Dr. Kimberly Moore (00:02)
I am Dr. Kimberly Moore, a host of the Envision More Workforce Insight podcast. Join us as we explore workforce and leadership through an innovation lens with leaders from across the country and every industry. Whether you're in education trying to crack the code for workforce or industry seeking to address your workforce talent strategy, for maybe you just need to be inspired. We've got you covered. Tune in, save us as a favorite, and let's innovate together.

of the Workforce Insight podcast brought to you by Envision More Consulting Group, where we bring your bold visions to life. Today, I am so excited with our guest speaker, who is an absolute trailblazer and leader in the health education space when you think about nonprofits and navigating opportunity. So this is a session that you will not want to miss. He is a leader.

across the board and you'll hear not only in healthcare, but also education and in advocacy. So Marlon Hunter, so glad that you're here. And I guess to level set with our audience, please do share and like give us a walkthrough and quick journey of, you know, from where you started up to your current position. Well, you know, first let me say, Dr. Moore, I appreciate the opportunity to be here and to meet with you and to talk about healthcare.

me and what's going on right now in my life and this along my career path and my journey. You know, I am in year 30. I can't believe it. All I've done. You don't look a day over 10 years. So it's amazing. And I know our listeners want to hear you. So we're going to get you to get a little bit closer. Yeah. All right. Well, perfect. Yeah. And is that a little bit better? Yes. Okay, perfect. And so I've spent.

30 years in healthcare and I'm celebrating that this year all year long and definitely proud of my work and I've dedicated my life to public health and healthcare and community -based work. And because I believe that prevention and education is key, especially when it comes to educating communities about gaining access to care. And so I started off in DeKalb County, Georgia as a health inspector and then moved along into

hospital industry, we're working in compliance to keep them in line with Joint Commission and all the regulatory agencies that keep hospitals in line with regulations and rules designed to help keep us all safe if we find ourselves needing to get admitted. And then later on after that, I decided to get back into public health and then on into public health leadership.

where we actually met as a chief public health officer for a local county government. And I spent seven years in the Tallahassee region with Florida Department of Health, not only just managing one county public health department, but two during my tenure in time there. Then on to North Carolina, since my roots are in the Carolinas, in particular South Carolina, I decided to get a little closer. And I spent...

before taking this role as the public health director for Forsyth County Department of Public Health in Winston -Salem. And so for folks who are listening, if they're familiar with Winston -Salem, Greensboro area, I spent a good clip of my time there, wrapping up 24 years in public health before now taking over this role as president and chief executive officer of Regenesis Healthcare here in my own hometown.

You know, I'm so proud of that. And because, you know, so many of us as professionals would like to serve our communities in some impactful ways, but may not necessarily have an opportunity to do so. So I'm just delighted to be here to talk about, you know, my journey and in particular what's going on here and healthcare after COVID, what we did through COVID, you know, and beyond around how we improve, you know, the healthcare, you know, landscape in our communities.

And so I'm just, I'm still excited. I got quite a few more years to work and so I'm just delighted to share my insights. Well, I know that our listeners are equally excited to one, learn from your journey and certainly to hear about some of the innovation that's underway at your current organization. You're right. It's so powerful to be able to go out and learn and then be able to bring that learning and passion back to your hometown. So I agree. That's, that's marvelous.

So we're gonna jump into the interview and I will call it a conversation because again, we know each other and I know the powerful work that you've done, but it's about getting the word out and making sure that others can learn as well. So could you describe the current landscape of the nonprofit healthcare space and just, you know, what are some of the changes or trends that you've seen that are shaping the industry? Well, what I'll do is I'll focus in on federally qualified.

community health centers to give some good, you know, 30 ,000 foot view of primary care at a community -based level. And then I guess for the others who are in healthcare who have an interest, you know, they can just kind of think about where they are in the healthcare world, whether it's hospitals or in private industry or working for a private, you know, company. Federally qualified health centers are funded, you know,

partially by the federal government and a community -based level, typically nonprofit. They could be public entities, hospitals could serve as federally qualified community health centers, but the whole goal is to create access to care. So as a president of a federally qualified community health center here at Regenesis Healthcare in Spartanburg, South Carolina, we are one of...

1 ,400 health centers in the United States. We have multiple sites and we are part of the largest primary healthcare network in the United States. Collectively, we serve more than 30 million Americans and in a total of between 15 to 20 ,000 clinic site locations.

