January 10, 2024 • 34 mins
Text your grey haired host for a shout out on an upcoming show!
Senior citizens and their caregivers who call Florida's Treasure Coast home, know and rely on the name Cleveland Clinic to provide an uncompromised and superior level of care for their well being.
Your Great American Senior Show Host Sam Yates recently had the opportunity to sit down for an in depth discussion on health care with Dr Rishi P. SIngh, MD, Chief Medical Officer and Vice President of Cleveland Clinic Martin Hospitals.
In this special episode, courtesy of Florida's Number One Business Forum Podcast, The Florida Business Forum Podcast, we learn of the five year journey Cleveland Clinic has made since acquiring the Martin Memorial Health Care hospitals.
It's been a journey that began with an operating loss of $70 million the first year of the Cleveland Clinic takeover. And, a journey that has seen smaller losses each year but, more importantly, no services have been cut and the Cleveland Clinic oath of caring for patients has been upheld despite a year of COVID and unrivalled population growth for the region.
Here's Episode One of what we hope will be more in depth updates on this model of health care in Florida.
The Great American Senior Show podcast is produced by Yates & Associates, Public Relations & Marketing. This podcast is part of the network of podcasts streaming under the umbrella of the Pod National News Network. For more information about Yates & Associates or the Pod National News Network, contact Sam Yates at (772) 528-5185 or Sam@Yatespro.com. Sponsorship opportunities are available. The Great American Senior Show is ranked 3rd Best in Senior Podcasts to Follow for 2023 in all podcasts for seniors in a comprehensive survey by feedspot.
30 Best Senior Podcasts You Must Follow in 2023 (feedspot.com)
Yates & Associates is a full-service Public Relations and Marketing company serving select clients throughout the United States and abroad. For more information visit www.YatesPRO.com .
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida (00:06):
Hello everyone and welcome to another
informative episode of theFlorida Business Forum Podcast.
Let's open the Florida BusinessForum floodgates and let the
information begin to flow.
Here's your Florida BusinessForum information guru and
Anchorman Sam Yates. Hello,everyone, the information
floodgates are indeed open. Andwe have lots of information to
(00:28):
share with you today, the numberone business forum podcast in
Florida and I'm going to startby giving you a little
background information. I'm SamYates, your host for the Florida
Business Forum Podcast, owner ofYates and Associates Public
Relations and Marketing, I'mactive in a number of healthcare
coalition's throughout the statea consultant to the urgent care
(00:48):
industry, and well connected tothe state's regional area, aging
councils, all 11 of them. So Ido that as a little bit of a
background, so that I canintroduce my guest today and be
quite, well spoken in some ofthe medical fields. But you
know, I am not the expert, but Ido have the expert with me
(01:09):
today. I have the Chief MedicalOfficer, Vice President for
Martin hospitals, Dr. RishiSingh is here with us. And it's
my honor and my pleasure, Dr.
Singh to welcome you to theprogram today.
Unknown (01:25):
Thank you, Sam. Thanks for having me on the Florida
Business Forum.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Busi (01:29):
I think it's really critical that
right now we get information tothe public about what's
happening with with Martinhospitals, but I always love
starting with my guest to tell alittle bit about yourself. Yeah,
Dr. Rishi Singh, MD (01:44):
I'd love to. So I am an ophthalmologist
by training. I've been with theCleveland Clinic for 18 years, I
was up in Ohio for many years,and I got a call to come down
and to help with our Floridaoperations. And what we're doing
in this area I didn't know muchabout Stuart didn't know much
about Martin County, I've beenthankful to be here, it's I've
landed in probably the nicestpart of all of Florida, I
(02:06):
believe, and certainly in thenicest community and the people
in this area that I've been ableto meet.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida B (02:13):
Now, you mentioned the
ophthalmologist, you're also aprofessor of ophthalmology. And
I really zeroed in when I wasdoing a little background
information about you that thereason you got into that
particular profession is becauseof the long term relationships
that you have with patients. AndI thought that said a lot about
(02:34):
you. And it really, you know,brings to the forefront that
you're a people person, most ofall,
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Clev (02:40):
you know, I think that as doctors,
we all want to care for peoplein in various ways, some want to
do surgery on them, some want totake care of them in the medical
sense. But some of the mostrewarding benefits is to see the
evolution of a patient overtime. And Ophthalmology is one
of those areas where you havethe longest lasting
(03:01):
relationships are probably allof medicine. And in fact, you
can improve their welfare, whichis really impactful to restore
site or to improve site can belife changing for people. And
it's really been my call to armsfor many years, and I've been
very proud to be anophthalmologist.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Bu (03:17):
You know, one of the things that
that impresses me with MartinMemorial, Martin hospital
systems, it's a hard habit tobreak when you say Martin
Memorial, but with ClevelandClinic executives are practicing
physicians, you're still apracticing physician.
Dr. Rishi Singh, MD (03:33):
I am. So Cleveland Clinic historically
has had physician leaders, andit's a physician led
organization. And I always saythis in the nicest way, we
probably make bad businessdecisions for the good of
patients. Because we're not thebean counters. We're not the
people that are necessarilyrunning a masters and Business
(03:54):
program before we get to thisspot. But the reality is that
healthcare has become abusiness. It's a business we
have to focus on from a profitand loss margin statement. But
at the same token, we are anonprofit organization that's
very different. Sam overall,than some of the other hospitals
in the area, we really focus onproviding high quality care to
(04:16):
our community, which is a very,very different focus than an HCA
or a tenant facility. Thosethose hospitals are great, but
they really focus on specificservice areas. And that's a
very, very different missionfrom us, and caring for our
community through our hospitalsystem.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Bu (04:33):
And I'm glad you said that because
many times we hear about thosespecific care areas, and I think
perhaps the general public doesnot realize what those general
specific care areas are reallyour profit centers.
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cl (04:48):
Yeah.
Yeah. And I think that again,with our areas that we talk
about when you look at the gamutof health care for maternal
fetal medicine, the mothers whoare laboring our facilities just
here at night Have hospital forexample, many of these hospital
systems that you talk about HCA10, they would never entertain a
program that would take care ofthese people. Because they would
(05:09):
say, well, their margins aren'tvery good. And you know, I have
to be in a high volume businessin order for me to do that sort
of thing. Whereas we know it's avital part of our community.
We're the only place to birthright now in Martin County.
Tomorrow, our hospital, whichhas faced, you know, upheaval of
our finances, and certainly anuphill battle in regards to our
cost of care. It decided thatthis was not possible, this
(05:34):
would hurt our community, wehave made strong commitments to
continue this despite thatefforts, and we balance that
with the other things that areprofitable in our hospital that
do bring in dollars the hospitalagain, at the end of the day,
it's to balance our books tomake sure we are a nonprofit
organization, whatever profit ismade there, we put that back
into the organization reinvestin the community. And I will say
(05:54):
this much that one of themisnomers is that Cleveland
Clinic is a large enterprisewide organization, which it is,
but any money that is createdand generated here is going to
support our local Floridamarket, any philanthropy we
generate here, goes to supportlocal Florida markets. He
doesn't go beyond even MartinCounty. And I think people don't
(06:16):
necessarily understand that froma standpoint of how we operate
as a system and what we're doingin here and locally.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Busi (06:24):
I think that's an important thing,
because a lot of people andmyself included, my son was born
at Martin Memorial. And I justreferenced it a few moments ago
as Martin Memorial. That wasquite a transition from Martin
to Cleveland. Walk us throughthat. And for our audience, I
have to say, in all honesty, Dr.
Singh and I met a few weeks agoface to face and preparation for
(06:47):
this and other things that aregoing on. And I was very
surprised of how frank andhonest you were about the
finances, but walk us throughthat transition with with
Martin. Yeah.
