Becker's Hospital Review

WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP 29 Mayo Clinic's 15-year focus By Carly Behm W orkforce strategies and healthcare disruptors are just a couple things Sarah Poncelet, chair of the strategy and enterprise portfolio management office and strategic consulting services at Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic, is paying attention to in 2024. Ms. Poncelet spoke with Becker's about her goals for Mayo Clinic's near and far future. Note: is conversation was lightly edited for clarity and length. Question: What are you most looking forward to in 2024? Sarah Poncelet: First we're starting to think broadly about the future of medicine as it relates to what happens in a physical location. We've been outlining some practice transformational aspects as it relates to our hospitals because we're expanding our physical footprint and growth. We're thinking about some of the pivots we might need to make. What are the future CAR-T therapies or proton beam therapies? How does diagnostics shiing into home or therapeutic shiing into home really fundamentally change how we interact with patients? What is that seamless interaction between a physical and a digital environment? In light of that, we're also looking to forecast our 2040 future instead of our 2030 future and really thinking big and bold into the next 15 years. Finally, we've been investing quite a bit in our generative artificial intelligence, large language models and automation. So I'm excited to see some of our efforts and automation really drive an impact and hopefully alleviate some of the hard-to-staff roles. Q: What have been the hardest roles to staff? How are you approaching it? SP: e most difficult role to staff is nursing. We've seen a nursing shortage globally, and that is a space where we have been thinking through a few different things. Some within nursing are the tasks that they're doing where we could utilize technology and/or robotics to help alleviate some of that. I think at Mayo, about 30% of their work is in documentation, communicating and care coordination. So how do we relook at how they're doing their work and empowering them with some technology in order to not be short-staffed everywhere? We've been looking at process automation as well as potential automation solutions within our inpatient setting as well as our surgery setting. e other couple of roles that are extremely difficult are our surgical techs as well as our imaging techs. We've been thinking about either vended solutions or potential automated solutions that help with surgical trays and instrument processing, and how we utilize vendors differently and maximize the impact there and areas that we could potentially automate. Q: When you think about these long-term plans, what are the biggest challenges that you're anticipating? What's your strategy to tackle that? SP: I think some of what we're anticipating for challenges is an ongoing workforce constraint. Seeing that we're having an aging population shiing into Medicare Advantage, a lot of hospitals and health systems are looking at our financial model and thinking about how we create viability. We've seen a lot of rural healthcare kind of close and change how they're able to support patients. We have to think about new technologies to reach more people and maximize that from a value-based lens. ere's a lot of headwinds from the government in that space. I also think that we need to think about the additional consumer expectations. Our consumers are going to be changing how they interact with healthcare because there's so many new entrants into the space such as Walgreens, Amazon and Best Buy as well as some of the app-based solutions that are going to be changing the healthcare landscape. What are the expectations from our consumers? What are the things that they're going to adopt? For us, it might be thinking How this chief nursing officer plans to strengthen workplace culture By Mariah Taylor For Cherie Smith, PhD, RN, fostering enthusiasm in the workplace is the top priority for 2024. "We must address our current demands," Dr. Smith, chief nursing officer and vice president of patient care services at OhioHealth Dublin Methodist Hospital and OhioHealth Grady Memorial Hospital in Delaware, told Becker's. "Our focus is on elevating healthcare quality by recruiting and retaining top talent. One of our strongest organizational attributes is the positive, close-knit relationships shared by our associates, however, the intensity of our work can occasionally overshadow these relationships." To improve workplace culture, the system has added a well-being consultant to the team whose role is to generate opportunities for collaboration and networking away from the care environment. They are also prioritizing elevation and empowerment associates in decision-making. Columbus-based OhioHealth recently added three hospitals to its system and plans to expand its level 1 trauma center and its women's center. The system has also partnered with Columbus State Community College to create the OhioHealth Center for Health Sciences "with the goal of doubling the number of students in nursing, surgical technology, medical imaging, respiratory therapy, and sterile processing." The center will open in 2027. n

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