This Week in Health Tech
This Week in Health Tech podcast is a health technology podcast. Podcast features Vik Patel, a health technology veteran and CEO of Tido Inc. (A Trusted Tech Partner for Healthcare Organizations) and industry experts. Our shows provide commentary, news, and perspective on the latest trends in health tech and features seasoned experienced industry experts. All of our shows are free. TWIHT is supported by advertising. We limit the number of ads on each show, and we only accept advertising from companies whose products or services benefit our audience.
This Week in Health Tech
When the Systems Go Silent: Building Clinical Resilience Before the Outage
Imagine a hospital corridor lined with open doors and a chorus of hotel bells, each ring a patient hoping to be found. That’s the picture Julie Dearinger Smith paints from real stories of downtime, the moments when networks collapse, call systems fail, and teams fight to deliver safe care without the tools they rely on. Julie brings two decades in clinical informatics atop years at the bedside, and she turns that experience into a simple but radical premise: resilience is a clinical operations discipline, not just a cybersecurity task.
We dig into Leadership by Design, Julie’s practical framework that maps growth from novice to expert using observable skills. No more vague advice like “show initiative.” Instead, leaders get a clear coaching plan, and team members get a transparent path to advancement. This clarity becomes critical during outages, when pattern recognition, prioritization, and calm execution can prevent harm. Julie shares the mindset shift that separates “testing to pass” from “testing to break,” and why that difference defines proficient practitioners in health tech.
From there, we get tactical. Julie explains how Contingency Health Solutions approaches downtime with tools designed to run when the internet doesn’t. Bell Assist gives patients a cellular-based call capability with location awareness and prioritization, while a lightweight bed management module restores throughput and room turnover visibility when EHRs and intercoms are offline. We cover everyday value too, including meeting CMS requirements for communication in ED overflow spaces without expensive infrastructure. Along the way, we surface hidden dependencies in radiology, pharmacy, and supply chain, and outline how to run serious tabletop exercises that prepare clinical leaders for the worst-case scenario.
If you care about patient safety, informatics, nursing leadership, or hospital operations, this conversation offers a blueprint you can act on today. Subscribe for more practical health tech stories, share this episode with a colleague who owns downtime planning, and leave a review with your biggest resiliency question—we’ll tackle it next.
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Vik Patel - LinkedIn
Tido Inc. - Website
Tido Inc. - LinkedIn
Welcome to another episode of This Week in Health Tech. Again, it's another Friday and three o'clock on a Friday afternoon. That's when we record our podcast. And I have an amazing guest joining me today, Julie Derringer Smith from Contingency Health Solutions. Thanks for joining me, Julie.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, really, I'm really happy for you to join me. I know we have been talking about meeting up for a podcast episode, and it's been an adventure, but we have finally done it. And we are recording it. And so yeah, no, welcome. Please, I think it would be good to get a little bit of background about yourself and also a little bit about contingency health solutions to start with.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So I hope that and I believe that if you speak with team members that I've worked with in the past, that they'll tell you that I'm a big believer in work-life balance. So I'm going to start with my most important role that I have, uh, which is wife and mom. And uh I'm GG to three beautiful brands that I have. And so that's the most important job that I have out of all of them. But um, but professionally, uh I've been in healthcare for more than 25 years. It's hard to believe that. I spent 10 years by the at the bedside as a registered nurse. Um, did some overlap bedside and clinical informatics, but for the last 20 years, I've been in clinical informatics and IT leadership. Um, and really um that's those two experiences have always they it always impacts the way I approach really any project that we look at. Um, and I've really I've worked across the the healthcare ecosystem. So I've worked in the hospitals um and then more broadly with health tech partners or vendors, um, and then back in hospitals. Uh when I worked for vendors for an EHR company and I led the clinical um clinical project manager team, and that was great. Learned so much and met great people. Um, and all of that experience really has helped me to um find contingency health solutions. Um, and so it's a company uh that really was born out of passion. And I'll I'm gonna talk about I got two great passions when it comes to work uh professionally. Um, one is leadership. Uh I love leadership. I love being able to um help develop team members. So recently uh released a book. It's called Leadership by Design, uh a framework for team member development. So, how do you help that team member become what they want to be, where they want to go? And then the other is uh operational resiliency in the face of disaster, whether it's natural disaster or uh cyber attacks, when we don't have our primary systems, how do we keep our patients safe? How do we give them the best care we can when we don't have the technology that we've come to rely on? And I'm really excited to talk about both today.