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cleve (07:03):
So you know, the Martin hospital
system came to us about six,seven years ago and said, we
really want to grow ourselvesfrom a community based hospital
into a tertiary careorganization. You know, Martin
Memorial system has been aroundsince 1930. Cleveland clinic's
been around since 1920, bothhistorical improvements and
(07:24):
accomplishments over those timeperiods. And Martin Memorial
system had done a great job ofbeing a good community hospital,
one that you gave birth in. Andone that we you potentially had
some minor issues taking careof, and your last rites, you
know, done in this facility. Butthe in between care, the cancer
care, the heart care, the carefor orthopedic issues, wasn't
(07:46):
really being performed very muchat all in the past couple of
years, and certainly was beinglet go of I think a lot there
was a lot of an ability to getthose, those specialists here is
to be recruited here to work forthis hospital because of its
name and its stature. And again,it had a great name as a
(08:08):
community based hospital, but itdidn't have a national ranking
and all those sorts of thingsthat go along with it. The
Cleveland Clinic was asked tocome in and to take over this
hospital system. And by that wedidn't pay $1. For the hospital,
actually, we actually took itover and said, We will now go
back and reinvest into thecommunity will provide community
(08:29):
based benefit will provide newservices will provide more
doctors will provide morebuilding, and we'll do all that
on our dime to help thecommunity and to grow the
community centers. And, youknow, it's now been five years
in the making of this agreementthat we've just have celebrated
the 50 year anniversary of it.
And I can tell you, there havebeen a huge number of
(08:51):
improvements since that fiveyears have undergone and I'm
happy to give you just amicrocosm of them. But we've
doubled the number of doctorswe've tripled the number of
advanced practice providers. Weare the we've expanded care in
13 Specialties since being hereand increase the number of care
areas we can provide. We'veincreased our physical plant
(09:14):
spaces, very in various areasand our ambulance centers,
outpatient centers, thosefacilities, we've actually
increased the number of birthsthat we do we are now the
largest place to birth both inthe Treasure Coast between
Indian River between MartinHospital in North Hospital in
our tradition campus withrebirth that as well. And we've
(09:36):
continued to contribute dollarfor dollar to the community
we've almost contributed almost$350 million to both directed
care philanthropic benefit inother areas here to the
community. We keep doing thateach and every year. We keep
investing I just got the budgetfor next year. No, no surprise.
we're reinvesting even furtherOther into our systems here. And
(10:00):
we are challenged by a lot ofthings that hospitals are
challenged by influx ofpatients, the seasonal nature,
you can imagine if you were in abusiness where every day, the
same 100 people showed up, it'dbe fine, we can manage. But some
year, some months, it's 300. Andsome 100 months, it's 50 people,
because of the seasonal natureof what we see in the market,
(10:22):
sometimes the cost of care hasrisen. As you can imagine,
inflation costs, I think, Sam,you and I go to the gas pump, or
we go to the grocery store, andthings cost a little more these
days than they ever have beforein the past couple of years. And
we're seeing an economic shiftin regards to that. And so we've
had to really adapt to thatenvironment in this market very
well. And it's been a it's beena slow, slow struggle, but we've
(10:45):
been able to do it. And I'vebeen very proud of our teams for
being able to do so
Sam Yates, Host, Florida B (10:51):
over the course of five years of
making this happen, and bringingit to wear, it has gone through
a lot of trials andtribulations. And today, you
know, you're looking ahead towhat's happening in the budget
and everything. It doesn'talways go smoothly, though. And
I think we would not be hittingthe mark, if we didn't touch on
(11:13):
some of those areas that we bothhear. And I know you hear
because you've let me know. Andour community knows about some
of the problems. One iscommunication. And anytime I
talked to somebody anddeliberately asked them, what's
your biggest concern complaintgripe with the hospital, and
(11:35):
it's the telephone system? Tellus tell us about that? No,
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cle (11:38):
it's it's an antiquated system. It
really honestly is a system thatis inefficient. And I have to be
honest with you has been ourbiggest Achilles heel, and we
are improving that drastically.
We rerouted all the phones tothe actual specific offices in
which those patients are beingseen now. But it is it was very
difficult to do. So Sam, we hadon a typical Monday, we get
(12:01):
13,000 phone calls that comeinto our center on a Monday
morning. And that's, you know,very, very difficult to manage.
As you can imagine that numberof phone calls, the sheer volume
alone speaks to the the factthat the community. And we've
looked at this, by the way intomarketing kind of survey, you
know, you we can be of differentdemographics. And sometimes
(12:23):
different demographics, usedifferent communication styles,
some use email, some use chat,some use our portal, some use
our phone system, and phonesappear to be important to still
have here. And I think thatthat's something we're improving
on as we do continuously in theprocess by embedding technology
to call you back when it's timefor your time in line, which is
(12:43):
coming soon. All these sorts ofactivities that I think are very
beneficial, but But that's Ithink that that's been the other
one that that's sort of the Iwould I call the front pipe, the
back pipe has been the number ofphysicians, doctors, advanced
practice providers, because, youknow, this has been a market in
which it's been Florida is avery, you know, competitive
market. And to be able torecruit doctors takes time, we
(13:07):
can't just flip a switch one dayand say, Hey, we're we have
enough people, it does takeweeks, months, even years to
recruit the number of people wehave. And I think that the
people feel the tooth aspects Iwould say to you or our phone
system, which again, is a workin progress. And the back area,
which is number of providers wehave, we're just increasing it
rapidly over time. And just togive you a sense that we've
(13:30):
we've doubled, you know, thenumber of doctors I told you
before, but we've actuallyimproved and gotten services
here that were just never evenhere. Cancer Care, for example,
is now embedded in our hospitalwith six doctors attached to it.
That's a huge undertaking forany organization, and certainly
ours, but we were able to do it.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida (13:51):
Along that same line with as we're
talking about physicians, youhave increased staff, but
community wide there, thereseems to be a perception that
you're losing doctors, what doyou say when someone doesn't
listen to what you're saying?
Well,
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Clevel (14:06):
I think I think again, there in
every situation, there's badattrition, and there's good
attrition. There are people thatwe came here and we literally
said we're just the ClevelandClinic and they said I'm out.
And I don't really understandit. But you know, there are
people that just don't want tobe under organized medical care.
(14:26):
They want to be in their ownpractices. And I don't blame
them. They want to be in theirown businesses. And that's
perfectly fine for them to do todo that sort of thing. I would
say there have been some, someone or two or three sort of
regrettable departures for us asan organization. But it's never
been that we've actually exitedanyone just to be clear. So
(14:48):
these people have left anyindividual has the freewill to
leave on their own volition. Andit's not because we haven't
taken care of them or we haven'tdone anything else. It's really
a lot of times voluntary nature.
I can count on one hand, howmany times we've have to
eliminate a physician here forbad practice or behavior,
because we actually have gooddoctors here for the most part.
But there are those individualswho are just the squeaky wheels,
(15:11):
unfortunately, and they thinkthat we're pulling the wool over
their eyes or something else. Ican tell you, I live and breathe
my organization every day, Iwake up every morning, knowing
that today's gonna be a betterday than yesterday. And I have
to be honest with you, Iwouldn't be down here moved away
from my family and moving themdown to Florida. If I didn't
believe in what we're doinghere, we are making a difference
(15:33):
in this community. But it doestake a journey. I think that the
the journey is something thatpeople are a little bit
impatient by, and I understandwhy healthcare is very scary.
You know, just imagine, today,if you have a medical problem,
you know, having to wait becausethere's not enough doctors and
nurses and so on so forth.