And so, you know, they called the federally qualified community health center and I may say FQHC is moving throughout the rest of my presentation. Just so you'll know what all that means. They call it the health center movement. And so, you know, they've been in business, you know, since, you know, the 50s and this movement has grown consistently in a very bipartisan way.

throughout various presidential administrations because everybody, we had a huge fight with the Affordable Care Act, but the bottom line is everybody recognizes that they need access to primary care and they really need it. And it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. And so at these health centers in particular in FQHC, we provide access to comprehensive care, medical, dental.

behavioral health, pharmacy, and I know we'll get it more into detail about some of those services as we go through our interview today, but you know, often times and for so long in our communities, many of us have had no place to go. But if you have an FQAC in your community, you can no longer say that because they really do a great job of making sure they get you into a position.

and take care of your healthcare needs. And that exists now, again, as a part, we are part of the largest primary healthcare network in the United States. And so we're just proud to be a part of that and be able to shine a light on what's happening. Such an amazing system, but wow, the number of Americans that are able to access services through the network that you described. So again, major impact and thank you for bringing our listeners.

along the way so that they could fully understand it too. Our next question, interestingly enough, and it's certainly not gonna be one that's not on the mind of every healthcare organization and not to mention just healthcare, but all sectors, talent, talent, talent, and more talent. So when we think about the whole composition of the healthcare workforce, it's evolved to, when you think about the pandemic,

And it's always interesting to hear what strategies organizations are employing to not only attract, but also to retain talent. So what have you, or are you doing, or maybe even considering in that space? Great question. And I'll focus in on a particular group of employees within our health center and for everyone that's working in hospitals across the United States or

private practices will all agree. And I'd like to just talk about this particular topic around workforce as it relates to nursing. Yes. And of course, you know, there's a health care shortage of, you know, of health care professionals and physicians all across the United States of America. But nurses, you know, really do work hard and they are the backbone of what supports, you know, our health care system.

whether it's a federally qualified community health center or a hospital or a nursing home, you know, they are just key and an integral part of making sure that those systems work. And so, you know, we have had a difficult time in the state of South Carolina, here in Spartanburg as well, recruiting nurses. And during COVID, I had a hundred percent turnover of my nursing staff from the leadership all the way down to entry level.

a nursing medical assistant or CNA related staff, LPNs, 100 % turnover. And that is not just unique to me, it's unique to every community health center across the entire state of South Carolina. So we had to get creative. We had to go to the nursing licensure boards and the legislature to say, listen, we're having a difficult time trying to recruit. We can't see our patients unless we can recruit and retain. And so,

The state decided already that we didn't necessarily have to hire an RN to work with our physicians, but they would allow us to work with LPNs. And then because of the shortage, especially after COVID, and COVID was the catalyst that really precipitated us moving on to working with CNAs or medical assistants. Because depending on what state you're in, they're allowed to do nursing -based related.

and to be supportive of our nurses, our advanced registered nurse practitioners in ways that was never traditionally thought of. And so once those rules got changed, we were able to recruit and then a year later, we continued to bleed staff. And so we had to get creative with pay. And so we started.

you know, researching our market to see what hospitals and other private healthcare organizations were paying nursing staff. And there was a huge inequity between what we were paying in comparison to others with regard to pay. And so we had to do everything we could in our powers to realign some things to raise that pay. So we hired medical assistants.

same rate of pay we hire LPNs. You know and some of those folks if they have you know 10 plus years of experience they can make as much as as an MA medical assistant as much as $30 an hour. Wow. You know which is significant you know and was something that I never thought I would see you know and so but if you want to you know recruit and retain you know pay is a big

uh... topic but it's not all pay because we are not sure you know that folks are not necessarily because of a sometimes mostly organization because they don't work well with their supervisors and not adequately trained so we were hard to our trainers on our staff to make sure the onboarding and retention process thirty sixty ninety twelve months in you know this is you know is really you know

that critical time when we see turnover, but we wanted to make sure we spent extra time taking a look, you know, those critical markers, you know, around employee performance and improvement and what we are doing as an organization to improve that. And one final thing I'll say about this in particular is that, you know, I wanted to find a way to move the needle around retention, you know, since we saw the biggest turnover in the first 12 months, my goal was strategically to say, what can we do to

to keep our nurses on board for 24 months. I don't necessarily want to try to figure out how to keep around three or four or five years. What's that next best benchmark we can go to to retain? So, and that's, you know, when we started to take a look at salaries, more training, hiring a corporate trainer, because if you take a look at the turnover rate, we're losing so much money, we could afford to hire someone to come in and adequately train. We put in...

