Speaker 0 | 00:09.602

All right, welcome everyone back to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Today we have Chad. Is it Branko?

Speaker 1 | 00:16.444

Branko it is.

Speaker 0 | 00:18.484

I always do this at the beginning. I really make myself look stupid, but at least I got it right this time. Chad is really an epic IT manager that happens to be an… epic project manager at the same time, which we all know, you know, epic rollouts in the healthcare industry are probably one of the easiest things in the world to do. It’s very, very always smooth. I think the word seamless is often used to speak about such things. And I know that you would agree with that because that’s what you do every day, all day, every single day.

Speaker 1 | 00:53.360

Uh, it, it really kind of beats me to death, right? So you have your normal nine to five during the week and sometimes that transfers over right into our weekends, uh, overnights. And it really is, uh, uh, you, you breathe it, you live it and you love it, right?

Speaker 0 | 01:06.964

Yeah. Well, yeah, I guess so. I would, uh, I think I, not for me, no, for me, that would be a small form of torture. Everyone in my family is in the medical industry, except for me and my brother, we went into business. Let’s see my other older brother as well. I think it’s a dying breed, but my great grandfather, I think was some kind of doctor. My grandfather was a pediatrician born 1900. My father is a urologist MD. My uncle is an ophthalmologist. My mother was the, like ran the office. My sister’s an RN. Her husband’s an anesthesiologist. So I kind of know a little bit about the world that you work in. and the hierarchies and of the fiefdom of the hospital system. I like to say that I can beat up on healthcare, can’t I?

Speaker 1 | 01:57.495

Yeah, you absolutely can. And just by the sound of it, it sounds like you have a better idea of what I do than I actually do. So I’m just going to throw that out there.

Speaker 0 | 02:04.560

I’m just throwing out these stories. I haven’t even looked at our notes of what we’re supposed to talk about on this call yet, but I’m just, I’m feeling it. I’m feeling the healthcare atmosphere today. I went, my dad, you know, as a very well kind of bullet pointed doctor in new England, right? He was, he was anyways, well-known surgeon, but he had to go and get a hip replacement and not too long ago. And I’m sitting in the hospital. I’m looking at the different wheeling. What do you call the mobile kind of unit that the nurses walk around and take all your information into? And I’m assuming you guys have those as well.

Speaker 1 | 02:39.466

Yeah. So we call those wow’s so workstation on wheels.

Speaker 0 | 02:44.029

Okay. So there’s wow’s sitting in his room more than one. one with plugs just dangling kind of onto the floor. And I look at the nurse and I’m like, Hey, uh, why is the new one? Like the one that looks the newest and the best and all awesome, like kind of, you know, like what’s up with that thing over there? Like, why aren’t you using that one? Why are you willing in this, you know, this like kind of legacy thing. And, uh, she kind of just rolled her eyes. That’s the new system, you know? So I don’t know if you ever deal with that, but, um, I think we’ll get into that. Uh, so surprise story. I spoke with my sister the other night. I won’t name the hospital that she has been working at yet. But Epic had a massive ransomware attack. They were down for three days. Is that a fear of yours at all? Or does that even have anything to do with you?

Speaker 1 | 03:31.148

You know, I think that’s something that over the past several years, organizations have been more aware of, right? We’re a little bit more cognizant. And you’ve seen organizations invest a lot of time and resources in the… their approach to cybersecurity, data security, etc. We’ve had instances where we have not had breaches, but we’ve had instances where we get emails and say, hey, we’re at a threatened level in terms of security right now, and these are the appropriate actions that we should be taking. If you see suspicious emails coming through phishing for information, you need to notify XYZ. So they’ve done a really good job, I think, at educating people.

