Transcript of (BONUS) Operational Blindness: What’s Costing Hospitals Millions

Hey, this is Dr. Jake Taylor-Jacobs, host of Bread to Lead. In this episode is something different. I think it'll be extremely special. This is me speaking at RMBC conference, Their Business Summit on Operational Blindness. This is a keynote edition of the Bread to Lead podcast. If you like more episodes like this, I would love to be able to give you all just an earshot of what goes on when I speak on the stage. I hope you enjoy it, and let us know if you want more of this. Thanks. Since the age of 12, I've been buying my father's I'm going to sit down for a second because I get anxiety when I I start to speak. I've spoken on... You can hear the shakiness in my voice a little bit. I've spoken on some of the largest stages, tens of thousands of people, TEDx, Done all the works. But when I talk to you, healthcare folk, it just gets me all... You all get me anxious. These judgy eyes. What's this next smart guy got to say. The truth is, you all made me go talk to my counselor. I went and told him, you all.

When I asked my counselor, I said, Why with this group of people? People, do I get so anxious? They're the nicest people I've ever met, some of the most thoughtful leaders of any industry that I participated in. Why? My counselor said, After a decade of being a counselor, I think you finally found an industry that matters to me. When you speak, you know that motivation or a concept or a thought, a theory, a structure, a system, a programmatic way of doing something, somebody can take it, go implement it in their hospital, and it can ultimately save a life or home one. It's not the same as talking to the entrepreneur that owns a tissue or toilet tissue business. Can get them amped up. Go clean bucks. If they make a mistake, you just have some stains in your underwear. That's it. But it's nothing that truly, truly, truly can affect the life of a human being. Before coming into health care, my My team, as you guys can see, I'm not going to act like he doesn't exist. This is my head of marketing, Ignacio. We're known, my little ragtag group, we're known as ambulance chasers, tornado chasers, if you will.

We like to chase the most difficult problem and solve it. You can call it because I'm the why kid. I got a bunch of weapons, not for being bad, just because I asked why all the time. What I came to find out, no matter what organization, no matter what industry we participated in, why it just irritates people? Because the truth is, we don't understand why. So it's just easier to not address the problem at the end. That's what happens. Give me a story. I think my anxiety has gone now. I was at my mother's to his house, and she cooks mean fried chicken. I'm talking about the type of chicken that will make you want to slap your mama. Unfortunately, it's my mom cooking it. She cooks this fried chicken in a cast iron skillet. What? Small. She She gets me chefing away. One day, I said, Mom, it's a thousand of us in this house. Why are you cooking all of this chicken in a small cast iron skillet. Taking you forever to do the same thing that you can do with a bigger cast iron, at least. She said, Baby, because this is just...

She you start to bake up this excuse because when it's smaller, it heats up faster and it keeps it hot. That's how I get it crispy. Your grandma and great grandma, they all did the same thing. I said, Huh? Told you I was the Y kid, so I could cook a little bit, too. I went home, and I got me a cast iron skillet. But a bigger one. Because I just wanted to test the theory. Is mama right? Or is this one of them folk glory folktales that you just say because you don't know the answer to my question. Lo and behold, not only did I cook more chicken, it was golden and crispy, just like Mama and Grandma made it. So I went back to my Mama and I said, Well, Mom, I thought you said that the smaller cast iron skillet heats up more, and it's the only way that you can keep the ground even and all those things. She said, I just never thought to get a bigger skillet. So I go to my Grandma. Hey, G-Lady, I'm going to with M. K. J. She said, Hey, baby. I said, Why do you all use small cast iron skillets?

Her response was different. She said, Well, it's because It cooks down to the meat faster. I said, Well, that's strange. Mama said something different. Well, where did you all get it from? My mama. So it's my great grand. Well, my great grandma has passed, though my aunt Barbara is still around, her best friend, her sister. I said, I'm Barbara. Why did you all use small cast iron skillet? She said, Baby, that's all we can afford. I Imagine three generations having this concept that this is how you put something, only to find out when you keep asking why, they just use the skillet that they could afford and kept it. And so what it had me thinking is that organizations all around the country have theseisms, these myths of how things have always been because they've been passed down from generation to generation, and nobody has taken the time to ask, what am I going to say? Oh, you all read my notes today. It's feel like church. Anybody from Austin? Anyone? Anyone from Austin here? Anyone from Dallas? From Dallas here? You from Dallas? Yeah, you look like you're from Dallas, brother. Got a little drip to you.

I see the socks. Fonsue. How long does it take to get from here in Dallas to Austin? From Austin to Dallas? Three and a half. Eight. Three and a half on. Say it like you're proud. Three and a half. Did you all hear what he said? What did he say? Three and a half hours. He said it with confidence, no question. If I take that same question, I ask somebody that's never driven a car. Only walked. Never been on the bus, never been on a plane, never been on a scooter. Only walked. How long does it take to get from here in Dallas to Austin? They'll say three to four weeks walking. The question is, who's right? They're both right. The only difference is the vehicle. The next question I ask someone, I say, Hey, that's driven a car all their life, never a plane, never a bus, a car. How long does it take to get? He said the thing, Three and a half hours. If I go to a Middle-class American community. They fly. They don't really travel by bus or by car, by walking or bike. How long does it take to get from here in Dallas to Austin?