Thankfully, we've been able tohire a significant number of
(15:56):
nurses and hire significantdoctors, so it wouldn't feel
that way anymore. But back abouttwo years ago, we had a
significant labor flux in theorganization. Yeah, there were
some really tough times. And sodoctors got very frustrated. And
some nurses got very frustratedwith how many people we actually
had. And that, again, wasbecause it was COVID, traveling
nursing made a ton of money. Andrightly so I think nurses were
(16:19):
underpaid for many years. And sothey decided to go on the free
market and get travel all overthe country and get huge
paychecks for what they'redoing. And kudos to them to do
it. But now we're back to asimpler time at different time
at time post COVID, where wefeel like we have a great team
of doctors, nurses who areworking together. And I am
tickled pink to see what happensthe next year or two with
(16:41):
regards to what we can achievewith this team that's now in
place.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Bu (16:44):
You know, I think I'll probably have
a layman's perspective,sometimes our community doesn't
quite understand, nor really insome cases, they don't want to
know the intricacies or even thenuances of the health care
system. I can say, in oneparticular case. And obviously I
(17:04):
won't say by name, but there wasa physician that that I know
about that left, that could havebeen a liability. So for those
that are thinking out loud,where we have, you know, a loss,
sometimes as you said, it's forthe better, but, but you know,
those, that's business as well,when you're talking about influx
(17:25):
of people into the area. And
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cle (17:27):
I'll say this much, Sam, we're a
quality driven organization. Wepride ourselves on outcomes we
meet every day, at 930 in themorning, and a huddle group. And
what we're doing in that huddlegroup across the entire Florida
region, by the way, isdiscussing our patient outcomes
or patient experience, ifthere's been any deficits in
(17:49):
care that have occurred, anyerrors in medical care that have
occurred, and we elevate them tothe highest levels of the
organization. In fact, every dayat 11 o'clock in Ohio, Dr.
Mahalo Vic, who's the head ofthe organization listens to the
report out of each of ourhospital systems to understand
what is happening each place. Weare focused on quality, patient
(18:10):
experience and outcomes. Andthat is a very different mission
than a volume based drivenmission that might be at another
facility. And I know that, youknow, our reputation has been
tarnished for a lot of differentreasons. Also, I believe that we
have not been proactive, abouttalking about what great things
we have done to this community,you know, this hospital probably
(18:33):
would have gone under if itwasn't for the Cleveland Clinic
supporting it through the lastfew years because of the amount
of money that was required tokeep the hospital on life
support. When there was nonursing here, we brought in
traveling nurses to asignificant degree. And the
first year I was here, weactually lost almost $70 million
to our bottom line. And it wasbecause of the Cleveland Clinic
(18:55):
that we were able to make upthat deficit. And this year,
we're losing far less money thanwe did last year, which is a
great thing. We're in the rightdirection, but we're still
losing money. However, theCleveland Clinic has a very
strong balance sheet and is ableto support us through this tough
time. And they believe as wellas I think our community
believes that we can do a greatjob of improving the care that
we provide those individuals wholive in Martin and St. Lucie
(19:19):
counties.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida (19:20):
After our first meeting, I took the
opportunity to do a social mediapost on one of the neighborhood
social platforms. And some ofthe comments were very negative
and in the first 48 hours morethan 7000 comments, people
views. But I want you to knowthat the majority of those
(19:41):
comments and posts werepositive. So as easy as it is
sometimes to get wrapped up onthe negatives of everything. I
think it's important for youalso to know that there's a
large segment of the communitythat is not complaining, but
that is supportive of thehospitals and And
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cle (20:00):
Sam, I can tell you first of all, I
think good news sells betterthan bad news six days to
Sunday. So the second thing is,is, you know, we take every
patient complaint veryseriously, there's an ombudsman
who takes over the complaint, Iget copied on all those
complaints, we actuallyinvestigate each one of them, we
have a response time of sevendays to respond to every patient
(20:21):
who has a complaint about us asan organization. And we take
pride in responding to them,because we want to make sure we
investigate each one look at itscare, its source, see if there's
common themes, we if there's acommon theme of some individual
or some areas, some areas offocus unit, we can certainly
address that for the patient,and do that. So we take these, I
(20:42):
think the bottom line is good oreven not so good. We like to
hear about those things. And Iurge anyone who's listening to
this to keep asking us andgiving us feedback on what we're
doing. I don't mind feedback. Ithink it's a very good guidance
point, post. But the interestingthing to me, Sam, to be quite
honest with you is the number ofsolutions that people come up
(21:04):
with are great, and I'm happy tohave solutions. But when you see
things that are published inpapers that are just totally
false or call a false about us,it really saddens, I think the
organization ultimately, therewas a post this last two weeks
ago in TCP palm, about somebodysuggesting that quantum
computing could solve theproblems and Martin now, I have
(21:25):
to say that is the most off basediscussion anyone could have
about this, forgive me forsaying so. But the reality is
that is a strictly a basis ofpersonnel, people and process,
it's really people process andtechnology that needs to
supercharge our ability to takecare of people. And the
(21:47):
technology is not quantumcomputing, which only exists one
at one place in the entireUnited States, which is in
Cleveland, Ohio, actually. Butit's actually the fact that we
implement good processes toimprove this. And when you're
hiring individuals, as you know,Sam, and if you've run
businesses, like we have, whenyou hire people, day one, they
don't start to perform at the90th percentile, they start to
(22:09):
slowly ramp over time. And whatwe're seeing right now is those
people that get into ourservices from a patient
perspective, love the serviceswe can offer. Those patients
that can't get in areunfortunately are still
troubled, troubled by it. Andwe're going to make more space
for them. We're gonna get themin, we just need more time to do
so I've been working towardthat.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Busi (22:29):
I saw that same post and it was a
it was a head scratcher. I waslike what in the, you know, it's
like, people talent. AI has aplace in the medical field. But
and 90% of the time, I thinkwhat people are referring to is
artificial ignorance instead ofintelligence, but that and that
(22:49):
was one of them. And
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cleve (22:51):
we are using, for example,
artificial intelligence to helpus better staff, our hospital to
better determine where there'svariances in call volume so that
we can get our calls answered ata certain time of the day, we're
using artificial intelligence toanswer people's messages. Chat
GPT is coming to us to answerpeople's messages in our system
(23:13):
as well. So there is value toit. It's just when you talk
about these articles that getpublished in major major
publications, by the way, and Ihave reached out to TCB pom and
I've been surprised that theydon't even proofread this stuff
anymore, because it just seemslike they're just fishing for
anything to put in into theirtheir journal. Because clearly
(23:34):
they they could have come to usand talk to us about it and
learn about what quantumcomputing offers, which is
fantastical, but has very, verylittle relevance to what needs
to happen in our communities andto take care of patients
ultimately,
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Bus (23:47):
to be real honest, the demise of
local news at all levels is oneof the reasons that that I'm
doing this Florida BusinessForum and other podcast because
it's going away unfortunately,it for different reasons. But
that's a good point. Well,
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Clev (24:05):
and I applaud your ability to do
this and blog posting and thingslike that, that gets out when I
do it myself. By the way, I havefriends and neighbors of Martin
of this area, I do them on nextdoor. I do them on all these
different media social channels.
We have a big following even ontick tock for that matter what
we're doing in the hospital,just to get that the word of
we're providing the community.
(24:28):
So
Sam Yates, Host, Florid (24:28):
another tool, let's let's touch on some
of the positives if we've gonedown the negative route and how
you were addressing it, but I'llmention that what I know and let
you fill in the blank cancertreatment trials.
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cl (24:42):
Yeah, we were the first to offer them
in Martin County here at ourWiseman Cancer Center and that
wasn't first for the entirecounty. If you're a patient with
cancer care, or cancerdiagnosis, and you need to have
care sometimes there's notalways a treatment for you.