Speaker 0 | 04:13.268

the staff and preparing us for uh being it what doctors never click on things or emails i know this from my own father i’m the it dad i’m not even really in it i’m just a guy that’s smart enough to talk it and i my dad’s always calling me like every other day like hey what’s uh what’s this email i just got or like what’s this you know and uh i’ll go over to his house and there’ll be a piece of mail sending out that’s like you know satellite internet and it’ll have like a note on it. Like ask PJ. He calls me PJ. That was my, because another thing is is everyone’s named Phil in my family. So, um, I got the benefit of being Phil Howard, the third, which, uh, Anyways, growing up, that’s an interesting one. Anyways, so I was called PJ. But there’s all this stuff going on. I don’t know where I’m going with that. I think it is that a lot of times doctors may have to be, may have to click on things, maybe some of the more longer generation, you know, whatever, stock portfolio management, email, whatever it is. So what does Epic have to do with a ransomware attack? Would they ever actually just attack Epic or would it be just kind of the network in general or access into it? And I asked my sister, I said, so what do you guys do? Do you guys pay it? She said, absolutely not. It’s a terrorist attack. We refuse to negotiate with terrorists. And luckily they had, you know, had whatever security, from what it sounds like from the nurse, my sister is the nurse, RN, and I’m not down putting nurses, but she said, you know, I’m saying from a security perspective, right? Like, I’m not expecting her to know as much about, see, I’m backstepping here, digging a deeper hole. So the- She basically said, no, we don’t negotiate with terrorists. And obviously, the security breach wasn’t that. Obviously, there was some sort of stoppage in place that the damage wasn’t that bad. But still, obviously, they had some sort of ransom. They had something that they could ransom. And they were down for three days. So what could happen in your world like that?

Speaker 1 | 06:14.846

So. This is going to be purely speculation on my part, right? Because I’m not as informed on some of the security items as other individuals in the organization. But I first want to say, isn’t it funny how people turn into the president of the United States? The second these things happen, they ultimately immediately jump to becoming George Bush. And no, no, no, no, no. We will not negotiate with terrorists. And it’s just, I understand the criticality of it. and what they’re saying, but it’s just as funny to me. Yes,

Speaker 0 | 06:50.586

we will not negotiate with a guy that doesn’t have enough credentials yet, enough in the world to get a job in security, but is looking for the one point to penetrate us so that he can get a job in security. You mean that guy?

Speaker 1 | 07:01.934

And I think that’s what it is, right? So you asked before, are they attacking Epic itself or whatever the case is? I think when you’re putting to those situations, from what I understand, when these… folks set out to infiltrate your network or they’re trying to get information, any clause that they can get into you, that’s what they’re going to try. I don’t know that it’s going to be specific to one thing, but they’re going to be sneaky about it. It’s not going to be as straightforward as you think. Someone that’s not as well-informed, you have that older generation where they see an email, sometimes they come through impersonating individuals from the organization. It looks like… Um, so unless you, you know, you know enough to look to see, oh, this is actually coming from an external email address. I probably shouldn’t log in. You have my social security number because they said they’re from human resources. Um, so like I said, I don’t think it’s anything necessarily specific, but if they can get their claws in you even a little bit, that’s, you know, that’s usually a telltale sign that it’s a wrap.

Speaker 0 | 08:08.541

Okay. Switching gears. You were going to be a history teacher or thought that you wanted to be a history teacher. Is this correct?

Speaker 1 | 08:17.234

Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 08:17.994

What’s your favorite area of history? First of all, let’s do something completely off. And what is your favorite area?

Speaker 1 | 08:22.637

World War II.

Speaker 0 | 08:24.278

Wow. So that was my, what did they call the, like your, your counselor in high school? What’s that person? Guidance counselor. Oh,

Speaker 1 | 08:31.261

your guidance counselor.

Speaker 0 | 08:32.242

Yeah. He was the world. He was my, he was a World War II buff. My history teacher. Loved him. Now he’s the, whatever, the president of the school. I guess they call that. principle. Anyways, go ahead. Why?

Speaker 1 | 08:44.814

So I always had this intense fascination with, you know, learning from our mistakes, right? And, you know, what happened during these time periods and, you know, what happened with these small decisions, right? And it usually stems from a small decision. It’s not like somebody, you know, walked out the door one day and drops a bomb on a house, right? It starts with, you know… reprimands, financial reprimands that turn into, you know, a country really being aggravated with the rest of the world. And this individual who used to be a painter and then served for Germany in World War I turns into, you know, one of the worst dictators in the history of the world. And I just, the politics behind it and, you know, the geopolitical mess that came from that was just always fascinating to me.

