The Digital Drive @ Memorial Hermann

Tranforming Healthcare in America’s 4th largest community

Baseball fans in Houston are a bit frustrated these days in America’s 4th largest city.  However, on the healthcare front, things are looking up in the Astros backyard!  

If you have the opportunity to align with or help Memorial Hermann realize it’s new vision powered by data and digital, I humbly offer three words for you, “Just do it!”.

Memorial Hermann is Houston’s largest non-profit health system.  I recently had the pleasure of speaking with the members of Memorial Hermann Health System’s leadership team under new CEO, Dr. David Callender.  Dr. Callender joined Memorial Hermann late last year driving the new vision of, “a commitment to broadening Memorial Hermann’s reach beyond hospital and clinic walls by improving the neighborhoods where people live, work and play”.  This is the kind of inspiring vision increasingly operationalized at America’s leading health systems.  It reflects the pragmatic reality that health systems must play a leading role in transforming health in American communities.  Transforming health includes reinvigorating neighborhoods and collaborating with local resources to provide nutritious meals, soccer programs for kids, walking clubs and the like.  It’s hitting lots of singles, inviting more members of the community to grab the bat and take a swing.

Realizing this new vision at Memorial Hermann demands leveraging data and digital to make every aspect of Houston’s leading health system more effective (better outcomes) and more efficient (less waste), particularly for the doctors and nurses who care for members of the community.  And it’s all being pursued well aligned to Memorial Hermann’s “4 C’s” values; Community, Compassion, Credibility and Courage!  ...emphasis on that last one.

Any significant transformation in healthcare benefits handsomely from the addition of key talent from outside the organization in addition to tapping into the reinvention energy of strong existing leaders and employees.  In that spirit, Memorial Hermann hired Dr. Feby Abraham at the beginning of this year as EVP and Chief Strategy Officer.  Feby comes from McKinsey & Co. with an exceptional track record in healthcare, pharma, post M&A integration and mathematical modeling.  Perhaps most importantly, he knows from experience that leveraging data and digital to improve effectiveness and efficiency (aka, “eliminate waste while driving patient and physician NPS”) is a matter of committing to a plan, executing and iterating, versus excessive PowerPoint decks and meetings.  His engineering background is a great compliment to the backgrounds of the exceptional Memorial Hermann leadership team.

Brian Dean, EVP & CFO, Nicole Clarke Luck, SVP Strategic Initiatives and Cindy Demoya, SVP & Chief Accounting Officer are the financial and accounting leaders attending to the financial engineering of Memorial Hermann’s data and digital drive.  This includes spearheading key health-system-wide strategic initiatives that need seasoned financial guidance.  Memorial Hermann provides a Health Plan as part of its overall system. This plays a critical role in Brian and team understanding how to effectively manage the transition from “fee for service” to “fee for value”.  Data and digital needs to play a critical role in modeling things like how best to avoid Emergency Department visits via preventative medicine while understanding the financial impact of prevented ED visits or procedures. 

Memorial Hermann’s bold new vision also requires exceptional operations leadership.  They could not be better equipped on this front with the recent and well-deserved promotion of Erin Asprec to EVP & COO.  Erin has been a key leader at Memorial Hermann, and in the Houston community, for years.  She has a longstanding deep personal commitment to health in the Houston community and to delivering exceptional quality of care.  Erin’s strong operating expertise is closely aligned with Alex Greengold, the new SVP & Chief Consumer Experience Officer who joined Memorial Hermann last summer from Dish Network.  While Erin looks to leverage data and digital to make Operations more effective and efficient every day, Alex is leading the delivery of exceptional experiences for patients, their families and caregivers.  He’s rightly focused on making sure that any experience that can be digital, is made available digitally.  And he’s particularly skilled at the use of unstructured data (e.g. customer/patient feedback) and analytics tools to speed up improvements in customer journeys, web sites and apps.

One of the most exciting aspects of Memorial Hermann’s data and digital drive is in the area of physician effectiveness and efficiency.  Dr. Jamie McCarthy, EVP & Chief Physician Officer is exceptionally highly skilled and passionate about his work.  Memorial Hermann’s commitment to quality was again recognized in the 2019 Bernard A. Birnbaum, MD, Quality Leadership Award as measured by the Vizient Quality and Accountability Ranking program.  Dr. McCarthy’s key data analytics and digital partners include Dr. Nnaemeka Okafor, VP & Chief Health Informatics Officer and Amanda Hamel, SVP & Chief Information Officer.  These leaders are well aligned to providing more relevant information to physicians at the point of care so physicians can make better informed decisions including educating patients and families.  This is incredibly exciting work that is powerfully aligned to the efforts of healthcare industry analytics and platform leaders like Dr. John Halamka, President, Mayo Clinic Platform.

The energy of Memorial Hermann’s data and digital drive extends powerfully into Administration and HR as well.  That is critical.  All too often data and digital transformations fail to align legal, administration and HR with desired outcomes and results.  Deborah Gordon, EVP & Chief Administration Officer and Lori Knowles, SVP & Chief Human Resources Officer are fully engaged and aware of the essential role data and digital play in realizing Memorial Hermann’s new vision.  Deborah and Lori know how to effectively align regulatory realities with optimizing people processes (e.g. hiring, developing, incenting, promoting) as part of data and digital transformation toward improved employee experiences and a healthier Houston community.

Data and analytics to power all these leaders and their teams to be more effective and efficient; digital experiences to allow community members to self-serve (e.g. find a doctor, schedule a visit or televisit, understand a bill, pay a bill on an app); collaboration with other health systems, EHR players and tech companies; and collaboration with Houston community resources beyond hospital and clinic walls...  all in support of making America’s 4th largest community healthy in the neighborhoods where people live, work and play!

ALL the best to Dr. Callender and the whole Memorial Hermann team.  And remember, if you can help Memorial Herman with their data and digital drive, “Just Do it!”.  Or as one might say with Astros Spring Training around the corner, “Play Ball!”.