You're hoping for are a clinicaltrial that you can get involved
with that could potentiallychange your life. We had a total
(25:05):
of 10 trials added to theexisting number of trials that
we had last year. And I'mactually doing one of them
myself and helping that out aswell. That is awesome.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Bu (25:14):
One that I'm familiar with through
the various health care councilsis something that started I
believe that John Hopkins andthat's the hospital at home,
you're involved in that now.
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cleve (25:26):
We are yes, this is another great
opportunity to transform healthcare in our community. We
released this recently in in St.
Lucie County, a traditionalhospital, it's taken up huge
uptake as far as deliveringhospital care, in the comfort of
your home, with our paramedicteams visiting you three to four
(25:46):
times a day and nurse on call.
With a monitor system, you don'teven have to have an internet
connection. It's all driven byself service. And so we can do
it even in your own home withyou. And this has been a huge
benefit to our patients in ourcommunity community. It's
avoided days within thehospital, the brick and mortar
(26:06):
structure. And it's deliveredhigh level high quality care
that has high patient experienceregarded. So we are the fastest
growing hospital to hair carehome program and is coming to
Martin north and south hospitalactually in February of this
year. Something
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Bus (26:24):
to look forward to there. It's the
advances of how people are caredfor it just fascinates me. It
really is. It's amazing. As youcontinue to improve overall, one
thing that comes up is thehospital grading system. I'm not
quite sure that I agree with howthose grades are made touch base
(26:46):
on that.
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cl (26:47):
Yeah, so you know, there everyone, and
even including, you can have arancor and Raider. And and every
one of their methodologies aredifferent. And so some sometimes
the methodology changes and youperform really well. And
sometimes it does not perform aswell as we want it to. There's
(27:07):
Press Ganey there's healthygrades. There is LeapFrog.
There's a lot of these. Andunfortunately, the LeapFrog
score that we got this year wasnot optimal, but reflects data
from almost two years ago. Whatleapfrog does is it looks at
data not from just this sixmonths ago, or even three months
(27:27):
ago, it looks at some data inarrears for almost two years
ago. And I remember Sam, when Italk to you about this, and what
we were doing two years ago, itwas a very bleak time in the
Martin health system, we hadlost a lot of nurses, we have a
total component of around 1300nurses, we were down to 850 or
so nurses by that point in time.
Just imagine that for a moment,1/3 of our population nurses
(27:48):
decided to travel at that pointin time, or stop working because
of COVID being so detrimentaland concerning to them, which I
understand. And so this waswhere this grading system came
in about. Now, if you look atthe other grading systems, for
example, like healthy grades, weachieved five star status, which
is the highest as you canachieve in nine specialties,
(28:08):
cardiothoracic care, cancercare, lung care, orthopedic
care, Mother fetal and maternalfetal medicine. All these areas,
we were able to achieve a fivestar status, which is the
highest you can achieve andmeets national ranking in those
areas. So just for comparator, Ithink again, that while these
(28:28):
Rancors and Raiders areimportant to some, they're not
the be all end all and certainlyif they don't use data from very
really irrelevant timeframes andbecomes irrelevant to what we're
talking about
Sam Yates, Host, Florida (28:39):
today.
I have found that complainerslook for the worst things that
they can use to support theircomplaints. So it's, it's really
why our rearview mirrors aresmaller. So kudos for making
things move forward. Anotherarea your Ophthalmology is the
goal I ophthalmology are wegoing to see an expansion into
(29:02):
this area 100%
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cl (29:06):
We've gotten the green light to do
that. And we're raising thefunds now to do so. And it's
it's it's only a matter of timebefore we start to see up
Thalmic patients andOphthalmology is one of those
unsung specialties of medicinein many ways it as an
aphrodisiac, huge impact and faras welfare, but it actually
attracts people for the firsttime to hospitals and to
(29:27):
facilities to get care and it'svery important for us to
establish a footprint to helpsupport our hospital system. Our
emergency rooms et Cieophthalmic patients as well as
our outpatient practices wouldneed to be supported by that.
Just to give you a quickexample, Sam 40% of the patients
who have diabetes right now, inthe count and Martin and St.
(29:49):
Lucie counties gets their annualexamination for diabetes or eye
examination. That's well belowstandards of the community by
putting an ophthalmology unitand we hope to scream closer to
a 90% of those people. So we canprevent vision, threatening
blindness, which occurs fromdiabetes, which is, again, the
most common cause of blindness,the US and working age adults.
(30:10):
So that's going to be a hugeadvantage for us to add to this,
amongst other things that we cantalk about to Sam, you know, we
have a fast track program at ourtraditional hospital that is
valuable to our emergencyservices there. And also,
expanding the services we'regoing to be doing at South
Hospital in regards to ourmother baby unit, there is going
to be additional adds to ourfacility to help our care for
(30:32):
our community through theseprograms.
Sam Yates, Host, Florid (30:35):
Without going into details, because I
can't go into details, but Ithink you know that I've been
working behind the scenes andperhaps getting some hospital
care into other areas of ourcommunity. We have a wonderful
community, but it's a growingcommunity. Is that growth a
factor that that you have todeal with?
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Clev (30:55):
Oh, absolutely. I mean, we start
we've we've now had the highestlevel of nursing 14% Higher
nursing that we had four or fiveyears ago to expand, what we can
do in population growth isanywhere from three to five to
7% a year. So we've seen thatgrowth every year, year after
year, which is pretty, prettysignificant. And so we've
upscaled our workforce in orderto do that we look at
(31:17):
locationally, where we want tobe we buy land, and find out
practice areas to be where wewant to be from a locational
perspective. And we're doing allthat right now. So definitely is
an eye toward continuallygrowing our organization through
these these sort of overallstructures and strategies.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida (31:35):
We've covered a lot of topics and I
know that just the nature of ourconversation, we could sit here
and carry on for another hour,anything that we have not
touched upon, that you reallywant to make sure that we get
across before we wrap up.
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cleve (31:50):
So Sam, I think the first thing is,
we appreciate the community thatwe live in as an organization,
we value their feedback, I wouldtell you, if anything, anyone
leaves with today, please giveus more feedback. And what we
could do better give usexamples. I always tell everyone
give me examples where I canmake things better. And the
organization can make thingsbetter. We have a huge team here
(32:10):
and this invested in it. Andthat's the second point is we're
invested here. We're notleaving, we're not selling we're
not doing anything else. Yetanother day goes by that other
somebody doesn't call me withsome weird rumor about what we
may or may not be doing. Theanswer is we're gonna be here
for the next 100 years. And aswe have been the first 100 years
in Ohio will be for the next 100years and Martin, and we will
(32:31):
continue to expand the care thatwe can offer a number three to
our community, because I livehere just like you do. And I
want everything here and beingable to be able to be accessible
to our, our community. Andcertainly we didn't have that
for a long time. And now we'regetting that day after day and
week after week.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida B (32:50):
Most important question of the entire
program. Can you come back foranother episode in the future?
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cle (32:56):
Well love to and love to give you
updates as far as our progress,especially as we, you know, grow
the program this year.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Bu (33:04):
One final observation, I'm looking
out my window and I can see outthe window to your side, nearly
sunny skies. And having spentquite a number of my adult years
in Ohio. I will take thisweather over the Ohio winter,
anytime.
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Clevel (33:23):
I would too. Except in days when I
guess yesterday it was 60degrees. And I was walking
around with a sweater on.