Speaker 0 | 09:35.931

Without getting into it, because this isn’t a history podcast, just one question there. Do you think the majority of society even knows really how World War II got started or the actual underlying story of it?

Speaker 1 | 09:45.034

No, probably not.

Speaker 0 | 09:47.014

Probably know kind of more like what the, well, let’s go back to how everyone becomes the President of the United States. Kind of a… What would we call it? Fake news or what? Popular, popular news. There you go. Okay. I, and just so you know, I am a conscientious object, objector, objection, objector, whatever that official word is, just so you know, um, for anyone out there listening, I don’t vote. You can get as mad at me about that as you want. Um, so you were going to be a history teacher. How did you get into this? Uh, how did you get into the, um, please, you know, uh, uh, Toothpicks under the fingernails, epic rollout stuff.

Speaker 1 | 10:26.142

So the company that I work for is South Coast Health. We’re out of southeastern Massachusetts, right? And my dad worked there for 37 years, my mom almost 30 years. And I liked computers. And when I was going to school, community college for my associate’s degree, I still had no clue. who I wanted to be, you know, what direction I was going in, you know, there was an internship available. I knew I liked computers and, you know, it was a way for me to get my foot in a door at a company I was familiar with and, you know, possibly start a career there. So I just, I don’t know, like blind, blindly jumping in, I guess we could call it.

Speaker 0 | 11:08.662

Yep. And then I started getting a real paycheck that was more than, uh, whatever it was. And one thing led to another. And I think that that’s, you know, so many people’s stories anyways, unless you’re this super crazy driven individual, which are like the outliers that you see on like the YouTube stars or whatever it is. I think that’s how a lot of us, you know, I saw someone’s post the other day. I wonder if we were really honest about how we got the job versus saying, I’m a very expert in this, this and this. When it was like, I knew a friend who referred me in here and I got on this door here and that was great. And I had some experience and then grew from there.

Speaker 1 | 11:41.157

Yeah. I, I, I like to look at it like, you know, I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie, the dark night, I’m sure. 99% of the population has seen that movie. In the movie, Heath Ledger’s Joker says, if you’re good at something, don’t do it for free. I think everybody hits that point in their life where they have this passion project that they’re working on. That was IT for me. Those computers. If I’m good at it, why am I doing it for free?

Speaker 0 | 12:06.328

It’s kind of like dissecting popular IT nerds, the podcast. That’s a good question. I should probably ask myself, why am I doing it for free? Deeper subjects, please help me out with that one. Okay. Okay. So we’re going to go in and sell Epic the what do we want to call Epic anyways? Yeah. Or we call this in the healthcare ERP CRM. What do we call this in the healthcare?

Speaker 1 | 12:31.696

EHR electronic health record.

Speaker 0 | 12:33.658

Okay. EHR. Okay. Simple enough. We’re going to sell them and drink the Kool-Aid because that’s part of a more underlying way that you manage and make things happen and stay alive and not really. go home and, you know, just hate life. But we’re going to, we’re going to, you know, what is it with, with, with, and, and this is selling any massive CRM or software rollout, any massive change in a company. It doesn’t have to be healthcare. It could be manufacturing. It could be any massive ERP rollout. It’s confusing. It’s new. It’s different. There’s training. There’s thousands of end users involved. Tell me the story of what it was like rolling that out.

