Follow The Brand Podcast with Host Grant McGaugh

The Digital Embrace: How VITAS CIO Patrick Hale is Redefining Hospice Care with latest Technology

• Grant McGaugh CEO 5 STAR BDM • Season 5 • Episode 36

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Imagine being able to bring comfort and dignity to end-of-life care through the power of technology. In this episode of the Follow the Brand Podcast, we sit down with Patrick Hale, the Chief Information Officer of VITAS Healthcare, to uncover the groundbreaking innovations transforming hospice care. From mobile apps to virtual reality, learn how Patrick and his team are leveraging tech to offer patients immersive experiences that alleviate pain and provide moments of peace.

We also journey through the inspiring transformation led by a former CTO for the state of Michigan, now at Sparrow Hospital. His leadership has propelled the hospital to global recognition for technological innovation. Discover the rigorous alignment processes and teamwork that earned them awards like CIO of the Year, and hear touching stories about how VR therapy is reducing pain and opioid dependency for patients at VITAS.

Lastly, we explore the rapidly evolving roles of CIOs and the unprecedented opportunities AI offers to today's innovators. Reflecting on the profound changes brought by COVID-19, this episode emphasizes the importance of continuous learning, mentorship, and embracing advanced technology. Prepare for an inspiring conversation that celebrates the compassionate application of tech innovations, while also gearing up for future advancements in healthcare. Don't miss this insightful episode that combines technology, compassion, and visionary leadership to redefine patient care.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Follow The Brand! We hope you enjoyed learning about the latest marketing trends and strategies in Personal Branding, Business and Career Development, Financial Empowerment, Technology Innovation, and Executive Presence. To keep up with the latest insights and updates from us, be sure to follow us at 5starbdm.com. See you next time on Follow The Brand!

Speaker 1:

Welcome to another episode of Follow the Brand. I am your host, grant McGaugh, ceo of 5 Star BDM, a 5 Star personal branding and business development company. I want to take you on a journey that takes another deep dive into the world of personal branding and business development, using compelling personal story, business conversations and tips to improve your personal brand. By listening to the Follow the Brand podcast series, you will be able to differentiate yourself from the competition and allow you to build trust with prospective clients and employers. You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Make it one that will set you apart, build trust and reflect who you are. Developing your five-star personal brand is a great way to demonstrate your skills and knowledge. If you have any questions from me or my guests, please email me at. Grantmcgaw spelled M-C-G-A-U-G-H at 5starbdm B for brand, d for development, m for masterscom. Now let's begin with our next five-star episode on Follow the Brand.

Speaker 1:

Welcome back to the Follow Brand Podcast. I am your host, grant Dahl, and today we are diving headfirst into the intersection where technology and compassion collide to transform healthcare as we know it Now. Picture this a world where technology doesn't just support healthcare but breathes life into it. Imagine a place where every beat of a heart monitor sings a song of hope, where data isn't just numbers but a lifeline, and where innovation isn't just a buzzword. It is the pulse that keeps the heart of healthcare beating strong. So today I have the privilege of speaking with someone who's not just a leader but a visionary Patrick Hale, the Chief Affirmation Officer of VITAS Healthcare, and he stands at the helm of the largest hospice care provider in the United States. But he is more than a CAIO. He is a digital pioneer, navigating the complexities of healthcare with the precision of a surgeon and the empathy of a healer.

Speaker 1:

Patrick and his team are doing what many thought impossible. Patrick and his team are doing what many thought impossible. They are using technology to bring comfort, dignity and peace to those facing life's final chapter. From developing a groundbreaking mobile app that puts the power of care into the palm of a nurse's hand to harnessing virtual reality to bring relief from pain. This isn't just tech. This is technology without hurt. But here's the real kicker Did you know that VITAS is using virtual reality not just as a distraction, but as a genuine form of pain management? Patients experiencing end-of-life pain are finding solace in the world of virtual gardens and peaceful beaches, all thanks to the innovation led by Patrick and his team. And that's right. Vr isn't just for gaming anymore. It's for giving people their moments of peace when they need it the most.

Speaker 1:

So why should you care? Because this is more than just a story about technology. It's about redefining what is possible in healthcare. It's about how the cold hard logic of algorithms can be used to wrap around a warm beating heart, and it's about using every tool at our disposal to make the human experience just a little bit better. Even at the end of the road, and as we embark on today's journey, I want you to feel the gravity of what we are discussing. You to feel the gravity of what we are discussing, feel the urgency of those moments when technology and human care intersect, feel the power of what is possible when we dare to innovate in a field where every second matters, where every decision counts and where every life is precious. Every decision counts and where every life is precious. So, all my listeners, we are about to explore the cutting edge of healthcare innovation and we will look at how technology is not just changing the game, but rewriting the rules. This is the Follow Brand Podcast, where we don't just follow trends. We follow leaders, and today we're following a leader who's making waves in ways that it matters. So let's get started on the Follow Brand Podcast, where we are building a five-star brand that you can follow.