Because I have unfortunatelybecome very acclimated to your
environment as much as you havebeen. And it's it's a real
pleasure being down here. I haveto be honest with you, I could
not have asked for a betterplace to be I started this
conversation by telling you howfortunate I felt because I
(33:44):
didn't know much about Floridato be honest with you before I
came down here. And I reallyfound a community that that is
enveloped in, in growing,improving and really helping
those around each other and thatto me is a big reason to be here
and to grow this or entity. Well
Sam Yates, Host, Florida (34:02):
said.
Dr. Rishi Singh, Vice President,Chief Medical Officer Cleveland
Martin hospital systems. It hasbeen my pleasure to have you on
the program today.
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cl (34:14):
Thank you, Sam. Really appreciate it.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Bu (34:16):
And until our next episode of the
Florida Business Forum, I'm SamYates Have a great day
everybody. The Florida BusinessForum is dedicated to showcasing
Florida businesses and CEOs ofall sorts to promote their
business or not for profit inthe only business forum of its
type in Florida. Thanks fortuning in. And remember, have a
(34:39):
great day everyone. And staytuned for more business
Hello everyone and welcome to another
informative episode of theFlorida Business Forum Podcast.
Let's open the Florida BusinessForum floodgates and let the
information begin to flow.
Here's your Florida BusinessForum information guru and
Anchorman Sam Yates. Hello,everyone, the information
floodgates are indeed open. Andwe have lots of information to
(00:28):
share with you today, the numberone business forum podcast in
Florida and I'm going to startby giving you a little
background information. I'm SamYates, your host for the Florida
Business Forum Podcast, owner ofYates and Associates Public
Relations and Marketing, I'mactive in a number of healthcare
coalition's throughout the statea consultant to the urgent care
(00:48):
industry, and well connected tothe state's regional area, aging
councils, all 11 of them. So Ido that as a little bit of a
background, so that I canintroduce my guest today and be
quite, well spoken in some ofthe medical fields. But you
know, I am not the expert, but Ido have the expert with me
(01:09):
today. I have the Chief MedicalOfficer, Vice President for
Martin hospitals, Dr. RishiSingh is here with us. And it's
my honor and my pleasure, Dr.
Singh to welcome you to theprogram today.
Unknown (01:25):
Thank you, Sam. Thanks for having me on the Florida
Business Forum.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Busi (01:29):
I think it's really critical that
right now we get information tothe public about what's
happening with with Martinhospitals, but I always love
starting with my guest to tell alittle bit about yourself. Yeah,
Dr. Rishi Singh, MD (01:44):
I'd love to. So I am an ophthalmologist
by training. I've been with theCleveland Clinic for 18 years, I
was up in Ohio for many years,and I got a call to come down
and to help with our Floridaoperations. And what we're doing
in this area I didn't know muchabout Stuart didn't know much
about Martin County, I've beenthankful to be here, it's I've
landed in probably the nicestpart of all of Florida, I
(02:06):
believe, and certainly in thenicest community and the people
in this area that I've been ableto meet.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida B (02:13):
Now, you mentioned the
ophthalmologist, you're also aprofessor of ophthalmology. And
I really zeroed in when I wasdoing a little background
information about you that thereason you got into that
particular profession is becauseof the long term relationships
that you have with patients. AndI thought that said a lot about
(02:34):
you. And it really, you know,brings to the forefront that
you're a people person, most ofall,
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Clev (02:40):
you know, I think that as doctors,
we all want to care for peoplein in various ways, some want to
do surgery on them, some want totake care of them in the medical
sense. But some of the mostrewarding benefits is to see the
evolution of a patient overtime. And Ophthalmology is one
of those areas where you havethe longest lasting
(03:01):
relationships are probably allof medicine. And in fact, you
can improve their welfare, whichis really impactful to restore
site or to improve site can belife changing for people. And
it's really been my call to armsfor many years, and I've been
very proud to be anophthalmologist.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Bu (03:17):
You know, one of the things that
that impresses me with MartinMemorial, Martin hospital
systems, it's a hard habit tobreak when you say Martin
Memorial, but with ClevelandClinic executives are practicing
physicians, you're still apracticing physician.
Dr. Rishi Singh, MD (03:33):
I am. So Cleveland Clinic historically
has had physician leaders, andit's a physician led
organization. And I always saythis in the nicest way, we
probably make bad businessdecisions for the good of
patients. Because we're not thebean counters. We're not the
people that are necessarilyrunning a masters and Business
(03:54):
program before we get to thisspot. But the reality is that
healthcare has become abusiness. It's a business we
have to focus on from a profitand loss margin statement. But
at the same token, we are anonprofit organization that's
very different. Sam overall,than some of the other hospitals
in the area, we really focus onproviding high quality care to
(04:16):
our community, which is a very,very different focus than an HCA
or a tenant facility. Thosethose hospitals are great, but
they really focus on specificservice areas. And that's a
very, very different missionfrom us, and caring for our
community through our hospitalsystem.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Bu (04:33):
And I'm glad you said that because
many times we hear about thosespecific care areas, and I think
perhaps the general public doesnot realize what those general
specific care areas are reallyour profit centers.
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cl (04:48):
Yeah.
Yeah. And I think that again,with our areas that we talk
about when you look at the gamutof health care for maternal
fetal medicine, the mothers whoare laboring our facilities just
here at night Have hospital forexample, many of these hospital
systems that you talk about HCA10, they would never entertain a
program that would take care ofthese people. Because they would
(05:09):
say, well, their margins aren'tvery good. And you know, I have
to be in a high volume businessin order for me to do that sort
of thing. Whereas we know it's avital part of our community.
We're the only place to birthright now in Martin County.
Tomorrow, our hospital, whichhas faced, you know, upheaval of
our finances, and certainly anuphill battle in regards to our
cost of care. It decided thatthis was not possible, this
(05:34):
would hurt our community, wehave made strong commitments to
continue this despite thatefforts, and we balance that
with the other things that areprofitable in our hospital that
do bring in dollars the hospitalagain, at the end of the day,
it's to balance our books tomake sure we are a nonprofit
organization, whatever profit ismade there, we put that back
into the organization reinvestin the community. And I will say
(05:54):
this much that one of themisnomers is that Cleveland
Clinic is a large enterprisewide organization, which it is,
but any money that is createdand generated here is going to
support our local Floridamarket, any philanthropy we
generate here, goes to supportlocal Florida markets. He
doesn't go beyond even MartinCounty. And I think people don't
(06:16):
necessarily understand that froma standpoint of how we operate
as a system and what we're doingin here and locally.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Busi (06:24):
I think that's an important thing,
because a lot of people andmyself included, my son was born
at Martin Memorial. And I justreferenced it a few moments ago
as Martin Memorial. That wasquite a transition from Martin
to Cleveland. Walk us throughthat. And for our audience, I
have to say, in all honesty, Dr.
Singh and I met a few weeks agoface to face and preparation for
(06:47):
this and other things that aregoing on. And I was very
surprised of how frank andhonest you were about the
finances, but walk us throughthat transition with with
Martin. Yeah.
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cleve (07:03):
So you know, the Martin hospital
system came to us about six,seven years ago and said, we
really want to grow ourselvesfrom a community based hospital
into a tertiary careorganization. You know, Martin
Memorial system has been aroundsince 1930. Cleveland clinic's
been around since 1920, bothhistorical improvements and
(07:24):
accomplishments over those timeperiods. And Martin Memorial
system had done a great job ofbeing a good community hospital,
one that you gave birth in. Andone that we you potentially had
some minor issues taking careof, and your last rites, you
know, done in this facility. Butthe in between care, the cancer
care, the heart care, the carefor orthopedic issues, wasn't
(07:46):
really being performed very muchat all in the past couple of
years, and certainly was beinglet go of I think a lot there
was a lot of an ability to getthose, those specialists here is
to be recruited here to work forthis hospital because of its
name and its stature. And again,it had a great name as a
(08:08):
community based hospital, but itdidn't have a national ranking
and all those sorts of thingsthat go along with it. The
Cleveland Clinic was asked tocome in and to take over this
hospital system. And by that wedidn't pay $1. For the hospital,
actually, we actually took itover and said, We will now go
back and reinvest into thecommunity will provide community
(08:29):
based benefit will provide newservices will provide more
doctors will provide morebuilding, and we'll do all that
on our dime to help thecommunity and to grow the
community centers. And, youknow, it's now been five years
in the making of this agreementthat we've just have celebrated
the 50 year anniversary of it.