Speaker 1 | 13:20.648

So first, when this was announced, when this enterprise rollout was announced for our organization, I think they announced that we were doing this back in 2013. I was working as a help desk representative. And I kind of looked at this as an opportunity for me. I’m going to throw my hat in the ring. I’m going to see how this goes. And, you know, we have to take like these, this aptitude test from Epic. So this is not like a, like an internal organization. Like this is from Epic, this type of aptitude test that tests your critical thinking. And, you know, we, we joke about it to this day that, you know, some of the questions on there, you know, if you have a lion and a tiger on a train headed toward Milwaukee, what’s the temperature in Saudi Arabia? And it was just, it’s bizarre, right? Um, but you know, they’re really trying to see what people can bring to the table in terms of critical thinking, which you don’t really understand why at the time, if you’re not in that type of role, but long story short, um, I ended up getting pulled in, I think the day before Christmas Eve in 2013. And, you know, uh, you know, they offer me a position on this, on this team to, you know, go out to Epic in Wisconsin, get certified, work through the build. And you cannot appreciate the undertaking that this is until you’re actually going through it. Right. So you’re, you’re spending, you know, millions of dollars implementing this software, you know, you’re, you’re investing in individuals to go and learn about it. You’re investing in your community, right? So you want to bring the software in to better treat the patients in your community. And, um, We started in January 2014. The first set of folks flew out to get their classes done and start the certification process. I think our ambulatory offices went live the spring of 2015. And the hospital locations went live fall 2015. And that was a long, long, long year and a half from that January. to that October enterprise go live. Cultural buy-in, meeting with end users. I mean, you’re going from the ground all the way up, trying to work with these users that have done something the same way for so long and getting them to understand there’s a better way and it’s okay. It doesn’t have to be the old ways, right? We can kind of expand our vision a little bit here. And I think, you know, folks having a positive attitude and… Really helping Epic sell the product and buying into what the vision is goes a long way.

Speaker 0 | 16:10.277

Now, you can help share some of the, obviously, it goes to show the power of healthcare software providers. Not only the reflection of bureaucracy and how healthcare works and the amount of changes that would have to happen if there were massive, you know, anyways, you can see ripple effects in many things. They have a lot of money. You pay a lot of money, obviously, for this. So they give you a ton of resources. Other companies do not provide this level of resources. So to share with the audience listening, what were some of the great things that they did that helped you roll something out to end users? Whether it was to get buy-in from them, what were some of the things that you did to get buy-in? And did you have any even quit? Were there anyone that just threw their hands up in the air and they’re like, no, I’m done, I’m retired, I was pressing F2 and F5 for years on this old DOS-based system, I’m not doing this,

Speaker 1 | 17:10.538

goodbye? That’s a really good question. So am I sure that there were people out there that hung up their hat when they saw this? I can almost guarantee that it happened at some point, and not because of the difficulty, right? But to your point, they’ve been in the game for a while. they’ve been working in healthcare for, let’s say it’s a nurse that’s been working there for 30 or 40 years, they’re at retirement age they don’t want to deal with a big change and they’re just ready to say,

Speaker 0 | 17:41.607

done I’m sure there’s companies that weren’t ready for the digital revolution that just said, nah,

Speaker 1 | 17:45.788

we’re closing up shop aka Toys R Us oh yeah and as far as the you know, Epic and what they’ve done and what they bring to the table, I’ll answer your question with something a little bit different and kind of say, you know, what is it that today, right? So it’s not just about when they roll the product out, because obviously they’re going to, they’re going to front load us with a lot of people to make sure that goes smoothly, right? Because you, you want, uh, you know, an optimal and positive go live. But when you see the level of support that they’re still bringing to the table five years later, that still helps, you know, push positive culture, implementation of new modules in the system. I mean, I have daily communication with my counterpart at Epic. Never mind the technical support folks that I work with on module implementations, the technical support teams that work with our application analysts on a day-to-day basis. So it doesn’t start and stop at GoLive and Enterprise Install. It really continues through, like, what else did they bring to the table moving forward for your support? sport.

Speaker 0 | 19:00.180

Do they have competition?

Speaker 1 | 19:02.621

Okay, so I know that we kind of briefly spoke about this the first time we chatted and the only way that I can describe this is they are the mid-90s Bulls and you’ll have your John Stockton and Carmelone Jazz team, which came close. Which came close? They came close. And that would be Cerner, right? and then Meditech, I don’t even know where they would fall in the mix anymore. Maybe the Supersonics, I don’t know. But I’m just kind of throwing something up against the wall for them. But I would say it’s Epic and Turner are probably the two biggest players.

Speaker 0 | 19:42.406

So we can’t throw out the Celtics or anything like that? We can’t throw out Kevin McHale and Larry Bird? Or is that a pass? Or are you too young for that?

