Transcription:
Designing for the Post-Pandemic Future: Modernizing Space to Promote Safety, Efficiency, and Agility

Intro: The following SHSMD Podcast is a production of DoctorPodcasting.com.

Bill Klaproth (Host): On this edition of the SHSMD podcast, we're going to talk about Designing for the Post-Pandemic Future: Modernizing Space to Promote Safety, Efficiency and Agility. We're going to talk with Al Green and Angelique Kennison, both from Maine Health who will be presenting at this year's SHSMD Connections 2022. So let's get to it right now!

This is the SHSMD Podcast, rapid insights for healthcare strategy professionals in planning, business development, marketing communications, and public relations. I'm your host, Bill Klaproth. In this episode, we have Al Green, Vice President of Planning and Business Development at Maine Health and Angelique Kennison, Director of Regional Clinical Planning at Maine Health, joining me, as Al and Angelique are going to be presenting at this year's SHSMD Connections Conference. Visit shsmd.org. That's S-H-S-M-D.org/connections to learn more and register. Their session is titled Designing for the Post-Pandemic Future: Modernizing Space to Promote Safety, Efficiency and Agility.

Al and Angelique, welcome to the SHSMD Podcast. We start every episode of the SHSMD podcast with rapid insights, one quick tip someone can use to make their marketing communications better today. Al, you're up first. Give us your rapid insight.

Al Green: Yeah, thanks, Bill. My rapid insight is the toughest thing about building a strategy is that once it's done and you put it on paper, it's out of date, because variables are constantly changing and you need to update it always. So as you're putting it together and once you're revisiting it, keep that in mind.

Bill Klaproth (Host): Yeah, good thought. You always need to keep revisiting it. Think of it more like a living document, right? Angelique, you're up next. Give us your rapid insight.

Angelique Kennison: Sure. Thanks for having me, Bill. Keep your eyes out on the horizon and look out ahead. A few months ago, I was at a conference and happened to sit next to a former fighter pilot. And she shared with me anytime that she became overwhelmed with the noise and stimuli right in front of her, her mentor would remind her to stay focused on the horizon. And that focus and taking that long view is so essential to strategic planning.

Bill Klaproth (Host): Great point. So keep your eyes on the horizon. Thank you for that rapid insight, Angelique. Well, we are really looking forward to your session at this year's SHSMD Connections 2022. So let's talk about this. Angelique, let me start with you. What is the role of the strategic planner when it comes to facilities planning?

Angelique Kennison: Strategic planners play such an important role during this process. But it's important to share up front, we're not the architects. We're not the ops people. And you know what? We're not even the actual decision-makers in the room. But the critical role that we play is that we inform the decisions that are going to be made. So we bring a ton of data to the table. We help folks really understand their current state so that they know what their real problems and issues actually are and where there's areas of opportunity. We bring in forecast, we bring in intelligence, so that we can have folks really think through what are the needs of our community three years down the road, five years down the road, 10 years down the road, based on trends that we're seeing, our own demographics and, again, pulling in all those different tools that we have at our fingertips to help us kind of see into the future, even though of course we can't predict the future.

Facilities planning is really interesting, because you have this moment of time to design for the future and for your community. It's a special moment to take a step back and realize we're not just talking about modernizing and/or replacing our facility to meet a demand and need in this current second, even though that's really important and that plays an important role in the overall conversation. But you're thinking about how do I make a facility that's flexible and agile and nimble for the future, so that it meets all of our community's needs as we look to the future and have a space that encourages access and safety and innovation.

It's such an exciting time to be able to have that opportunity, to think about how are we designing our space for the future that's going to better meet our needs for not just our patients, but also our staff and be a space that we can maximize to its full potential. I think that's something that we really learned during the pandemic that we need to be a lot more nimble and able to adapt on the fly. I can't emphasize that important point enough that you're not just going to design for the noise that's right in front of your face right now, kind of to that point I made earlier with the fighter pilot, you need to really think out ahead and think about how to design your space for the unknowns and some future needs that you can kind of start predicting based on the data and intelligence that we have at our fingertips today.

Bill Klaproth (Host): Right. Well, we've heard a lot more about being more nimble and being adaptable and the pandemic certainly brought that on. So Angelique, in your role, your job is to inform the planners then of key data points to help achieve your goal. So Al, let me ask you this as Vice President of Planning, what is your thoughts when it comes to facilities planning?