They'll say about an hour and a half, give or take, getting through the terminal. It's to get on a plane to get to Austin. The question is, who's right? They're all right. The only difference is the what? Vehicle. Now, if I take that same question to the Orcherville that have only flown yet, how long does it take to get from here in Dallas to Austin? What do you think they're going to say? Thirty minutes on a hopper. I always like to make it sound like real different. It's just a little small plane. It's really not really cool, especially when you go into states that got a lot of turbulence, you're on the plane, you think you're going to die. You're just wishing that it was a bigger plane. But imagine this concept, same destination, same place, but the only difference is how fast you get there in the most efficient way possible. With every way that you get there, it takes more time, more resources, more finances, more money. But the experience gets better when you start to question sacred cows that we've addressed this entire time. For just the moment, I want us just today to just act like you, my friend.

I'm not going to sell you anything. You won't see a thing that's going to say, Just for 2. 99, change your life. You hear that enough? Today is about talking about belief in changing concepts that you've held so dear that's actually destroying your organization is honestly destroying your own peace. You came into health care to make a difference. Sometimes when I look in some of you all's eyes all over the country, it seems like you feel like you're fighting, but that spirit of optimism and joy is just dying. I get it. I just want to challenge us to think something different. I want to ask you something. Any NASCAR people are here? All right, sister, I got one. In NASCAR, we have the driver. They run the race. All eyes are on the driver. We know the drivers. They have the pit crew, the pit lane, the garage team, the hauler. See, the driver's the star. Pit crew on race day, those ones that are… When you see them in slow motion, it looks like butter. They're fixing a car in less than 11 seconds, and that car is hit in the road. It's a beautiful sight.

Then you have your pit lane. That's the track where the action happens. You have your garage behind the scenes. They prepare the car, inspect every component. Without them, it seems like the driver doesn't race, and the hauler delivers the race-ready car to the pit lane on time every time. All of these positions are important. Wouldn't you agree? You can't have an amazing pit crew with a terrible driver. It doesn't work. You can't have an amazing driver with a terrible pit crew. It doesn't work. You can't have an amazing driver with an amazing pit crew with a terrible garage. Does that work? No. Then you're a transporter, you're a hauler. They have to care about the car, too. Imagine if everything is perfect, but every time they haul the car, they mess up the driver's car. It's crazy what it takes to have a flawless organization. Everyone has to actually care about the roles that you play in the positions that we have because each position matters. Now, there are some positions that is quite naturally. They get paid more because they're taking the most risk. But it doesn't mean they're more important. When I look at the surgical service line, and I'm so proud about this because when I came into the industry, the very first thing I did, didn't sell or sell.

Me and Donnie, my co-partner, my CEO there, she's been with the company 20 years, started as a volunteer and worked her way up. Now she's the CEO after 20 years later. Her and the founder of the company found our Ragtag group and had to convince us to come over here to healthcare. The question I asked them, I said, It's not about money because we're fine. Can we make an impact? Is there a true change that can be made or are people stuck in their ways that you can't create anything different? She said, No, transformation is needed. Hospitals are asked to actually operate a profitable hospital and nobody's actually been trained on how to run a profitable There's change that's needed. I said, Okay, we went all over the country for the first year, and you will see in a little bit. We, one on one, surveyed more than 180 people, leaders, peri-op leaders, C-suite executives, SPD leaders, you name it, we've done it. One-on-one. Not a survey, not an email blast, not a text message. One-to-one, person-to-person, face-to-face. Because it matters. What we found out, I'll share with that later with you. But here we have the surgical service line is the surgeon.

They run the case all eyes on them, but they can only run one case at a time. Your ORT That's your pit crew. Get in there and... Just like the pit crew. The track, that's the OR. That's where everyone gets to shine. You get your lights on. It's the process and it's behind the scenes. That's your garage. The black box everyone forgets about but complains about when the rubber is the road. Then your case car, That's the delivery transport team. The garage isn't support. The garage is part of the operation, not the evil stepchild. It's a part of the group. The driver knows that if the car isn't ready, they lose. The driver respects the mechanics because winning depends on them. The crew chief coordinates the garage and pit crew as one integrated team. The team owner invest in the garage because they understand the ROI. Everyone's on the same team. Everyone shares the same goal. Everyone contributes. Visible and valuable. Contributions, visible and valuable. But imagine if Nascar operated like most hospitals. Just imagine. Just imagine all the things that we could be. Who knew Barney was my favorite singer? Imagine all the places we can go and see.