Speaker 1 | 19:51.153

No, I mean, I’m an avid Boston fan, right? So… To me, my generation, when you resonate greatness, and please don’t say the Miami Heat, I will cry, just cry a lot. You know, you thank those mid-90s Bulls and then… The Lakers, late 90s Lakers, right? Okay. But I say Bulls. I say Bulls all the way in that circumstance. They have this level of, I don’t want to use the word perfection. I don’t think that’s the right word to use. But they have this level of giving you this shiny product that it just works. And it just excels and it just does what it’s supposed to do.

Speaker 0 | 20:33.093

Wow, you’re really selling epic here.

Speaker 1 | 20:35.538

It’s not about selling it. I’m being honest. I mean, I’ve had the opportunity to help build the system. I’m a patient that uses the system as a patient. And their front-facing portal is called MyChart that the patients can log into and use. And I have the ability now to be a project manager that oversees our upgrades, updates, and some of our module installs. So I’m just going by what I see.

Speaker 0 | 20:59.284

MyChart. I love MyChart.

Speaker 1 | 21:01.185

It’s great.

Speaker 0 | 21:02.285

I do. I’m like a… An obsessive blood work guy. I get my blood work done like every month, sometimes twice a month. It all shows up in Epic. But I want to see like a graph. There’s a couple of things. Let me know who I can give the feedback to. I want to see a graph of like my cholesterol. I want to see a graph of all these things. I have to put it all side to side and like download it and like graph it myself. I want to see from a patient standpoint. Anyways. And most people don’t get blood work done like I do. And I also want to like upload my DNA and I want to upload all this other stuff too. That’s a conversation for another time. So what were some of the things though, outside of basically to summarize, great partner support. There’s a partnership there. They give you great support. You definitely pay for it, right? But there’s great, there’s a partnership there. Some people don’t like the word partnership. Some people say it gets old. Like, no, you’re buying something, you’re paying for it. But okay, so what? There’s a partnership there. What were some of the things that you did or that you remember rolling out? Aside from aptitude tests, which would be cool. I’d love to get my hands on that one and see how that grades things. Let’s do an end user aptitude test or whatever, help desk aptitude test. Kind of cool. What were some of the things that you guys did or what are the things that you do now when you roll out a new thing? How do you communicate? Do you have any communication tips?

Speaker 1 | 22:26.382

So you’re referring to like for other organizations that work with these types?

Speaker 0 | 22:30.745

Like, hey, do this. Like I’ve had some people say, no, we put up kiosks and we have like a, you know, a couple laptops sitting out there to demo stuff pre-rollout. We have internal cheerleaders. So I’ve got a head, in your case, I’ve got this, you know, five RNs in each department that all push this. And then I’ve got this doctor that’s, you know, positive about this and everyone’s staying positive. And how do you keep this positive attitude running throughout the organization?

Speaker 1 | 22:55.258

Oh, yeah. So first off, and it comes down to what you said when you kind of introduced this piece of the segment, right? You got to drink the Kool-Aid. You have to. You have to buy into this product the same way the people that are providing it to us do. So you got to get on the same page as them. That’s number one. And by doing that, that gives you your internal team, your external support team. especially when they used to come on site. So specific example, I’ll use our enterprise go live back in 2015, right? So you would think, all right, they’re going live. You’re going to send out one or two technical support individuals per team. They’re going to have their support. And after a day or two, all right, have fun, guys. You have an internal support team. I’m not sure what organization is going to run that way, but I can tell you that it was weeks. Not days, weeks, where we had multiple individuals per team from Epic, plus some of their leadership folks with us during our Enterprise Go Live. And it was supporting us in our command center for calls. It was them getting on the phone and talking to end users and helping them doing rounds out on the floors. When your end user sees that a third… party company is buying into their own product, right? And they’re not just there and saying, here, you paid the money for it. As you said before, now you’re on your own. They don’t do that. And I think that spoke volumes to me about what their commitment was to us.

Speaker 0 | 24:38.854

Real white glove.

Speaker 1 | 24:40.275

Yep. Absolutely.

Speaker 0 | 24:42.897

Gosh. So I think that’s kind of a dumb question. I had a bullet point that were like, why are good vendors with a lot of resources important? I think that that goes without saying that it makes your job easier and makes people believe. And, um, you know, it shows how you can lean on a vendor a lot. You can lean on them for support. Um, what things that do you have to do? all by yourself without their support? What do you do? What’s your biggest challenge, I guess? What’s your biggest challenge on a daily basis that you have to do all by yourself without Epic helping you?

