Scott Webb (Host): It's time for another Town Hall Podcast from San Juan Regional Medical Center. Today, I'm joined by President and CEO, Jason Rounds, as well as Chief Human Resources Officer, Neil Teatsorth. Welcome to you both. Jason, I understand you've got a lot of great things to share with your caregivers.

Jason Rounds: Oh, absolutely. So, this is the third in our series, at least, since I've been here. And just as a reminder to everyone, we do send out surveys to try to keep the content relevant to what you guys are looking to hear. And the purpose of our town halls, as always, is to share important updates, celebrate the incredible work that you guys do, and keep you informed about what's happening around our organization.

From our last town hall meetings, there was a lot of request for information about recruitment and retention and our status of our HR department. And so, with me today, I have Neil Teatsorth. He is not our newest member of the senior team, but he is one of the newest members of our senior team, and happy to have a buddy with me today to talk a little bit about our HR and some of the exciting things that are going on in that department.

Host: Yeah, it's really nice to have you both here, especially have Neil here. And Neil is the newest member of the Senior Leadership Team. Happy to welcome you to the Town Hall. Just give you a chance to sort of introduce yourself to folks.

Neil Teatsorth: Thank you, Scott. And Jason, thanks for including me in this most recent town hall. It's an honor and pleasure to be here. I joined the organization back in November as the interim Chief Human Resource Officer. Obviously, in doing so, arrived where there were multiple significant needs for improvement across the HR team and organization. And so, since then, have gotten great traction to get some work done. In May, I became the full time Chief Human Resource Officer. And so, we're just continuing on executing the strategies and the org structure changes that we've been blessed to have approved. And we'll talk more about those throughout this podcast.

Host: Yeah. Let's do that, Neil. I know you have a lot to share about how HR is growing and adapting to meet the needs of the organization. Maybe you could talk a little bit about your newly reorganized team and its purpose.

Neil Teatsorth: Scott, I think it's important to go back to the beginning. Even prior to my arrival, the organization had the wisdom to commission an assessment of the HR organization, our policies, our workflows, our technology, and did a very thorough deep dive in the current state of things in HR. Prior to my arrival, Jason shared that final report to ensure that I was fully aware of the size and scope of the challenges and up to the challenge to come and join the organization. And upon doing so, it's been a wonderful roadmap for me to get a sense for priorities, org structure changes, and the need for strategy to ultimately rise up to the biggest challenges that exist in the organization. We took a recommended org structure change and tweaked it in a slight way. I led that discussion with my HR leaders. When that was completed, we reviewed that with the senior leadership team and the board and got full approval to move forward.

Scott, it's important to point out that the number of positions allocated to the HR budget did not change from what was the case prior to my arrival, but what exact roles that we were filling changed significantly to ultimately bring this team and this organization up-to-date with standard best practices and essential needs and roles to measure up against the many challenges of a hospital system like ours. In April, we got that fully approved. The position descriptions were created. The compensation work was done. We began recruiting. And of the 14 new positions or backfill positions that we have pursued, 11 of those 14 are filled with local professionals. We have two candidates to fill three of the outstanding positions and one hard-to-fill position that we are continuing to work on. Incredible success much to my surprise and delight, and we're very excited about the team that we've assembled.

Host: Yeah, I'm sure. And it sounds like making great progress, 11 out of 14 so far and good leads on the others. I want to talk a little bit more in depth about retention. I know this topic comes up time and time again, and it's really something that people are interested in. So, give us a sense, Neil, of what the organization is doing.

Neil Teatsorth: The way I approach this is that when you think about it our turnover rate, which is really the metric that is most associated with retention is truly a lagging indicator. It really measures our relative success or lack thereof of ultimately delivering what I call an exceptional caregiver experience or employee experience.

And so, the way that we earn people's trust and their commitment and move them from marginally committed to fully engaged is by in everything we do in delivering an employee experience to do that with exceptional thought and exceptional performance. whether that's fair compensation, ample benefits, the quality of leaders that we provide them, the quality of team around them, an ample number of staff members, colleagues of high quality who are there to help them get their jobs done, an interest in their career goals, their personal needs, and how today's role fulfills a future goal. All these things are really important, and it starts with an exceptional candidate experience as we go out and recruit new people as well. So, that's the approach. It's really a comprehensive broad approach rather than just focusing on why people are leaving. What were some of the stumbling points that led to departures? We're really looking from soup to nuts, from beginning to end, the employee experience, the caregiver experience here and making sure on every level we're delivering a great solution, a great set of programs and support, and that's what the team that I've built here is solely focused on in many different functional areas.