And I can tell you, there havebeen a huge number of
(08:51):
improvements since that fiveyears have undergone and I'm
happy to give you just amicrocosm of them. But we've
doubled the number of doctorswe've tripled the number of
advanced practice providers. Weare the we've expanded care in
13 Specialties since being hereand increase the number of care
areas we can provide. We'veincreased our physical plant
(09:14):
spaces, very in various areasand our ambulance centers,
outpatient centers, thosefacilities, we've actually
increased the number of birthsthat we do we are now the
largest place to birth both inthe Treasure Coast between
Indian River between MartinHospital in North Hospital in
our tradition campus withrebirth that as well. And we've
(09:36):
continued to contribute dollarfor dollar to the community
we've almost contributed almost$350 million to both directed
care philanthropic benefit inother areas here to the
community. We keep doing thateach and every year. We keep
investing I just got the budgetfor next year. No, no surprise.
we're reinvesting even furtherOther into our systems here. And
(10:00):
we are challenged by a lot ofthings that hospitals are
challenged by influx ofpatients, the seasonal nature,
you can imagine if you were in abusiness where every day, the
same 100 people showed up, it'dbe fine, we can manage. But some
year, some months, it's 300. Andsome 100 months, it's 50 people,
because of the seasonal natureof what we see in the market,
(10:22):
sometimes the cost of care hasrisen. As you can imagine,
inflation costs, I think, Sam,you and I go to the gas pump, or
we go to the grocery store, andthings cost a little more these
days than they ever have beforein the past couple of years. And
we're seeing an economic shiftin regards to that. And so we've
had to really adapt to thatenvironment in this market very
well. And it's been a it's beena slow, slow struggle, but we've
(10:45):
been able to do it. And I'vebeen very proud of our teams for
being able to do so
Sam Yates, Host, Florida B (10:51):
over the course of five years of
making this happen, and bringingit to wear, it has gone through
a lot of trials andtribulations. And today, you
know, you're looking ahead towhat's happening in the budget
and everything. It doesn'talways go smoothly, though. And
I think we would not be hittingthe mark, if we didn't touch on
(11:13):
some of those areas that we bothhear. And I know you hear
because you've let me know. Andour community knows about some
of the problems. One iscommunication. And anytime I
talked to somebody anddeliberately asked them, what's
your biggest concern complaintgripe with the hospital, and
(11:35):
it's the telephone system? Tellus tell us about that? No,
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cle (11:38):
it's it's an antiquated system. It
really honestly is a system thatis inefficient. And I have to be
honest with you has been ourbiggest Achilles heel, and we
are improving that drastically.
We rerouted all the phones tothe actual specific offices in
which those patients are beingseen now. But it is it was very
difficult to do. So Sam, we hadon a typical Monday, we get
(12:01):
13,000 phone calls that comeinto our center on a Monday
morning. And that's, you know,very, very difficult to manage.
As you can imagine that numberof phone calls, the sheer volume
alone speaks to the the factthat the community. And we've
looked at this, by the way intomarketing kind of survey, you
know, you we can be of differentdemographics. And sometimes
(12:23):
different demographics, usedifferent communication styles,
some use email, some use chat,some use our portal, some use
our phone system, and phonesappear to be important to still
have here. And I think thatthat's something we're improving
on as we do continuously in theprocess by embedding technology
to call you back when it's timefor your time in line, which is
(12:43):
coming soon. All these sorts ofactivities that I think are very
beneficial, but But that's Ithink that that's been the other
one that that's sort of the Iwould I call the front pipe, the
back pipe has been the number ofphysicians, doctors, advanced
practice providers, because, youknow, this has been a market in
which it's been Florida is avery, you know, competitive
market. And to be able torecruit doctors takes time, we
(13:07):
can't just flip a switch one dayand say, Hey, we're we have
enough people, it does takeweeks, months, even years to
recruit the number of people wehave. And I think that the
people feel the tooth aspects Iwould say to you or our phone
system, which again, is a workin progress. And the back area,
which is number of providers wehave, we're just increasing it
rapidly over time. And just togive you a sense that we've
(13:30):
we've doubled, you know, thenumber of doctors I told you
before, but we've actuallyimproved and gotten services
here that were just never evenhere. Cancer Care, for example,
is now embedded in our hospitalwith six doctors attached to it.
That's a huge undertaking forany organization, and certainly
ours, but we were able to do it.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida (13:51):
Along that same line with as we're
talking about physicians, youhave increased staff, but
community wide there, thereseems to be a perception that
you're losing doctors, what doyou say when someone doesn't
listen to what you're saying?
Well,
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Clevel (14:06):
I think I think again, there in
every situation, there's badattrition, and there's good
attrition. There are people thatwe came here and we literally
said we're just the ClevelandClinic and they said I'm out.
And I don't really understandit. But you know, there are
people that just don't want tobe under organized medical care.
(14:26):
They want to be in their ownpractices. And I don't blame
them. They want to be in theirown businesses. And that's
perfectly fine for them to do todo that sort of thing. I would
say there have been some, someone or two or three sort of
regrettable departures for us asan organization. But it's never
been that we've actually exitedanyone just to be clear. So
(14:48):
these people have left anyindividual has the freewill to
leave on their own volition. Andit's not because we haven't
taken care of them or we haven'tdone anything else. It's really
a lot of times voluntary nature.
I can count on one hand, howmany times we've have to
eliminate a physician here forbad practice or behavior,
because we actually have gooddoctors here for the most part.
But there are those individualswho are just the squeaky wheels,
(15:11):
unfortunately, and they thinkthat we're pulling the wool over
their eyes or something else. Ican tell you, I live and breathe
my organization every day, Iwake up every morning, knowing
that today's gonna be a betterday than yesterday. And I have
to be honest with you, Iwouldn't be down here moved away
from my family and moving themdown to Florida. If I didn't
believe in what we're doinghere, we are making a difference
(15:33):
in this community. But it doestake a journey. I think that the
the journey is something thatpeople are a little bit
impatient by, and I understandwhy healthcare is very scary.
You know, just imagine, today,if you have a medical problem,
you know, having to wait becausethere's not enough doctors and
nurses and so on so forth.
Thankfully, we've been able tohire a significant number of
(15:56):
nurses and hire significantdoctors, so it wouldn't feel
that way anymore. But back abouttwo years ago, we had a
significant labor flux in theorganization. Yeah, there were
some really tough times. And sodoctors got very frustrated. And
some nurses got very frustratedwith how many people we actually
had. And that, again, wasbecause it was COVID, traveling
nursing made a ton of money. Andrightly so I think nurses were
(16:19):
underpaid for many years. And sothey decided to go on the free
market and get travel all overthe country and get huge
paychecks for what they'redoing. And kudos to them to do
it. But now we're back to asimpler time at different time
at time post COVID, where wefeel like we have a great team
of doctors, nurses who areworking together. And I am
tickled pink to see what happensthe next year or two with
(16:41):
regards to what we can achievewith this team that's now in
place.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Bu (16:44):
You know, I think I'll probably have
a layman's perspective,sometimes our community doesn't
quite understand, nor really insome cases, they don't want to
know the intricacies or even thenuances of the health care
system. I can say, in oneparticular case. And obviously I
(17:04):
won't say by name, but there wasa physician that that I know
about that left, that could havebeen a liability. So for those
that are thinking out loud,where we have, you know, a loss,
sometimes as you said, it's forthe better, but, but you know,
those, that's business as well,when you're talking about influx
(17:25):
of people into the area. And
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cle (17:27):
I'll say this much, Sam, we're a
quality driven organization. Wepride ourselves on outcomes we
meet every day, at 930 in themorning, and a huddle group. And
what we're doing in that huddlegroup across the entire Florida
region, by the way, isdiscussing our patient outcomes
or patient experience, ifthere's been any deficits in
(17:49):
care that have occurred, anyerrors in medical care that have
occurred, and we elevate them tothe highest levels of the
organization. In fact, every dayat 11 o'clock in Ohio, Dr.