Speaker 1 | 25:21.991

If you would have asked me eight months ago, nine months ago, it would have been just competing priorities, right? So where does my objective with an upgrade stand versus this new module implementation or anything else on the pike? And I think… A lot of other organizations feel that. A lot of other individuals feel that. Now, you ask me today, it’s the elephant in the room. It’s COVID, right? So COVID has changed the way that we do this. It changes the way that we look at our upgrades, the way we look at our updates, what’s important to us as a healthcare organization, a community, what’s important to Epic as an organization, you know, regulatory. wise what’s important regulatory wise um that that changed the game for us this year 100 so what happened so in the beginning right so we were slated for uh we were slated for one of our quarterly upgrades we do we do these quarterly upgrades with epic major upgrades um i believe it was in february and then you know news starts trickling out of COVID and things start picking up and it gets delayed. So already right there, you know, you’re on a quarterly schedule. Upgrades don’t stop. So we know that we’re going to have to start adjusting some of our schedules here. Now, February turned into March, March turned into May, May turned into July. So now we’re way back. And on top of being way back on our upgrades, you know, we’re taking weekly ad hoc. special updates from the vendor to make sure that, you know, we have a way to track patient data for COVID. And we’re getting that, you know, that, uh, up to the minute information.

Speaker 0 | 27:19.543

Literally like new software being built into the system, like new code, new code.

Speaker 1 | 27:23.967

We’re getting that weekly. We’re getting that weekly. And, you know, people, I don’t think people outside of information technology, outside of healthcare understand is we’re not I don’t want to say prepared because it’s not the right thing to use, but like if you were to open a book and start reading about a global pandemic, you would never expect something of this magnitude to kind of take place and how we would adjust to it, right? I mean, you can picture it from a movie or something like that and kind of like theorize like, oh yeah, this is actually how we would handle it. And you don’t know until it’s… the reality of things, how much it’s going to affect your day-to-day, even the smallest, smallest thing. It’s, it goes down to the smallest thing as, you know, you know, we have these cadences for meetings, updates, upgrades, so on and so forth. Like that just blew my day-to-day work out of the water. That cadence is destroyed. So it’s, it’s all about adaptation, flexibility, uh, and understanding, you know, COVID’s the priority now and making sure that, you know, we. are giving our staff and everyone else the tools that they need to do a good job with us.

Speaker 0 | 28:38.145

So were you able to get reorganized and kind of come back full circle? You said nine months ago, and I can tell you right now that my life was completely thrown out of whack until, I would say right about now. I’d say right about now. Today was the last time that I looked back my daily tracker and I could say, on a daily basis, I’m going to do this for work. I’m going to eat this for food. I’m going to exercise on these days. I’m going to study this. And this is how my day is going to look. Just about now is when it got back.

Speaker 1 | 29:06.008

Yes. So back to normal though, more back to normal. Yes. Right. So there’s really no good answer to that because through it, I think we’re in a more comfortable state where we kind of know what to expect. And now that they have predictive models out there that are fairly accurate, we can adjust, you know, staffing prioritization. what we’re going to be working on a little bit better. And,

Speaker 0 | 29:35.813

you know, What’s your piece of advice? This is it right here. What’s your piece of advice to everyone else in other organizations, other people like yourself, Epic project managers, IT directors, CTOs, CIOs. I mean, Hey, you passed, you passed the test. I mean, you literally passed the aptitude test. So I’m going to ask you because you’re qualified. What is your piece of advice to other people in other hospitals that are dealing with this really, I don’t know how to describe it, juggernaut of insanity that got thrown on them? Other than calm down, take a deep breath, meditate, whatever it is. Other than that, what’s your piece of concrete? I need something concrete here.

