Megan Gillespie, CEO of Sutter Santa Rosa Regional Hospital

This episode features Megan Gillespie, CEO of Sutter Santa Rosa Regional Hospital. Megan shares her personal journey to becoming a healthcare leader and offers insights into the strategies she uses to keep staff engaged—highlighting the importance of strategic roadmaps, proactive planning, and maintaining a clear vision for the future.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
This is Laura Dierda with the Becker's Healthcare
podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by
Megan Gillespie, chief executive officer at Sutter Santa
Rosa Regional Hospital. Megan, it's a pleasure to
have on the podcast today. Thanks, Laura. It's
a pleasure to be here. Now I'm really
excited to have you on the line because
I know there's a lot of cool things
that, you know, you're doing at Santa Rosa
Regional, and I'll certainly be excited to get

(00:20):
an opportunity to talk a little bit about
how you're thinking about the future. But before
we dive in, I'm wondering, could you introduce
yourself and just tell us a little bit
about the hospital?
Sure.
So I had the opportunity to relocate to
Sonoma County back in October
2023
from Illinois.
I'm originally from the East Coast, but Illinois
was where I was residing prior to relocating.

(00:42):
And I currently have the privilege to serve
in the role as CEO for Sutter Santa
Rosa Regional Hospital.
And we're a part of the bigger Sutter
Health System,
and we're really uniquely positioned,
between urban San Francisco
and the very rural geography of Northern California
in wine country.
So it's just an interesting place to be,

(01:03):
and it lends a lot of opportunities
for us to really look at how do
we open up access for care.
Yeah. Absolutely.
That you know, it sounds like a great
opportunity to just continue to grow and build
and serve the community. So I'm curious. What's
your biggest winner success story from the last
year?
So we've had a lot of great milestones
from this past year, but probably one of

(01:25):
our biggest wins was really focusing on where
we had to act open up access
where patients needed care.
You know, our community
was uniquely challenged,
and I knew that moving into Northern California
and Sonoma County, but I didn't realize how
truly constrained access to care. And I learned
more and more of that throughout my transition.

(01:46):
I'd say one of the first areas that
we really focused on was growing our teams
because we needed our people to be ready
to open up access and care for those
patients coming in where the demand was high.
We focused initially on the portals of entry
where our patients were most
frequently coming in to access health care. So

(02:07):
our emergency department,
you know, our patients that especially needed access
to vital
infusion services,
timely surgery.
You know, we and I wanna pause because
we were also recognized and earned recognition for
being the top 10% in the nation for
surgical care from health grades this past year.

(02:28):
Our team is really proud of that.
And it was also significant because patients were
waiting a long time to get access to
surgical care, and we've really opened those doors
up.
The other spaces
may be not as acute, but just as
important,
access to imaging, access to lab. So really
looking at those portals of entry and making

(02:49):
sure that our teams were hired
in those spaces to handle the demand
that was needed throughout our community.
That makes a lot of sense. You know,
really, it seems like a smart way to
tackle a big problem for I know so
many hospitals and health systems across the country
is just trying to figure out how they
can,
really serve the patients better and make sure

(03:10):
they have access to even care.
What are the top two to three issues
that you're focused on right now?
Well, it is definitely continuing the access. And,
you know, when I think back to just
to summarize what we just talked about before
we shift into that,
you know, if we combine the touch points
for emergency department infusion

(03:31):
surgeries,
accepted emergent transfers into our hospital.
Our team impacted patients with enhanced access more
than nine thousand one hundred instances
last year in 2024 compared to 2023.
And we're on track to raise that bar
again for 2025.
So access will be a continued

(03:52):
issue that we're gonna continue to focus on
as we open up and figure out how
do we connect that care better for our
patients
and make it easier for patients to get
access to care. So that, I would say,
is probably number one
for sure.
I'd say
within that top realm, it's as a system,
how are we able to make it easier

(04:14):
for our team to provide the care delivery?
And that's a lot of that is gonna
be generated through innovation, through technology,
but also really looking at our systems and
working as one system, one Sutter Health.
Looking at what do we need to offset
to our ambulatory sites,
how do we
support the demand across our different geographies, and

(04:37):
make sure that we can care for more
people across the different communities.
And the last thing I'll say about that
topic is the underpinning for all of that
is really around our people and our culture.
So making sure we have the right people
on our teams, making sure they're supported to
do their best work, and being able to
retain that talent.
I'm gonna tag this in as another win.

