals, you might get a text that says, "Hey, I know you've been discharged, we'd like to stay in contact with you just to make sure you're doing okay."

And so we used AI and other types of capabilities to send you questions, you start to have some issue.

You say, "Mmmh, I've gained a lot of weight since I got home, I'm not really sure what's happening."

Then that escalates to our nurse, we call you, and so we helped to intervene and in the past, none of that existed, so that's very low, low touch.

All the way up to what we're working on is, hospital at home.

How do we take an acute patient that presents to St. Francis here in Peoria, for instance, and we make the decision we can treat you at home rather than ever admitting you to a hospital.

You can get the same kind of care that you can get in the hospital at home.

So we think about it as a continuum.

- Yeah, and I guess there's so many different possibilities 'cause you kind of hold two different roles.

So when you're thinking of continuum of care or however you wanna put it, I mean, you're talking about everything clamped together as one to make it easier for the patient.

- Right, that's the goal.

- [Matt] That's the goal.

- I mean, that is the goal to make it easier for the patient and to take, I mean, I think that in the past, there's always been sort of this thought that you as a patient interacted with us at these very discreet points.

You saw your doctor, you got an X-ray, then you went to the hospital press, maybe you went to our ED.

- [Matt] The lab, whatever it may be.

- The lab, right now, we're trying to connect all of that, and really a fabric of that is really digital health so that you do don't really ever leave our organization.

I mean, we know who you are, when you interact with us, we know your history, we know how to help you, so that it's easier for you.

So you're not having to start all over and navigate that, without some help.

- Okay, so that's gotta be easier for the physician too, right?

- [Michelle] Yeah.

- Because they can pull up whatever your system's called.

They probably even have it on iPads or whatever, and they could pull it up and say, "Oh yeah, you were here, here, here, and here, and now we know exactly where to take you instead of checking old school charts and sending someone down the hall and come back Wednesday and all that type of stuff."

- Yeah, that was sort of the promise of electronic health records, and we've implemented electronic health.

We are, I mean completely automated at every point and on a single.

- [Matt] Wow, yeah.

- A single database now, still not there yet.

- [Matt] Right, yeah.

- I mean, that is like, that's sort of that's basics, that's sort of plumbing.

And now we're getting to laying on top of that, a different kind of navigation, that is much more personalized to what a patient needs.

- Okay, so let me ask you this.

So another off the top of my head question.

- [Michelle] Yeah.

- So how do you stay, you personally stay on top of this technology?

Like how do you keep learning it?

Because you're bottom line is what you just said is you're trying to find more efficiencies.

- Right?

- How do you learn?

- Well, a lot of different ways.

I mean, we have a robust IT division inside OSF.

I mean, and they're always on top of the types of capabilities that we have today.

- [Matt] Okay.

- And then we also have an innovation team that is really responsible for thinking about what's happening in startups, or what's happening in different types, different places in the country that really could help solve So our innovation team for instance, is partnered with a group called MATTER out of Chicago.

They, a lot of our docs have mentored companies that are startup companies.

We then bring them into the system.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- When it makes sense and they can solve some of these problems for us.

- You gotta have somewhat of an entrepreneurial mindset for that too.

- [Michelle] Yes you do, absolutely.

- Because you've gotta come up with all these different creative business ideas, and knowing that half of 'em or more aren't gonna stick.

- That's it exactly.

- [Matt] Is that right?

- So they're not necessarily long term either.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- I mean, some of these things are transitional and when you look at startup companies, a lot of times they merge with someone else, they're bought out by someone else.

That's just the, that's the path.

- One of the things that I like about what you do is you look at your team, and you've got what close to 25,000 employees.

- Yes.

- And you don't call them team or you don't call them, you call 'em mission partners.

- [Michelle] We do, yes, yes.

- [Matt] So that's pretty cool.

- Yes.

- So it doesn't matter what position, you could be maintenance or you can be.

- [Michelle] Oh, you're all, yes.

- CEO, you're a mission partner.

- Yes we are, yes.

That is a derivative of the Catholic heritage and our sisters, honestly.

It really came from one of our sisters that came from Halton.

And so she, it was what they did at their hospital and when they became part of OSF.

And I think it's a reflection of the vision and mission of the organization.

Our sisters are less, fewer, than they used to be, and so they see everyone that works for OSF as have being called there.

That there's real, like, they believe that you're really called to this service and it's an extension of them.

And so they put a lot of energy and effort into working with all of us as lay people, to help represent them.

