The Becker's team is excited to announce the launch of our new CFO and Revenue Cycle podcast. Tune in for conversations with finance experts from the top hospitals and health systems. We'll discuss key trends and ideas to drive meaningful change in the industry. Look for Becker's CFO and revenue cycle podcast wherever you listen to episodes. This is Laura Dierdo with the Becker's healthcare podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by JD Whitlock, chief information officer at Dayton Children's Hospital. JD, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today. Thanks, Laura. Great to be here. Now I'm excited for our conversation because I know you're doing some amazing things at Dayton Children's, and so we'll dig into that a little bit. But before we do, you tell me a little bit more about Dayton Children's and what makes it unique? Certainly. So Dayton Children's is a small health system. Our revenue is about 750,000,000. And if you know health care, as most of your listeners do, you know, that is a small health system, but that does not mean to say small organization. Right? 4,300 employees, and there's a lot of things going on. What I would say makes us unique, we are an excess and experience brand. We do very well at that. We have a net promoter score in the low eighties, which is world class, of course, And we compete with two of the top 10 ranked children's hospitals in The US, Cincinnati and and nationwide in Columbus. And we do that, successfully. Right? So we we we can't compete on academic reputation, but we do compete on on access and experience. So that's, I guess, that's what I would say makes us unique. We're blessed to be in the Children's Hospital Association. The pediatrics community is really tight. And even though we at the end of the day, we are we are competitors, we we do a lot of really great collaboration, which, of course, is true generally in health care, but it's even more true on the on the pediatric side. And then one other thing I would say is that we are on Epic. We are on Workday to shift to the IT side of things for a second. And, what that means is that so we're on the best DHR and the best DRP, and that's great. It also means there's a lot of care and feeding, and we have to do all the same things that a larger health system, would do, to keep to keep all that operating correctly and giving the, you know, the best experience, the best best quality of care to our patients, most importantly, and also, of course, best experience for all of our caregivers. That's really great to hear. And, you know, definitely, a lot happening, within the that space and on the technology side too. I know things move so quickly, and so it's great to have that kind of sophistication behind you. Now when you're looking back in the last year or so, what accomplishment are you most proud? The number one thing that I'm most proud of is, I wanna talk about the Class Arch Collaborative Pinnacle Award, and I wanna spend a minute on what that is because there will be probably a lot of listeners of this podcast that have been in health care for a long time and may not even have heard about this yet because it's relatively new. It was awarded for the first time last year. So what it is is the Class Arch Collaborative is, as the name implies, a collaborative of health systems that sign up to survey their caregivers on their experience with the EHR. And so it is a really nice of course, in health care, we're we're we're very used to very standardized surveys that we give to our patients. Right? That the government tells us how we're gonna ask a lot of the questions on the patient survey. So it's so it's benchmarkable. And so now, now CLAS is is doing this with the arch collaborative for EHR experience. So we can compare ourselves, to all the other health systems. And, you know, how are we doing delivering a good EHR experience to to our, providers and nurses and and other clinical staff? And so I am happy to report that due due to our really stellar performance when we look at the percentiles that we get, the percentile scores compared to everybody else in the partnership collaborative, We score in the ninetieth percentiles for both providers and nurses, and, and that that is, good enough to win us the, Class Arch Collaborative Pinnacle Award. And so I would predict that, in coming years, you know, more you'll see more people talking about this and and striving to to win this particular award. So it's a it's a it's a it's a great way, that we can talk about our dedication to which we like to talk about the quadruple aim. Right? The the fourth part being being the the caregiver experience. And so we we do a nice job of that, and we're able to do it, efficiently. Once again, it's it's a smaller health system. Right? So that's that's the number one thing I would point to. Got it. No. That's great. And and definitely impressive to see what you've done with the class pinnacle award and and being able to achieve it there. And I think especially, moving forward and looking at, you know, standardizing, continuing to find best practices and making things benchmarkable, how do you, really change a culture when that's not something that's been done in the past? You know, I I know there's a lot of health systems out there that are trying to figure out how to wrap their arms around a lot of the new processes and systems to become better and better than ever before, but it's not just the technology. I know it's the people side of it and making sure that we're able to go through the change management processes there as well. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, what I would say there is there's this really boring topic called governance that we, I don't think, talk talk about enough. And I think that part of our success is due to that. So we have a really great, clinical informatics team, and we have the committees that we have put in place to do the governance on, you know, what are we building next in our epic EHR? How are we doing that? How are we making smart decisions about, you know, the opportunity cost? If we decide to do one thing, that means we're not doing something else or at least not doing that other thing in the next couple months. And so if you do that with good transparency, then your caregivers, have a good understanding of, well, that thing that, you know, somebody asked for, didn't get done by the EPIC team, but that's okay because we understood that there were five things, you know, that that were voted as more important by by the governance committee. And so the thing we asked for is gonna have to wait. You know, that can if there's good transparency around that, then then it doesn't mean people are they're not they're not happy that their thing didn't get done, but they understand the reasons why. So that's probably the one thing that I would point to. And that's really helpful to know. Thank you for spelling that out for us. Now I'm I'm curious. In looking ahead to where do you see some of the biggest growth opportunities for your team in the next twelve months or so? So I'm gonna answer this one not for my team in IT, but but for the organization as a whole. So, unfortunately, we have an epidemic in this country for adolescent, mental health, and I'm proud of what we at Dayton Children's with with our executive team and board has, they made it impossible to stay in front of this, but I would say we've done a good job, responding to it as best we can. And we're we're actually in the next six months, we're actually opening two new buildings dedicated, for mental health, at a new building on our main campus that will double the size of our inpatient behavioral health unit and then a well, not a new building, but a repurposed building at our at our secondary campus for some intensive outpatient, mental health treatment. And so we are just doing a a a really great job as an organization doing the very best we can to meet the needs of our adolescent community in our market area, for all their, unfortunately, increasing mental health needs. Got it. That's such an important area to focus in on and really, you know, great work in that space. I can imagine added capacity will really help, serve the community better. And I I know from your side of things as a CIO, what does that really mean for you and how you're needing to move forward in the next year or so? What it means from the IT perspective is that there's just so many cycles are taken up by that as you can imagine anytime that happens. Right? So there's the there's the IT provisioning, with the new buildings and everything that goes along with that for the for the tech team side of things. And then there's, as you can imagine, a whole lot of epic build that that needs to happen, to support that. So and project management or, really, almost almost everybody in the IT team is contributing in some ways, you know, when you open a new building. And and what that means is because we're doing two of those in the next six months, it just means that there's less time available for some other things. So there's a little bit of a joke, is going on at children's these days as well. As soon as we stop building the buildings, you know, we can we can do some of the other things we've, gotten a list to suit. Now for a large health system, building two buildings, you do that in your sleep, you know, every month. For us, that's, like, a really, really big deal. Right? And so, so that's that's the challenge at a place the size of Dave Jordan's. Absolutely. And that's really helpful context to understand, especially given, everything that you're undertaking, you know, on a regular basis meant to add in, like you mentioned, those two new buildings. You know, is huge. Now I know a lot of opportunities, a lot of exciting things happening, right now, but I know there are challenges as well. What are some of the big challenges that you have your eye on right now, and how are you navigating through them? Well, the first thing that pops into mind with challenges is, of course, cybersecurity. Right? If if you talk to, of course, any really anybody in health care or leadership that understands what's going on with cybersecurity. It's it's a huge worry. You know? Pretty much every week in in in Becker's and other trade publications, there's a a sad story about some health system, that's that's been ransomware. I, for one, you know, with a with an understanding of the threat and understanding of what's required to counter that threat. I'm really not sure how organizations smaller than Dame Children's do it. We have a, small but mighty cybersecurity team. We have a good toolset in place. We have a good partner for managed detection and response. We but there's always more that can be done for disaster recovery, business continuity, and that is that is just always gonna I don't unless the threat changes significantly, which I don't see that happening, that's just always gonna be a challenge for the foreseeable future. And related to that is the regulatory environment. And, you know, one thing that we're all