Host: Yeah. Wondering, Neil, if you can share some of the stats and wins, if you will, some of the successes.

Neil Teatsorth: Yeah. We're making great progress. We still have a ton of work to do. But as we have wrapped up the 2024 fiscal year, a couple examples. Our overall caregiver turnover, which had a target of just shy of 26%, which is the national average for hospitals, we actually came in two percentage points below that target, which is really great news and great performance from everyone involved in that. Our voluntary RN turnover, so nurses who are choosing to leave us, the national average is 22.5%, which is the target that the organization adopted for this fiscal year. We actually ended this year below 15%, just shy. So, it's 14% plus, but a total of 6% below the national average as far as voluntary nurse turnover. So, those are just a couple great examples of ways in which things like what-matter-to-you conversations, which was a structured program that we put in place prior to performance evaluations for leaders to connect with their caregivers individually to understand their goals, how their current situation fulfills those goals, and are their needs being met. It's just one of many things that we're doing that I think are leading to those numbers that we're really quite proud of.

Host: Yeah. And I know you've got another big project you're working on across the organization. It sounds very important, very serious, the Kronos Dimensions upgrade. What is that, Neil?

Neil Teatsorth: Yeah. So, this is state of the art HR technology. It obviously straddles between HR and finance, because it ultimately is the platform from which we do payroll. But it is far more than just, you know, 21st century payroll app. It is allowing us to consolidate a lot of our administration into one technology platform, which includes not only reliable and high quality execution of payroll every other week, our time off balance accruals and time off PTO and sick time administration now can be done on the same platform. In phase two of this, we will implement scheduling. So, the work that our leaders do today, oftentimes either in Excel or on pen and paper to get the right people across all the shifts for an upcoming pay period will all be done using this same state-of-the-art platform. And then, phase three of this, in May of next year, will be an integration of our electronic medical records system that helps our leaders really understand the total workforce requirements needed when you look at not only patient volumes, patient acuity, how sick are the people in the units that they lead, and what are the staffing requirements as a result of both those patient volumes and the acuity levels. So, we're very excited about bringing 21st century technology into this organization. It's going to be a tool that can be used by our caregivers on their smartphone devices so information about available shifts, the need to change shifts is going to be readily available at people's fingertips. It's another piece of the puzzle to a great caregiver experience here that we think is really going to bring breakthrough positive changes here.

Host: Yeah. And I know your team's focus is obviously a lot, you know, much of it is on the caregiver experience. So, let's talk about the ways the organization is giving back to caregivers by focusing on their well-being.

Neil Teatsorth: First and foremost, we've listened a lot since I've gotten here. And some of the feedback that we heard was, an example, our current employee assistance program, our EAP, is quite frankly not at a level of quality that our caregivers really need for their emotional well-being and their mental health. And so, one of the things that we're currently doing is looking at ways in which to improve the quality of that program, set clear expectations with the provider that we currently use and explore relationships beyond that provider. And they're coming to town this week to do a thorough update with our leaders later this week. Beyond that, we've done a complete reboot of what wellness is in this organization. And we have like a three-year roadmap that starts this year with ensuring people take advantage of the ability to do their blood draw and get their lab results so that they can get a sense for what those results ultimately tell them about their physical well-being. We strongly encourage them to take those to wellness physicals. And in doing that, and then reporting their BMI data to a partner website that we use, they can get significant reductions in premiums for their healthcare premiums starting in January of 2025.

Beyond that, Scott, we've got a ton of education and events taking place. We just had our annual family picnic, which was a huge success. We saw turnout well beyond the expectations that we had. We have lunch and learns, we have webinars. We're tapping into the expertise that we have throughout the organization to help with education. And we even have weekend events where people can get out and together exercise so that they can, again, fulfill that physical requirement in the emotional, mental health and physical health well-being strategy that we have in place for wellness. So, we're very excited about incrementally adding more and more each year and really making this a model for success that the rest of the community can look to.

Host: Yeah. And as you go about fulfilling your purpose at San Juan Regional Medical Center, it's important for each person, I'm sure, to connect with the deeper motivations that guide them every day. And I've heard this a lot lately. It's come up a few times in my own life about knowing your why, right? So, knowing your why is at the heart of everything you guys are doing at SJRMC. So Jason and Neil, I just want to have you share your why for being a part of this organization. Jason, I'll have you go first.