- [Matt] Train.

- And extend that mission.

Because they're not in those rooms, they're not directly interacting with patients.

And no matter where you are, if you're supporting, people who interact with patients, you really are all part of that family.

- That's pretty neat stuff.

- [Michelle] It is, yeah.

- So you've been the Chief Strategy Officer for some time now, 12 or 13 years.

And so for a system that's so big, because you've just got so many different, I don't know, revenue streams, and businesses, and different things, and how do you, in your position even start putting together a strategy with the CEO?

Like how do you break it down?

- Well, I mean, we do an annual refresh and it's really interesting too, because it's this been on a trajectory when I started my role, I think anyone who is in a strategy role, could do a pretty robust annual or biannual process, and it felt pretty good.

Though, I mean, the speed that things are moving now.

- Yeah.

- We've really moved to much more of a continuous planning process, you have to react to what's happening in your environment.

- So it's a moving document at all times.

- It is, it is.

We have a strategy map that we use for communicating to all of our mission partners, because this really can't be my strategy, or the CEO strategy, or the board strategy.

It really, if we're gonna execute on it, it has to be, everyone has to see their fingerprints and how they contribute to us achieving that.

- [Matt] Yeah, that's hard.

- It's really hard, it's really hard, yeah, yeah.

- So does each department have to put together their own strategy and then as a homework assignment then give it to your, do you do it a different way?

- No, we're, it's interesting you ask this, because this is something, so we're trying something new.

- [Matt] Okay.

- So I'll have to come back here from now and I'll tell you, but what we're doing now, we've translated our strategy.

We have a white paper that I build with our executive team, and our CEO, and our board.

And then we've translated that into a visual.

- [Matt] Okay.

- So we actually have a storyboard that talks about like, here's all of the elements externally, that are impacting us, here's all of our pride points.

And then we take them through, there's a second visual that they look at, that really is, okay.

So this is how we're reacting to all of those.

Maybe their competitors, maybe their changes in government regulations, changes in workforce.

So here's our strategy to address all of those.

And we take them through, it's like a two hour exercise.

- [Matt] Okay.

- And you can do it digitally, you can do it, we prefer, I mean, we've found so far, anyway the best way to do this is, with people from all over the organization, not just.

- [Matt] One department.

- Not just all nurses, or maybe not just all physicians, but really bringing everyone together in small teams of about 10, and they go through this exercise and start to, they have to form their own understanding of it.

I mean, in order for people to really embrace it, I think I heard someone say, what is it?

People tolerate other people's ideas, but really what they do is they'll embrace it once they understand it.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- And so this is what we're doing in terms of moving 'em in that direction.

- Well, how do you take somebody that understands it from the get go?

And you got somebody that's lagging over here and they're starting to drive you nuts.

- Yeah.

- [Matt] 'Cause you're like, get on board, get on board.

- Right.

- Because all decisions or most decisions need to be driven by the strategy, correct?

- Yeah, they're aligned, yeah, absolutely, they should be aligned, aligned to the strategy.

I think, I don't know, I think you always have people who question that and you should.

I mean, you should have that it makes us all better.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- But I think at some point, if you have taken the time for them to see how they contribute to it, and I think that's the biggest gap sometimes is people say, that's great, that's awesome, but I don't, that's not, that's not.

- [Matt] I gotcha.

- Not my thing, you know?

- So I think taking the time for them to see that, makes all the difference in that.

- So if there's a new present CEO coming in, and he or she will have their own strategy, does that just mean everything that you do, is just kind of goes by the wayside and you start over, you just take the existing and tweak it, how do you?

- Well, it probably depends on.

- [Matt] On who it is.

- On who it is, I would say, our previous CEO is the one who put me in and as the Chief Strategy Officer, but our current CEO, great, great guy was part of that.

And so he was part, he worked there, he was part of the development of the strategy we had.

And so, I mean, he certainly has his fingerprints on the one we have now, but very much interested in continuing the work that we had started.

- [Matt] Yeah, so that helps.

- Helps a lot.

- 'Cause he helped authored the other one.

- [Michelle] He did, yes.

- That's cool.

- [Michelle] Yeah, absolutely.

- So I wanna read something, I wrote this down because I don't even know what it means.

I want you to explain it to me.

- Okay.

- "You and your team led the creation of the OSF innovation agenda, including health technology incubation."

What does that mean?

- Yeah, that is part of, if you're familiar with Jump.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- Simulator that facility is really an innovation center for us.