Imagination's fun for you and me. I just want us to imagine. The driver shows up on race day and expects the car to be ready, but never talk to the mechanic or the pit crew. It shows them like, Hey, we're racing today. Let's go. What car is going to be ready? If you do get a car, it's going to be a savvy car. The mechanic finds out Which car the driver wants to race 30 minutes before the green flag? When the car breaks down mid-race, the driver blames the garage, but the garage isn't on the radio. It's not a part of your huddle. We'll just send information down and them people downstairs and figure it out because we're busy up here. The team owner cuts the garage budget because they don't generate revenue, the driver does. So the team owner says, Man, what matters is the pit crew and the driver. So we're going to cut this garage, slice it up in pieces, and say, Hey, I'm going to get what I need because we just need to make sure we have the best driver and the best pit crew anybody can be a mechanic with this group.

But that's not necessarily true. After a loss, The debrief, everyone except is a part of except for the mechanics. This team will never win. Every minute your garage costs your driver is a minute of revenue that's gone forever, just like in surgeries. I'm not going to I'll cover you with these statistics because I think you all already know it, how much it costs to run a hospital. In case you didn't know, a lot of hospital systems, more than 7, 8% of the revenue comes from surgeries. Coming from private sector, one of the things that we value most was not just the sales team, but also customer support and service delivery team. They're just as important as the people that sell. Why? Because you can sell the moon I promise the world. But if you have no one to help you deliver it, the result of that is catastrophic in health care. Selling tissue, you just jump in the shower. But anything else is different. Every minute, every cancelation, every delay actually matters. When we talk about the health care servers, the connection is completely crazy. It's crazy because what we did with the hospital system that we were supporting was we convinced the C-suite of a hospital system to just give us two Two years with their SPD.

We talked to the VP of periop, the AC&O of the hospital system and said, Listen, we're not here to tell you all what to do. I just want to fix the relationship. They said yes. What happened? In 18 months, we took a hospital that's historically known to be terrible in the Midwest. The SPD was the number one No reason for causes of delay. Now they're last. Sterile Processing Department went from over budget 1. 5 to under budget 1. 5. We took them from having 36 FTEs to 24 FTEs, and they operate in home. Now in that same city, that SPD Department, most SPD folk work two jobs, multiple hospitals, because they don't get paid enough. So what did we do? We shrunk the team, made them more efficient, and paid them what they were worth. The highest paid SPD in the Hey, hey, hey. They don't have to work one job. They're happy. They have respect from the OR. We bridged that relationship. And guess what's most important? The surgeon's happy because they can increase their volume. Because what we told the C-suite, we said, Listen, if the SPD is not involved in revenue creation conversations, there's no way that we can actually help you.

There's no way. So we did it, and we changed it. After that, now we talk to the President CEO like we're best friends and buddies. The first thing I told him, I said, Brother, I don't want to be your friend. I don't want to act like I'm your friend, but I do want you to go home and know that when you leave your hospital, that it's all in the right hands. I know we get tired of those vendors that act like they're your friends, they ask you about your family. Hey, buddy. Hey, Betty. Just love you. Then you sell them, you sign, you don't hear from them until they want to upsell. Yeah, that's not what we want. Before we talk about what it costs you a hospital, You wake up at 2: 00 AM, not because something's wrong, but because you don't know something. You don't wake up at 2: 00 AM, not because something went wrong, because you don't know something went wrong. You're waiting on the call, Uh-uh. I'm going to go back. You're waiting on the call, the email, the text, because you know something is going to go wrong. Imagine having anxiety going to work every day.

You can imagine it because a lot of us live it. Then the doubt starts to creep in. I've been doing this 20 years. I should have known this. Why do I feel like I'm always one step behind? You start to wonder if you're actually good at this or if you've just been lucky. I'm going to give you a little something, a little fun small fact I found. 1969, that's when the OR actually was standardized. 1969, that's when regulation actually happened. Do you know when the idea of regulation happened with SPD? Anyone? 2006. St 79 came about in 2006. We have some SPD leaders that are managing, running SPD that have been a part of a world where They learned the majority of their nuances, their trade in an unregulated environment. Do you know when Joint Commission made it their priority to say, Every time we visit a hospital, we're going to SPD. Anyone know the year? 2010? You're close. 2013. What year is it? What year is it? How many years is that? Thirteen years. That SPD has been a part of the conversation. Thirteen. We wonder why. There's mayhem. Before you create a change, we have to assess something.

Here's the craziest thing. You say, Man, I've been here 20 years. I should know this. How can you know something when it never was the priority? You're never part of conversations. You just threw it on the bus. Or is upset at SPD. Spd is mad because they just need to be mad because you're mad. You know how we get mad. I'm mad because you're mad because we're mad together. But what happens is when you realize your counterparts that you need and depend on every day haven't had the same amount of time or regulatory standards that you've had in the development of training, you have a little bit more empathy and wanting to make something work with them. When I brought this to the C-Suite's attention, it's funny what research and facts do. It just brings things to life. Then we walked around, C-Suite said, Come downstairs. Now the president comes to SPD every single day. Can I tell you something? Metrics and numbers do lie. For an example, if you hire somebody that's been in SPD 30 years, they say, Man, I took all the travelers out, and we're now staffed internally. It sounds good on paper.