Jason Rounds: You know, It's really a privilege to be part of such a wonderfully mission-based organization. And in preparing for the town hall meetings, we also ask a number of our caregivers about their whys. And so we had the opportunity to share some of that like from Dylan Jones who's one of our RN educators. He's been here a long time. Jason McDonald from our Radiology Department. And it was really kind of an inspirational way to understand what motivates other people in this.

For me, it's really a multifaceted approach, even from my earliest memories in Roswell. I was not a healthy kid, so lots of doctor's visits when I was young, but it was such an exciting opportunity to go to this doctor's office. He was an ENT, had lots of really great equipment. It was an interesting place to go. It was really stimulating. To do that, I remember visiting relatives that were in the hospital at the time, not as a scary environment, but it's just wonderful complex of health care and healing that you could go to.

Fast forward that to when I was in high school in Galveston which is home to the University of Texas Medical Branch, which at the time was a 900-bed academic medical center. And so, lots of kids, faculty members who are in research or teaching or healthcare or clinical and all of that. It was really just very inspirational. It seems almost inevitable that I was going to be drawn to healthcare in some way. But once I was in healthcare, the resonance of mission and service to others and service to the community really is what drove me. And so, when the opportunity came up here in Farmington at San Juan Regional Medical Center to really have that opportunity to give back both from my experiential level, but also in that service to community and others. That really is what drives me in healthcare.

Neil Teatsorth: In our recent town hall meetings, we touched upon this from my side of the organization in two forms. As we look to recreate HR in this organization, we did a step back as to what are the fundamental whys that an organization, a team like that exists in a company like this. And so, we've done the why work at the department level. And then, individually, for me, throughout my professional journey, now spanning four decades, I've been blessed to really be a part of organizations that invested a lot in my professional development. And through some of that, I came up with a professional mission statement, which is leading high performance from a foundation of trust.

One of the driving reasons why I made the decision to join this organization full time is because I see unlimited potential in what this organization can achieve and to be an integral part of that journey to excellence is very attractive to me. And so, I just see my ability to fulfill my professional mission very tightly aligned with the vision of this organization that the board and the senior leadership have had. And so, I look forward to rolling up my sleeves and being a part of that journey to high performance.

Host: Jason, I want to talk about building a strong and growing San Juan Regional Medical Center brand. We can't have a town hall without talking about brand, right? So, what work are you doing in this area or arena? And what results have you seen?

Jason Rounds: Scott, you may recall that at our last town hall meeting, we had presented some of the results of our recent survey. But a strong brand builds trust, it differentiates us from our competitor. It enhances patient and staff experience, supports our financial health. A whole lot of things that are positive. One of the ways that we track this is through our Google My Business Star rating, which is now up to a 4.3, which is even higher than our last town hall meeting where we presented that, and up from where we started at a 2.6. So, that trend continues in a very positive way. The audience will probably remember that we do an annual brand survey every year. Since that time that we did it last fall, we had an opportunity to do a little bit of a deeper dive, working with our own caregivers to really understand what's going on from their perception. So, we had the opportunity recently to survey 21 of our caregivers in a focused 90-minute session. We had a diverse group, different age groups, different departments, different amount of time that they've been with our organization. And we identified a lot of key takeaways from that. One of them being that we are a mission-driven organization, which is great as far as our brand campaign. What is better to have out there than own mission of better and providing that personalized sense of healthcare that we strive to provide to our patients.

We also determined that our brand reputation is trending upward in the right direction. And as importantly, our caregivers really identify strongly with their calling in healthcare. And that gets back, Scott, to your first question about why are we all doing this. I think for most people, if healthcare was just a job, I don't know that they would be in it for the long haul. For most people in healthcare, it really is a calling.

Host: yeah, I hear that time and time again, Jason. It's a common thread speaking with caregivers and medical professionals that it really was a calling from a young age and they're all seemingly still really happy to be doing it. And we're talking about brand here, and I know it's important as you continue to recruit physicians and advanced practice providers to the medical center. So, how are those things going?

Jason Rounds: We've really had a very good year, and we're starting off even our new fiscal year pretty strong. So last year, we recruited a total of 26 new physicians and advanced practice providers to our organization. And even since July, we have 22 more that are committed to start in this upcoming year and into next year. So, we've done some different things. We've approached it looking at our recruitment strategies a little bit differently. As I like to tell folks if you're looking to live in New York City or Houston, Texas, Farmington, New Mexico may not be the right place for you. But there are a number of people not unlike myself and most people that we're attracting here that absolutely love this area and everything that it has to offer.

