Hub & Spoken.

What's in this podcast?

In this episode, Jason finds out how data is used to deliver the best healthcare service in the United States with Scott Harrison, VP Chief Data Officer at Parkland Health and Hospital System, based in Dallas, Texas. They explore how to build a mission-driven team, the future of virtual care, and how data science helps provide for the needs of the community.

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One Big Message

Understanding the needs of the community; this is where data science in healthcare helps provide a future look at problems may arise to deal with in the next few years.

[00:43] Scott shares his experience in data, and the history of Parkland.

[10:35] How Scott’s nursing background prepared him for his role as a Data Officer.

[13:51] What are some of the opportunities for data to enhance?

[16:52] Where has all the data accumulated enabled Scott to really help the Parkland Health System?

[19:17] Parkland’s investments made their pace easier to adapt and deliver.

[22:19] How Scott made sure that the insights and data products they’re creating are in the right hands so the value can be realized.

[31:21] How Parkland uses data to help ensure that the right people get the right care outside of any kind of COVID-related problems.

The haves and the have-nots in data programs

One of the more common occurrences is where organisations that haven’t invested heavily in their data programmes are starting to get further and further underwater. Right now, there’s a very hot market for the type of talent that it takes to build a program. We can see healthcare systems having to compete with Google or Amazon and Apple and some of the big tech players that are able to outpace our wages. So we’re seeing a widening gap in the industry, just from a skill perspective of being able to build those types of resources internally. It automatically puts pressure on organisations to come up with how they’re going to get this type of value built into their program.

The key to choosing the right people

It’s important to identify the key strategic priorities, and who rolls up underneath each group, then identify programs that are important to those key priorities. These priorities have goals associated with them that are measured and that need to be reported back. It is crucial to be very targeted with what to take on from an initiative standpoint, because those priorities have goals that need to be reported.

Ability to establish good relationships within the organisation is important as well. Leaders that have responsibility for the service lines must understand the value that they can provide with their tools and their products. Rather than becoming reactionary, it is more proactive. In that way, we’ll be able to see what’s coming down the pike to plan better.

Build a team culture

This highlights the tight relationships that you have to create with the business. Build trust and build that working relationship, so that your team can count on you – and you’re consistently delivering. That’s how you build team culture. It gets people bought into the mission. A team that is very heavily mission-driven achieves its goals.

To summarise

At the end of the day, it’s all about the patient. Everything becomes a zero-sum game when we put the patient at the center of the needs. If we’re working on something that doesn’t really impact patient outcomes or patient deliveries, then we ought to refocus on what we’re doing. In the healthcare industry, it’s about being able to take that technology, implement it and then use it quickly.