structures in place based on productivity with providers to retain that. And so we had to get creative quickly and we have and you know and I can talk about some of those successes later when that time comes. Sounds like I mean certainly you didn't rest on your laurels. You all moved out and you moved out proactively and again I think it's important for the listeners. Those that are in health care and even in other sectors to think about and what that pivot looked like.

and how it's really continuing to evolve. So as we talk about the whole shortage, we know that something has continued to increase and that's the demand for services. So that's the thing, regardless of whether you had full staff and no one left and everybody was retained, but the demand, the continued demand. So particularly when you think about underserved communities, how has your organization adapted?

with the service delivery model to that change and with specifically looking at the underserved community? Well, you know what I'll say is, you know, we leverage the resources that we receive from the federal government during COVID and we've got around five and a half million dollars to keep our doors open during COVID to increase our capacity, our facility capacity. And because even though we received those dollars to expand facility.

to build more clinic exam rooms or more dental operatories. You know, here we are, you know, two years later after that funding and we are at full capacity again. Because when I walked through the doors, we were seeing in 2018 around 1200 clinic encounters each month. Last year, March, 2023, we saw 9 ,000 clinic encounters and it was the most we'd ever seen in history from Genesis Healthcare.

This past March, 2024, we saw 9 ,955 patients. We're getting close to around this time of the year, seeing 10 ,000 clinic encounters each month. So the first thing I wanna say is, folks are not coming to the doctor because they think we're good looking men and women and really we are. They are coming to see us because it speaks to the need that exists.

in our communities. And we're not saying that our hospitals and other folks are not performing, but there is a very real need that exists in our communities, which speaks to why people are coming at the rate that they are. You know, we have grown from five sites to 15 sites. And we've included as a result of the pandemic and also as a result of our entire healthcare industry shining a light on real needs.

is behavioral health. We put in place a behavioral health program and we now have 50 staff members on our staff. We have a psychiatrist, we have mid -level nursing psychiatry folks that support our psychiatrist, we have behavioral health clinic -based staff, we have seven,

school district in Spartanburg County. We are in 40 schools across school districts in Spartanburg County. We also support two other counties Union County as well as Cherokee County. We also have school -based counselors in those schools as well. And so when you take a look, you know, at that landscape and the increasing healthcare demands we have had to do everything we could in our power.

you know, to scale up, to put new programs and services in place, to be able to meet the demands. Because we now realize that folks need more than just primary care and dental. You know, they need behavioral health. We took the time also finally to expand our pharmacies, because what good does it do to come to the doctor, get a diagnosis, and then not have the ability to get a med that you might need.

that just take temporarily for a week or a month or a year to just get you back into a good place where you can maintain your health status. So we've expanded from one pharmacy to now to five pharmacy sites and two of those sites are inclusive of retail pharmacies with after hours services with drive through windows where folks can still come through and pick up their medications if they need it. So.

We have definitely had to scale. We've had to be creative with our shortages and find ways to connect with our communities in a great way based on the needs that they presented to us. You know, again, so remarkable. I know that we're going to spend some time talking about scaling because.

You know, not only, you know, when I hear scaling, you're often thinking about even for the for -profits. But then when you think about nonprofits, when you're always going to focused in on the budget and resources and oftentimes limited, depending upon what your major resources are, it's powerful that you all have been able to do that. But we're not going to steal the thunder on that one yet. We're going to jump into it's something that you talked about, and that's like connecting, connecting with those that need the service and making sure that it's available. So the whole idea of.