Speaker 1:

I want to welcome everybody to the Follow Brand Podcast. This is your host, grant. We're going to keep it right here in South Florida, one of my favorite, favorite organizations. I've been working with them in six, seven years going back. I'm talking about VITAS, v-i-t-a-s, vitas Healthcare, the largest hospice provider in the United States, and there's only one, there's only one and only chief information officer with the same grit and personality who takes the world stage at HIMSS. And if you're not familiar with HIMSS, we're talking about Health Informatics Management System Society. We got him live coming to HIMSS Integrate in October and before that he said you know what? I want to grace your podcast man, your stage, what you do, Because I saw Ed Barks and I know Dr G is coming. I've got to have my moment in your side. I've got to address this audience like nobody else can. So I want to introduce you to Patrick Hale. We're going to learn a little bit about what he's up to. So, patrick, do you like to?

Speaker 2:

introduce yourself. Yeah, that's really. Yeah, you said it low bar Grant Thanks. Thanks for that. I should have no problem with that. Hey, everybody, that's it, no he's great, I'm telling you.

Speaker 1:

I've seen Patrick Patrick work. He's very entertaining, but he's a very serious individual. I've worked with people on his team. He does a lot of great things. Here's my one question that I have that I think our audience wants to know. Because I'm into the personal brand space, I use branding for development, business development. It's a way to get more visible. If you had to describe your brand, what would you say and what I mean I'd have to say it's probably grit, it's probably.

Speaker 2:

We have a saying of VITAS that I always like to bring up to my team, and that's innovation is celebrated but execution is worshipped, and that it really. It does take a lot to have original ideas. It takes a lot to innovate. It takes a lot to be bright and to be smart, to think ahead of your competition, ahead your team, and to anticipate needs. But it takes a lot more to actually drag ideas into the light of day and get them over the finish line and get them into production. And that's really we try as a team to never stop focusing on the fact that our bright ideas have to have to have to really help people in the cold light of day. So those of your audience who don't know what VITAS is, we're a hospice company, and so hospice is a really urgent business where our average length of stay for our patients is just two weeks, and every customer interaction starts with the worst news anybody could possibly imagine, which is, if your disease continues its course, you have less than six months to live, and so we have two weeks to make an impact on our patients and their families and some of the most trying points of their life, and our job is to make sure technology never, ever gets in the way of the human element of that interaction, and that's what we've been trying to do here.

Speaker 2:

I've been at VTOS for 11 years now. I know the average tenure for CIOs is like a minute or something like that now. But yeah, I mean it's just we're so blessed to be doing this work that matters so much that when you start to measure, you know, uh, the rest of your life in terms of weeks, every, every second counts and uh. So there's just an urgency that comes along and a passion that comes with this work. That's unlike anywhere else and I think it just it takes. It takes an extra, an extra kind of evangelism to get it done. So if I was going to have a brand, I guess it would be grit, I guess it would be getting stuff done and maybe taking some risks and getting things across the finish line when it matters.

Speaker 1:

Well, you do have a brand, and a brand is always in the perception of other people. And when I think of Patrick Hale, I see all of that and I see some more as well, because you're not just talking the talk, you walk the walk. I mean, one of our first innovation programs that we came out with at HEM. We put this out there. We put it out in the community. Whoever is doing anything innovative in IT and actually making a difference. We said, hey, bring your proposals to us, let's take a look at these different things. And VITAS won that award, and that was maybe five, six years, I can't even remember, but it was still a patient experience.

Speaker 1:

It's still innovative. You're using fire. You're doing a lot in the mobility space. Talk to us more about your innovative mindset and some of the things that you've been able to accomplish in your position.

Speaker 2:

Well, we're pretty passionate about it. You know we think in health care. You know your most important piece of software is your EMR. But EMRs are, you know they're great for hospitals. They're great for patient safety know they're great for hospitals.

Speaker 1:

They're great for patient safety. They're not so great for clinicians.

Speaker 2:

And if you hear the criticisms about EMRs, it's that you know doctors and nurses that I know my wife's a nurse and I've had several positions or personal friends and in their, in their honest moments of frustration, you know, they tell me like I didn't. I didn't, you know, go to medical school to become a data entry clerk. So one of my friends put it to me. He said look, when I'm rounding at the hospital, I'm lucky if I get 12 minutes per patient that I get to spend with that patient talking to them, and I've got eight minutes with my back to that patient feeding the machine the data that it needs to get the workflow so I can get the orders in. And so they find it really disconcerting that this amazing innovation in healthcare has taken them further away from the patient and from what matters.