You cut the traveler's cost, now it's all local on paper, localized on paper, but your skill mix is wrong. You have 10% of your team that what we call a blue belt. Can operate in multiple zones, but 90% are under three years. Yet it looks good that we cut the cost, but the organization is absolutely going to struggle because the skill mix is off. Well, when you think about it, you roll it back, it sounds simple, but when there's high pressures to cut costs and not observe the system first, these are the things that we do. We do patchwork. We get this tech, we get this system, we get that product, we go to this comfort, we take that process, and we don't actually think about reconstructing the entire system because we've never been prone or pushed to. We're wondering why this hyena and lion relationship is always conflicting. Like I tell anybody, you can get new technology all you want. There's a lot of great vendors here, but you can't put new wood on the termite infested for. Because the termites are going to eat the what? The new wood. You can't slap lipstick on a pig and say it's a sheep.

It's still oinks. But when we look at it, we say, Man, they got to catch up. Let's just give them a budget. Let's approve them. Spd, what do you need? They don't know what they need. So then you get them what they need and it doesn't work. Now you say, I'm never going to get you what you need. And it gets worse. Then you get an agency in that promises they're going to change it, but they're just a bunch of patchwork people doing the same thing HRs do, do a call all around the country, charge your hospital arm and leg to have people that are underperforming. This is the truth. Hey, brother. Hey, what's your name? Chad. Hey, Chad. How are you? Pretty good. These are the things that we deal with on a daily basis. I like to do things very simple. I like to take things biblical really quick. There's a favorite book I got. It's Genesis. We may not know about this book or not, but in Genesis, the creator of this world, being politically correct, Danny, am I doing good? Yes. He's the creator of this world. In this book of Genesis, the first thing this creator did, it did not say, let there be light first.

That's what everyone talks about. You know what he did? He hover the waters. You know what waters mean in Hebrew? Mayhem, chaos. He didn't bring light first. He split the chaos first. In darkness, he assessed the problem before patching it. Before creating a world in a system, he assessed what was going on. So I look at an organization, I like to say, Hey, we need an assessment. The My organization says, Hey, no, we just need staff. I say, Hey, we don't want to work with you. They say, Hey, wait, wait. You don't want to work with us? I'm telling you, we need 10 techs. I'm telling you, there's a lot of other companies to go to. Because I don't want to deal with this hetchy-hetchy-getchy stuff. Came in the healthcare to make a change. I want to work with the leaders that truly wanted to make changes. If you knew what the problem was, why is there a problem in the first place? So he hover the waters. Then he split chaos, the waters that could not be controlled, from the waters that could operate in the system. Then he said, Let there be life.

Before humans were even brought to this world, he built systems. Did you all know that? Systems that didn't have to need a human to run them. They just run on their own. Because this creator wanted to create a world where we didn't have to depend on how we would feed ourselves because the system, the ecosystem, actually could produce it itself. So that we can realize the system will move with or without persons. But we live in a society, not just in health care, but all over the world, because we need notoriety and we need acceptance and we need the vision of everyone to see us. So we Love to award heroism. When it's all on one person, and then we award that person, then the other person coming up after you says, I need to be a hero. But I don't know about you all. I like to be a hero parent. I don't want to be a hero at work. I don't mind stretching the Earth for my child, my baby, my birthday, and my two sons. But at work, I shouldn't have to do that. I want to operate in the system, but we've been saying this for 20 years.

Now you carry this weight alone. You can't admit it to the board, you can't admit it to your peers, you can't admit it to your team. So you carry it alone. The more senior you get, the more isolated the weight feels. Because if you do say that you have a problem as a VP, you think that that means that, Hey, that means that I'm not fit for the job. So we patch it, we hide it, we patch it, we hide it. We patch it, we hide it, we patch it, we hide it, we patch it, we hide it, we patch it, we hide it. Before you know, we have a lot of an organization full of patchwork with no system work. The best way to build something is structure. We talk about systems. Everyone has intelligence and everyone has technology. All of a sudden, all of these 30-year-old companies, now the same systems and programs are now intelligent all of a sudden. New buzzword, new day is fine. But as an organization, you have to ask yourself, when there is no technology, How can we operate intelligently? When there is no technology or systems or structure, how can we move in a way that allows for us to move according to ensuring that patients, regardless Regardless of what type of surgery, you can get back home to their babies the same way that you want to.

It's what matters. We don't want you to carry this along, because what happens is, here's the cost that no one measures, strained at home. You're present, but you're not present. Your spouse sees it, your kids feel it. You're at the dinner table, but you're still at the hospital. You're there, but you're not there. The loss of joy. You got into health care to make a difference. Now you spend your days managing the aftermath of things that you never saw coming. You hired a rock star, and you thought that it would change. That rock star is not a rock star, but you can't fire them. You just have to now create all these difficult ways to get them to quit, but they won't quit. We talk about the health costs, blood pressure, sleep, weight. The body keeps score. You know the stress is taking years off of your life. The quiet fear, how long until this catches up to me? How long until there's a problem I can't recover where we're coming from. It's not your fault. That's what I want to tell you. It's not. The architecture of healthcare operations was never designed to give you the visibility that you need to lead at this This level of complexity.

