Kathleen Wessel (Host): Following exceptional growth, AdvocateHealth faced a unique set of challenges and competing priorities, such as creating synergy between separate systems and staff, building a workforce pipeline to support demand, expanding healthcare access, and continuing to advance standards for patient care just to name a few.

Welcome to AHA Associates Bringing Value, a podcast from the American Hospital Association. In this series of podcasts, we speak with AHA Associate Business Program partners, check in on their efforts and learn how they support AHA Hospital and Health system members. I'm Kathleen Wessel, Vice President of Business Management and Operations at the AHA.

And today, I am joined by Dr. Rasu Shrestha. Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation and Commercialization Officer at AdvocateHealth. In this episode, we'll discuss how he's putting innovation at the forefront of their business strategy by investing in both urban renewal and next gen talent development via the Pearl Innovation District, integrating improved systems across 1000 plus healthcare facilities and redefining relationships with med tech suppliers like Siemens Healthineers to help achieve their goals and find sustainable success. Dr. Shrestha, welcome to the podcast. I'm excited about this one.

Dr. Rasu Shrestha: Thank you, Kathleen. That was quite the introduction there. I am excited to engage in this dialogue with you. I love this. This is great. Let's jump n.

Host: All right. Well, you know, we typically like to start these podcasts by hearing from our speakers, our venerable speakers, about their experiences in healthcare. I know you've got just a wonderful background and résumé. Can you share that with us?

Dr. Rasu Shrestha: So, Kathleen, I appreciate this opportunity. I'm a radiologist by background, trained in informatics, and IT as well as in business. I've been doing this now for the last almost 30 years, really leading health system transformation and innovation and strategy. And I got to tell you, you know, it really is an exciting and pivotal time to be in healthcare.

You know, and I reflect on that quite a bit, this notion of health and care, right? And what we do and what we don't do, they matter. They really do. And I'm reflecting on that, you know, where we are in this moment in time as well. And it's not just the what, it's also the how we do what we do. I think that really matters as well.

So, I'm really excited for where we are as an industry. I think we have tremendous opportunities to build on the progress that we've put in place over the last couple of decades and really then elevate things to the next level. And I'm most excited to be here at AdvocateHealth, really leading that charge with my leaders and colleagues here and partnering in the right way with industry as well.

Host: That's wonderful, just seeing the evolution with Advocate alone, but across the field. Can you specifically talk about the steady and significant growth of what is now and what makes up AdvocateHealthcare?

Dr. Rasu Shrestha: Absolutely. It's really interesting, Kathleen. I've been here now for about six years at AdvocateHealth. And when I joined the system six years ago, we're about a $6-7 billion annual revenue health system. And today, we've dramatically grown to about, what, a $34 billion annual revenue health system. And, you know, we talk about that growth as, you know, where bigger meets better. And it's not to stay a specific sort of internal value pride that we have for ourselves. It's also specifically our strategy, right?

And, you know, the prior strategy that we called Impact 2025 that I had the opportunity to work with, you know, Gene Woods and the leaders at that point really pulled together and mandated a number of things in terms of priorities. And one key one was what we called our growth scale and influence strategy. And it wasn't just growth for the sake of growth, it was really growth really for the sake of scale and scale for the sake of influence. And that in large part has really gotten us to where we are today. And we're now really moving on forward to the next level, the next level of growth with what we're calling Rewire 2030. That is the name for our next five-year strategic plan. And so, really exciting where things are with AdvocateHealth. You know, we're 162,000 teammates. We're now one of the largest health systems in the country.

The third largest is not-for-profit health system in the country. And, you know, over 70 hospitals. Over a thousand sites of care, as you referenced earlier as well. And when we look at the overall footprint of our current geography, it's, you know, 50 million plus patients that, you know, we have access to across our broad footprint. And then, backed by, you know, the strongest of academic and scientific rigor with the Wake Forest University School of Medicine as our academic core. And when you think about sort of the integrated academic health system that we are, i'm super excited about all of that too because I believe that, you know, the future of healthcare really needs to be built on the strongest of, you know, academic and scientific rigor backed by a really progressive view to how we can change healthcare and impact healthcare for good.

Host: That's wonderful. And I appreciate all of those insights about the plans going forward. Given the challenges of expansion and transition, how do you envision innovation, creating meaningful community impact? And what are some of the key obstacles that the health system is tackling during this process?