Speaker 2:

And at VITAS, I think part of what you're talking about is kind of the patient experience that we did, where we for our onboarding, for intake of new patients, it's a fully mobile experience. So we go to the bedside, meet our patients and about 85% of our care is done in the patient's home, and so our job is to get them out of an acute facility, where you know they're coming off of some pretty acute episodes, and get them back home for the first time. And we do that pretty acute episodes and get them back home for the first time and we do that. We arm all of our nurses, our physicians, with iPads and so they have a fully remote workflow where they have to do a clinical assessment and they also have to kind of get orders and everything in, and that's a completely variable workflow, which is something that is kind of unheard of in healthcare. But what we did was design this with the clinician in mind so that they can have a conversation with people. And you can imagine it's the way our mobile devices are today. Instead of having to type a lot of things, you're using slides, clicks. If you have to point, my left arm is hurt. We have a body picker so that you're clicking on that left arm, you can slide a pain scale from 1 to 10 without having to type things in that keystroke elimination just gives the clinician that much more time to look into people's eyes, to hold their hands, to have the conversation and the human element that really needs to be had for this kind of work, and so we're pretty proud of that.

Speaker 2:

I think it's actually kind of a funny story. We originally developed that grant for that award. This is many, several years back. We were so proud of this application. We gave it to nurses in the field and they hated it. I mean we were really proud. I mean we really like this is awesome, this is so cool, it's so innovative. We had, we had everything mobily, working, completely secure, completely compliant, and, uh, we were so proud of how good it worked, we we forgot to, like, ask the nurses what they thought, and so they threw us, threw us for a curve ball, and I gotta. I think it actually that interaction really defines who the team is today, because, um, rather than look at that as a loss.

Speaker 2:

You know we got really serious, we got really passionate, we listened really carefully and we delivered to them. You know, an application suite that they, that they're using to this day. It cut our training time by 20 X so it used to take, you know, an entire day. We can have a, we can have an admissions nurse productive within just a couple of hours of receiving their device. You knowconfigures itself, shows them what to do and they're off and running pretty quickly. So, yeah, a lot of good things have happened. That power of mobility and bringing that into business and enterprises, that intuitive design, application design, ease of use all those things into healthcare for the first time has been pretty exciting, to be sure. Ease of use all those things into healthcare for the first time has been pretty exciting, to be sure, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

And you remember we talked about this five, six years ago. You're bringing it all the way forward and I love the way, because a lot of times these things start as a prototype and they start as an idea. Then you've got to develop the design. You've got to then get into the field and you brought up a very good point. So I've seen this happen over and over again. You haven't brought in all the stakeholders, all the users, and when you got that nursing input, you got even a better application that was useful for everyone. Going back to what you said earlier, we want to make sure we develop technology that everybody can use. It's the ease of use for all different points of interest, all your stakeholders. That is wonderful. And you've gotten some awards for that. I've seen you've gotten the CIO of the Year Award. I see you got an award that you were working with Sparrow Healthcare. I mean, was that all from that mobility?

Speaker 2:

application. No, yeah, no, I mean. So my career progression was I was the first CTO for the state of Michigan during some really rough economic times. So I mean earlier in my career, when I was promoted into that position, one out of every five people in Michigan was out of work. We lost a third of our population over a three-year period because economic conditions were bad. This was during the 2000s, the crash, et cetera that we went through. But that hit Michigan especially hard and I went from there innovating there to Sparrow Hospital and then that's really where I got a lot of my experience from a hospital.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, we won awards. We were the most innovative healthcare organization. When I started. I had a four-year tenure there and when I started there, we were the lowest fifth percentile in terms of technology adoption for a health system. And when I left, we were the Information Week magazine listed us as the number one healthcare innovator in the world. So that was a worldwide award that was multiple countries and Fortune 500, fortune 50 companies compete for. So we were pretty excited to do that.

Speaker 2:

I get careful talking about awards. I'm not a big award guy and especially individual awards. Cio of the Year was just such an honor for my whole team. Nobody ever wins those things alone. I mean it's impossible. This is a lot of people putting a lot of effort in across the boards. Any CIO or CEL will tell you the portfolios are so complex. You've got to have people that care at every level of your organization from your operators, your database administrators, your developers, et cetera.