Education, engagement, and the work that you're doing is critical because not only providing the service, but you got to make sure that people are aware of it. So what are some of the creative ways that you all have looked at when thinking about promoting health and wellness in the communities that you're tasked with serving? Well, you know, we actually, and that's a great question because, you know, we actually have a full blown, uh,

outreach department where all of our five staff members that work in each one of those counties that I mentioned, you know, are certified community health workers. You know, they, we have a full blown program where that's recognized, you know, nationally with certification to make sure we're able to effectively and adequately educate. Prevention and education is key. And, and you know, health literacy,

Is is something that's so critical. It will never go away because You know people are not coming to the doctor, you know yearly like they used to at least when I was growing up Or every other year, you know We have how I describe You know things and some folks believe this and some folks don't but we have a bit of a sick care system in the United States of America not necessarily one this

focused and framed around prevention based. And so folks tend to go to the doctor when they're sick and they want medications and they want to get better quickly without regards to working to develop a relationship with a primary care physician like we've been talking about. They prefer to go to an urgent care or go to an emergency department. And so that is not developing a relationship. You know, that's not what we want to do. You want to be able.

to have a good enough relationship with your medical provider for yourself, for your family, for your spouse or your parents, so that when questions come up, you're able to do that. And so I feel like through education, we have working with our hospitals right now on an emergency department diversion program to really connect with.

folks who are going to the emergency department to help educate them on other resources that are available in the communities. Not that, you know, we don't need our emergency departments because they have their place and they're critical when we need them. But we also want folks to take advantage of the other services that we have worked hard to put in place. And so we're so, you know, certainly proud of the educational components.

of what we do in a federally qualified community health center through our community health work program. That sounds amazing. And you're actually hearing across the United States the inclusion of the health care workers and making sure that they are a part of the teams that are being assembled because of that critical piece that you talked about. So, you know, a lot of what you've done.

And it's so interesting because, you know, previously if you'd use the word innovation, you'd be thinking about perhaps a startup or something, you know, like that and not necessarily placing it in the space of healthcare. But innovation in healthcare is a real thing. I mean, it's a driving force for progress in healthcare. And I'd love for you to share just some of the examples or maybe that bold one that.

you can talk about that you've taken either as an innovative approach or even something related to technology that if you think about it in retrospect because you have some years behind you that you would have never imagined doing, but you are doing right now. Well, I have an innovation innovative program that I'd love to talk about and I'm so proud to be able to talk about it. And it's not necessarily connected to an IT approach, you know, because we do have apps.

We have kiosk, we found ways to connect with our patients through geofencing when they come in, if they have cell phones. And we found ways beyond our community health workers to communicate and connect electronically and by email and by cell phone and all those other places. But sometimes I think it's okay when you think about innovation to get back to the most basic fundamentals of what a community may need.

where the rubber meets the road. And so, and as I've spent my time, you know, traveling from coast to coast here in the United States of America and catching a bird's eye view of what's happening in foreign countries, you know, throughout my travels, you know, globally understanding, you know, public health and healthcare. There's one thing in one common thread. I think that is significant and important to all of us.

around the United States and that is access. Many of us have talked about the determinants of health and what are those driving factors that stop folks from getting to the doctor. So I spent my time working on a couple of them. I'll talk about one right now. We'll talk about another one later. But one that I'm so proud of is our transportation program. We used some of our federal dollars during COVID that we received to keep our doors open.

to go and give folks a ride. So instead of having them use Uber and have them work with other ride share or transportation based programs in our community, we bought vans, a fleet of vans and said to our patients, if you need a ride, how about we'll come and get you for free. Especially those patients that are on Medicaid. Because we felt like, you know, if we're getting a reimbursement rate for,

you know, which is higher than most others would get in the healthcare, hospital, healthcare, private industry from seeing Medicaid patients that most folks that don't want to see. We should use those dollars to benefit the community. So we spent our resources to buy vans. And we tell folks, we will come and get you for free because when we bill Medicaid for providing care, we'll get enough dollars back from that reimbursement rate to keep.

to buy gas, to pay for our staff, and to keep those wheels rolling. And so we started that transportation program about a year and two months ago, and since that time, we have transported nearly 8 ,000 patients to and from their appointments. And there's one other thing that I'm really proud of, too, about the transportation program, is that I mentioned a moment ago how important it is for folks to have access to pharmaceuticals.

drugs. So if those same folks need a ride to the doctor, how are they going to get their prescriptions filled if we don't have a pharmacy in our clinics and we're working on getting pharmacies and all of them in -house? They're going to need a ride to get the prescription. Somebody's going to help get that. So guess what? We put in place a pharmacy delivery program.