Dr. Rasu Shrestha: Yeah, it's a really great question, Kathleen. When we came together as AdvocateHealth, we pledged publicly to generate positive social impact to Foster environmentally sustainable healthcare innovation and to ensure that these innovations are accessible to all. So, we actually publicly pledged a number of specific things to deliver the impact that we said we would deliver, right?

And we know that the future of healthcare hinges on having an engaged and expert workforce in all roles, not just the clinical ones. We also believe strongly investing in our communities, including how we can inspire the next generation of youth as we reimagine the future of health and care. And a lot of this really, you know, boils down to key strategic partners, right?

And so, with our key strategic partners, we're looking for something bigger than strategic alignment. We're looking for mission alignment to accelerate that impact that I was talking about. So for example, together with Best Buy Health, we opened a state-of-the-art teen tech center at the McCrorey Family YMCA in an underserved part of Charlotte to support community teens with college and career readiness and access to technology and resources.

We're also privileged to be a recipient of a $26 million Bloomberg grant to help expand STEM education. And Siemens Siemens Healthineers is a wonderful partner in this space with a real commitment to reaching middle school and high school students to expose them to many exciting opportunities in healthcare, including imaging technicians, which again, as a radiologist, I'm super excited about as well. So, we're very excited about the prospects of what does that do for our communities through STEM education and empowering the next generation in healthcare.

Host: Yeah, those are wonderful examples. And that the insights I think within those examples are amazing to expose to the listeners here. From your experience, what role do your suppliers and other industry partners play in the development and execution of your strategy?

Dr. Rasu Shrestha: Again, another great question here, Kathleen, just to take a step back, when I think about healthcare and the landscape that we're in right now, healthcare is really hard. And we've been at this now for a while and really chipping away all of the complexities, the challenges that exist in healthcare.

You know, I'll be really blunt and upfront by saying that, look, healthcare is too darn hard and too darn complex for any one entity to try to solve for all of it by themselves, right? And I am an avid believer in the power of partnerships done right. And I say that very intentionally, right? And as we begin executing our Rewire 2030 Strategic Plan, AdvocateHealth will be investing in solutions that bring care closer to the home, that foster diversity in clinical trials that create a national innovation network. And we cannot accomplish these bold goals alone. And I truly believe the future of healthcare will be built on the shoulders of the strongest of partnerships. So, it really is about partnerships done right.

So, let me maybe expand on that a little bit. So AdvocateHealth, Kathleen, we believe the borderless hospital and care at home is really core to our future. And a couple years back, we've come up with what we called our Connected Care Everywhere strategy. And the notion behind that is care really is a continuum, right? So, it's not just about the bricks and mortar facilities that health systems are known for. And in fact, in our Rewire 2030 strategy, the shift to home is one of what we call our key strategic differentiators that we're doubling down on.

And over the past two years, we've scaled our program in the hospital at home program from a census about 25 to now a daily census of almost a hundred. And we recently served our 14000th patient in our hospital home program. So now, this is the largest hospital home program in the country. And it all started through, you know, just a willingness to embrace innovation in the thick of the pandemic. It was March of 2020 that we decided to really start our hospital at home program, primarily to address what was, at that point, a growing, you know, burden of positive COVID presumptive patients that were flooding our ICUs, flooding our EDs. And we said, "Look, there's a better way to do this and let's stand up our hospital home program."

So, our partner in Best Buy Health, we're now co-developing a service with a Geek Squad, who supports our clinical team and our patients in setting up and troubleshooting the home technology to ensure that the patient is comfortable. And we continue to grow this partnership and really scale this, not just across Advocate, but across the industry.

And then, similarly, you know, we're really looking to continue to make a lot of progress in innovation ecosystem, right? And bringing in these outside-of-the-box thinkers, these doers and these partners. And we're building what we're calling our National Innovation network. And it's through public-private partnerships, but it's also through key corporate partners as well.

So later this summer, I'm really excited that we'll be opening the Pearl, which is our innovation district right here in Charlotte. So June of 2025, super excited about this. And while we have IQ, the Innovation Quarter, our sister innovation district also under AdvocateHealth as part of our Wake Forest Baptist Health up in Winston-Salem, our new innovation district of Pearl. We'll be bringing together industry partners such as Siemens Healthineers and startups and accelerators and innovators and community members and researchers together, really in a community where, you know, we're fostering what I call intentional collisions, right? Intentional collisions for ideas that help propel advances in healthcare, in sustainability, in artificial intelligence, and in technology.