Speaker 2:

And I'm blessed with an organization that gives me investment and lets me take some chances and lets our team do some great things, because they see we're great stewards of every dollar spent.

Speaker 2:

We are acutely aware every year, every project, that every dollar spent on IT is a dollar not spent at the bedside and it's got to be worth it. I mean, everything's got to be worth it. And so we have a pretty rigorous alignment process at VITAS to make sure that everything that we're working on is really aligned with the goals of our patients and families and with the goals of the company, and so we really just try to make sure that we do things that matter and that that breeds respect and it breeds, you know, a confidence that we can deliver when we say and we make and keep commitments. We say what we're going to do and we do what we say and over time, that reputation, you know, if you're lucky it gives you, gives you budget. And so we're very lucky. We've been blessed with a fantastic executive team that allows us to do a lot of stuff.

Speaker 1:

Well, you've been doing it in the right way. I remember when there was a big buzz around virtual reality, artificial reality, mixed reality, and here I see, I see a lot. It's At VTOS. You guys are really looking at doing this because you started to see, as you alluded to earlier, someone is at end of life. What can we do to help their experience to be that much better? And you experimented with some of these technologies. Talk to us about what you found and are you full-blown implementing it now?

Speaker 2:

What does it say?

Speaker 1:

Ready to elevate your brand with 5-star impact? Welcome to the 5 Brand Podcast, your gateway to exceptional personal growth and innovative business strategies. Join me as I unveil the insider strategies of industry pioneers and branding experts. Discover how to supercharge your business development. Harness the power of AI for growth and sculpt a personal brand that stands out in the crowd. Transform ambition into achievement. Explore more at FirestarBDMcom for a wealth of resources. Ignite your journey with our brave brand blueprint and begin crafting your standout five-star teacher today.

Speaker 2:

So we've partnered with AT&T in the early days in Stanford University Medical Center to help execute a study that they were doing on virtual reality therapy, and this is now really we show the efficacy of this as a tool to actually reduce pain management and reduce the use of opioids over time. And it's actually just one of my favorite things about everything that's happened to me in my career is to be in the room when a patient that is listing their pain as a 9-10, which is just excruciating. There's one of the first women that actually did the virtual reality therapy and this is like you. Her pain was so bad if you were blowing on her skin it hurt. So you can imagine this was a woman recovering from a stroke and wasn't a significant amount of pain, so much so that they kind of had to hold the VR goggles up to her face so she could hear and experience things. I think she was going through an English garden I think that is kind of a meditation walk through an English garden and you could just see her. She was in such pain. She was really twisted up, really stiff from the, from the amount of pain that happens, and you could just see her within within a minute or two. She's just relaxed. She, just she, just you know you can see her muscles on tense and, and that distraction therapy with your brain is so powerful we, I mean it's, it's almost a miracle when you see it happen still brings tears to my eyes thinking about it and, and the incredible thing is, for a lot of people that can, that lasts a while. So she, she had her first good night's sleep, uh, and, and she, I know, for for hours, after going through about 15 minutes of this, uh, it was just incredible. And she, she got.

Speaker 2:

You know what the magic stuff happens is the, the, now, the discussion she can have after after that therapy session and, um, now we've expanded that so that there's now shared experience with family members. So there's capability now, uh, with our current solution, where you can go visit your, your house, where you used to live, we go on Google and we go down Google maps and and, uh, you know, we have patients that are showing their family members where they used to live, where they grew up. Uh, you know, that was the, that was, uh, our church where we would go over a weekend, and that's my school, and so these, um, these are just super powerful for family, allow families to connect. Even if they can't be in person with the loved one, they can kind of experience the same experience that they're having. So, yeah, we're just, we're super proud of that.

Speaker 2:

That's been, obviously with COVID. It's been a little bit, you know, taking a little bit of a backseat because of infection control concerns et cetera, but we're getting back into that now and we have a phenomenal volunteer workforce that's working to deliver more and more virtual reality therapy as we move forward. So we're excited about the future of that and the impact that it's having on patients.

Speaker 1:

I've got a quick question on that. I don't know if you've seen it or not, but there's a lot of people with Alzheimer's. Have you seen that actually make an impact on somebody that has that kind of degenerative disease?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean it's. I know I want to be careful, because there's anecdotal evidence and then there's study evidence right.

Speaker 2:

So we're still waiting for the studies and the evidence to catch up with what we've experienced anecdotal people, especially for Alzheimer's patients, but this is being used Now.

Speaker 2:

Vr therapy is being used really effectively for people who have muscular diseases and are trying to recover, for rehab.