SPEAKER_01:That's awesome. And let's go into your book first, uh, Leadership by Design. And, you know, so this is something I'm I'm I'm really interested in. I don't know how much time I have to kind of put into you know thinking about my leadership skills and whatnot. I I I read a lot of books and I I try and learn from that. Right, it's a lot of biographies and mostly nonfiction books, but so maybe this should be on my list now. Uh I'll definitely add that and read it and and hopefully gain something out of it, but or I'll definitely gain something out of it. I know you, so it should be should be good. But what is uh like what led you to devote time to that? I mean, which is great, you know. I mean, bringing up your team members and making sure that they go on and succeed and and that definitely not only helps them, but obviously helps everybody that they come in contact with. But is there any stories around that that led you to kind of have so much passion around the leadership?
SPEAKER_00:Uh you know, I've been in leadership, uh I was in leadership multiple years, multiple positions, multiple, multiple companies. Um and I found this framework. I was actually taking um a course for some continuing education, and they were talking about this specific model that I mentioned and we can go into, but it it clicked for me. So I've been in leadership, I've taken a step back from leadership, kind of taking a break. And then when I went back into leadership again, um, I had I I had a even more passion for it. I think because I had been a leader in the past uh for leading a team, um it helped me feel more confident in that. So then I could go on and kind of focus on how do I get them to where they want to be. And I think about when I was a leader, when I first became a manager and finally got my feet underneath me, I was always that person that looked around and said, okay, now they're a senior manager. What do I have to do to be a senior manager? You know, what do I have to do to take the next step? And even before I was a leader, when I was um a nurse, actually when I started out as a CNA or and a nurse, then a nurse, um, you know, I would go, okay, you have a level one, you have a level two. What are those skill sets? What do I have to do to get there? And so um that's always the question. And the answer was very, very vague. And I I don't blame any leader for for giving me those answers, but it was usually, well, you know, um it you've been here a while, you step up, you show some initiative, right? It was always uh, you know, there's not one thing you have to do. And um, then I became a leader, and of course I had team members asking me, well, okay, well, what do I need to do to get to level two? What do I need to? And it may not be levels. I want to point that out because some people might go, oh, well, we don't have a ladder like that. It may not be levels, it may be you start out as an application analyst, and then you go to a systems analyst, and then if you're good there, you go to you know, something else. So it could be different positions, but really, what is the pathway to get that team member where they want to be? And as I was taking some courses, um, the Dreyfus um model of skills acquisition came up. I it sounds boring, I know. I I learned about it in nursing school and bachelor's for nursing when I went back for my master's, and um it never really clicked. But once it clicked, it just made so much sense, and and we can get into that. That this is exactly what I need. And this framework that you can build, and in this framework, it works for any industry. You could be a recruiter and you could use it, you could be in banking and you can use it, you could be anywhere because you you develop that framework, and I walk through how to do that, and it will show your team members exactly where they are on that matrix. What do they need to do to get to this point? They can see that. There's also a flip side to that. If you have a team member that has been in their job for a very long time and they feel like they need a promotion because of the length of time in that position, um, it it gives you the ability to have a really productive conversation with that employee. So instead of going, or I shouldn't say team member, I usually don't use the word employee, but if if you work with that team member and you can very clearly show them where they're underperforming, and that gives you the ability to target how do I need to, how do I need to help you to get you where you need to be? So it has um really a lot of value across the board.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, that's really good information in terms of improving yourself, and especially if that is some kind of logic-based, you know, that some kind of logic that you can actually learn and follow to grow as a leader. I mean, absolutely. So yeah, I'll I'll check it out. And related to that, I mean, you know, especially being a leader in uncertain times. Um, so let's talk about that piece, you know, in terms of when systems are down and in health system, more and more every day. We hear about this in the news all the time, and unfortunately, it's because of cyber threats and everything is online. We need to be online, we use technology non-stop. And so I would like to hear, you know, if you have some stories of how the contingency health solution came about and you know the the background of it and then why it does it exist? What does it solve?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'll tell you the story of how it was born. Uh, it was kind of like my book. I'm not an author, it was born out of passion, and so was contingency. Um, so I have been really preoccupied with operational preparedness for several years. Um, in healthcare, we all know that healthcare is one of the most targeted industries when it comes to cyber attacks for a number of reasons. And those attacks and and the impact of those have continued to rise over the years. And I thought to myself, you know, it seems like we're just not ready. When it happens, we we seem to be struggling to find the best way to care for our patients and to keep going. We do the best we can. Um, every hospital, I mean, patients are patient value, patient safety is at their core. So everyone does the best they can. Um, but I want to plan ahead of time so that we're ready. You know, my my dream is that if it happens in 10 years from now, that a COO or a CEO can say, yes, our primary systems are down, um, but we've already prepared for this. And that's that's a big statement to really say that and mean it and have your team members um understand that too, because that is