Mahalo Vic, who's the head ofthe organization listens to the
report out of each of ourhospital systems to understand
what is happening each place. Weare focused on quality, patient
(18:10):
experience and outcomes. Andthat is a very different mission
than a volume based drivenmission that might be at another
facility. And I know that, youknow, our reputation has been
tarnished for a lot of differentreasons. Also, I believe that we
have not been proactive, abouttalking about what great things
we have done to this community,you know, this hospital probably
(18:33):
would have gone under if itwasn't for the Cleveland Clinic
supporting it through the lastfew years because of the amount
of money that was required tokeep the hospital on life
support. When there was nonursing here, we brought in
traveling nurses to asignificant degree. And the
first year I was here, weactually lost almost $70 million
to our bottom line. And it wasbecause of the Cleveland Clinic
(18:55):
that we were able to make upthat deficit. And this year,
we're losing far less money thanwe did last year, which is a
great thing. We're in the rightdirection, but we're still
losing money. However, theCleveland Clinic has a very
strong balance sheet and is ableto support us through this tough
time. And they believe as wellas I think our community
believes that we can do a greatjob of improving the care that
we provide those individuals wholive in Martin and St. Lucie
(19:19):
counties.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida (19:20):
After our first meeting, I took the
opportunity to do a social mediapost on one of the neighborhood
social platforms. And some ofthe comments were very negative
and in the first 48 hours morethan 7000 comments, people
views. But I want you to knowthat the majority of those
(19:41):
comments and posts werepositive. So as easy as it is
sometimes to get wrapped up onthe negatives of everything. I
think it's important for youalso to know that there's a
large segment of the communitythat is not complaining, but
that is supportive of thehospitals and And
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cle (20:00):
Sam, I can tell you first of all, I
think good news sells betterthan bad news six days to
Sunday. So the second thing is,is, you know, we take every
patient complaint veryseriously, there's an ombudsman
who takes over the complaint, Iget copied on all those
complaints, we actuallyinvestigate each one of them, we
have a response time of sevendays to respond to every patient
(20:21):
who has a complaint about us asan organization. And we take
pride in responding to them,because we want to make sure we
investigate each one look at itscare, its source, see if there's
common themes, we if there's acommon theme of some individual
or some areas, some areas offocus unit, we can certainly
address that for the patient,and do that. So we take these, I
(20:42):
think the bottom line is good oreven not so good. We like to
hear about those things. And Iurge anyone who's listening to
this to keep asking us andgiving us feedback on what we're
doing. I don't mind feedback. Ithink it's a very good guidance
point, post. But the interestingthing to me, Sam, to be quite
honest with you is the number ofsolutions that people come up
(21:04):
with are great, and I'm happy tohave solutions. But when you see
things that are published inpapers that are just totally
false or call a false about us,it really saddens, I think the
organization ultimately, therewas a post this last two weeks
ago in TCP palm, about somebodysuggesting that quantum
computing could solve theproblems and Martin now, I have
(21:25):
to say that is the most off basediscussion anyone could have
about this, forgive me forsaying so. But the reality is
that is a strictly a basis ofpersonnel, people and process,
it's really people process andtechnology that needs to
supercharge our ability to takecare of people. And the
(21:47):
technology is not quantumcomputing, which only exists one
at one place in the entireUnited States, which is in
Cleveland, Ohio, actually. Butit's actually the fact that we
implement good processes toimprove this. And when you're
hiring individuals, as you know,Sam, and if you've run
businesses, like we have, whenyou hire people, day one, they
don't start to perform at the90th percentile, they start to
(22:09):
slowly ramp over time. And whatwe're seeing right now is those
people that get into ourservices from a patient
perspective, love the serviceswe can offer. Those patients
that can't get in areunfortunately are still
troubled, troubled by it. Andwe're going to make more space
for them. We're gonna get themin, we just need more time to do
so I've been working towardthat.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Busi (22:29):
I saw that same post and it was a
it was a head scratcher. I waslike what in the, you know, it's
like, people talent. AI has aplace in the medical field. But
and 90% of the time, I thinkwhat people are referring to is
artificial ignorance instead ofintelligence, but that and that
(22:49):
was one of them. And
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cleve (22:51):
we are using, for example,
artificial intelligence to helpus better staff, our hospital to
better determine where there'svariances in call volume so that
we can get our calls answered ata certain time of the day, we're
using artificial intelligence toanswer people's messages. Chat
GPT is coming to us to answerpeople's messages in our system
(23:13):
as well. So there is value toit. It's just when you talk
about these articles that getpublished in major major
publications, by the way, and Ihave reached out to TCB pom and
I've been surprised that theydon't even proofread this stuff
anymore, because it just seemslike they're just fishing for
anything to put in into theirtheir journal. Because clearly
(23:34):
they they could have come to usand talk to us about it and
learn about what quantumcomputing offers, which is
fantastical, but has very, verylittle relevance to what needs
to happen in our communities andto take care of patients
ultimately,
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Bus (23:47):
to be real honest, the demise of
local news at all levels is oneof the reasons that that I'm
doing this Florida BusinessForum and other podcast because
it's going away unfortunately,it for different reasons. But
that's a good point. Well,
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Clev (24:05):
and I applaud your ability to do
this and blog posting and thingslike that, that gets out when I
do it myself. By the way, I havefriends and neighbors of Martin
of this area, I do them on nextdoor. I do them on all these
different media social channels.
We have a big following even ontick tock for that matter what
we're doing in the hospital,just to get that the word of
we're providing the community.
(24:28):
So
Sam Yates, Host, Florid (24:28):
another tool, let's let's touch on some
of the positives if we've gonedown the negative route and how
you were addressing it, but I'llmention that what I know and let
you fill in the blank cancertreatment trials.
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cl (24:42):
Yeah, we were the first to offer them
in Martin County here at ourWiseman Cancer Center and that
wasn't first for the entirecounty. If you're a patient with
cancer care, or cancerdiagnosis, and you need to have
care sometimes there's notalways a treatment for you.
You're hoping for are a clinicaltrial that you can get involved
with that could potentiallychange your life. We had a total
(25:05):
of 10 trials added to theexisting number of trials that
we had last year. And I'mactually doing one of them
myself and helping that out aswell. That is awesome.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Bu (25:14):
One that I'm familiar with through
the various health care councilsis something that started I
believe that John Hopkins andthat's the hospital at home,
you're involved in that now.
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cleve (25:26):
We are yes, this is another great
opportunity to transform healthcare in our community. We
released this recently in in St.
Lucie County, a traditionalhospital, it's taken up huge
uptake as far as deliveringhospital care, in the comfort of
your home, with our paramedicteams visiting you three to four
(25:46):
times a day and nurse on call.