It's not your fault. We just never had a system. A system is just simply a series of programs that work succinctly together in order to produce an efficient outcome. I'm sorry. The purpose of the lean belt system doesn't teach you how to restructure an organization from scratch. It teaches you how to make the current structure, assuming it is the most efficient structure, efficient. This is why you can have all the black belt lean on your team and still have mayhem. Because lean was created in a world Toyota, that already had a flawless system, and they just were making tweaks along the way. What happens is you learn lean, you make it efficient, and you make your workarounds efficient, but you don't deal with the symptom at the end. Or is underdeveloped or the SPD is underdeveloped. We have service techs or liaisons that have never been in SPD. The purpose of a liaison from SPD to OR is to have somebody that understands both worlds. When you look at a pit crew, the most important person on the pit crew is the mechanic that worked the garage and also is great at working with the pit crew.

That's the person that can liaison in between, communicate in between, talk in between. This is a systematic structure that are needed. We did a study. As you can tell, I am a doctor, but I'm not a doctor. If you are sick, if you call me, you may end up dead. My doctor is in a business administration, so I like to tell people, When your organization is sick, that's when you call me. I'm the person that makes your organization feel better. I'm not the person that you come to for anything else. But if you want true change, and you're not alone, we actually Remember I told you that we went and did a study with 185 leaders all over the country, some of the larger hospital systems in the country we support. Even those leaders, it was absolutely scary. How many leaders would I talk to in confidence, told me the real truth, that they felt like they couldn't tell their peers, their upline or their leaders. We come with these fronts with these masks on to conferences and talking to your peers. Imagine being in a space where you can't even be yourself and be honest about how much of a mess things are and how much of a lack of a structure people have.

We did a study. Did you know that 99. 5% of the people that we did a study with scored at-risk or operationally blind? 99. 99%. Did you know these same 99% actually had tracking systems? If tracking systems, how they currently stand, actually worked, even in the hospitals, they have all the modules. Why are we still having the same issues that we had before the tracker system? It's not a tracking of instruments. If I lose my key at home and I keep losing my key, I'm not going to put a tracker on my key fob. I'm going to find a place and make it a routine in the behavior it's put in the same place every time. 50. 8% lack early warning capability. Did you know that 50. 8% feel like they can't see the problems that are coming, and it just hits them like a ton of bricks? Every single time. Now, imagine if you're a VP, and every department feels that way. Just hide in your room and just get through the day and say there will always be a problem. 49. 2% say solutions fail to fix persistent problems. Bring in a consultant, it works.

They leave, it breaks. You bring back in the consultant, it works. They leave, it breaks. We keep this cycle up. We keep this cycle up because the solution was never actually solved. We've had a lot of hospitals because what most people didn't know with Sips, when we do staff or we have staff before, we actually built those leaders from scratch. Those technicians that we placed, a lot of them, we trained from scratch and got them certified. So they were a little different. Then when we placed them, the hospital, of course, said, Hey, we want We're going to cut costs. So we want the staff. We want the team. You get the team, you remove the system. Two years later, they call us back. Same team. I need an RFP. Cool. We do an RFP. They give our same team to another company. That company Same team, same team, new company, overseeing it in the dumps. They bring us back. Same team. Our system, it works. Why? Because how we build an organization is When I'm all programmatic, when I'm hiring somebody from scratch, what is your program to take them from entry level to top performer in your organization?

How do we decide the quality of a technician or nurse or surgeon? Is it just based on tenure? Man, the 10 years, man, I've seen it all. Ten years of interviews. You're a great interviewer. But when I ask your organization that you've come from, what has happened, you ran out of there when problems arise because you know there's a shortage all over the world. What I've learned about this consulting space is that when people underperform at their hospital, they go work for a consultant company, let it die down for a year or two, pop back on the local hospital. This is just the structure. This is why, fundamentally, what we've done in the organization is it doesn't matter what your tenure is. Everyone gets assessed the same in giving some type of belt. We have a color-coded belt system. Based on how we assess you, I don't care if you're a 20-year vet, how you're assessed and you have to keep that belt status like Karate. This is how we're able to progress throughout the organization. Why? Because building a system is a programmatic way, especially when humans are the main focus of the care or the delivery of the service.

We don't assume what people know. If you're offended that I test you because you've been in 10 years, you don't fit. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you, sir. So you know what we did? I got it, brother. I knew what you're thinking. We went to the healthcare system, the same one that I told you that we saved all this stuff. They wanted us to get a person that was a manager of 10 years. I said, Oh, no, we're not going to do it. They said, No, we want somebody of 20 years. I said, Hey, see, sweet. Remember? You told me, let us figure this out because it's already in. Let us figure it out. We went and found a supervisor that's never been a manager before, but they were 1,000% committed to the system and development. You know what happens? They love her. They love her so much. They said, Can we keep her? She said, Oh, no, he can't keep me because I don't have a system. Because the hospital thought, Oh, it's the manager. But no, it's how we develop our leaders in our system. When she saw it, I said, Hey, man, come on.