Al Green: Yeah, Angelique and I have had the opportunity to work together quite a bit in facilities planning for Maine Health. And just building on what she said there, is that we're process people as much as we are big thinkers. So we think about important questions, but then we look at the period of time that we're planning for and the period of time that we have to plan within and try to organize those questions in terms of what's important to know before we answer the next set of questions. And as Angelique pointed out, we're sort of career collaborators, we're not architects. I heard Angelique say that, we're not the most creative people when it comes to how a building looks and feels and functions. But we're really good at helping a group of people, a group of stakeholders and subject matter experts to vine a need will exist for however long the building exists, could be 50 years plus.

Bill Klaproth (Host): Right. Absolutely. So Al you and Angelique, you really have to be forward thinkers on, like Angelique said, not just what's in front of us, but down the road. Is that right, Al? So you're trying to really think ahead what we're going to need, what our community needs. Is that right?

Al Green: That's right. And as Angelique pointed out, the need for flexibility has always been important. But I think what the pandemic has showed us is it's shown us many things, is that that flexibility is essential.

Bill Klaproth (Host): Yep. Like I said, we're certainly hearing that a lot. Flexibility, adaptability, being nimble. So, those are the terms we're using. So I think the whole industry is seeing the need for that. So Al, when it comes to your session at SHSMD Connections 2022, how are you going to be approaching it?

Al Green: Yeah. So recognizing that, given all of the changing variables in the world that we live in, process is still very important. So we're going to illustrate the process that we use here at Maine Health to approach facility planning in two different scenarios. One is a pre-pandemic sort of tertiary medical center example. The other is a post-pandemic rural health center example, and trying to compare and contrast the nuances of those two examples and emphasizing some of the foundational aspects of the planning process. They don't change, they're consistent between the two environments, but also recognizing that, once you've done one facility plan, you've really only done one facility plan, because every environment, every community is so different, that often the needs drive some special nuances in the way that the facility looks and feels once it's done.

Bill Klaproth (Host): Yeah. Process is important. Angelique, your thoughts on approaching the session.

Angelique Kennison: Yeah, exactly right, what Al was just sharing there. I think it's so crucial to call out that there is a foundational approach there that is consistent and will help guide you throughout these conversations, but because so much has changed, especially in these past few years, we're also going to be approaching the session from a lens of getting the audience to have to think a different way, because the past two years has forced us to have to think differently. So we've already touched on the space piece, about how it needs to be more flexible, nimble, et cetera, all the key buzzwords that you were mentioning, but they're so right.

A few other things I want to get the audience to start thinking about differently, with my local health systems were chatting with them about their primary care space, their ED, and even their urgent care if they have that, one thing that's changed so much over these past few years is the pace of disruption and the constant effort of different organizations coming into that space, right? So when I say think differently, we're not even just talking about facilities planning of using our space that we have existing in a potentially different way to be more flexible. We're also talking about, "Wait a second. Three, five, seven, ten years from now, are we to be feeling some of the same pressures, knowing that there's a bunch of disruptors coming into this space that could be taking our market share?" I don't have an answer to that right now, none of us do, but it's something that I think we should be thinking about and posing to our teams that do this facilities planning work. I literally asked that question to a group of architects last week. You know, are we thinking about facilities planning differently, knowing that the pace of change is happening faster than ever, how should that impact facilities planning? Does it impact facilities planning?

I also want the audience to think about resource constraints a little differently. We've always been confronted with resource constraints. I don't know anyone who's ever worked anywhere that never had that phrase thrown at them before. But again, over the past few years, coming out of COVID somewhat, knowing we're in a tough economic climate. We've had unbelievable staffing challenges. Health systems have spent so much money to just keep trying to care for their patients and their communities in different ways, because of the challenges that we're experiencing through resources, staffing, et cetera, how do we approach our governing bodies and our boards with our asks for facilities planning, knowing that we are in a really tight, hard time across the board everywhere right now. So again, I'm not giving answers here and you're not going to get necessarily straight answers out of this session, but we're getting at how you need to think through all of this so that you're prepared, whether you're at the table with your architects, your clinical folks, your hospital presidents, or your C-suite.

Bill Klaproth (Host): Yeah. So there's a lot to unpack there. As Al said, you're going to be showing examples. And then, Angelique, you said we all need to start thinking differently. You mentioned disruptors and resource constraints. So what are you hoping session goers will get out of your session, Angelique, when they walk out that door? What are you hoping that they'll take with them?

