Joey Wahler (Host):  It includes some big doings for Jefferson Healthcare. So we're discussing The Year In Review. Our guest is their CEO, Mike Glenn. This is To Your Health from Jefferson Healthcare. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm Joey Wahler. Hi there, Mike. Welcome.

Mike Glenn, MHA: Hi Joey. Thanks for having me.

Host: Great to have you aboard. I know you're a busy man these days with the aforementioned, so let's start with you and yours opening a new building in 2025, adding new service lines as part of that. So we'll get into some details in a moment, but overall, what does that mean for East Jefferson County?

Mike Glenn, MHA: It means fewer trips to Silverdale and Seattle for residents of Port Townsend and Chimicum and our community to seek specialty healthcare. And that's kind of been our focus for years, to try to understand what the healthcare needs of our community are, and then, see if we could develop them in a high quality, patient safe way.

And what we learned is that it's easy to count the number of patient's that need to leave, our community to seek specialty care that have the means and ability to do so. But harder to count are patient's that need specialty care that can't make it to Silverdale or can't make it to Seattle.

So we were equally motivated to improve access, make access more convenient, for most of our patients. But there was a mission orientation to create access for those patients that just could not go to Silverdale or go to Seattle, particularly repeatedly, over the course of a treatment.

So that, that was very satisfying to be able to accomplish.

Host: To pick up on that, it seems like in recent years, this has been more of a focal point for healthcare leaders like yourself, hasn't it? Maybe something that went not noticed enough up until recently, the fact that those that have trouble getting around, don't have the means to do so, maybe a little bit of both; often that's a big obstacle in their healthcare. And if you can address that, that goes a long way for both sides, doesn't it?

Mike Glenn, MHA: Absolutely. But what we learned in reaching out to our providers, about their perception on the new services that we need to offer and how we should offer them, I was stunned and alarmed at the number of discussions that they were having with patients where they said, okay, we clearly, we gotta, we gotta get you to a neurologist, to begin this form of treatment, that will really help you.

And when that resulted in a trip to Seattle, it was a complete non-starter. So then the discussion was, doc, what can you do locally to help me? And our providers are amazing. So they would put together care plans, to the best of their ability, but it really gnaws at them knowing that, there is a better care plan, an hour and a half away, but just not available to this patient.

So they are, many of our primary care providers are over the moon, with these new services that we are offering because it helps them do better, what they show up to work every day for, and that is to make their patient's healthy and well.

Host: Yeah, so definitely a win-win all around. Now, part of that expansion, of course, was adding radiation-oncology. So what can you tell us about what most of all that means for patients going forward?

Mike Glenn, MHA: Many of the specialty services that we offer, you know, some of them are one or done, you go over, you see the specialists, they address your issue. Other's maybe are quarterly or a couple times a year. But with radiation therapy, that is often a three or four time a week, four to five week regimen. And, as, you may be aware, we currently provide medical oncology. So we provide chemotherapy services for our patients.

Uh, and that's an important foundational piece to cancer treatment. But almost half of every patient that goes through a cancer diagnoses also has radiation therapy. So many of our patients, would be seeking chemotherapy here, and then the following day, traveling to Bremerton, Silverdale or Seattle for radiation therapy and doing that for several weeks.

And this was the most compelling reason for counting the uncountable. And what I mean by that is understanding the patient's that would say to their providers, I just can't do that. What can you do for me locally? Because the addition of radiation therapy, on top of chemotherapy sometimes improves, uh, five-year life expectancy 20, 30%. So a provider has to say, well, we can do this locally and there's a 45, 50% chance that you'll make it five years, which is kind of a bellwether, for a successful cancer treatment. Or, if you had radiation therapy, that would jump to 85%. And so you can imagine how difficult that discussion was to have with, uh, providers and patients.

So we are thrilled to introduce the service and could not be more pleased with how it's being embraced and the patients that we are taking care of.

Host: Absolutely. And continuing down the road regarding services. This expansion also has meant some clinics moving to the hospital's new wing, right?

Mike Glenn, MHA: One of the goals of the new building, was to expand existing services, that the need sort of exceeded the capacity. So, we increased space and providers in dermatology. We increased space in our OBGYN program. And we increased space in medical oncology.

Another, driving reason was to create space for new services. We stood up a neurology clinic, a pulmonology clinic. We have an ENT clinic, our new ENT provider will join us in a few months. And we have a podiatry clinic, and our new podiatrist will join us in a few months.

Introducing new services in addition to expanding, and improving access to existing services, were two primary goals.

Host: So some big accomplishments there to say the least. But in addition, how about a few other highlights, if you will, for you and yours in 2025?

Mike Glenn, MHA: Highlight one that probably won't make the marketing brochures, but certainly is the mantra of all 1000 Jefferson Healthcare employees is we got through it. Remodeling a hospital, not many folks can relate to how challenging that is, but everybody can relate to living through remodeling your kitchen, or a bathroom or any part of your house.

It is just a continual challenge. And a series of minor irritants, to patients and, staff alike where saw cutting and digging and, pounding and all of that stuff related to major construction project. So, that was a grind. And we are pleased to get on the other side of that.