And so, so not only will we give you a ride, if we can't get your prescription filled while you're with us, we will bring your prescription to you. We have a pharmacy program that's deeply discounted. It's one of the best pharmacy programs that exists in the United States of America and it is called 340B. And 340B discount pharmacy program is one that we all are fighting to keep and fighting.

to educate and advocate for, because perhaps, for example, if you're a diabetic and you need your meds, without insurance, it may cost you five, $600 a month. On a 340B program, it is as low as $10 a month. And it's that way for the many other medications that folks may need. But the joy of it is from...

an innovative perspective is just putting some systems in place that we know that are critical, that our community really has a need for. Because if we had a mass transit system, so many parts of our community is so rural, you'd still need a ride to the bus stop. And so that, although it may not sound innovative to most people, it is working for us.

Well, when you think about communities and they, you know, it's oftentimes talked about, especially when you think about COVID, is that you don't waste the crisis. And you didn't. I mean, you all capitalized on the moment and are making it, you know, a wonderful, accessible service for the residents there. So yeah, no, I think that's amazing. I also think what's amazing, and we've alluded to this at the onset of the conversation, is about scaling.

So scaling can be challenging for even your for -profit businesses. But if you've ever led a nonprofit out there, you know that scaling for a nonprofit is, I would say, doubly challenging. So you have been able to do that. So let's again, talk about where, you know, where you met your organization and where that organization is now, and then how through the scaling, because, you know, that's one concern that they think we always think about is that if you scale,

you know how that impact your quality and sustainability is that something that will be impacted so talk about where you were the before the I won't even call it the after because I think you're just still growing talk talk to us about that. Well and again I just mentioned you know we had around five clinic sites when I got here and today we have around 13 you know 14 one soon to come online at the beginning of next week that we're proud of.

And so we leveraged our resources to hire critical staff to fill slots and to build those programs that are most fundamental and that would generate revenue so that we could continue to expand. So again, that's primary care services, medical, dental, behavioral health, pharmacy. So we've.

I spent the time to focus on those programs and then connected with those groups in our communities that needed those services but didn't know how to access them or were not aware that they did. So we put in a huge marketing program. Even one year the local TV station allowed us to have a slot during the Super Bowl. Oh wow. To highlight, you know, a very, very deeply discounted rate, you know, to highlight our primary care services.

you know, that we're really proud of. And so we've since, you know, purchased more sites. We run a couple of facilities as well, you know, that we're hoping to purchase. We've developed a great relationship with our local United Community Bank, who has funded an administration and training facility for us on the south side of Spartanburg. There's currently under...

50 ,000 square feet that's currently under renovation so that we can move all of our administrative staff out of our facilities to one centralized location so that we can then in turn go back and use that space to develop out more exam rooms. And so, but in terms of, so we used resources and we've gotten loans in order to build to scale. But there's one other program that has been

highlight that I would never want to forget about talking about in terms of the scalability of our services and what has been integral. And it is our new mobile medical center program. And we call it a mobile medical center versus a mobile clinic because our mobile medical centers are just an extension of our brick and mortar facilities.

We use our mobile medical centers as a way in rural communities to establish a relationship and establish care, all in an effort to get folks inside our doors in our facilities. And a lot of people may say, I'm not taking my mom or my grandma to a mobile trailer to get care, you know, but, you know, and I've heard people say that, you know, openly in community meetings. But when you walk inside, they're ADA accessible and

can get in and you realize how beautiful they are. They're just like, you know, and you standing inside of a building and a facility with heating and air conditioning that that are just nicely done and clean and just well taken care of. And and so we have three. We have one that's also inclusive of dental operatory so we can do dental, provide dental sealants at schools, provide dental, you know, full.

comprehensive dental care, including x -rays at community centers or nursing homes. Then the second one is inclusive of mammography. So we can do breast exams for breast cancer in communities. And that one is also, it has, we can do mammography services as well as primary care services off of that unit as well. And as well as primary.

