In an interview with Invest:, Rob Deininger, chief executive officer at AdventHealth Orlando, discussed how the company is expanding its service offering to prevent Central Florida residents from having to seek healthcare outside the region. He also discussed the advantages that new technologies offer to advance care, extend the reach of its medical staff, enhance patient experience, and deliver personalized medicine.
What are AdventHealth Orlando’s most significant achievements in the past year?
Central Florida is a rapidly growing community with over 1,000 people moving to the area every week. As a result, we are constantly challenged to find ways to continue growing access and subspecialty services that keep our consumers in the region. That removes the need for patients to travel to other metropolitan areas for great care. The cancer-related and gene-related services that we can now offer previously were not offered anywhere closer than Tampa or Miami in the state of Florida or Atlanta. The Cellular Therapy Facility at AdventHealth Orlando, a groundbreaking facility providing the latest advancements in cellular therapy treatments, has given Central Florida something that was not available here before.
We also recently opened the Innovation Tower on our downtown campus. For the first time, the complex brings together neurosciences, orthopedics, research, and rehab in one facility. This creates an essential one-stop shop for our consumers when looking for care in those areas.
How is AdventHealth Orlando tailoring treatments and care plans to meet individual patient needs?
We do that in several ways. At its foundation, AdventHealth believes in whole-person care. Part of treating the whole person is recognizing that individuals are different, which draws us to things like personalized medicine. We recognize that a one-approach model is not as good as a more specific approach.
As personalized medicine continues to grow, cancer and metabolism are at the forefront for AdventHealth. Personalized medicine has taken off in specific areas, such as cancer, so we now have targeted, gene-based cancer therapies. We also have treatments for diabetes and other metabolic disorders that can be targeted to specific interactions with everyone. We have a large team that focuses on genomics and personalized medicine.
How is AdventHealth leveraging data analytics and artificial intelligence to improve patient outcomes, streamline processes, and enhance healthcare delivery?
The innovation and technology curve in healthcare has rapidly accelerated over the last two to three years. Artificial intelligence is one of the areas that has seen the most attention and growth in the previous six to 12 months. AdventHealth already has AI interfaces in dozens of its clinical areas and applications that have already been in use for some time. We continue to look very aggressively at ways to bring AI into the healthcare space to continue advancing our care. The future of AI is not something we should be afraid of as much as something we should embrace and learn how to work with. It has tremendous potential to offer advantages that we would otherwise not be able to get.
We also mine more data now than we ever have before. We recently transitioned into a new EMR platform called Epic, which provides enhanced analytics tools and data points we can see on each patient. The platform offers better insights into how we deliver care to them and how they access our care. Indicators such as how many times they access the app, go into their charts, and what they look at when they go there. This gives us information on ways to tailor our products for consumers.
What is AdventHealth’s strategy to address health disparities within the Central Florida community?
We are a faith-based organization and have been in Central Florida for over 100 years. The fact that we are connected with the community at all levels is at our core. Aside from supporting community organizations and being heavily involved in nonprofit groups, we also have a deep and intentional DEI process on each campus. A big focus is health equity outcomes as we ensure that we deliver the best care and the best outcomes to all members of our community.
How is AdventHealth innovating in terms of addressing mental health challenges?
We realized that what we have been trying to do in mental health is not working fast enough. We have focused aggressively on finding partners in the mental health space to accelerate our ability to deliver care. Funding in the mental health space is severely lacking. There is a lot of talk about funding it, but more substance is needed regarding how it gets funded. Therefore, we have taken the approach of bringing partners together that can help us solve mental health challenges together.
For instance, we recently received a grant from Dr. Phillips Charities to address mental health in adolescents and teens and bring community groups together to solve that. A piece of that is ensuring that we attract partners to the community that deliver mental health care in the outpatient space. We have successfully worked with the City of Orlando, the Orange County government, and economic development groups to bring companies previously in Jacksonville and other places into Central Florida. Mental health requires a team approach. Medical professionals can do only so much in a hospital setting. We also need a team in the outpatient setting to partner with us.
What is AdventHealth’s strategy to enhance and measure patient experience?
We are very proud of our work with our teams on patient experience. We have a track record of high engagement levels from our team members and high patient experience. Like most hospital systems, we measure patient satisfaction through an HCAHPS survey facilitated by CMS. Additionally, all our hospitals across Central Florida consistently exceed the 75th percentile in patient experience.
It has been great to see the rebound on that front coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, we saw patient experience and satisfaction drop. That drop in patient experience and satisfaction was correlated to a high staff turnover and a high volume of agency workers, so it has been great to reverse course and surpass pre-pandemic levels.
How is AdventHealth addressing the challenge of healthcare sector workforce shortages?
We have taken a multi-pronged approach to fixing the workforce challenge. We doubled down on our investments in AdventHealth University, our company-owned university. We also committed to doubling the number of nursing graduates from the university and significantly increasing the number of graduates from other key programs we need, such as CRNAs, PAs, and nurse practitioners.
We also partnered publicly with UCF, Seminole State College, and other organizations to help fund additional training spots and rotations to boost the level of talent that can be created in Central Florida. Finally, we have embraced virtual care and telemedicine as ways to extend our staff’s reach into areas where we do not have staff. We have tele-teams that can help the staff go further.
What are the most important trends shaping the healthcare sector over the next five to 10 years?
AI and data-driven technology will be at the forefront of everybody’s conversations. ChatGPT was only launched 12 months ago, but it has triggered unprecedented change. Those technologies will continue to be hot topics. Secondly, the workforce will continue to be on everyone’s mind.
Moreover, we will also continue to see a focus on efficiency and growth in healthcare. In Central Florida, there will be a challenge in terms of recognizing that payment in healthcare will stay the same, but we need to keep up with a growing population and demand. The pressure on the healthcare sector will be to grow to meet demand and scale without adding cost to the system while also in a fixed or declining reimbursement model.
How is AdventHealth positioning itself to adapt to those changes and continue providing exceptional care to the community?
We have had the mission of extending the healing ministry of Christ since our beginning. Since that mission does not change, it provides a singular focus. Additionally, our vision guides us to be a preeminent, faith-based, consumer-focused clinical company. That keeps us pushing forward, innovating, and listening to our customers. We are organized as a company to adapt, be agile, and grow as we embrace change rather than resist it and get left behind.