In the fall of this year, there's another example. So in September of 2025, we'll be launching our new experiential learning and surgical simulation and training center called IRCAD North America at The Pearl, right here in Charlotte. And this is a destination center where surgeons across the United States and North America and really globally will be coming into IRCAD to get trained on the most cutting-edge surgical training techniques and experiential learning and robotics and imaging and AI. And Siemens Healthineers was really the first corporate partner to join us in IRCAD North America in this journey forward.

So, we're super excited to continue to push the boundaries. With Siemens, we've now been joined by Stryker and also Boston Scientific. So, super excited to have continually more and more partners join us as strategic allies in pushing the boundaries of what will be remarkable destination centers where we're training the future workforce. And so, we've got lots and lots of things happening, and I'm super excited about, again, the power of partnerships done right.

Host: How exciting, being on the precipice of launching something like that is amazing and gives you a lot of energy to keep going forward on some of these improvements. I mean, just big goals ahead of you. It sounds like you're set up well for success. I wonder if maybe I could squeeze in one final question, hearing about your experience, hearing about how Advocate has been thinking about these in five-year increments and moving forward, what valuable knowledge have you gained from this experience? And what specifically could you share with other hospital and health system leaders about facing this kind of significant growth?

Dr. Rasu Shrestha: I always think about, you know, growth really as a strategic imperative, right? So, it's not just growth for the sake of growth, it's growth for the sake of scale. So, we can take these amazing innovations and ideas and solutions. You know, think about sort of the digital twin capabilities that Siemens Healthineers brings to the table and how that, really, in this age of gen, AI really empowers the elements of really taking care models to the next level and looking at insights and analytics in a whole new different way. So, it's growth so that we can scale. And scale so that we can influence and create that impact, right? So, I think, you know, all of that continuity really comes together.

The other element to this is discipline. I think it's really important to have the discipline to not be blinded by shiny objects. You know, one of the first things that I wrote in my whiteboard when I joined AdvocateHealth now six years ago was let's inoculate ourselves against what I call the shiny object syndrome. And there's an ICD-10 code for a shiny object syndrome. Far too often in healthcare, we get blinded by these shiny objects. And I think it's really important to be grounded on the strongest of academic and scientific rigor; to be grounded to align not just strategies, but really around the mission of delivering better care and superior experiences and leveraging the power of partnerships, like what we're talking about today for broader good.

The last thing I'll say is, I think, you know, in large parts, and again, I reflect on where we are in this really momentous time in healthcare with everything that we've done in the last couple of decades in rolling out digital IT solutions, you know, PAC solutions or picture archiving communication solutions, you know, 3D imaging, now leading into 3D printing, now with the embrace of gen AI and capabilities to really take all of the digital assets as well as the human realities of healthcare and marry those two elements and take it to the next level. And in that, you know, comes a mandate and a need for us to embrace change, right?

So, I'd say, you know, three things in embracing change. One, you know, never let crisis go to waste. And we saw that, you know, as we were living through the pandemic and how, you know, we partnered with partners like Siemens and others to really take things to the next level in terms of, you know, capitalizing in on those opportunities and really innovating and taking these programs to the next level.

Secondly, you know, I think we have to learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable, and that's really critical. Gene Woods is the CEO of AdvocateHealth continues to talk about that as well. And, you know, we embrace that wholeheartedly here in how we look at all of the uncertainties that are upon us. And as a leadership team, you know, I always say that the role of leadership is not to provide certainty, it's to provide clarity. And we think that's really important as well.

And then last but not least, as I reflected on earlier, healthcare is hard. It really is about the power of partnerships done right, so that we can align our missions together to create the impact that we can and make sure that we're able to create, not just, you know, a successful pilot or, you know, aim for a press release that creates some waves in the industry, but really create, you know, meaningful impact, co-development, co-creation, skin in the game, and transformative, you know, solutions that can really be scaled across a large health system like AdvocateHealth and really across the industry so that we can leave a lasting legacy and an influence for years and decades to come.

Host: I want to thank you for joining me today. This has been a wonderful conversation. I wish we had much, much more time to dive into some of the examples that you provided today. Really interested in some of the work you're doing and partnering with Siemens on. It Sounds amazing.

For listeners, if you'd like to learn more about what you've heard on this podcast today or anything about the AHA Associate Program, please visit us at sponsor.aha.org. This has been an AHA Associates Bringing Value Podcast, brought to you by the American Hospital Association. Thanks for joining us.