that is preparing intentionally and leading the way. So about a year and a half ago, um, there was a health system, rather large health system that was hit and several of their hospitals, uh, many, many of their hospitals were down. And um I've spoken actually with some of the patients in the hospital that have been host that have been patients, some parents of patients. I've spoken with several uh nurses that have cared through this. I personally have not um worked through that, thankfully. Um, but I do connect and interview and talk a lot to people who have, including CNOs and other healthcare, CIOs, other healthcare professionals. And the story that really made me take action, Vic, um, was it shocked me. So I've never worked in a health system that could lose their call light. Really depends on the call light system that you have. Some of them are server-based, internet-based. And they had lost their internet and they'd lost their nurse call system, which shocked me. Um and a lot of nurses may know this because they may have seen it in the past. But um, so what they did, and and kudos to them for doing, you know, taking action and um you know, doing their best to take care of patients. They went out and they bought bells for the patients to ring, like hotel check-in bells. Um, I've heard that. I've heard other hospitals say the the little hand, you know, handheld bells. Um, but I started picturing this and imagining what this was like because um the nurses are are scared their patients aren't as safe as they could be, um, and they're worried for their own license as well. Um, rightfully so. But if you imagine this picture where they give every patient a hotel check-in bell to ring. Now we can't close the patient's doors because if we close their doors, we can't hear their bells, right? Um, also, it's not ringing the bell once and the nurse comes to your room. Now we're playing Marco Polo.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Right. The patient continues to ring their bell until the nurse shows up because you know she's walking up and down the hallway trying to find the patient's room that's that has the bell ringing. And so finally the nurse is able to identify which room that is. But the nurse doesn't know which which bell is a priority. She doesn't know which patient maybe is a fall risk, and and this is the person, this is the room that the bell is coming from. So she's got to search for it. And this is happening, which just terrifies me. I just I shouldn't say terrify horrified. It's really the way I felt. This horrified me because then you also think about that moment in time that the patient and the nurses, especially the nurses, are going through because they are doing something they may never have done. Uh, I'm a seasoned nurse, I remember the days of paper. Um, but a lot of the nurses that we have on the floor do not. And in fact, talking to a CNO a couple of weeks ago, she said, it seems to be kind of a bit of a Gen X joke online. She said, But I literally had young nurses that could not read cursive. Wow. Yeah. And they don't have electronic mars. They're writing orders, they're, you know, and and not only that, but you think about an order gets written down in the emergency room. They get admitted. Maybe the patient goes to the floor, then to the ICU. Now lab doesn't even know where the patient is. And there's so many stories. I want to, I really want to collect those stories so that they're heard and so that they're not forgotten. And that's maybe an upcoming project. But that is what moved me is that we have to plan for this. We have to be ready for exactly that, and then we're going to expand that. So that's where contingency health solutions was born. It was born out of a passion and knowable need that we need to pick keep our patients safe during those times.
SPEAKER_01:Those are powerful stories. They are. I mean, though, that's you can actually imagine. As you were speaking, I was I was I was trying to like I can actually imagine what that floor looked like and the bells ringing everywhere. Not a good situation. But when there is a downtime, it's definitely not a good situation. So I mean, what's the, you know, how many hospitals are actively thinking about this and preparing for these situations? I would be curious to know in your conversations, you know, as you come across these leaders at conferences or or meetings. Um, yeah, like what what what does that look like?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so it's really interesting. Um, so I've had two speaking engagements at a couple of conferences over the last few months, um, different conferences, all healthcare related, um, different parts of the country. Um, and I'm seeing an increase when I ask who is starting to plan for operational resiliency, who is starting to plan for that and talk about it. And I've I've started to get maybe 40%, maybe 50, 40, 50% of the hospitals start to raise their hands. But when I start asking more about it, which is much more, I should say, much more than it used to be. It used to be like, oh, I don't know, you know, IT plans for that. Um, but when I start asking, it's typically the IT teams that are saying, okay, operationally guys, how are you going to do this? You know, we're going to be busy. And so I often say when anybody asks um operations, well, what happens when all your systems are gone? And they're like, oh, well, we call IT, right? Which I understand. Right. And and let me say, IT is very well aware. They are very focused. Your CIOs, they know your um, you know, CISOs, chief security officers, that they they know that they've got to focus on this. I think that overall um healthcare is with it's it's a target. But when we get there, right, we're that's all about prevention, right? Um, when we get there, when it when it happens, when somebody opens up an email and clicks on a link they think is going to show them their grandkids, and now our entire system's down. IT is busy. IT is working to keep us safe, to make sure nothing or nothing else gets encrypted, to figure out the best way to bring those back up, what's impacted, what's not. So IT is not going to be up on the floor talking to you about how to care for your patient. Um, and so that's really the conversations that need to have happen now. That that intentional preparing for the worst case scenario, because anything less than the worst case scenario, that means you've already planned for it. But it's very, very important. And it's it's there's so many parts and pieces to it. It's hard to wrap your brain around. Um, you know, and and it's it's time to really prepare now, not when it happens.
