This is Scott Becker with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by one of the best leaders in healthcare that I've got to know over the last twenty, thirty years. I've been in healthcare for thirty plus years. I've known David for, like, ten years or so. I'm not sure what the what the time frame is. But we're joined today by David Rahia, who's a leader at Endeavor Health, formerly known as North Shore University Health System. I'll ask David to tell you more about himself and his background. We we have him on today particularly because he's taking on a new role in the Endeavor Health system, which is a fantastic system. David, can you take a moment and tell the audience a little bit about yourself and about the new role that you're now taking on? Thank you, Scott. Always a pleasure, and and appreciate the opportunity to be on with you. My new role, I've, been asked to and named as the president of NPH. NPH is a licensed, for a hundred 509 bed hospital in Arlington Heights, Illinois. It's actually our biggest of the nine Endeavor Health, hospitals. So great opportunity. We have 20,000 inpatients a year, over 76,000 ED visits a year, a very wide, outpatient ambulatory network, 17,000 surgeries, 20 five hundred deliveries. So really a great opportunity, to, take this great organization, take the baton, from, my friend, Michael Hartke, who has done a great job here. He's going to a health system out west and really take it, to the next level. This is the community that I grew up in, so, it's personal. So the opportunity to take the expertise and the breadth of Endeavor Health and continue to build on the strong legacy here at NPH in Arlington Heights, to build subspecialized programs and continue to bring new and differentiated services to the community. It's just a great opportunity, and I'm excited, to join the MCH team, and get back to my old stomping grounds in Arlington Heights. Thank you. Did you grow up in Arlington Heights? Were you an Arlington Heights High School person or a friend to person or Palatine or one of those schools? Yeah. We've had I I, grew up in Mount Prospect. Right across the street was Arlington Heights, and we actually sat in to really metals high school. So, district. Yeah. So the come right back home. Fantastic. Well, congratulations. I didn't realize that I've seen the different post on social media about you being appointed to the position. Some of them have said you're returning home. Congratulations. And talk a little bit about, yeah, what I saw you most visibly do was run as, I think, the first CEO or president of The North Shore Orthopedic Institute, which was just a fantastic success. Can you talk about that role and how that role of leadership might have helped prepare you for this role currently? Yeah. Great question, Scott. Correct. When I was president of of North Shore University Health System, Skokie Hospital, it was a general community hospital. Skokie was a unique asset. As you know, Scott, the four legacy NorthShore hospitals are very close proximity to each other. Skokie is a, was a smaller footprint, and it didn't make sense that we were doing everything everywhere in such close proximity. And so we had a, huge advantage in orthopedics and spine care. And so, in '20, '19, we flipped, Skokie from a general community hospital on the inpatient side to an orthopedic and spine specialty hospital. Still kept our ED, still kept a very wide ambulatory network to to kick take care of what the the vast majority of the community needs, and it has been a resounding success from the standpoint that it continues to grow nationally ranked in US News four years in a row and running. And to me, the learning there was an example of when you have focused care, with teams that are expertly trained and do a lot of something with the latest technology, latest equipment, ORs, and and inpatient teams that are specifically trained, outcomes do get better. Now NCH is a very different, hospital from the standpoint of it. It's not small. It's actually quite large. They're it serves a very dense community densely populated community, and so we're gonna be a multispecialty hospital as we are today. But I think taking the learnings of building multidisciplinary, teams, specialty programs. We can scale that at NCH and in the NCH service area, for a very wide breadth of the Chicagoland community. And so I'm excited to build programs, build programs with expert clinicians, bringing multidisciplinary teams together around specific patient problems, and then really focusing in on equipment, technology, the broader team on delivering a differentiated better product. At the End of day, it's all about outcomes. There's human beings associated with data and outcomes. And I think given the assets that are here, we can really take what we've learned with building some specialty programs and really do it at scale in this environment. Just fantastic. And and and talk a little bit about David, you are a fantastic leader. What are you most excited about and focused on this year? Is there anything particularly that you're very excited in the focus? And I know you you're taking over a new job. I don't wanna compare your first ninety days to president Trump's first ninety days. I take you'll take a little bit of a softer, slower approach and figure out what's doing. That's not a knock on president Trump. But how do you view those first ninety days, and what are you most focused and excited about? Yeah. No dose, committee at NCH. You know, I'm really excited about where we're going as a broader health system and where NCH fits into that. Endeavor, Health is relatively new health system in Chicagoland. We're about, as a brand, to be about a year old, when we launched Endeavor Health, in the Chicagoland market. It's a compilation of four great health systems, North Shore University Health System, Swedish Hospital, Northwest Community Healthcare, and the Edward Elmhurst health system coming together to really make a really a powerhouse, health system in Chicagoland. We're only in Illinois. We're a not for profit, and we all live and work in in our communities. And so we are excited about how do we elevate the care, in the Chicagoland communities. I think what sets Endeavor apart, unlike many health systems across the country that are collection of hospitals, collection of physician groups, all under, you know, a common name. We're really challenging ourselves to think about how do we truly become a truly integrated system of care across the continuum of care. How do we ensure that care is seamless and personal for every patient no matter where they start in that continuum and take the patient from outpatient office to inpatient to post acute back in the office and make that experience as seamless as possible. We're embarking on taking three instances of Epic and merging them into a single instance of Epic to kind of enable enable that, seamlessness. In addition, we've brought four legacy medical groups together into a single Endeavor Health medical group. All that is gonna allow us, to to really operate as a truly integrated system of care. And NCH being our biggest hospital in our system that serves a very large service area, I'm excited, to help lead and, really take, the strengths of all of our legacy entities, bringing them together, and, leveraging that for the NCH community. David, thank you so much for joining us today. Literally, a fantastic I'm so excited to see what happens with NCH, Northwest Community Hospital, under your leadership. It's a great, great institution. I I know that you get a chance to work with one of my closest colleagues, Michael Glickman. Doctor Glickman, he was a fantastic, fantastic physician, and I'm very excited to see what happens with NCH. I I I am so thrilled with the leadership. Thank you for joining us today on the Becker's Healthcare podcast. What a great pleasure to visit with you. Pleasure is mine as always. Thanks, Scott.