Speaker 1 | 30:21.934

Go back to drinking the Kool-Aid. And I know that sounds silly. I know it sounds silly. But when you’re going through your enterprise rollout, depending on how large your organization is, it’s hell, right? It’s constant work. It’s constant. Um,

Speaker 0 | 30:39.610

what’s the Kool-Aid we need to up the Kool-Aid. I don’t even think it’s go back to drinking the Kool-Aid. I think it’s double up on the Kool-Aid. I saw many hospitals. I saw many hospitals doubling up in the Kool-Aid people out on the crosswalks with, with, with like sidewalk chalk, you know, like, like keep hope alive, whatever it was that they’re saying, whatever things, smile, you know, everything that they could possibly do to keep people happy. Um, yeah, we tripled the Kool-Aid. What’s the, what’s the Kool-Aid for you? What’s in the, what is the Kool-Aid?

Speaker 1 | 31:09.790

So at the end of the day for me, and I think this, this kind of harkens back to when my dad and my mom worked for the organization, stuff that they kind of instilled in me is even though I’m working in it, right. Even though I’m not touching the system anymore, but I’m kind of driving efforts or helping, helping drive efforts surrounding the system. What I do and what the folks that work on these upgrades and updates do affects lives at the end, at the end of the day, it affects lives and not nurses. We’re not doctors. And, you know, we don’t, we don’t look at it that way. Although we do have RNs that work on our team and folks that were previously out on the floors that have done that work. We have an absolute effect on patient lives and, you know, the work that our doctors and nurses are doing. And that reflects on us and it reflects on the organization.

Speaker 0 | 32:02.199

And the, again, I’m just going to push you here. I just want. one concrete example of how you gave someone a glass of Kool-Aid?

Speaker 1 | 32:13.623

A concrete example of how?

Speaker 0 | 32:16.404

Here’s my Kool-Aid. There’s nothing wrong with burritos, guys. I’ve got a box full of 100 burritos. I have at it. Do you have anything that’s like, do you remember like really like a moment where people were lifted or like, you know, there was like, really, if Chad wasn’t here? And they might not tell you that, but if Chad wasn’t here, I probably would have shot myself.

Speaker 1 | 32:40.168

Ooh. You know,

Speaker 0 | 32:42.809

you have a gun to your head. You have to answer this question in about 10 seconds. Okay. Someone said that to me one time. I had a personal coach say to me, I was like, look, I’ve got all these email addresses. I don’t know which one to use. They’re all important. I’ve got all these domain names. He’s like, you’ve got a gun to your head. You’re going to die. No, he’s holding a gun to your children’s head. You must decide now. I was like, okay, fill it, fill our telecom. I was like, what was the Kool-Aid?

Speaker 1 | 33:09.362

I think that moment for me was when I was an analyst. So right before this, when I was an analyst, I worked with our nutritional services folks.

Speaker 0 | 33:18.109

Yes.

Speaker 1 | 33:18.750

And we worked through pain points that they had. I’m not going to go too specific here. And stuff that they had been asking for for years, trying to figure things out. And we did it. because of what Epic provided us. I don’t know if that’s what you’re looking for, but that’s the closest coming to Jesus moment that I can describe for you. What I’m taking away from what you’re asking.

Speaker 0 | 33:48.978

We finally delivered upon something that they’re asking for for three years.

Speaker 1 | 33:54.599

Yeah, more or less. And I mean, patience, patience, everything.

Speaker 0 | 34:00.641

Gotcha, gotcha. So at the end of the day, what that really means is take feedback from your end users. They’ve been asking for something and you delivered on it.

Speaker 1 | 34:12.114

Oh, absolutely. If they’re not happy, you certainly will not be happy. So that’s the lesson to learn there.

Speaker 0 | 34:18.118

I have so many great ideas from the show. I’ll be honest with you. And one of them is a mailer with a small package of Kool-Aid in it that has a sticker that says that I’m going to stick dissecting popular nerds over the top of it. And don’t ask me how that I’m not going to do this for free, but I’ve been doing this for free for quite a while now. Thank you so much for being on the show and some great stories. Really, really kind of eyeopening from the perspective of, I guess, drinking the Kool-Aid. And if you’ve, if you’ve, if you had any one thing to I guess say to other people out there that are listening to the show, what would that be?

Speaker 1 | 34:58.071

You know, guys, if you listen to the show, you’re in healthcare. Keep your heads up. You guys are doing the good work right now. Just keep those heads high.