Angelique Kennison: A framework to think through all of this. So, we'll be sharing a lot of different examples. And I think they'll even be taking away more than just this thought framework, I like to call it, but that is the crux of all of this. I think it's important for anyone listening, who might not be as deep into strategic planning as Al and I, I like to tell folks that strategy is so gray, right? So if you're someone who needs a clear answer, clear direction, always something has to be black or white, strategy, it won't be for you. You need to be able to operate in uncertainty in the gray space. To operate in that space, you need to be thinking about things differently and asking really good questions. So, we're going to share with them how we've approached all of this, again to Al's points, pre- and post-pandemic and how you need to think about all this going into the rooms and the conversations that you're having.

A key thing to call out here is that I think one of the most important things a strategic planner can do is listen very intently in the rooms that they're in, ask really good questions and get the group of folks that you're with to, again, keep thinking out ahead, because we're not having all these conversations to just meet immediate demands right in front of our faces. And if we are able to get folks to really, really lean into that, we're going to be successful. So a framework to think through all of this and ask the hard questions, ask the right questions, ask the questions that people are afraid to ask, because we don't know the answers, but it gets us thinking in a really forward trajectory in an important way to be able to accomplish what we wanted to accomplish here.

Bill Klaproth (Host): Yeah. And Al, let me ask you, I love what Angelique had to say there. I love that the thought framework, you're going to introduce that concept. Tell us more what you're hoping people will get out of your session.

Al Green: My hope is that people can learn from our experience. I want to go back to my previous comment. Once you've done one facility plan, you've only done one facility plan. They're all so Different. the same solution isn't going to work everywhere. The questions that were asked that generated that solution or the conversations that generated that solution are the important pieces. So I hope that we equip anyone who attends the session with that list of important questions to ask themselves for their environment and for environments that they deal in.

Bill Klaproth (Host): Yeah, I think that's good. You've been down this road and you certainly can share what to do, what not to do and introduce these concepts. Well, this is going to be a great session. We're all looking forward to it. Al, let me start with you. Final thoughts on your session and planning when it comes for modernizing our spaces to promote safety, efficiency and agility.

Al Green: I'm really looking forward to it. And I'm a person who goes into situations like this, thinking that I've got as much to learn from the audience as they have to learn from me. I hope to really engage the folks who do attend in a conversation about some of the important questions that we've asked ourselves here at Maine Health in the various facility planning exercises that we've done and also hear from folks in situations that they've been in as well.

Bill Klaproth (Host): Yeah. Well, that sounds really good. And Angelique, let me wrap up with you then, your final thoughts on your session.

Angelique Kennison: I'm so excited to meet everyone at the SHSMD Conference. And facilities planning, what I've learned while doing this has been it is the ultimate team sport, and it's been fascinating to be able to collaborate with all of our peers across our system and even external stakeholders. And I'm excited to share that with folks at the conference who haven't had the chance to really sit in on these conversations yet at their organization. It is so much more than people even realize.

You bring in, like we talked about earlier, the clinical data, the quality and safety, the access, the experience, the forecast, the future looks all together in this big melting pot. You get to sit around with a bunch of really smart people in a room and hash that all out. It's a really interesting experience and I'm excited to get folks excited about it if they haven't had the chance to do it yet.

Bill Klaproth (Host): The ultimate team sport. I love that.

Angelique Kennison: Thanks, Bill.

Bill Klaproth (Host): You know, and I love how you both said you're going to be there to answer questions. That's the great thing about conferences like SHSMD Connections. You get to meet people like yourselves and strike up a conversation and who knows start a relationship or your information can be valuable to that person in their career down the road. So, this is really great. I want to thank you both, Al and Angelique. Thank you so much for your time today. We appreciate it.

Al Green: Thanks, Bill. It's been a pleasure.

Angelique Kennison: Thank you so much. Thank you both.

Bill Klaproth (Host): And once again, that's Al Green and Angelique Kennison. And registration for this year's SHSMD Connections in-person annual conference held in Washington, DC is now open. Visit shsmd.org/connections to learn more and get registered. And if you found this podcast helpful and how could you not? Please share it on all of your social channels and please hit the subscribe or follow button to get every episode. This has been a production of DoctorPodcasting. I'm Bill Klaproth. See you!