With a monitor system, you don'teven have to have an internet
connection. It's all driven byself service. And so we can do
it even in your own home withyou. And this has been a huge
benefit to our patients in ourcommunity community. It's
avoided days within thehospital, the brick and mortar
(26:06):
structure. And it's deliveredhigh level high quality care
that has high patient experienceregarded. So we are the fastest
growing hospital to hair carehome program and is coming to
Martin north and south hospitalactually in February of this
year. Something
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Bus (26:24):
to look forward to there. It's the
advances of how people are caredfor it just fascinates me. It
really is. It's amazing. As youcontinue to improve overall, one
thing that comes up is thehospital grading system. I'm not
quite sure that I agree with howthose grades are made touch base
(26:46):
on that.
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cl (26:47):
Yeah, so you know, there everyone, and
even including, you can have arancor and Raider. And and every
one of their methodologies aredifferent. And so some sometimes
the methodology changes and youperform really well. And
sometimes it does not perform aswell as we want it to. There's
(27:07):
Press Ganey there's healthygrades. There is LeapFrog.
There's a lot of these. Andunfortunately, the LeapFrog
score that we got this year wasnot optimal, but reflects data
from almost two years ago. Whatleapfrog does is it looks at
data not from just this sixmonths ago, or even three months
(27:27):
ago, it looks at some data inarrears for almost two years
ago. And I remember Sam, when Italk to you about this, and what
we were doing two years ago, itwas a very bleak time in the
Martin health system, we hadlost a lot of nurses, we have a
total component of around 1300nurses, we were down to 850 or
so nurses by that point in time.
Just imagine that for a moment,1/3 of our population nurses
(27:48):
decided to travel at that pointin time, or stop working because
of COVID being so detrimentaland concerning to them, which I
understand. And so this waswhere this grading system came
in about. Now, if you look atthe other grading systems, for
example, like healthy grades, weachieved five star status, which
is the highest as you canachieve in nine specialties,
(28:08):
cardiothoracic care, cancercare, lung care, orthopedic
care, Mother fetal and maternalfetal medicine. All these areas,
we were able to achieve a fivestar status, which is the
highest you can achieve andmeets national ranking in those
areas. So just for comparator, Ithink again, that while these
(28:28):
Rancors and Raiders areimportant to some, they're not
the be all end all and certainlyif they don't use data from very
really irrelevant timeframes andbecomes irrelevant to what we're
talking about
Sam Yates, Host, Florida (28:39):
today.
I have found that complainerslook for the worst things that
they can use to support theircomplaints. So it's, it's really
why our rearview mirrors aresmaller. So kudos for making
things move forward. Anotherarea your Ophthalmology is the
goal I ophthalmology are wegoing to see an expansion into
(29:02):
this area 100%
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cl (29:06):
We've gotten the green light to do
that. And we're raising thefunds now to do so. And it's
it's it's only a matter of timebefore we start to see up
Thalmic patients andOphthalmology is one of those
unsung specialties of medicinein many ways it as an
aphrodisiac, huge impact and faras welfare, but it actually
attracts people for the firsttime to hospitals and to
(29:27):
facilities to get care and it'svery important for us to
establish a footprint to helpsupport our hospital system. Our
emergency rooms et Cieophthalmic patients as well as
our outpatient practices wouldneed to be supported by that.
Just to give you a quickexample, Sam 40% of the patients
who have diabetes right now, inthe count and Martin and St.
(29:49):
Lucie counties gets their annualexamination for diabetes or eye
examination. That's well belowstandards of the community by
putting an ophthalmology unitand we hope to scream closer to
a 90% of those people. So we canprevent vision, threatening
blindness, which occurs fromdiabetes, which is, again, the
most common cause of blindness,the US and working age adults.
(30:10):
So that's going to be a hugeadvantage for us to add to this,
amongst other things that we cantalk about to Sam, you know, we
have a fast track program at ourtraditional hospital that is
valuable to our emergencyservices there. And also,
expanding the services we'regoing to be doing at South
Hospital in regards to ourmother baby unit, there is going
to be additional adds to ourfacility to help our care for
(30:32):
our community through theseprograms.
Sam Yates, Host, Florid (30:35):
Without going into details, because I
can't go into details, but Ithink you know that I've been
working behind the scenes andperhaps getting some hospital
care into other areas of ourcommunity. We have a wonderful
community, but it's a growingcommunity. Is that growth a
factor that that you have todeal with?
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Clev (30:55):
Oh, absolutely. I mean, we start
we've we've now had the highestlevel of nursing 14% Higher
nursing that we had four or fiveyears ago to expand, what we can
do in population growth isanywhere from three to five to
7% a year. So we've seen thatgrowth every year, year after
year, which is pretty, prettysignificant. And so we've
upscaled our workforce in orderto do that we look at
(31:17):
locationally, where we want tobe we buy land, and find out
practice areas to be where wewant to be from a locational
perspective. And we're doing allthat right now. So definitely is
an eye toward continuallygrowing our organization through
these these sort of overallstructures and strategies.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida (31:35):
We've covered a lot of topics and I
know that just the nature of ourconversation, we could sit here
and carry on for another hour,anything that we have not
touched upon, that you reallywant to make sure that we get
across before we wrap up.
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cleve (31:50):
So Sam, I think the first thing is,
we appreciate the community thatwe live in as an organization,
we value their feedback, I wouldtell you, if anything, anyone
leaves with today, please giveus more feedback. And what we
could do better give usexamples. I always tell everyone
give me examples where I canmake things better. And the
organization can make thingsbetter. We have a huge team here
(32:10):
and this invested in it. Andthat's the second point is we're
invested here. We're notleaving, we're not selling we're
not doing anything else. Yetanother day goes by that other
somebody doesn't call me withsome weird rumor about what we
may or may not be doing. Theanswer is we're gonna be here
for the next 100 years. And aswe have been the first 100 years
in Ohio will be for the next 100years and Martin, and we will
(32:31):
continue to expand the care thatwe can offer a number three to
our community, because I livehere just like you do. And I
want everything here and beingable to be able to be accessible
to our, our community. Andcertainly we didn't have that
for a long time. And now we'regetting that day after day and
week after week.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida B (32:50):
Most important question of the entire
program. Can you come back foranother episode in the future?
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cle (32:56):
Well love to and love to give you
updates as far as our progress,especially as we, you know, grow
the program this year.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Bu (33:04):
One final observation, I'm looking
out my window and I can see outthe window to your side, nearly
sunny skies. And having spentquite a number of my adult years
in Ohio. I will take thisweather over the Ohio winter,
anytime.
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Clevel (33:23):
I would too. Except in days when I
guess yesterday it was 60degrees. And I was walking
around with a sweater on.
Because I have unfortunatelybecome very acclimated to your
environment as much as you havebeen. And it's it's a real
pleasure being down here. I haveto be honest with you, I could
not have asked for a betterplace to be I started this
conversation by telling you howfortunate I felt because I
(33:44):
didn't know much about Floridato be honest with you before I
came down here. And I reallyfound a community that that is
enveloped in, in growing,improving and really helping
those around each other and thatto me is a big reason to be here
and to grow this or entity. Well
Sam Yates, Host, Florida (34:02):
said.
Dr. Rishi Singh, Vice President,Chief Medical Officer Cleveland
Martin hospital systems. It hasbeen my pleasure to have you on
the program today.
Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cl (34:14):
Thank you, Sam. Really appreciate it.
Sam Yates, Host, Florida Bu (34:16):
And until our next episode of the
Florida Business Forum, I'm SamYates Have a great day
everybody. The Florida BusinessForum is dedicated to showcasing
Florida businesses and CEOs ofall sorts to promote their
business or not for profit inthe only business forum of its
type in Florida. Thanks fortuning in. And remember, have a
(34:39):
great day everyone. And staytuned for more business
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