I think I mentioned primary care already. And then we have a third one that actually looks like a storefront. It's so innovative. We were at a mobile medical center conference in Phoenix, Arizona two years ago and bought one and you can set it up, you know, in a parking lot at a Target or a grocery store if you could rent some space and it looks just like a storefront. Very clean, very nice.

very user friendly, very accessible. We would provide primary care out of it. We also provide behavioral health services and partnership with our mental health department. We set it there and folks come out of their mental health visit onto our mobile medical center and receive care. And so we've used those tools, you know, to do school -based physicals with our school systems. And we've used those services to do physicals in our manufacturing community, because we have a very large manufacturing.

here and Spartanburg with BMW manufacturing so if you drive a BMW you probably got it from Spartanburg and don't know it and so many other feeder companies that are here that that support BMW and the other manufacturing companies that exist here we connect with those folks through our mobile medical centers you know on -site there or wherever we may choose to so the scale from a scalability

perspective, we've used that as a form of outreach to connect with other industries that need access and really want access to more accessible primary care. So when you think about innovation, innovation is certainly in the DNA of your organization and the leadership. I mean, some outstanding examples, something that, as you mentioned, you really should be proud of. And I think.

that even from this podcast that you will have healthcare folks contacting you and wanting to know more about this because it really has, you have any barriers that probably existed with receiving care, you have looked to address them and so, and in a powerful way. So you have some secret sauce, which actually is a great segue for the next question. When you think about, you know, key ingredients for being an impactful leader,

in this nonprofit healthcare space, especially when you think about the challenges that healthcare leaders have to navigate and to create positive change. What do you think those key ingredients are from your perspective? To make the health system work.

the key ingredients to the key ingredients for being an impactful leader. Oh, yeah. For being an impactful leader in this nonprofit health care space. So that's where you're going to share the secret sauce and the world is going to find out by way of workforce insight. So what's the secret sauce? Well, you know, you have to sell your secrets. But but here's here's one one one good thing.

And I think as a leader, you must have the ability to do a few things. Number one, you must be willing to connect with community. You gotta be willing to get from behind your desk when you have time, get out, develop partnerships. Because I once held a position as planning and partnership development director, you know, in a large metropolitan city and public health. And so that really gave me some good fundamental knowledge about the importance of.

getting out and building partnerships. And because we all know by now that we can't do this work alone. And the second, you know, one out of three is you can't be afraid, I think as a leader, to surround yourself with people that are smarter than you. You know, you can't know everything and you know, and you may be a subject matter expert on some things, but you just can't know everything. And in my world and my role,

I'm not a physician, you know, and I can't walk into an exam room and see patients. So I have to hire people with the ability to be able to do that. You know, with our growth rate, I certainly can't sit on interview panels and interview employees. So I need folks who are savvy in the human resources world, who's able to come in and really to help us recruit and retain. And if I didn't have a strong HR team, I wouldn't have consistently been able to staff up.

when we have experienced our deficits through the years. And of course, financially, yes, I can count. I can do very well with managing budgets and all that good stuff. But I need someone who understands finances and also someone who understands compliance and also someone who can really help us communicate and connect. And the only thing I'm doing is laying out a list of key critical.

positions that I have had to surround myself with in order to be able to advance and move things forward because I realized that I can't do it alone. I have to do this work through the hands of others and share my leadership with them so that we all are successful. And if you don't have that type of mindset and the willingness to surround yourself with folks that...

are smarter than you and have more knowledge on a particular subject base, then I think you're doing your own self -disservice. And then finally, I believe in continuing education. I have a full -time executive coach on staff here and, you know, that I even take advantage of as well, because I feel like, you know, you can really, you know, get lost in your leadership.

especially when things are moving very fast till you can really lose touch with and get out of sorts with yourself and with folks that really need you most fundamentally. And so we really coach our green professionals and our seasoned professionals. That's a condition of employment here and a requirement so that we continue to get coached and make sure we stay on top of who we are as leaders.

That's powerful. And I've spoken with a lot of leaders and sometimes, oftentimes there may be a challenge or maybe it's just at the onset of a new role. Oftentimes at a senior level, that executive coaching would be made available. But the fact that you've woven that into the fabric of your organization again speaks to, and I think like you said, with this whole question about key ingredients for being an impactful leader is having that level of awareness of which you've certainly demonstrated there.

So when you think about, you know, you talked about internally, the ability to carry out the work that of course drives you to the mission of your organization, there's then the external collaboration and partnerships. You know, they're essential for nonprofits, healthcare organizations, and honestly for us all, what have been some of those, I call it, maximize large partnerships that you have just been super.