SPEAKER_01:And I don't think many people, I mean, everyone who, you know, who goes to the hospital can kind of imagine the front lines in terms of yes, you know, there's a nurse who comes and takes care of me, and there's a doctor who comes and talks to me after many hours of waiting, but regardless, um I don't think many people understand the back end piece of it. You know, like there's so much going on behind the scenes. I mean, a lot of my friends, they still may or may not understand what we do. You know, it's like, oh, what do you mean? Like there's integration behind the scenes, like you know, there's hundreds of systems that talk to each other constantly, right? Like they it's very hard to picture all of that. So I think like you were saying, you know, it's it's not just always the clinic, the front end piece of it, but yeah, you need to prepare in terms of when all these back end systems are down, not available, what happens? And and maybe that's what it is. Everything goes into prevention, but how much goes into the actual when it is downtime, unscheduled, or usually, you know, this is more the unscheduled piece of it. Yeah, like that's a preparing for that piece. I don't I don't hear a whole lot of those conversations. I I definitely prevention. And you know, from an IT standpoint, yes, we we are our teams are part of hey, if things go down, let's have a dry run of bringing up everything at our backup site, you know, the disaster recovery drills and all that. But other than that, what is the other, you know, like the actual on the floors and all that? That's what you are talking about here.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. I I I could give you example after example. So for instance, um, radiology. Do you have radiologists? Does the hospital have radiologists across the country that read for them? Which, you know, I remember when that was a new thing, but now it's very common. Well, well, when you're down, you have to have a radiologist in the department, possibly at the modality. So where is that radiologist going to come from? Um, if I bring in people who don't have a who don't have tasks to do, such as, you know, maybe I my my coders don't have anything to code because everything is on paper, and now they're gonna be runners so that they can take orders to the lab and and so on and so forth. Well, how are you gonna pay them um differential for the different shifts? Because they don't typically get that. And so how are you gonna keep track of that? That's you know, another example. There's a ton of examples. Um Pharmacy. Well, we're gonna have to stock up our staff up on pharmacy on pharmacists because now all of our medication dispensing machines can't keep inventory because they're down. Right. So there's just so many pieces and parts. Um, I really part of the the conversation, part of my um speaking engagement was actually about this topic. And um I really encourage everyone um to take back and and say, hey, from a leadership perspective, we need to have a very intense tabletop exercise. Usually the hospitals have had tabletop exercises when it comes to the disaster of the IT department and standing that up. But I'm talking about, okay, you know, let's talk about to our nurse leaders. Um, let's assume that your IV pumps that are integrated are not going to work. Do you have enough dial of flows to use? So it's even, you know, talking about the supply chain. Um, and you know, you may not have a it's another example. I could go on and on, Vic. No, it's good. You know, I want to, I need to order, I need to order supplies. Normally, what do we do? I'm not in supply chain. I can't speak to the details of that, but typically you order all of that online. Oh, well, then fax is something. Well, our faxes are down. Um, so how are we going to order the supplies that we need? So there's so much to think about, and that downtime looks different for um for every healthcare system, every hospital. Even within an ecosystem, a health system, a large health system, each individual hospital's downtime is going to look different. So, for instance, one may have their phones working and their faxes may be working. Well, another hospital down the road, all of that might be server-based. So no phones, no faxes. Uh, I was recently, actually, um, very recently, I think yesterday, talking to directors of informatics. Um, I had about four different hospitals that I was talking to uh in different health systems, and we were talking about downtime that happened that wasn't related to cyber uh events, um, related to other things, some some infrastructure and some some things like that. So, what does that look like? And then have we planned for all of it? Again, if you plan for the worst, hope for the best, you'll be prepared.