Speaker 2:

They're using it a lot now in pediatric clinics for that, for rehab, recovery and to make kind of rehab grueling rehab sessions more fun for kids and you are starting to see this being used for Alzheimer's patients for more acuity and mental you know, mental exercises, et cetera. We've been using it primarily for relaxation, but I really think what we're finding now at least the initial studies that have been done and we're now into round two of these studies for multiple and wider purposes and applications of VR within healthcare, they're really showing that the power of the brain is unlike anything that we've really fully understood before and it's just a super exciting area that the power of your mindset, the power of the frame of mind that you're in, matters so much to your health and I think we're going to continue to see that evolve. So, yeah, I would not be surprised almost in any endeavor if you're not going to start to see VR pop. So, yeah, I would not be surprised almost in any endeavor, if you're not going to start to see VR pop up as potentially useful.

Speaker 1:

This is good news. We need some changes in health care. Before you jumped on, when we started recording, we talked about the whitewater moment that is happening in the industry and you had even alluded to. You know, back in Michigan, what was going on in 2009, 2010. Big economic shift. There's challenges now because you sit on this national footprint and you work with organizations throughout the nation and there's certain integrations. You see the challenges that are happening, whether it's the technical challenges, the financial challenges, the business challenge, where all this kind of sits. Talk to us right now about your whitewater moment.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think we call it the whitewater because it's moving fast, but you can hit a rock and it's pretty bad when you do. I just think you know, grant, you know this. I mean this is uncharted territory. The waters that we're moving into now in healthcare, but in any business right now, if you look at the geoeconomic forces that are coming to bear, political forces that are coming to bear, there's a lot of adversity, a lot of challenges. It's incredibly volatile. Things shift and change, opinions shift and change. There's AI, which is revolutionizing. I mean, it's probably the greatest degree in human history of revolution and all these barriers to innovation have been removed. Just imagine today, I mean, if you're a college kid coming out of college today, not only do you have access to an entire data center at a moment's notice, like you don't have to put servers together, you don't have to have a computer under your desk, you can go get that. You can go get that from Amazon pretty cheaply, pretty accessibly, but now you're also going to have AI tools at your disposal. So your barriers to completely innovating and changing the game have never been lower than they are right now. Navigating those waters, I think it's especially challenging. I was just with a lot of CIOs from all industries at the Inspire CIO conference just last week, and I think we're all trying to deal with that that the pace of change is really new. I mean it's as fast as it was for our whole careers. It's faster every year. The demands are always higher, um, and I think that these tool sets that we have in front of us now are really giving us a fighting chance to maintain and keep pace with what we're doing.

Speaker 2:

The only thing you can't do is stand still Like the only sin right now is not to try. You know I I get advice from you know new executives, I mentor several new executives and you know they they're a little bit taken aback. I just say, you know, the only real mistake you can make is not try like, yeah, yeah, your team may fail. You have to be honest about the commitments you can make, but you have. If you, if you are, if you are hiding your head in the sand, if you are taking a step back and not pursuing aggressively and with great curiosity everything new that's happening every single day, then your company runs the risk, as an executive, of falling behind, and that is 100% true. I mean it has. I don't care what business you're in, you've never had more competition than you have right now. And if you don't realize that, you're probably not long for the world.

Speaker 2:

You know, we have got our job as CIOs. We sort of stand at that function point right of innovation versus risk, and we have got to move our organizations forward, always, ever forward. And we're going to stub our toe, we're going to make mistakes. Every project's not going to be successful, but we've got to set things up in such a way that we allow our teams to fail fast, learn and move on, and move on, and move on. And it really is.

Speaker 2:

You know, I think it was Richard Bone that said when you're in the winter of adversity, you don't pray for a lighter winter. You pray to improve yourself. You ask for more wisdom, you ask for more experiences, you get to work on improving what you can improve in yourself and in your teams, and that is the key to getting through a terrible winter. It's not looking up at the sky and saying, geez, I just wish it wasn't this cold. You have to really get to work, and so, at these times of adversity that we really have to double down on the fact that it's never been more important for our people to be driving us forward at every level of our organization. Important for our people to be driving us forward at every level of our organization.

Speaker 2:

We kind of like to say that you know, you're at VITAS. You're not, you're not hired to catch up to mediocrity. We're not just trying to be just as good as somebody else, we're trying to change the world here and, and if you're going to do that, every single person has to, has to do their part, and that means you're going to continually be out of your comfort zone, you're going to continually be pushed forward and, um, if you're looking for something where tomorrow is just like it was the day before, you're probably not in the right business and probably not not good for it, right? So there's just not very many jobs that are steady state anymore, and it's never been more true than it is right now.

