Spotlight On: Marty Bonick, President & CEO, Ardent Health Services

Spotlight On: Marty Bonick, President & CEO, Ardent Health Services

2022-11-18T13:20:06-05:00November 18th, 2022|Economy, Healthcare, Nashville, Spotlight On|

2 min read November 2022 —In an interview with Invest:, Marty Bonick, president and CEO of Ardent Health Services, discussed the numerous healthcare innovations that help to assist patients and providers, and the slow adoption of the “volume to value” philosophy. Regarding changing patient expectations after the pandemic, he said, “This has been a wakeup call to the industry and the industry is responding.”

What have been some milestones or highlights for Ardent Health this year? 

This year did not start the way anyone thought it would. The good news is, we are recovering, and the pandemic taught us that we need to conduct business differently. I am excited about our team embracing innovation, so they can face the challenges in our industry. We have a few initiatives in particular that I am excited about. One is our “digital front door,” which helps with patient onboarding, engagement and scheduling. It helps take the friction out of correspondence between patients and providers. We also started a new virtual nursing pilot because there just aren’t enough nurses out there to meet current demand. This is one of the first such programs in the country. It won’t replace nurses but if we can help bring nurses into the room at the right place and the right time, it will augment the staffing challenges everyone is dealing with. Also, we have partnered with a company called BioIntelliSense, which is re-imagining how we collect and respond to patient vital signs. The technology will help us better monitor patient health and rapidly respond when there are changes in a patient’s condition. This will help save lives but it will also help to take some workload off of our staff. We expanded outside of the four walls of the hospital and we have new opportunities in monitoring and management externally. Telehealth also remains strong. These are all new opportunities for us to help both our patients and staff. 

What is your assessment of the healthcare industry? 

The industry has realized it has to change. The adage of “if you build it, they will come” is no longer true. Patients, as consumers, have options and we need to react and respond to what patients want. Historically, they have come to us and they had to play by our rules. Now they have options and are expecting better access and service. This has been a wakeup call to the industry and the industry is responding. Partnerships help to fuel that innovation. By partnering with tech companies that understand the consumer experience, we can provide a powerful combination of solutions that help to make us more efficient across the country. 

How has demand for your services shifted? 

Our outpatient services are growing faster than the rest of the business. Demand is almost back to where it was pre-COVID. Demand for emergency services has gone down as the rise of telehealth and urgent care has given people the opportunity to not use the ER as their only access to timely service. Emergency rooms are costly, so that is a good thing because it is often not the right care setting for most issues. 

How are you reacting to the “volume to value” shift? How are you dealing with high costs and issues of affordability? 

The industry needs to move in that direction but it is still a slow adoption. Payers in middle America have been slow to adopt because they are focused on open access versus driving for high-quality, low-cost outcomes. Healthcare costs continue to grow and inflation is real. Wage and supply inflation are major issues but consolidation in the industry has proven to bring the cost of delivering care down. To keep access open, the impact is premium costs are rising. Employers are going to have to make choices about curtailing choice if they want to reduce premium spend — that is the biggest holdup to accelerating the trend. 

How would you like to see the industry evolve so it can provide affordability and access to care? 

Embracing outpatient locations and digital and virtual tools will help both the efficiency and cost of delivering care. Remote patient monitoring and hospital-at-home programs can also help to reduce the cost of care while we maintain the health of the community. In short, creating a system where patients can access the care they need on their terms versus ours is the future of healthcare.

What are some of your key partnerships in the Nashville region and how do they help advance the industry? 

We are partnered with multiple companies that have roots in the Nashville healthcare ecosystem. Cadence helps us with remote patient monitoring, and Care Harmony is helping with chronic care management. Recently, we also launched partnerships with care.ai and BioIntelliSense. SwitchPoint is a Nashville-based venture studio that operates as our internal innovation arm. The goal is to invent new companies and solutions that don’t exist today. They just launched a company called Winnow that is focused on disrupting the traditional physician recruiting model and was recently named best local healthcare startup.

How have you maintained a company culture to retain employees and avoid burnout? 

We are very focused on our culture. Six of our entities recently were honored as one of Modern Healthcare’s “Best Places to Work” and our corporate office has won several culture awards as well. We are focused on diversity, equity and inclusion because we want a company that reflects the communities we serve and where our employees feel supported and a sense of belonging. We have created opportunities for employees to move from one market to another, so they can create a lifelong career within Ardent. We have a predominantly female workforce, which we are proud of and are committed to growing through mentoring and professional development. Half of the executive team is also now female, so we have really changed the diversity of our organization from where we have been historical. We want everyone to grow and have opportunities to build their career. 

What is your outlook for the Nashville healthcare industry in the next three to five years? 

Digital health is the biggest focus for growth and there are billions of dollars chasing the next great ideas. Nashville is one of the few places that has the entire ecosystem that can put it all together. Nashville has always been strong in representing the provider side of healthcare, but that is rapidly changing as healthcare technology will take on a more predominant role. Together, the future for Nashville healthcare is bright because we have all of the pieces to make us a technology hub for healthcare. 

For more information, visit: 

https://ardenthealth.com/

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