Come on, bud. Let's come over here. Let's do it. We say here, 50% of operations leaders are operating blind. The highest, this is the highest of any role that we assist. That operations leader said, We have no clue what is going on. Anywhere. We depend on reporting. Give me the dashboard, give me the report, give me the information. It's crazy what happens when you sit with people one-on-one, you actually talk with them, they understand that you truly care about what's going on with them, you're not trying to sell them. It's crazy the type of truth that comes out. It's crazy what type of truth that comes out. They say, Doc, I'm going to be honest with you. I know I go around and I say how well we're doing percentage-wise, but it's bad. I give the front. This is what one of them told me. I give the front that everything's great, the statistics are great. I said, Well, how are you measuring greatness with statistics? Well, I just measure where we come from. I said, Well, where are you going? Well, we just want to keep incrementally getting better. I said, Well, how do you know your organization's better?

Yes, you're trending up and things are coming down, but at the end of the day, what is your metric that you're judging your organization against? He said, Dr. Jake, I never even thought about that. I just was proud to say that we've gotten better. I said, There's nothing wrong with you getting better. But what are you getting better to? In comparison to whom? Based on what knowledge? We saw that. These stats are scary you all. 40. 7% said they're operating fully, operationally blind. Metrics don't match reality. When they look at the dashboard, raise your hand if you looked at a dashboard and you said, But this doesn't feel like reality that I see. Especially with the vendors. I'm just going to be honest. We're vendors, so I can be there. I can talk about the vendor. We give a dashboard, wow, we want to stay. You're looking at the dash like, Dude, I just don't see it. I just I don't see it. I don't see it. Why? Because the metrics aren't matching. Why? Because numbers do lie. It just depends on how you want to tell the story. The great old attitude that numbers don't lie, put the facts out there and they'll do that.

Then I can ask them, based on what? You say, Man, we cut down over time. Well, let me see. If your organizational structure had not changed, you cut down over time, but you increased in travelers. You're just moving the cheese. It doesn't fundamentally work. As an operations company, we look at the true structure of an organization. Forget all the fluff and all the names and certifications and all of this. What we did when we first got on board as we were building this, I'm a little bit of a radical transformations, but I'm not an idiot. The first thing we did, we went and hired one of the best sterile processing vets on this side of Her name is Sharon Green Gold. She used to be the President of ISHM, HSPA. She is a rock star. She's a traditional SPD Specialist. Forty years in the game, she's seen every evolution of sterile processing. She's on international boards. It's a rock star. Then I went and we hired an operations specialist that did sterile processing but left to build his own business and came back. Do you all know why I hired that person? Because that person had to learn how to build something from scratch.

See, a lot of times when you grow up in a system and you've been programmed to be an operator, you don't know how to actually rebuild the structure or the program. You just make patchwork. You don't know how to reverse engineer and look at all the fail shoots and rebuild that structure from scratch. You just operate. When I'm operating as an operator, I get promoted to director, sometimes because of proximity, sometimes because they just like you, or because you are a great clinician or a technician, you are really great at what you did. But fundamentally, being great at the job does not make you great as an operational leader. We do that all the time. Man, this person is a great tech. I want to make you a manager. That's not how it works. When we looked at the structure, I said, Okay, I'm going to get you. I'm going to get you and my team of Ragtag crew, the Y kids, and we're going to deconstruct every theory, myth, methodology, structure, understanding, any of that. We're going to reconstruct that, and we're going to actually build a system that's amazing. We had a lot of fighting nights.

I wanted to quit, including myself. Me calling Alan Dunney saying, This isn't worth it. But every day, coming back to the table, looking at what has historically worked for our company, looking at what hasn't worked with vendors come to organizations and what has worked, rebuilding that structure, and then turning around hospital systems moving forward. But when we look at this, this is why I say the metrics don't really match, because when we went into a hospital system, they had four vendors supporting one hospital. Yes, they were going through a third But anytime you have four staffing companies supporting your one company, each staffing company wants more staff. So they, quite naturally, do what? They sabotage each other. Because in their payroll, you get commission for upselling inside the organization. So now you said, Man, we got a third party. They're doing all the work because we don't want to do it anymore. But then you're not asking the third party, how to How are they getting their staff? They just send emails to staffing companies to fill these gaps. So you're being filtered in from 10 different agencies, and you're wondering why, because 10 different agencies have 10 different philosophies and 10 different methodologies and 10 different reasons why that they're there.

You're wondering why you have help, but it feels like you have none. Now you can't go back to leadership and say you need more help because they finally gave you what you asked for. Now you're stuck again. And 47. 6% said, We can't explain the root causes to exec, so we just… One of them literally said, Dr. Jake, we just dug it out. And I said, Absolutely. It's crazy. This is what we call operational blindness. I wrote a book entitled Operational Blindness: Why Health Care Leaders Can't See What's Costing Them Millions and How to Finally Fix It. Every one of you is going to get a free book, free copy. We send it to each and every one of you. I'm daring to think about the way that we think. I'm challenging leaders to change the way you think. When I write books, historical, I've been doing it 10 years, 10 books, seven sectors, same result, change. The reason How to write books? Not to make money. To invoke thought. Put this in your hands so that you can actually see it, understand it, maybe challenge some things that you're thinking about. This guy right here that's making it really weird.