I'm proud of and how it's contributed to your mission. Is there one that comes to mind? It is. There's one that comes to mind that, you know, that I really would like to highlight. I don't often get a chance to talk about some of those partnerships, but you know, and from this one particular partnership, I've gotten a tremendous amount of knowledge out of it. And the CEO of that organization would be proud to know that I'm talking about him.

And we work very closely with the north side of Spartanburg with a group called the North Side Development Group. And that group has worked hard to reimagine as a term I would use, the north side of Spartanburg, you know, to make it more livable, walkable, connectable, safe with new stores and resources.

restaurants, you know, in order to be able to connect. And let me tell you, it has turned out to be a beautiful place. And so vastly different, I think, than any of us would have ever imagined that it could turn into. And it's a place on the north side of Spartanburg that we're all proud of. And so they came to me before they broke ground to say on, you know, we would love to see Regenesis have a health center on the north side of Spartanburg.

want you to walk with us as we do this. And so the North side of Spartanburg, parts of it is an economic empowerment zone. I know that you're very familiar with those. And so it requires various entities to come together to take advantage of new market tax credits, you know, when you build. And so we decided to get connected with this group. We now have a North side health center that's

beautiful, it's brand new, and I think it's a highlight of one of our facilities that we've expanded to. And all of the services that I've listed initially in my presentation are the same services that we provide there. And so we have been able to help families that have limited resources to go through a training and education program about banking.

finances, you know, budgeting. And they included us in that whole training curriculum for families to get down payment assistance, you know, which I'm so proud of because they had to go through five or six classes around healthcare, what it means to gain access to healthcare. And it all had to be signed off on before they got full down payment assistance into their new homes. I love that.

And so, you know, I was so proud that they took the opportunity to and take advantage of the services that we have to include us in such a model, you know, in such a way because you always hear about, you know, the education components about financing and budgeting, but never do you hear about, you know, them weaving into classes for health care and access to care. And so.

They came to us with the innovative idea. And that is a strong partnership, you know, to your question that I'm very proud of. We just, that 50 ,000 square foot building I mentioned to you is where we got the idea around leveraging new market and tax credits in order to get lower interest rates so that we, you know, could better afford the property. So that has worked out very well for us through the partnerships.

all of the business entities that have come together on the north side of Spartanburg to really, I think, make it a model for all of us to try to take a look at and stay connected to, you know, as we work to advance. So I think that's one of the greatest, I think, partnerships I think I could highlight right now. That is phenomenal. And again, I will make certain that I do a call out even when we're sharing the word about this podcast about parts that you just don't want to miss.

You know, it highlights not only, you know, the power of one, it's the power of us, you know, the power of us. And so it really is so wow. We oftentimes talk about partnerships and industry and others that want to have a relationship with different groups. And sometimes they're met with, you know, no, we don't want to go down that path. But the fact that everybody was one, they had the idea and you welcomed it. And now you're able to capitalize on it in another business way.

again, just speaks to who you are and certainly the community as well. So now one of the areas, we've talked about impact, we've talked about scale, we talked a little bit about numbers and the importance of them, but this one is about data and analytics. And so certainly in healthcare is a lot of data and quality issues, but how are you using data? And I call it in this most informed decision -making way in analytics.

to guide you, whether it's with serving your, I call it the individuals who are receiving care or with moving your organization in a direction that you'd like to take it in. What role is data playing? Well, data is, without data, we really can't do anything. Why? Because I know you've heard this before, what gets measured gets done. Yes. And so then the question is, what are you measuring? Yeah.

You know, and so you got to have data and healthcare in order to understand, you know, how well we're measuring someone's A1C. Whether or not if someone's coming in to get their, man are getting their colorectal cancer test. Or, you know, how often do they come to the doctor for care? You know, who's on Medicaid and Medicare and who's not? Who uses Blue Cross, Blue Shield and other HMOs and who doesn't?

who needs free care or need to come in and get in on a sliding V scale discount program to gain access to care based on their household income. You must have tools in place to really monitor and measure that. And that is a federal requirement to get this and keep the funding that comes to maintain keeping the doors open for a federally qualified community health center. Because we're not giving services away for free. And because that's certainly not something that...

federal government wants us to do in these centers, you know, they want us to really find a way to help folks, even if they agree to a payment plan of some sort, to get folks to the door to gain access to the primary care that exists. And the only way we can do that is by taking a look at our data, patient health data, our financial data, you know, our risk and information data, our quality data, health care.

