Melanie Cole, MS (Host): Welcome to It's Your Health Radio with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. I'm Melanie Cole. And today, we have Kevin Klockenga. He's the President and CEO of Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital, and he's here to introduce himself to the community and talk about his plans for the hospital. Kevin, thank you so much for joining us today. Can you start by telling us a little bit about your background and how you came to Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital?

Kevin Klockenga: Sure. I've been in healthcare now for about, I guess, 30 years. I spent the first 15 years of my career in different large academic medical centers around the country from as far east as Baltimore with Johns Hopkins Hospital. And then, in the last 15 years, I've been with mostly large community health systems. All those 15 years, I've been here in California. So, I've been in California now for 15 years. Certainly, I've loved it here. and I've loved my career. I've had a lot of fun and I've been blessed to do something that I'm passionate about every day.

Melanie Cole, MS (Host): So, what are your first impressions, Kevin of the Santa Clarita area and Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital?

Kevin Klockenga: They've all been great. It's really a fantastic community. I joke once in a while that it's certainly is the friendliest place I've ever met. The joke part of that is that Walt Disney better look out. Walt Disney claims that they're the friendliest place on earth. And I think he has some competition with Santa Clarita here. People are really awesome. It's a pretty good-sized community. But yet, it still feels very small. People know each other. It just has a small town feel even though it's still a pretty good-sized community still growing pretty rapidly.

And we have some of the nicest neighbors I've ever encountered in my life. Every single place I go to here, people are just really awesome and super friendly. And that carries over to the hospital as well. All the employees, all the physicians that I work with here, fantastic people, very committed to the community, very community-focused, very friendly and passionate about doing what's best for the community, doing what's best for the hospital. So, I have a really a great team that I work with that's just very talented, very committed. And I just really feel like we have an organization that there's nothing we can't accomplish. And so, that's a pretty exciting to be in that place.

Melanie Cole, MS: How lovely, Kevin. That is just awesome to hear. Now, this next question is a pretty big question, because we're seeing a lot going on in the healthcare community these days. And ever since COVID, wow, we sure learned a lot about our own resilience and the resilience of our healthcare community. What challenges do you see that the healthcare providers might be facing in the next few years?

Kevin Klockenga: I think it is a challenging time. Actually, I think it's the most challenging time I've seen in healthcare in my 30 years of being in the hospital administration, COVID made things very difficult. It is, you know, a a very difficult, unique years, through that. But even today, it's tougher and tougher all the time. There's all kinds of pressures, even legislation that comes out all the time that forces our costs up. A lot of what I call unfunded mandates, where legislature requires us to do things, drives our costs up and there's no revenue to pay for it. And we've been impacted by inflation.

The same way that everyone else has been. But as our costs go up, our revenue doesn't necessarily go up. A lot of other businesses, when their costs go up, they raise their prices, they get paid more. Seventy, 75% of our patients are paid by Medicare and Medi-Cal. Government programs, we have no ability to negotiate with them. And they do not give us increases that are anywhere close to the rate of inflation and other cost pressures that we have. So, pressure on our operations and our ability to stay financially sound, I think are more difficult than they've ever been for hospitals across the country. It's not just unique here, it's really everywhere and particularly throughout California, I think has become very difficult.

So, they're just challenges that are stretching healthcare providers more than ever to figure out how do we continue to do this in an environment where there's just so much pressure on not capping revenue, continuing to increase costs, and how does that all continue to work. And so, we're working on it every day trying to make sure that we stay strong and able to meet all the needs of our communities while being yet in a very challenging financial environment. And it's all over the place. There's a lot of things we could go into in terms of details. But I'll just say it's the most challenging time that I've seen in 30 years.

Melanie Cole, MS: Well, it certainly is. But also, as I stated before, it's shown so much resilience, so compassion and caring really from the healthcare community. And I'd like to ask you, Kevin, what your philosophy of care is. What would you like patients to know about how you approach disease, wellness, care for the whole person?

You already mentioned how great it was and the people are so friendly. And everybody seems like a family in a smaller environment. Tell us a little bit about that, your philosophy of care and how that all comes together.