SPEAKER_01:Man, I I am learning a lot. Like I I know our listeners will definitely appreciate all the real world stories and and things that you need to think about. How many hospitals or health systems actually have a department allocated to this? Is there is there anyone actually designated to to do this?
SPEAKER_00:I've met one.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Um and uh and it was an unusual set of circumstances that created that position for director of operational resiliency. I don't know that that's next that's the official title. Um spoke with her. She had previously been a CNO who had lived through it. And um we're gonna keep in contact because you know, again, love to bring all these stories together. But um and I I've talked to them about and the people I'm talking to and interviewing and finding out more from, you know, I'm letting them know what we're working on at contingency. How can we help? Um, I spoke about that that horror of the nurse, you know, giving all the patients bells to ring. Um so your your healthcare or your hospital, I'm sorry, your your nurse call system may not go down, but you may lose your intercom. So again, you may lose parts of it, you may lose the whole thing. So what what I started with at Contingency Health Solutions and got a great team, um, not only a team internally, but also a care advisory board, which is clinicians across the country uh that help as well for review and design. Uh, but what we started with was Bell Assist. And so what Bell Assist is, is it's it is a patient communication tool. So the patient can say, Yes, I need help. You'll know where the patient is. Um, and I'm sure one of your questions is, how are you going to be up if all the other systems are down?
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:So um we do approach every design with the assumption that the um the health system, the hospital's internet is down for 30 days or more. So if the internet's down, plan on everything to be down. And if it's more than that, okay, we we've planned for that. If it's less than that, then we've already done we're covered. And so a patient is able to scan a code with their own smart device, um, whatever smart device that is, that's actually connected to a network, like a cellular network or satellite network, and they immediately instantly have that communication tool in their hand. Um, we can mark some of the features I'm really thrilled with is like we can even mark a patient as a fall risk so we can help us prioritize when those call lights go off. Um, we can say a room doesn't have a device, so we can round on that room more frequently and have another plan for that room. Um, and so there's also some communication back and forth. Um, it actually ties in with um our bed management system. Uh so you're you might have your call system, but you may not have your bed management system if all your systems are down. Um, so again, cellular networks, hot spots, we talk with hospitals about um how to accomplish having these applications available. They are um a low integration. So um right now, what when we initially start, there is no PHI, there is no integration, so then it's easier to stand up. Um, we are talking to a few health systems now to get our foundational clients. I'm very excited about that, still looking for more. Um, and then we'll we'll get into the integration. But there'll always be a light integration, right? In healthcare technology, um, we are very proud of our real intense integration, and we should be. It is amazing what we have done over the decades. And everything, every time a hospital brings a new application or a new vendor in, the question is okay, how are we going to integrate this? How are we gonna be a make this a part of a bigger ecosystem so that everything can talk to each other and be together? And but that really tight integration also means that when you lose one, you might lose them all. So um, so we'll be lightly connected with the information we we have. Um, again, you can use these separately or you can use them together. So maybe your intercom goes down, but you would like to have a know why the patient needs some help. You can optimize your work, your um workforce because you can you can say, Well, I need a supply or I need my room clean. Maybe I spilled something, my trash is full. And those can go to the people who need to know. And I don't necessarily need to send a nurse into the room for those things. Um, part of uh the way our applications work together is also for throughput. So, from a nursing perspective, a hospital perspective, throughput really slows down when you don't have all of that integrated system. And so this lets you know which beds are full, which ones are not. Um, as soon as a patient is discharged, housekeeping knows immediately, okay, this is where we need to go. Uh we can see how long it takes us to turn those rooms over. So they really help in their own way separately, but then they work together as well. So those are our first two applications. I'm so, so thrilled to say that they're ready. They're ready to use. And we have some everyday use cases, Vic. Maybe we can go into that if we have time. Um, but then also what we're working on now is the registration piece so that when we're integrated, then we can register patients into that room. Scheduling, we want to know who our patients are two weeks from tomorrow so that we can call them and say, hey, we've prepared for this. We are still gonna see you, we're still gonna be doing your surgery. Please come into the clinic. We have what we need to care for you so we can have that patient communication, individual patient communication if we need to. And then that'll also help our hospitals, if they do go down, um, you know, for whatever reason, it'll help them recover because it takes a long time to manually read, you know, manually admit all of those patients in. And that's really our next step. But let me tell you where I want to go and where the vision started before I pulled back a little bit. Clinical decision support. I want us to have a way to have that automated clinical decision support, even when our primary systems are down. Every hospital, you say, What are you doing during downtime? And they'll say, We go to paper. Paper is the most unsafe way to care for patients, and I want to change that.