Speaker 2:

And I mean a lot of people can be overwhelmed by that. I think it's exciting. I mean, I think that the outlook, my gosh. How lucky are we to live in this time when this level I mean, grant, when you and I were very young, we had rotary phones, that's right, maybe not you.

Speaker 1:

You're dating yourself very young we had rotary phones. That's right, maybe not you.

Speaker 2:

You're dating yourself. No, but yeah, maybe not you. But I mean this is. I look at my kids and they've never grown up without automation on their hip, at their fingertips. They've never grown up, never known that.

Speaker 1:

Going to a library. My God, who's going to a library? Who used it?

Speaker 2:

Libraries have had to change They've had to innovate.

Speaker 1:

I mean to your point, the digital world has sped up dramatically In my 25 years being in IT. To your point, at your fingertips, you can get information, and I want to talk to our audience. What is changing is this Now you've got information at your fingertips. You call it the information age. We're going into the intelligent technology age. Technology is intelligent. It forces us to be even more advanced in order to operate in this advanced technological society, so you get better outcomes. What that's going to look like. It's going to be very, very interesting. I want to ask you this, because you brought up a point that's very important right now is that mentoring aspect, the experience level. We've got a lot of CLs out here. We've got CDO Chief Design Officer out here. We've got C of CEOs out here. You've got CDO federal officers out here. You've got CTOs out here. About, the game is changing, because what got you here is not going to get you to where you need to go Talk to us about, from a mentor's standpoint, how your workforce has to change in this evolving era.

Speaker 2:

I mean, you can have, I don't want to be. You can have a pretty good career right, getting very good at a certain set of skills and going from company to company and giving your wares, et cetera, but you're not going to be, you're not going to realize your potential as a human being doing that Like. If you're going to realize your potential as a human being, you have to realize that you don't exist. You know on an Island that you you exist in an ecosystem of tools and technology that's ever evolving and that that is a huge leverage point for you as an individual. To not grab onto those things and take advantage of them, it puts you at a significant disadvantage and I think it just does come down to you. Know, we we try to hire people that are curious, that want to know why. You know you could use chat, gpt to write your term paper. Sure, you can do that. That's pretty cool, that's awesome. But what we're looking for?

Speaker 1:

is the people that says how does chat GPT do that?

Speaker 2:

How does that work? What's the prompt engineering that I can do to get better at? Well, you know, how does how does it actually make the logic leaps? How is it trained? And those are the folks that are going to really run the world. And I just do want to say Grant to our AI overlords. I'm with you, man, don't mess up with my credit score or any of that stuff. So, please, if they've already taken over Skynet's, gone live, we'll see.

Speaker 2:

But I, you know, I'm not a big. I'm not a person that, um, that subscribes to a lot of the doom and gloom that surrounds AI. There there are some scary moral questions that I think we have to answer. I think every generation's faced their kind of moment of obsolescence and we'll face ours. Uh, this, you know, this is, this is part of that moment for us and for a lot of positions, and there's always replacement of more things that only humans can do, and I think we're starting to even see that evolve now. So I'm not doom and gloom on it, but I do think that even in technology, which is as a technologist, and no matter what your role is you're already more inclined to be always looking forward, because it's always been true for my entire career that if you stand still, you're obsolete and you're left behind. Technology will leave you behind. Maybe you get three years, five years, two years before whatever it was that you knew is old hat and you're onto something new. We're watching that accelerate. This is all about you challenging yourself to always continually learn and you have to get good at learning fast. I mean, you have to get good at learning fast. That I will tell you. Um, you know, I gave a presentation called the steaming pile of grit. Uh, given that across, I think we did that at HIMSS and uh, one of the biggest things that I talk about is we are so distracted right now as a society and talking about mentoring, it's one of the biggest things that I that I tell folks.

Speaker 2:

I think there's two big traps that face young executives today that are trying to make their way in the world. The first trap is that excellence is kind of boring If you look at where the most exciting spaces are for professionals and where you, as a human, can make the most impact for your company or for humanity. It's data analytics, right I mean. So this is taking at large data stores and figuring out really what does that data mean? What are the interrelationships between the data? I mean that work is mind-numbingly boring.

Speaker 2:

That is not exciting stuff to do, and so I do think that boredom has killed a lot more careers than naysayers or critics. Boredom has killed a lot more careers than naysayers or critics. It's, it's having the fortitude to just stick through and have an analytical mind that that you just keep taking your, your attention span and expanding it and expanding and expanding it until you can crunch. You can crunch through those things. That's one advice that I have for young kids is look it's, it's you. You've got to get good at doing the boring stuff, because that's where the innovation sits, that's where the aha moments are is getting through all that to excellence. You have to do things badly for a long time before you're good at it, and getting from an entry-level person to an expert takes a lot of dedication, hard work, and it ain't always fun. As a matter of fact, most of the time it's not fun at all.