In addition to that, part of this construction project meant demolishing our old kitchen and cafeteria and then building a new one. That meant we went, gosh two and a half years without having a cafeteria for our employees. And, for what all of our employees know and many members of our community know, the biggest rock star at Jefferson Healthcare is our chef, uh, chef Aaron Stark.

So we were very excited to introduce our new kitchen and cafeteria. Chef Stark is amazingly fired up about continuing to provide his culinary delights and treats, for patients, staff, and community alike. And it's just so much fun, to go over there at lunch and seeing the place abuzz again and seeing our employees, take a well-needed, well deserved break, but it's very light and airy. It, backs up against an open air courtyard. And we couldn't be more pleased with the design and the quality of construction. That's a big joy too.

Host: So you're obviously wrapping up one strategic plan for 2025. You've got another one in store for 26 of course. Can you give us a preview of what's coming, some of your goals for the coming year or years?

Mike Glenn, MHA: Yeah. The timing of that question is remarkable because in two weeks I'll be presenting to the board, kind of the final bounce of our 26 through 28 strategic plan. In healthcare, most hospitals focus their strategic planning work on five primary pillars.

Those pillars are quality, people, service, growth and finance. And really, you, you never reach the finish line in your work to improve quality. So, we will once again be using those five pillars, to support our work. The work around quality is to continue to improve the quality of care and the safety of care, for every service every day.

I mean, it's this, relentless, ongoing pursuit, to get better. We have an amazing culture behind that and teams of people that, help lead that charge every day. Under the people pillar, we want to be an amazing place to work and practice. And I think, on easy days, that is a goal that is fairly reasonable to achieve.

But in healthcare there are challenging days. And so, our focus going forward is how do we make Jefferson Healthcare be an amazing place to work and practice, even though we are in a very challenging industry, that often, that external pressures, apply a lot of, headwind to achieving that goal.

But we have incredibly talented people working on that. With respect to service, we sort of changed the name of that goal, to try to relate more to what we think our patients and really every patient of healthcare is thinking. And so the name of our service goal, is make healthcare work better. What has become clear to me is that I learn far more about healthcare when I'm on the patient side than when I'm on the hospital, CEO side. I have been helping my elderly parents, the last year and a half or so, navigate the healthcare system and it is incredibly frustrating.

It, fragmented, it just doesn't work. So we spent a lot of time talking about what our service goals should be. And we finally just said, You know what? I, I think what our community wants, us to be working on is just making our part of that huge industry work better. Connect, make sure providers are connected, make sure appointments are, are handed off.

Make sure that there's a sensibility in everything that we do and why we do it. So that is our North Star with respect to service. Just make healthcare work better as defined by the people that use it.

Next goal is growth, expand local services, more of the same. Last year we spent building these new services. Now we're going to work on making sure that they are up and running and hitting our targets.

And the last goal is finance. And really the way we talk about that goal in this kind of rough and tumble healthcare environment is that we want to make sure that there's no other logo ever placed on the Jefferson healthcare sign. That our primary focus with respect to financial performance is to maintain our governance and our operating autonomy. And in order to maintain our operating autonomy, we have to maintain our financial autonomy. So, we manage the finances of this place with that in mind because our community and our board has zero appetite, for there to be anyone else in charge of healthcare decisions other than local leaders.

Host: Well, one last one for you, Mike, before we let you go. You've done such a great comprehensive job of summing up this exciting year for Jefferson Healthcare. In parting, what would you say your overall message is for the Jefferson healthcare community, both on the staff and on the patient side? It's so exciting to see and hear about everything that's going on.

How would you sum it all up? What's the main thing you want everybody to take in from all of this?

Mike Glenn, MHA: Well, I think that the community should feel real good about the level of access to care in our community. That every service that we introduced was the result of understanding either through hard data that we pulled from our electronic medical record or soft data, what we picked up from community forums or from discussions with our patients and with our providers.

That these services that we introduced, are the most necessary as defined by the highest number of people leaving our community for them. So we're in a great place. We're going to work hard to provide those services as efficiently and as well as possible. That will help us be successful.

On the other hand, the bill that was recently passed in Washington, DC around the 4th of July, eliminates $1 trillion of healthcare funding from the system. We are beginning that work, to make sure that we understand how that's going to impact our community and Jefferson Healthcare, to make sure that we can continue to fulfill our mission, we can continue to provide all of the services top to bottom for our community, we can continue to maintain and grow employees, in the midst of some pretty serious cutbacks to healthcare funding, particularly in the Medicaid space. And you know, the biggest shame to that is, those that will feel this the most are those that need the most.

So, it's going to be our mission to make sure that we are there for them regardless of whether their insurance is active or not.

Host: Mike, I'm sure those joining us are comforted, knowing that you've expressed those sentiments toward the end there. Folks, we trust, you're now more familiar with Jefferson Healthcare's Year In Review. Mike, congrats on all the work and all the accomplishments. As you said, just getting it behind you is an accomplishment in and of itself, right?

Best of luck in 2026 and happy New Year to you and yours. Thanks so much again.

Mike Glenn, MHA: Great. Thank you Joey.

Host: Absolutely. And for more information, please do visit jeffersonhealthcare.org. And if you found this podcast helpful, please do share it on your social media. Thanks again for being part of To Your Health from Jefferson Healthcare.