So the first two floors are dedicated to simulation, and the next two floors are really where we house, what we call the innovation ecosystem.

And that really has been the capabilities we've built out there are engineers, designers, the bringing together our clinicians from across the system, bringing together partnerships.

So when you think about incubation or acceleration of technology, those ideas may start at OSF.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- But we're not gonna incubate 'em, so we have partnerships matter is a great example.

- Okay, I see what you're saying now, yeah.

- So we connect them and some we've got a couple spinoffs that have come out of there and a lot of great ideas that come from inside OSF, but we always try to bring ideas from outside too.

And so that same team, helps translate those into maybe pilots or other types of technologies that can address some of our problems.

- I was lucky enough to get a tour of Jump.

- [Michelle] Jump, yeah.

- That place is so cool.

- It's great.

- I mean, it's like a museum almost in some places or like a science and industry museum.

'Cause you sit there and you go, how do they do that?

And, oh, that's pretty neat on how they have the simulators for surgery or whatever may be.

- They do, it's very, yeah, yeah.

- Unbelievable.

- It is, it's a great, great asset for the health system and for.

- [Matt] The community.

- The community, we're doing, we do steam programs for instance, and my team had to get real creative on how to do that during COVID.

Because we weren't bringing all these students in.

So they created packets and we send them out.

- Yeah, it'd be easy to kick something like that to the curb for a year or two.

- [Michelle] Yep.

- But that'd be lazy and.

- [Michelle] Yep.

- These kids would, they're already struggling.

- Correct.

- So that's pretty neat.

- Yeah, yeah, it really, I mean, they've done great.

I mean, they've ended up interestingly enough, sending some of those steam capabilities across the country, because people just landed on our website and so it's great.

- So you probably don't wanna talk about this, but I gotta bring it up.

You were just recently named Modern Healthcare's 2022 class of top 25 innovators in the nation.

You had to have gotten that, whatever a letter or call or something and gone, oh my goodness.

That is about as cool as it gets.

- It is, it is pretty exciting.

Yeah, yeah, and it's really a reflection of so many years of so many people's work, I mean, it really.

- I knew you're gonna say that's my next point.

- [Michelle] Yes.

- I knew you were gonna say that.

- It really it's I have an amazing team and building the innovation ecosystem that we have.

I mean, we've just made a difference, and that was a huge element that happened during COVID.

We were able to pivot some of the things we were doing in innovation to really outreach to people who had COVID at home and take care of 'em, in a virtual setting.

We never would've been able to do that.

So that is sort of the fruits of many years of labor and a lot of people, but I was very honored to get that award.

- When I was doing my homework someone said, you are a very impressive person, you always compliment your team.

You always give them credit for work that you all do.

I mean, that's leadership 101 right there, right?

- Oh, I believe it though.

I mean, it's the reality of being a good leader.

You're only as good as the people that work with you and they really are fantastic.

- So in what you do, it's probably a pretty cool job every day, because the opportunity's just endless.

I mean, it's constantly changing, right?

- It is, yeah, it is, it is.

And it can be, I think that one of the keys is trying to understand the signal from the noise, because there's so much happening.

- [Matt] Yes.

- In just in the innovation space.

I mean, people, I mean, it could even be a buzzword, right?

If you're not careful.

So that's one of the reasons why we aligned it to our strategy.

- Are the helicopters part of your strategy?

- Of course they've always been.

Yeah, they're the, for sure, yeah.

- I love those, those are cool.

- [Michelle] Yeah, they're great.

- What does community mean to you?

- I think community is the way people are able to come together and interact, and really take care of each other.

Particularly, I don't think of a place where that's been more true than the last couple years.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- And it everyone brings some kind of gift, particularly when you're working through innovation or healthcare or trying to think about those boundaries.

So I think OSF has a responsibility to our communities.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- And delighted for us to be able to continue to do that.

- I want somebody that I was talking to said that, you and your team are best in class.

That's about as good a compliment as you could have.

- Yeah that's awesome, that's great.

That's so nice to hear.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- And that's what's fun about doing this show, is I get to talk to a lot of people and get a lot of, hear a lot of things.

But with having you come on, that was gonna be, I was pumped for it.

And so I was really, really glad that you came on.

And when you implement this next, I guess maybe three to six months, I'm gonna have you back on, because I wanna continue this conversation.

So this is a very good time, I appreciate you coming on.

- [Michelle] Absolutely.

- Thank you, and this is another episode of Business Forward.

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