He has a camera that's following me. At the sales booth, he's going to find, he has a QR code. You can sign up for it. We're going to send you a free book, free copy. No cost, no hidden shipping fee or anything like that. I just want people to understand. Operational blindness is when healthcare leaders are accountable for outcomes they cannot see, cannot govern, or cannot influence in real-time. Despite having data, despite having dashboards, despite having technology, it's not incompetence, it's not ignorance, it's not inevitability. The problem is systematic. Leaders have no knowledge or expertise, and it can be eliminated with with the right architecture. So symptoms you may realize. This is how you know if you are dealing with operational blindness. Reactive decision-making. You're responding to problems after they've escalated rather than preventing them. Don't raise your hand. Just do like this with your eyes. Firefighting culture. This is how it always been. You don't understand our... Every health... You don't understand how our hospital system is. Ours is different. That's fine. Culture is different, people are different. That's fine. But every hospital can't tell me the same thing. Moral injury. When you can't deliver outcomes you know are possible, it creates professional distress.

Problems discovered too late. Issue surface. We were one of our host systems, and one of the people reported, We have no Midas findings. We said, Well, that's a little scary. That means you all aren't reported. Because I know that we've caught 10 of the That should have been put on my list, but it wasn't. If I look at the data as an executive and everything is moving fast, I say there are no findings. We are a perfect organization. It's only because they just covered it up, because if they actually tell you that they're underperforming, they're scared to lose their job because they know you're not going to give them the system or you're not going to defend them for the resource they need to rebuild the structure so that it can be able to help. So they just say, Hey, if something come up, just let me know. I'm going to fix it. Don't report it, though. Kind of like my culture growing up, they say, Don't snitch. My daddy said, If you didn't do it, call the police immediately. It's very important. Here, leadership fatigue, constant firefighting depletes cognitive resources. You can't even think about being innovative because you're so busy putting out fires where you are.

Leadership fatigue and executive burnout. High accountability, low visibility creates unstable environments. It's crazy. It's like this leadership paradox. We have more data than ever in less clarity. We have just so much information. We need to get you data and just I'm going to board you and dashboard you. I'm going to dashboard it up. When you look at this thing, you're going to be able to see everything that's happening. But seeing everything that's happening doesn't help me. I know we're sick. Can you fix that? When you look at it, it's actually proven. The more information you have without the tools and your tool belt to actually improve it, the more it bottles you up that you can't actually solve it. Now you get more anxiety because you have the information, but you don't have the skill set, the tools, or the resources, or the system that can actually bring about change. This reminds me of IBM. Health care today is where IBM was in the '90s. Everybody remember IBM? Everybody remember IBM was about to go bankrupt? Everyone was scared. Everyone was terrified because this is America's company. If IBM dies, America dies. They brought in a guy named Lou Gertsner.

Never been in tech in his life. He's a why kid like me. We went to the same school, the School of Y. He came in asking simple questions, why? What he realized was every department in the company was its own little business. When I look at healthcare, everything is siloed, everything's apart, everything's in pieces. Spd has its own system and technology that doesn't communicate with anything upstairs. Or has their own system and their own world and their own governance and their own leadership that doesn't talk with SPD. If you do talk to SPD, you talk to SPD, but you really don't talk to SPD. You just make it It's hard to be a part of your rounding to talk to SPD, but it's not really SPD. Spd doesn't want to talk to OR. Good OR is mean, but then they're not mean because when I talk to OR, they want to be your friend. They just don't know how to be your friend. You know the guy that wants to be a friend, the guy that want to be your friend? This is weird for you all to get there. That's where it EVS, they got their own metrics.

You know what everyone says? Without us, nothing will work. I promise you, ask every department. They will maul you down that if we all boycott it right now. Everything will be shut down. For some positions, it is true. For others, it is not. But the ones that it is not technically true, the reason why they are peacocking is because they haven't been included. From 1969 to 2013, you know how long that gap is from being even thought about being in a conversation of patient safety? How many of those leaders that we have that were in leadership in a world with no true regulations, that are directors of SPD, that are leaders of SPD? These are an organizational structure issue. I want you to write this down if you're taking notes, if you're taking blind notes, blinking, and you just want to close your eyes and blink to take a picture, you can. But it's not going to be on the board, so I don't know how you're going to blink and take a picture. So just bring out your phone, take a note. Write this down. People move processes. People move processes. Processes create systems.