Kevin Klockenga: What we focus on every day is a few things. One, being the best place to work. So, making sure that all of our caregivers, our employees, that we create an environment that this is the place where they would want to work, where they're passionate about what they do every day. Being the best place to practice for our physicians. Similarly, making sure we have a great environment for our physicians, making sure we're serving our patients in the best possible way, providing the highest quality care, you know, to our patients, et cetera, and being the best place for patients to receive care. And that's not only just being the highest quality provider, but also providing the very best patient experience. Because as we all know, we can provide really high quality, but we may not always feel like it was the best experience. And so, you know, we are very passionate about that, almost obsessed with the patient experience as an organization, so that we make sure that we're the best and that every day, we feel like we have to be better than we were yesterday. And so, just kind of maintaining that as our primary focus over and above everything else we do I think it's what helps keep us all focused. That's why most people get into healthcare, is because they're passionate about those things. And as long as we stay committed to those things, stay passionate about those things, and deal with our other challenges in the background, I think we continue to always meet the needs of our patients and our communities, and continue to do that better and better.

Melanie Cole, MS: Well, now my favorite question, Kevin, I'd love for you to tell us something about yourself that your colleagues and the community may not know about you. Any hobbies or interests that people might find interesting? What do you do for fun? Just tell us a little fun fact about yourself.

Kevin Klockenga: I think for fun, certainly, I like to spend time with my family. When I have an opportunity to travel, see new places, new cultures, we certainly love to do that. That's certainly at the top of our list. I have a little personal hobby that I've picked up in the last couple of years I've always wanted to do. I bought an old, 1960s Corvette that I am working on and it's been kind of fun for me. It's something I've always kind of wanted to do. I've had some exposure to cars when I was younger, so it gives me a little hobby to do. I haven't had much time to do it lately.

So, I haven't touched the car in probably more than the last nine months, but, it is a fun project when I have time to work on it.

Melanie Cole, MS (Host): That's a very fun fact. Thank you for sharing that. What goals, Kevin, do you have for Henry Mayo? Can you give us a glimpse of what we might expect to see from Henry Mayo New Hall Hospital in the next five years or

so?

Kevin Klockenga: some of the things I kind of generally that I spoke on really is making sure that, we continue to meet the needs of the community. We have a growing community. we have a great, staff and physicians that I mentioned to you that are all truly committed to serving community.

We've invested pretty heavily our, physical plant. We built a new patient tower full of private We built beds and we built that knowing that this community is growing and so we knew that we would have the capacity to meet the growing needs of this community for many years to come.

every day we're getting better. I've seen much improvement even just in the nine months that I've been here. it's really kind of remarkable. We focus a lot on one example, the efficiency of our emergency room. And today we're seeing our wait times be. dramatically lower than what they were even just nine months ago, and I know that that's translating to, a lot happier patients.

No one likes to come to the ER and sit there and wait for a couple hours, to be seen. We've kind of re engineered processes so that, that is now dramatically lower and I think we're one of the best practices now in terms of ER efficiency. So it's. just one example of ways we're kind of focusing on the patient and making sure that patient experience is the best it can be.

and then you'll also, I think, see us growing more in the outpatient area, having more different outpatient services around the community. to, continue to meet the needs of the community, putting services in different geographic portions of the community so they're closer and more accessible to where people live as well.

And so, growing in that area as well as, just really focusing on, the patient experience.

Melanie Cole, MS (Host): Thank you for sharing so much with us, Kevin, today. And are there any closing remarks you'd like to make to the community about what you're expecting, what you hope for, what you would like

them to know?

Kevin Klockenga: we are very Committed to this community. Every single, employee that works here, from the board to our physicians to our staff, our leadership, all very passionate and committed on what are the needs of this community and making sure that we're meeting those needs and that we're anticipating those needs and being prepared for even future needs that may not even be here yet.

You know, today, um, continuing to make sure we grow to meet those needs, um, and, and again, just being, um, you know, passionate about, you know, this will be the best place for patients to receive care and, and, um, we want to make sure that every single patient encounter is the best and that our community feels that when they come here.

Um, they know we care, they feel we care, um, and they tell each other how much, you know, everybody else how much we care and, um, that's kind of part of our motto as we go forward.

Melanie Cole, MS (Host): Thank you so much, Kevin, for joining us today. And to learn more about Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital, please visit henrymayo. com. You can also visit our website. Sorry, you can also visit our free health information library at library. henrymayo. com. That concludes this episode of It's Your Health Radio with Henry Mayo New Hall Hospital.

Please always remember to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast and all the other Henry Mayo New Hall Hospital podcasts. I'm Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for joining us today. Just hang on.