So, we're being a little bit more intentional about how we approach those candidates, finding the right people who are going to be the good fit. And back to our brand, we're leading with our best selves, so to speak. So, we've restructured some of our outreach. We're working on microsites for recruiting that we can specialize to any specific specialty area that we're doing. And we're starting to see some real success from it. So, we're really enthusiastic about that, Scott.

Host: That's great. Yeah. And I was reading that you have this exciting remodeling project going on in the childbirth unit. Maybe you could tell us how that's going.

Jason Rounds: That was a project that was about to get underway when I joined the organization last year. So, we're super excited about throwing hammers, so to speak. So, kudos to all of the caregivers that are up there. I know Sonia and her team are in temporary space. They've got a great attitude about it, knowing that better is coming.

The construction shoot actually lands right outside my office in the big dumpster. So, I call it the sound of progress. So for the next couple of weeks, we're going to continue with that destruction. And in about nine months, we're hoping to open up a state-of-the-art, brand new, wonderful childbirth center up on the fifth floor. So, we're all very excited about it.

Host: That's amazing. I never heard that expression before, throwing hammers. I made a little note here. I'm going to jot that one down. I love that. You know, we mentioned earlier, we can't have a town hall without talking about brand, of course, and we definitely can't end today without talking about the financial health of the organization.

Jason Rounds: We've got great story to tell as well. So, as our CFO John Mayer likes to say, we're in period 13. So, this is a stage where we're confirming all of our numbers. We haven't closed the books on the year yet. And we're in the midst of doing our annual audit. So, that has a lot of work and a lot of commitment that our finance team is working on right now.

But overall, we're optimistic. June ended a little bit short of budget. But overall for the year, we believe that we're going to wrap up the year strong and pretty much on budget from a financial standpoint, we did get our rating from Standards and Poor, which is the rating agency that gives us our credibility when we're wanting to borrow money and all that good stuff. So, we are still at a triple B positive with a stable outlook. They liked what they saw from a financial standpoint. In their review of us, there are certain kind of economic factors within Farmington and New Mexico that are still challenging for us. The diversity of the economy, for one thing. Some of the challenges with malpractice and other coverage were kind of negatives for us. But overall, we're in a very strong position. So, our ability to borrow money for big projects if we need to at good rates remains in place and very strong. Our balance sheet is looking very good. We have over 252 days cash on hand. Our ratios are solid, so we're entering FY '25 in a very strong and stable position.

Host: Yeah. Well, I always enjoy these, Jason, even though I don't work there, of course. I always leave these feeling like I wish I did because things are just so positive and trending in the right direction and so many good things happening. Just give you a chance here, Neil, as we finish up, just any final thoughts or other positive takeaways?

Neil Teatsorth: Scott, I, think ultimately what you hear today and what we've shared with in the town halls i that there's a lot of good news. There's a lot of progress being made on so many fronts that are going to enhance the patient experience, which is ultimately what we're here for, which upstream from that is the caregiver experience, downstream from that is our brand strength and our financial strength. And so, I'm just proud and honored to be a part of this organization to help contribute. So, thank you so much for including me today.

Host: Yeah. It's been great to have you here. And Jason, as the head honcho, the big cheese, we'll give you last word as we finish up this town hall.

Jason Rounds: To carry on the theme that Neil started is we're making lots of profound and foundational investments in this organization. But shifting to our outlook for the future is I'm really optimistic. We have some additional funding attached to Senate Bill 17 that's going to come in the following year, so after FY '25, and we're preparing for that. So, we've got a lot of work that's being done right now to update our strategic plan and making sure that we're going to invest those dollars wisely for the future and to continue our mission here at San Juan Regional that's been around for 114 years for another 114 years.

Host: I love that. That's a perfect way to end, another 114. Why not? Let's go for it, right? Thank you both for your time today. Good stuff as always, Jason. Look forward to our next one. Thanks so much.

Jason Rounds: Thanks, Scott. Thanks, Neil.

Neil Teatsorth: Thank you, everyone.

Host: That's San Juan Regional Medical Center CEO, Jason Rounds,

Scott Webb (Host): as well as Chief Human Resources Officer Neil Teatsorth.

Host: And thanks for joining us for our caregiver town hall. I'm Scott Webb. Stay well.