Speaker 2:

Uh, and the other thing is that we're the most distracted society we've ever been right now, and I think a lot of people are getting left behind and, um, I like to tell my kids you gotta put your phone down to pick up your life. You know they don't they don't listen to me a lot, but I will say you know that's it's a super important thing. You can spend your day distracted or you can spend your day doing something that matters for somebody else. It matters to you, and you have to actively use your time management and use your time effectively. There's a lot of folks that are that are kind of putting careers on hold and and they're they're sort of like floating through life at this point and I really I just think that's such a shame and and you can make a pretty good living doing that for a while, but you're not going to learn, you're not going to be challenged.

Speaker 2:

You know, get face to face with people you work with, make sure you care about them and they care about you. You need to have people in your career that are going to tell you the rough stuff, that are going to have radical candor with you. You have to have people that you trust, that you know have your back, even when it's not what you want to hear. And if you surround yourself with that model. Don't get distracted. Spend your time with people who are trying to do what you're trying to do, and they're going to be honest with you about your performance and about your capability. You're going to be fine. You're going to excel. I just think fewer and fewer people have that mix at work anymore.

Speaker 1:

The can't make is nothing easy, but I read this one book. It's better to take the stairs, meaning. You know, automation is good to a certain degree, but that should free you up to do what is most important, because you should have more time. Where's your passion? What is your purpose? You get into that self-awareness and that self-actualization and you build confidence about who you are and what you can do. I love the way you have framed those things because you can't get away from it. We love watching. I always use analogies like in sports, right, and this one guy remember. He played in the NFL and he got a Super Bowl ring, played for the Denver Broncos. He's catching passes from John Elway and we got to talk about this man. It's so cool, he played in the Super Bowl. But what you don't see is is that when you see those incredible catches that are out there.

Speaker 1:

I had to do that a hundred times in practice. You don't see that it looks incredible when you see it live out there, but I've made that same catch, or even better catches, in practice. To your point earlier about doing the boring stuff you've got to do the blocking and the tackling and the fundamentals to get good. So then when that aha moment comes, when you see that correlation and you can apply your knowledge and you're put up thinking and he's like, wow, I think I've got something here. And they can bring it to a Patrick Hale like, look, this is what I've got. You package it in a certain way that makes business sense, financial sense, technical sense. He's going to take it and run with it and that's how he becomes the true grit person. We're going to start calling you true grit now. True grit, you know.

Speaker 2:

I just always like that view of that. It just, it just takes that fortitude. It just, you know, life isn't easy and and it doesn't, it doesn't wait for you. You got to, you got to meet it, wherever it is, and and I'm going to tell you and I don't know why it is, but anything worth doing has always been hard and and the rewards that come, you know, it isn't. I love what you just said about that. I caught that. Catch 100 times before. There's a Japanese saying. I was talking with the CIO at Toyota at this conference and he told me there's a Japanese saying that is you know, fall down seven times, get up eight. And I love that, I love that, and it's like it's about getting back up and you learn from those things. I mean, when you're faced with adversity, that's where you grow and for whatever reason, like, growth is never easy, it just doesn't seem to go that way.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think that goes back to the basics of electronics. We don't understand how you get bolted. You have to have current resistance. Something has to be pushing against you to create pressure and create power, and that's what happens. So adversity is a part of the game. It's a part of the game. You can't just hand you the ball and you just run the rest out of it. Somebody's got to be running after it, so that's part of the game. But, to your point, when you finally score, after so much adversity and you don't know how this is going to turn out you're in that whitewater moment and you finally reach the finish line. And you did it, man. That journey was definitely a payoff. One more thing I want to ask you, and this is about your hymns relationship what have you got out of hymns and why do you think, personally, you're going to do this particular keynote for us in october?

Speaker 2:

well, I'm deciding right now on what the title is, and I think we've talked about some of the elements that I want to speak to. Um, look, I mean this south florida community, and this is true for any listeners listening all over the country. I mean, your impact is local and what I want to try to do is inspire people to actually make a difference in our communities in which we serve, and I'm lucky enough to work in health care, where that contribution is really easily understood. But I don't care if you're making McDonald's more efficient or if you're helping build a better bowling ball. You're having benefit and that benefit is right in the community where you're at, and I think you know, you and I were talking about this beforehand like we're coming on.