(05:00):
We had a lowest historical rate ever for
turnover
while achieving the highest headcount,
this past year as well. So our people
are really
the ones to give credit to for making
making this access happen for our communities.
That's amazing to hear. You know, certainly a
huge testament to them, in what you've been

(05:21):
able to accomplish over the last couple years.
Now where do you see some of the
big opportunities for growth in the future?
I think this is such a hot topic
right now with health care. You know? I
think about for the first time
in history, we're having a revolution that's not
dependent on
human or animal power, you know, similar to

(05:41):
our industrial revolutions we've had in the past.
We are solidly in an innovation
AI technology error
that is moving at light speed. You know,
we're we're moving faster than we ever have
before.
And at the same time, I think we're
we're moving the slowest we're ever gonna move
when we look ahead to the future.

(06:02):
There's,
such a pace that
AI is driving in health care, and I
think that ability for us to take advantage
of how do we leverage that compilation of
data
and take advantage
to predict
how do we drive
better health care, how do we drive better
health care outcomes

(06:23):
and shape population health for the better?
So I think it's it's a loaded question.
I think I could talk about that for
eight hours, which I won't because I know
we don't have eight hours. But I think
as we move forward with that light speed
pace,
it's
the challenge is gonna be how do we
preserve that humanity in health care and help
to ensure that we're

(06:43):
empowering,
adding that value added activity back into health
care. You know, having our clinicians help shape
how we're using those different technologies, how we're
using AI,
and give people back the most value part
of their profession, you know, the joy in
the work that we get to do.
One example I just wanna share quickly is

(07:05):
having the opportunity to watch one of our
emergency department physicians
in a physician and triage role, and that's
where our physicians are caring for those patients
and helping to triage
what track they're gonna go into to get
whatever care they need.
And we're using something called,
a bridge, and it's ambient listening for our

(07:26):
physicians.
And he used it so seamlessly
without having to type while he's doing his
assessment,
while he's caring for that patient.
And
in his words, it's bringing the fun back
in what he gets to do. This is
why he became a physician.
So he's not having to stay hours after
his shift to catch up documentation.

(07:46):
He's not having to stare at the computer.
He's able to care for the patient,
and the note is generated, and all he
has to do is validate, maybe tweak it
here and there. But it's done.
I can imagine that's, you know, such a
relief and burden lifted off his shoulders and
certainly for all clinicians that are able to
use that type of technology.
It makes a big difference not only for

(08:07):
clinical care, but then happiness and and just
ability to live their lives as well.
Mhmm.
Perfect. Well, I am curious from your perspective.
Given all this change that's coming about, whether
it's technology driven or, you know, a patient,
population, communities, what they need in order to
thrive, what do you think it will take
as a leader in order to build a

(08:28):
great organization in the next five years or
so? What do you need in order to
continue to, be able to serve your community
well?
There are so many answers to that question,
but I'm gonna go back to kind of
the theme that we've been talking through
throughout this whole
conversation, and I think it comes down to
culture.
It's a perfect storm right now in health

(08:50):
care.
There's definitely more pressure. There's
decreasing reimbursements.
There's increased demand. We have 11,000 people aging
into Medicare
every day. Yeah. I was just on the
phone talking to my parents who are in
the East Coast, and my dad was working
on getting an appointment that was a struggle.
So it's a real problem that people are
dealing with on a daily basis.

(09:12):
Decreased availability of health care professionals, you know,
that pace is definitely not equaling the pace
of people aging into Medicare.
So I believe that as we move forward
in order for organizations
to thrive,
we really have to understand and execute on
that importance of intentional investment in developing our
people and

(09:34):
being really focused on the culture that we're
creating. I think that's gonna drive the advantage,
and I believe we're probably gonna start to
see a separation of health care organizations that
get that right.
Obviously, I might be biased, but I feel
like Sutter Health is very much getting that
right,
because it is the foundation of everything.
Those places that are able to recruit and

(09:56):
retain that talent
is gonna empower that progress to happen with
more agility and at a higher speed
than than the others. It's I mean, that's
just what it's gonna come down to. And
as a
system,
we have access to something that's fairly new,
but we're actively using it,
called our innovation center.

(10:17):
And it's really a focused area where we
can partner
across our organization. And, obviously, a lot of
our IT and
technology team
can partner with change makers to help shape
the future and and pilot things that are
scalable across
across the system, like the Abridge documentation that

(10:38):
I shared that we're using in our emergency
department here.
And I just think it's an exciting time
more than ever before.
So it's it's an honor to get to
be a part of it.
That's amazing to hear. Megan, thank you so
much for joining us on the podcast today.
This has been such a fun conversation and
inspiring as well. I look forward to connecting

(10:58):
with you again soon and definitely will be
excited to continue the conversation at our CEO
CFO roundtable. I know you're a speaker and
and certainly will cover a variety of these
topics there too. So I'm looking forward to
it. Yeah. Thank you. Me too.