(upbeat music)
Matthew: Rob, you mentioned transitioning
10% of your workforce,
and the impetus behind it,
and the reception that it's had thus far
seems to be very good in terms of turnover and the like.
Maybe I'd ask you to talk more about some of the workforce
work that BCH and Optum are doing together in Boulder.
-: Yes, I think it is important to mention
that going into this, we had certain areas
that had a great deal of concern for us on the board.
And one was the wellbeing of our employees,
and particularly the workforce
that was most directly impacted.
And that really has gone well.
I think it's a reflection that this isn't the first time
that this type of, at least, relationship or rebadging
has occurred, particularly, in RCM space.
And frankly, we were reassured going into it
that it would go well, and it did go well.
But since then, when we started looking at initiatives
and things that we could do together,
we recognized that we needed to re-look
at our entire workforce,
and certainly not around rebadging as a solution
or outsourcing, but more importantly, optimizing.
And while we are facing an acute struggle
with the turnover and employment really in all areas,
but in particular in nursing
and some of these highly skilled professions,
we recognize that certainly the solution isn't paying more.
You know, and it feels like right now
we're in a bit of an arms race
with all the other health systems,
and I don't think anyone's really benefiting.
But how do we look at this over time?
And so one of our first initiatives coming together
is a workforce analysis, but not just, you know,
how do you compare against benchmarks or standards,
but using our clinical continuum and our analytics resources
and our Advisory Board best practices to say,
but where should we be going with our workforce?
How can we restructure?
How can we map out the processes of each unit,
so that we look at our workforce in a way
that it fits with the workflow?
And so that, again, we hear this over and over again,
but truly, our nurses are working
at the top of license that they have,
the more cost-effective, more available support staff,
and we've got the right complement of people,
at the end of the day, more cost-effectively,
providing higher quality care and giving that great
patience experience that we always have.
So that's been at least certainly our focus.
I talked a little bit about the challenges of COVID
and the transition.
And I think I mentioned earlier
a bit about the turnover as well.
We were very nervous
about what this was going to do to our turnover.
And I'll have to say that it has been better
than actually the rest of our organization.
(both laugh)
But I'm not offering to rebadge all my employees.
I don't think you want that.
-: Sorry, you're welcome? (laughs)
-: But we just recently looked at the data.
And in fact, the turnover is probably about 25% less
than the rest of our organization.
It's similar to what it was beforehand.
But what's been really heartening is to see employees
who have left moved on to other roles within Optum.
And it's a way of creating that advancement
that we never could before as well.
-: Different aspect of scale.
-: Absolutely.
(upbeat music)