HJNO Mar/Apr 2024

DIALOGUE 14 MAR / APR 2024 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS Coffman That was a big one, too. At the time, Epic was a fortune. They, I think, sold to nearly everybody in the country. They're looking at reducing those costs today, but at the time, 2014, that was a big one. We are on the Epic platform, which is the Ochsner platform. Editor St. Tammany is celebrating 70 years as a hospital. What do you think hospitals will look like in 70 more years? Coffman Well, I won't be here. But I think our industry is a traditional industry. Change comes hard for healthcare, but the consumer is really driving change today. I think it is going to move in the direction of a retail experience. Consumers really want that instant access and ability to acquire services on demand. I think you'll see a lot of growth in that. You'll see a lot of telemedicine, or virtual visits, that are occurring already. What I don't know is how big a role AI will be in our industry in 70 more years. It is already impacting our industry with the amount of predictive analytics that are available to many, but whether that becomes mainstream and safeguarded — because it's a big rift when you get into theAI world of making sure that things are safeguarded — I don't know how that's going to truly play out, but I think it will play a very pivotal role. Editor T alking about the future of AI, I recently read in the near future, if a doctor does not consult AI in caring for a patient, they may face a malpractice suit. Is that happening now with Epic? Coffman No, we don't experience that at all. But I think to your point, and probably where they were going, is it could go either way. Recently, they used AI to have Taylor Swift appear somewhere that she wasn't. Not that I am on the Taylor Swift path, but AI is powerful. That's why I think structure and guardrails need to be leading the charge with respect to AI — because you could potentially put a provider at risk for not usingAI as you described, or it could be factually inaccurate because it is AI. It can superimpose a lot of different things. I guess I amnot smart enough to predict what that's going to look like in the future, but I do think it will play a pivotal role. Editor Shifting to workforce shortages and staff burnout, there are big concerns for folks in your position. How does St. Tammany attract and retain qualified healthcare professionals? Coffman Leading into the pandemic, we were very proud of the fact that we had limited, if any, agency nurses here at our health system. When I talk about culture, it is a true culture of caring. There was often a waiting list for positions. That all changed with the pandemic. We had a significant transition going on, as many did, and we saw a lot of people taking advantage of agency and travel assignments so they could see the world and make a lot of money in a very short period of time. We doubled down on a lot of things, and, again, we had tremendous support from our board of commissioners to do this. First and foremost was adding to the number of tal- ent acquisition specialists we had because when you have that much transition, the number of requisitions grows exponentially, and you need the team in place to manage that for you. We partnered with an outside agency to capture the essence of our culture, which I think they did a fantastic job of, and helped our own colleagues to promote what it's like to have a position here at St. Tam- many Health System. We also worked very hard on the aca- demic side in thinking about our partner- ships in a more meaningful way. We already had solid partnerships with Southeastern University and Northshore Technical Com- munity College, and they, quite honestly, were a saving grace because they would talk to us routinely about what our gaps were, how they could accelerate programming, how they could build new programs of hot spots that we had — for example, psych techs, which they did — and then building capacity with their existing programs for medical assistants, CNAs, and, obviously, nursing. We had, just last week, a ribbon cutting for the St. TammanyAcademic Center, which is right down the street from our flagship hos- pital in a building we leased previously for our finance folks. After Hurricane Ida a cou- ple years ago, we bought a new building and moved finance there, but we didn't let this lease go. Because we didn’t have one in the area, we worked with our partners to create an academic center that has Southeastern as well as Northshore Technical Community College programming in that site. They can do all of their academics in that location. There's a sim lab there, and then they come here for their actual clinical practice. It allowed us to think differently and fur- ther upstream to work with our high schools in the area to build dual eligible program- ming so that the students could begin par- ticipating in their junior and senior years in programs that they want to go into when they graduate. Upon graduation, they'll have a certification to be able to fulfill that need here in our health system. We also looked at innovation. You hear about virtual nursing all across the coun- try. We had learned a lot about what others were doing and charted our own course, and we did it in our new South Tower because the technology was available there. In essence, there's a bunker, if you were to see it, where you have nurses that sit and mon- itor patients across the new South Tower. What that does is allows them to assist the nurse at the bedside because that nurse has so many responsibilities. You can offload some of the types of things, like medica- tion reconciliation or discharge planning, that can be done remotely. They'll virtually access the patient's room through the tech- nology, have a conversation with either the nurse or the patient or both, and fulfill some of those duties to take the burden off of the bedside nurse. The last thing, and this one is a little unique in and of itself, is that healthcare is