scratching our head about, right now, yeah, are the new HIPAA security proposed regulations, because they're if they come through, it's massive change and, pretty massive amount of new work that would be required. Basically, a lot of things that have been in the past, things you should be doing are gonna be things you must be doing. And once again, for smaller organizations, I'm not quite sure how that would be feasible to do. So I'm on a couple committees. I'm on the, China policy steering committee. We're trying to figure out how, as an industry, we we respond to some of these things and say, hey. There's some really great things in here, and there's some really there were some things in here that are probably not particularly doable. So how can you know, what can we do to to to advance the regulatory environment smartly to that would actually advance cybersecurity within health care as opposed to perhaps putting a regulatory framework on things that that have our cybersecurity teams doing box checking exercises that actually that actually reduce the cybersecurity posture of most health systems. So that that's what I would point as the biggest challenge right now. Got it. Well, that that's really helpful to understand. And in particular, knowing, obviously, cybersecurity, like you said, is something on the tip of everybody's tongue, coming off a really challenging year in 2024. And then two, looking at the regulatory environment, I know there's changes every day, in in in potentially, you know, even bigger shifts ahead. And so how do you stay, really focused on the main thing and being able to, you know, steadily plan for the future when there's so many unknowns and and uncontrollables? Well, that I guess that's job security. Right? There's knowables and unknowables. And related to cybersecurity, you know, one of the debates, of course, is all the generative AI going to make the bad guys smarter, faster, or the good guys, you know, smarter, faster? In other words, the defense is smarter, faster. So, as we explore some of the tool some of the cybersecurity tool sets, we I don't wanna get into exactly which ones we're using, but, we're using some tools within the last year or so that are are powered by Generative AI and and and really have, advanced our defensive capabilities and and and allowed our small cybersecurity team to do less of the scutt work that is required for keeping things secure so that they can address higher end defensive posturing to to to bolster our cybersecurity defenses. So I'll I'll leave that one there. Got it. Thank you so much for digging a little bit deeper. Now, before we wrap up our our call, I I'm wondering, you know, what's the number one thing that you're doing right now to set your organization up for long term success? What I would point to is convenient timing. We are just literally today, signing the contract with a bridge for our Amien AI Digital Scribe vendor. We've been piloting it it successfully for the last couple months, and we are now committing to to an enterprise agreement with a bridge. It's always nice when the when the plucky startup is competing successfully with, with big tech, which is exactly what Abridge is doing. We're really happy with their Epic integration and with the experience that we've seen in the pilot, which which mirrors some of the early adopters that have been doing it, you know, before us. We like to say we're, we can't really be bleeding edge innovators at Dave Jordan's because of our size, but we wanna be fast followers. And I think we're doing a good job at being a fast follower, in this case. I would predict that in the not very far future, maybe a year out, you know, once the, I don't know, half health systems are using an ambient tool from from whichever vendor, there there there are multiple good tools out there, that it is going to be a challenge for health systems to recruit physicians if they are not using an Ambiad tool because it's it's just so popular with, you know, 90% of providers. I say 90% because there's there's, some providers that that just just don't want to use the tool because they have highly templated workflows or they are just very particular about the wording, of their notes, and they're going to rewrite everything that the AI generates. But for 80 to 90% of providers, it's just such a huge win, and it improves, the quality of their life and decreases their burnout. And so I think we're going to see a really rapid adoption, throughout the industry. And so I'm I'm I'm proud that we are moving forward with this, working closely with our, CMIO and the rest of our clinical leadership about how we roll it out, to whom, when, how we support it, how we train it. So it's it's one of those we don't we don't very often in IT get to roll out new tools that are so immediately popular with the users. Right? Oftentimes, we're saying, hey. There's this new thing we gotta do. We understand it impacts your workflow. Maybe not in a way you really like, but here's the reason we have to do it for compliance or whatever. But in this case, it's a here's a new tool. It actually makes your life better, and everybody wants it. So it's it's it's fun to be involved in a project like that. Absolutely. That that sounds amazing and definitely, good to bring such a relief to the clinical workforce, to support them and boost them in everything you're doing. JD, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. This has been a really fun conversation, and I look forward to connecting with you again soon. Thanks, Laura.