Systems create automation. Automation. And automation influences scalability through technology. That's the order. That's the order. You can't bring in new gitchy gadgets in an infested world. You have to rebuild, starting with the people. What is the fundamental development program that your people have that is innately in you? Like my mother, you remember I said about the Skillet, Cast Iron Skillet. My mother was taught to use a small cast iron skillet, not because she was told, but because she observed. That's the same way you develop organizational structure. What we have here is the system-level view. Who optimizes for this. If everyone is siloed in their own world, who ultimately is affected? The hospital business, the business of hospitals, the business of health care. This is not about working harder. If you ask everyone in health care, if you ask me, everybody in health care works hard. Everyone is on their feet. Everyone's back hurts. Everyone's brain hurts. It's not about a matter of who works harder than the other. It's now the question is, how can we work in the most smart, the most efficient way possible so that when anomalies do come up, we have the brain with and the power and the energy to actually go and solve it?

Because it's my belief that when you actually a structure, a organization based on a real system, that means people development, process development, not SOPs that sit in a binder, that you say we have processes. But if I ask five of your leaders the same question, why do I get five different responses. Like I asked my Auntie, my Mama, my Grandma about the cast iron skillet. It's not about SOPs, but if I go and ask your person to show me what that SOP looks like, why do everyone do different things? We wonder why that there is no structure. We have to go from managing departments to governing systems. Say governing systems. Say governing systems. We have to go from managing these departments to actually governing systems to have some type of predictive, integrated structure. We look at capabilities that eliminate blindness. Real-time visibility. This is important. This is why technology is important. But getting technology without understanding how to properly use the tool is inefficient. If you use any of these wonderful vendors out here, don't try to penny-pinch. You're going to do it. Actually go about doing it. Figure out how to actually make it work within your organization to ensure that everyone has it.

Because what training is not. This is not considered training. But historically, you go to a conference like, Man, we've been trained. We have a vendor come in, they teach you one hour for two hours. You say, My My team has been trained. That is not training. Training is the consistent recorrection of ideology and concepts over and over again, practices and procedures over and over again to ensure that that person is great. Training is how you parent. Course correction every single day, frustrated or not, but the love that you have for your child will keep you up to continue to keep holding them accountable into the line. That is training. One of my favorite books, it says, If you train a in the way that they should go, when they leave, they'll never depart from you. That is development. One of my favorite leaders of all time, they call him Jay. Before he sent the leader out, he worked with them for three years, one-on-one. He had 12 of them. They went out and changed the world. That's my big brother Jay. He's my mentor. I love him so much. But big brother Jay spent time with his leaders.

He didn't train them one time, do a miracle, jump out of a hallway and say, Go tell everybody. He developed them. He worked with them. He curated them. He had a development program for everyone. That's why he still has the greatest organization of all time. He's the greatest leader ever. Predictive insight. Know what's coming before it arrives. Intervene. We have something before we layer our technology into a company in a hospital. We never layer our technology in a hospital until we have a manual process that mirrors what our technology does. Because if at any point the technology stops working, I want to make sure that the people in the organization can still operate with efficiency. If I allow for the technology to come over that and we don't develop the manual process in teaching them the why, then guess what? The technology has not beneficial to my organization. It handicaps us. We fix the organization before we layer in the technology. Is our tech cool? Yes, it's cool. Does it have predictive stuff? Yes. Does it stop you from making mistakes when you have it? Yes. Because we built our technology not to track to track instruments, but to correct behaviors.

You correct the behavior, the instrument is going to be there. If I track the instrument, I know where it is, but why is it there? That's my question. I know who did it. Did anybody stop who did it? We can do that. Here, architecture and intelligence equals visibility, not just intelligence of technology. Architecture, systems. What is systems? Programmatic of doing something over and over again from people development, process development, and you test and you assess over and over again. What we did in our organization, you all could take this down if you want, within our built system, we're able to work with HR, got it approved, that every time they grew in a built, that's when they got a raise. People can get raises without being managers, because I told my team, management shouldn't be the only way that you get paid more, because everyone is not a manager. Some people are specialists, and I want to keep you there. We We run our organizations like Harry Potter. Put on the sorting hat, Gryffindor, Slytherin. Why? Because we want them to fit where they fit, and we don't want them to go into management not liking people.

But they took the job because that was the only way they can get paid more. It's very crazy what happens when you actually start building structure. Now you have a new technician that sees value in their organization. Now you see a technician, and we have the search tech, too. Now you see the A technician can go from a tech to a search tech, then go from tech to materials, then go from tech to leadership, tech to our liaison. In that leadership circle, we value it the same. Very important for us to understand this. Since This exists from operational blindness. We have our operational system. This is the people part, people in process. Then we have our technology that we layer on top. This is the visual part. What does this change? It changes everything. We The reframe that changes everything is, the old belief is, we're not executing well enough. The new truth is, your system just needs to evolve. We're operating on a 20-year-old system today in a totally different world. Can we agree that this world is totally different from before a pandemic? Can we agree? That means that if we're operating in a whole new world, we need to actually create new systems that can support the new world.

Pocahontas. I lost two points, didn't I? I know. I'll get it back, bro. I'll get it back. Tonight, when I party, I'll get it back. All right, so you are not failing. The system is failing. I want you all to understand this. Eliminating operational blindness is not a health... Is how healthcare operations becomes predictable, governable, sustainable, and all that. I don't take the lead. I don't take the lead. Since the age of 12, I've been about my father's business. At the age of 30, he sent me to his.