Speaker 2:

I mean it amazes me that we're not that far out of COVID. I mean it wasn't a couple of years ago. We couldn't travel and you know people were huddling on planes real nervously with their masks on and everything. And you know I will just say this I don't know that we're all the way over it. I think you know I feel like back at work. Certainly, the expectations are now 150% of what they used to be, so the demand's never been higher. But I think every single person on our team and you know, and every single person in my life, we're different for having gone through that experience. So I think I don't know that I ever want to put it in the rearview mirror because there was real adversity there that I think we had some just heroic efforts throughout that whole thing that helped save the companies and save the industries that we're in and delivered some of the most innovative stuff that's ever been done, ever been accomplished.

Speaker 2:

But I do want to inspire people to there's now. I mean, if you look forward, this is uncharted territory. I mean we have to boldly go where no one has gone before, and it is because there are so many things now that are just a given. I mean we have Waymo driving cars around. I did that and I was in Phoenix, arizona, and I got in a Waymo for the first time and I mean I'm amazed at how great that was. I mean it asked me if I want to listen to music. It's a nice Jaguar. I mean these are incredible. But now you add that that company that delivered that, google, now just has an antitrust lawsuit that's coming to fruition.

Speaker 2:

So we're going to see what happens with the outcome of that whether that's going to be a big outcome or a little outcome, we're going to have to see, but things are changing on our landscape just almost at a breakneck pace.

Speaker 2:

And maybe it's the presidential election that's going on right now, I don't know, but every single day there's some headline of importance, there's something is happening in the world that is going to affect your life in some way every single day, and we now have to take. You know, we're as leaders, we have to go to our people and we have to execute in this sea of uncertainty and opportunity. And things are moving fast and we have to now execute in this environment. We got to keep people focused, steady, on those things that are right in front of us, things that we can control, things that we can change, things that we can improve, things that we can innovate, because it's in those small projects and that delivery, day to day, in that grind, where great things happen a year from now. And so our job is to future-proof our companies, and it's just never been more exciting and it's never been more serious than it is right now.

Speaker 2:

So what a time we live in, man.

Speaker 1:

We are truly blessed, beautiful time we're witnessing what we're witnessing. Someone else told me the exact same thing. I wouldn't want to pick any other time in known human history right now to be in, because I think we're on the precipice of a huge leap in human experience and it'll be a bubble and stubble to get there. Maybe our grandkids have really embraced this moment. But you look at these different ages and how they've come across and how they've delivered from the agricultural age to the industrial age or the manufacturing age, you know, into the information technology age.

Speaker 2:

And now this technology world right. It's breathtaking the amount of innovation that has just been done in the last five years. I mean, the things that are happening now just feel like science fiction five years ago. It's amazing. And that pace of change is getting more rapid. And I don't know. It's just incredible. Like I said, we're blessed. But I think that now we're facing this unique challenge, we're coming off of this hugely significant emotional and geopolitical event that really changed the entire world, called COVID, and we're finding ways to do this and we just the challenges. The mountaintop in front of us is massive. And how do we get to the top? We go one foot in front of the other and we make it happen, and that's where that grit comes in. That's just look we got to get it done.

Speaker 1:

You've got to be brave, you've got to have the grit and you've got to have the fortitude and you've got to get out there and make it done. This has been wonderful, patrick. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day and time out of your coming months to come and join us on the stage at HIMSS Integrate 2024. You don't want to miss it. It's going to be at the Levant Innovation Center October 24th. You don't want to miss it. It's going to be at the LeBron Innovation Center October 24th. You're going to see Mr Patrick Hale live.

Speaker 2:

I'm going to try to give you a show. Give us a show just now.

Speaker 1:

Of course, you set the bar even higher, but I'm sure that you'll meet it. You're going to be practicing back and forth with your hired gun, mr Steve Smith. I know he's going to be ready for this, so this is going to be wonderful. I encourage the entire audience. If you want to know more about Patrick Hale, do so. Look him up on LinkedIn. He's very, very active and the things that he's done. This is going to be great.

Speaker 1:

And for everyone else, tune in to all the episodes of Fellow Brand at 5 Star BDM. That is the number five. That's star BDM. B for brand, b for developmentinformationscom. Thank you so much for being on the show. Thanks, green. Take care, man. Thanks for joining us on the Follow Brand Podcast. Big thanks to Full Effect Productions for their incredible support on each and every episode. Now the journey continues on our YouTube channel Follow Brand TV Series. Dive into exclusive interviews, extended content and bonus insights that will fuel your success. Subscribe now and be a part of our growing community, sharing and learning together. Explore, engage and elevate at Follow Brand TV Series on YouTube. Stay connected, stay inspired. Till next time, we will continue building a five-star brand that you can follow.