lives and dies by quality. You know, so providers have to really evaluate one another, whether it's medical or dental. And so we collect that information and data primarily, number one, because it's required. Number two, because it makes us more efficient. Number three, we use, we build benchmarks in place to that help.

shine a light on provider productivity to see, you know, take a look at how many patients are you seeing per hour. And we use that information and data to, we've used it to build in a bonus and incentive pay program for our providers. For our pharmacy, for example, we measure all of our pharmacy information data because just because we have pharmacies doesn't mean our patients have to use our pharmacies. They can use other retail pharmacies in the community.

but we would certainly like for them to use our information and data. So we monitor to see our patient utilization rate of our pharmacy and of our services. So we measured that and we put campaigns in place to measure and monitor to see what providers and or to try to determine how providers or how our clinical pharmacist or technicians or nurse practitioners can work together.

to raise the awareness of our patients about the services that we offer and how and why they should take advantage of them. And so subsequently, one good measure with looking at data is, you know, only 20 % of our patients were, was using our pharmacies. And I spent, you know, a million dollars building new pharmacies and new pharmacies in place. About a year ago, the utilization was 20%. Well today, because we were very deliberate,

by saying we want a 60 % utilization rate in six months. And the campaign was 60 in six. Well, today, you know, it took us, you know, right at about a year. We're at about 58%. Oh my gosh. And, but that is because when you put an emphasis on information and data and understanding what gets measured, you have some very good outcomes around what can get done.

And so we've used that, you know, to, in those additional resources to enhance, you know, our facilities to buy more tools that our physicians may need, you know, so the reason we buy more vehicles. So all of those dollars that we earn since we're nonprofit, you know, are, are infused back into the organization to enhance, you know, the programs and our systems and processes, our services.

how we take a look at optimization models. And so it is critical that we look at that. And those are a few examples of what we do with that data. I love it. And it's been such a great conversation. But this last question is one that I'm going to ask you to take out your crystal ball and share with us what's the biggest opportunities or challenges that you see on the horizon and how is your organization prepared to address them.

Well, you know, some of the biggest opportunities, the biggest one is for federally qualified community health centers, that is, is funding. You know, while we've always received, you know, bipartisan support, you know, we have to take a ride to Washington, D .C. and speak with our delegation, our senators and congressmen and women to keep them educated and enlightened on what's happening back at home.

You know, what's happening with the dollars that they are being supportive of us using to provide greater access to care. And sometimes, you know, getting that funding, you know, is in jeopardy. And so, the better you educate, you know, the better and the better we tell our story around the impacts that we're making, the better off we are. And I would say that that is why we've been able to experience the type of growth we have. And so,

Our funding is critical. I've mentioned to you already that we're already at full capacity. We need more space because our funding hasn't grown from the federal government other than the supplemental fundings that we've received for COVID in many years. But yet, you know, we've expanded our services to more than serving, as I mentioned earlier, 30 million Americans with some of the same level funding. Yes.

So we've used those leveraged, you know, those dollars that we get with other partners to build new facilities. And a lot of us are just out of space and we can't do anymore. We have waiting list and we have waiting list only because we don't have space. Right. And if you know, and I realize there's a nursing shortage and a physician shortage, but people are graduating and people are looking for work. You know, we have a very strong loan reimbursement program.

physicians and dentists who want to get in the professions and come and work in rural communities for a few years to help get some assistance and God knows you know many of our rural communities need it because there are more rural communities in America than metropolitan ones. And in our metropolitan cities there are rural pockets. You know and so you know we all need to define continue to find ways to be creative in our thinking you know around gaining access to care and

and continue to find and work together collectively on those innovative ways to continue to improve access to care. And so that is one of the biggest barriers that confront us moving forward around continuing to advance and improve access to care.

You know, such an amazing conversation because even with identifying the challenge, you've also talked about the opportunity and the opportunity is for continued advocacy about the work that you're doing. I hope that all of our listeners have enjoyed the episode as much as me. And I'd ask that you all tune in, certainly save it as a favorite to another episode of the Workforce Insight podcast brought to you by Envision More Consulting Group. Again, where we bring your bold visions to life.

Thank you for joining us. Thank you.

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