Becker's Hospital Review

115 115 PRACTICE MANAGEMENT THOUGHT LEADERSHIP better by contributing their unique talents and expertise. I am also a believer in servant leadership — a philosophy that tilts toward the deliberate sharing of influence and decision-making. It means putting the needs of employees and patients first and paying it forward by providing resources and encouragement to help the team develop and excel. Q: What do you consider your greatest achievement at Sanford so far? BG: Earlier this year, Sanford Health announced an initiative to trans- form rural care delivery, improving access to affordable, high-quality healthcare for generations to come. e initiative was driven by our renewed focus on our patients and residents, people and communi- ties. ey will benefit from the creation of a state-of-the-art virtual care strategy that serves communities across Sanford Health's rural footprint and beyond through our network of hospitals and clinics, allowing patients to get the very best healthcare using the most ad- vanced technology as close to home as possible. As part of this initiative made possible by the generosity of benefactor Denny Sanford, we are working with our academic partners to cre- ate eight new graduate medical residencies and fellowships in critical specialty areas. is training aer medical school further prepares physicians to practice in certain medical specialties. Recruitment and retention of healthcare professionals is an ongoing challenge in rural America. By doubling the opportunities for graduate medical edu- cation, Sanford Health will build a stronger workforce, prepared to lead the next generation of healthcare. is initiative will bring highly sought-aer clinical expertise, resources and subspecialties to the re- gion so patients can access high-quality care close to home. Sanford Health is resolute in our belief that everyone deserves world-class care no matter where they live. n Competition heating up in healthcare delivery and tech, says critical access hospital CIO By Laura Dyrda D arrell Bodnar, CIO of North Country Healthcare in Lancaster, N.H., joined the Becker's Healthcare podcast to talk about major challenges for rural healthcare and exciting technology for the future. Below is an excerpt from the conversation, lightly edited. Question: Is there anything front of mind for you as the healthcare landscape changes to make sure your organization is poised for success? Darrell Bodnar: I hate to use buzzwords, but "consumer- ism" and "patient experience" are front of mind. One of the big challenges we're facing is delivering care to pa- tients when and where they need it. The model we used during the pandemic was to take our existing care delivery models and move them to a remote experience. I think that is what our consumers are going to expect moving forward. It was out of necessity last year and it worked well at the time, but I think we'll have to revisit the entire pa- tient journey map to see how things are changing. That will be critically important to how we look at this digital environment we're rolling out. The patient journey, from symptom checking to provid- ing contract information and service routine, and even perhaps online digital scheduling, are all expectations our patients will have going forward. Ideally, these things will be done on a mobile device. Even though patient portals are great, you really need to have a true digital front door for all healthcare services and all levels of ser- vice, whether it's virtual care, in-person care or chronic disease management. When I'm looking at the marketplace, the competition is going to continue to drive consumerism. People talk about the big digital giants entering healthcare. We're really in the Wild West of healthcare right now, with 18 percent to 20 percent of GDP devoted to healthcare. There are a lot of dollars there. When you look at Walgreens, Walmart, CVS and Amazon, they're delivering on these items, in- cluding retail clinics and health screenings, chronic dis- ease management, vaccines and pharmacy. Amazon and Walmart are getting into urgent care, optometry, dental and behavioral health. Walmart is even standing up imag- ing that is going to be a real challenge for rural healthcare. Best Buy has also invested a billion dollars into their pur- chase of GreatCall, an acquisition for remote patient mon- itoring. Who would have thought that would have been the level of competition we would have? Q: Do you see any opportunities for partnerships with the new healthcare entrants, or are they primarily competitors? DB: I would like to say that you could end up partnering with them, but for critical access hospitals the margins are so thin. Most of those margins come from services they're offering, the ancillary services like labs, radiology imaging and pharmacy. Those are the services that are really go- ing to hurt us. Since 2013, more than 100 rural hospitals have closed. Unfortunately, that trend is going to contin- ue unless we can meet patient needs before [the retail companies] do. They certainly have much deeper pockets and probably a much better platform at which to deliver those services. n

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