- We're now joined by Amy Mansue, President and Chief Executive Officer of Inspira Health.

Good to see you, my friend.

- Same to you, Steve.

It's great to be back together.

- Absolutely.

We'll put up the website for Inspira Health.

For hospitals and more, describe it as the website goes up.

- Steve, I'm thrilled to tell you that I have the privilege and honor of working at Inspira Health, which is, I'm the CEO.

We are a billion-dollar health system located in the bottom of South Jersey.

And I will tell you that I really had thought I'd been to every part of New Jersey and really understood, but the nature of the challenges that are faced in rural New Jersey specifically because the density everywhere else is so great, they are really hard to imagine unless you're here.

So our service area contains, our primary service area is Gloucester, Salem, Cumberland, and parts of Atlantic and Camden County.

But the primary service area within Cumberland, and Salem, and Gloucester counties, that Cumberland, Salem Counties, those are two of the poorest counties in the state of New Jersey with the worst health outcomes.

And there are so much distance between them because there's so few people.

So in Salem County, you have roughly 60,000 people and census going down, and in Cumberland County, you have about 150,000 people.

And so when you think about the density that exists in Essex County as an example, where you sit, it really pales in comparison.

So the challenges that people in poverty face are much different.

And so I really have had, this is now almost my fourth year at Inspira Health.

We have doctors, the same things that you would have in most health systems, doctors, outpatient settings, our four hospitals you mentioned, as well as two satellite emergency departments.

And really trying to think about how we engage with the community to really address some of those fundamental challenges that are come from, you know, all the natural things you would think of a poverty, but that added the transportation issues and the tremendous gap in reference to being able to get to people and get them to care.

- I don't even like Amy calling it the post-COVID world.

We're taping this in the middle of July 2024.

It'll be seen a little bit later.

Biggest lessons, dare I ask, that you have learned as a healthcare leader in South Jersey at Inspira Health that inform and influence how you lead today from this pandemic, please.

- Yeah, Steve, I would say a couple of things.

First, the conversations I'm having with team members now about how we support their mental health, when I first started out in this business, would've been 12 people in an HR, in a human resources conference room.

But now it is so important to identify that there are so many nuanced challenges.

You're really, you know, talking to people that were have served in war, in essence.

It was a war that, you know, related to healthcare, but they went in every day not knowing whether or not they would expose themselves or their families.

And just the stress of that still remains.

I would also say the challenges of the people coming for service today are significantly greater.

They're still coming in sicker, and they're delaying care more.

And I, you know, part of that is just the post-pandemic people still trying to get in for service.

Part of that is just the challenges of having access to care in rural areas.

But another real part of that is that I think there is a distrust of the healthcare system, and so that is making people wanna wait longer to get care.

And so by the time they come in, they're much sicker than before.

And then I would add one last nuance.

People have no patience anymore.

The level of anger, and hostility, and violence that we see each day that our healthcare workers are experience is much greater than anything I could have imagined pre-COVID, to the point that we actually have an entire team of people, as do many of the health systems that focus on workplace violence prevention and really trying to identify just literally SWAT teams that come in to try and support our staff when we find ourselves in violent situations.

This is different than security.

This is actually preventive in trying to make sure that we are doing everything we can to create those safe environments for our staff.

And that, you know, ranges from de-escalation training to making sure we expanded our behavioral health services for all of the people in need.

I mean, those are the things that we're still struggling with even post-pandemic is just the tremendous needs of our own patients but also our own staff.

- Fascinating how healthcare workers went in the spring of 2020 from heroes to what Amy Mansue just described.

It's shocking, it's pathetic, it's sad, and it's a commentary in itself.

You and I had an offline conversation about nursing, the nursing shortage, the nursing challenges.

There's an initiative that you're engaged in at Inspira with one of our higher ed partners, Rowan University.

Describe what it is and what it has to do with expanding, if you will, the pipeline of nurses coming into the profession at an incredibly challenging time.

Please, Amy.

- You know, I would say a couple things.

First of all, I think every healthcare leader has an opportunity for us to help people fell in love with healthcare again.

The next generation of those people who are called to care, you know, I've talked about this before, it is a calling, you know, whether you're caring for children or the elderly, you come in every day trying to do good for other people.

And so I think part of it is really making sure that we are creating accessibility for that.

I mentioned the poverty that exists in the county, Cumberland County, where our large hospital is in Vineland.

The dropout rate from high school is one in five people, right?

So when we set up the things that you would think normally an employer would do, like you need a high school diploma, that's a barrier to entry.

And so when, as we're going through COVID, as we're looking for ways to try and get more people in, we had some conversations with stakeholders who said, "Look, you know, just take away the high school diploma, commit that you'll help them get their diploma, but then let's move forward."

Indeed, we partnered with the Rowan College of South Jersey, which is the community college in Cumberland County as well as in Gloucester County.

They share those two counties.

And we set up an investment that our board of trustees made and the county college structure to say, "Look, if our employees commit to enroll in the programs with you, we will give them tuition free."

And so that creates the opportunity, A, for us to get a population of people in to help them get their high school diploma and then give them a direct link into the county college system, which is linked already to the Rowan University.

And so through that process, we've had over 400 people participate in that program.

And there is a desire to learn, but they need help.

They need help financially, and they also need help from the support of having a group of learners around them, and in healthcare you certainly have that.

And I'm so proud every single day when I meet people who say, "You know, I started out as a medical assistant, and now I'm going on to get my nursing degree."

Or last week I got to spend some time with somebody who I had met when I was volunteering within the organization at our thrift store.

And she was the person that worked at the thrift store to help people navigate, okay, well, I need a bassinet, I need this, I need that.

Could you keep eyes for them?

And again, I'm talking about a rural part of the area in New Jersey.

So it's very personal.

Like, we make sure that we get those items for people and then set them aside so they can then buy them.

But she's now moved into her first job as a medical assistant in one of our primary care offices.

And she now has a vision about, you know, going to school and doing all these things that she couldn't have imagined.

And that's the exciting part.

Not only providing healthcare services, but giving people that launchpad, that entry to careers, to be able to really create that foundation to then be able to build on.

- Amy Mansue, a leader in the world of healthcare.

She's the President and Chief Executive Officer of Inspira Health down in South Jersey.

Cannot thank you enough, my friend.

We'll talk very soon again about a whole range of challenging and important healthcare issues.

That's Amy Mansue, I'm Steve Adubato.

Thanks for watching.

We'll see you next time.

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