SPEAKER_01:That's so is your suite of applications going to like what's the approach there? Are you just going to go by service departments? Like, hey, is the next thing have an application for radiology and then pharmacy and the supply chain? Is that, you know, like, hey, here's all your backup systems when everything is not working, right? Like the main main systems are not working.
SPEAKER_00:Um, I I we are definitely open to where we need to go. We have a lot on our plate from a roadmap development standpoint. Um, you know, again, first two, first two applications, great. Um, then we'll start with integration. Um, and I want to make sure that we've got a way. I'm thinking about the patient. That's that's my first focus, right? Um, what do I need to care literally at the bedside for that patient? Um, and for me, that is order entry, clinical decision support, allergy checking, interaction checking. It's also medication administration because that keeps the patient safe when we have all of that in one place. I'm sure we'll get do documentation, but to your point, there's there's so much to do. So we're gonna focus here first. Um, and we just we want to help health systems, and that's what we're gonna do.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, everything you're talking about makes sense because all those systems that you're mentioning, like our team comes across that every day, right? As we manage integration for all the health, you know, m for many health systems. And yeah, like we do everything we can to make sure it's running and we monitor it proactively using our our AI monitoring now. So it it all makes sense, you know, in your efforts. So it's like, hey, if all the primary systems are down, here's what we what we can do as a contingency plan and make sure that the patient is being taken care of, which is all it's all about at the end of the day. Um yeah, I know, which is and since I brought up AI, is there, I mean, is that can AI help here in any way um in your solutions, you think, in the future as well?
SPEAKER_00:Well, a hundred percent. So there's there's you talk about AI, and there's two pieces to that. There's the preparedness piece. Um, you know, AI won't replace downtime planning, but it can enhance it if used correctly. We won't go into all the the right ways to use um AI.
SPEAKER_01:Um but that's a whole other episode, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That's a whole other episode. Um, but yes, I do think that there's a place for that. Um, you know, a lot of our clinicians now across the country and for the last five plus years um have started relying on ambient AI. I I believe that they will have a piece for that. Um, being able to pull out important pieces of the chart, that's not you know, specific to my applications. I think that from a healthcare perspective and how clinicians can use it, I think that that's one of the great ways that um AI can be used. So there's a lot of those things. Um and being able to, there's a lot from AI. I again, AI, man, like we could talk for an hour, right, about AI. But um, I do think there's a place for it as long as it's used responsibly in the right way. Um I did, I'm gonna segue if you don't mind. Yeah. Um, I did want to mention the everyday use case for uh Bell Assist, which is our patient communication system. I think this is really important and a lot of hospitals aren't aware. And so that's why I want to make sure that we talk about it. Um, I did have a hospital reach out to me because CMS um in July of this year. So we're past this already. In July of this year, part of their um their conditions for participation for the emergency room says that all of your overflow spaces, every patient has to have a communication system. And we there's always overflow, you know, hallway beds. Yeah, you you go into a holiday.
SPEAKER_01:You see the photos in the news and yeah, or social media, look at look where I am. Yeah, okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I was in the emergency room, unfortunately, um, last month, maybe it was the month before. And you know, I I didn't notice them at the time. I dude looking back, but there was these were freestanding EDs just a mile from my house. And there's patients in the hallway, but they don't have a call system. And so CMS has said that's a requirement. So that is definitely an everyday use case where if they scan a code, patients have a call system right in their hand. Um, and it's that easy. And again, no inventory, not none of that to worry about. Um, it's easy to stand up, it's not a lot of infrastructure, um, doesn't have to have any integration. So that's an everyday use case I do want to bring up because I think it's important a lot of hospitals um aren't aware of that. Um, and and converted, you know, any converted clinical space that doesn't have call lights. So it's not, it's not just our solutions are not just a generator for when your primary systems are down, right? Just like a generator, right? Oh, everything goes down, we have a generator. That's really what this is is the background is oh now we have a generator, we can keep going. Um, but there is everyday use cases for it as well.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, might as well use it. It's there, you don't have to wait until everything is down. So no, I I really appreciate all your insights, you know, talking about how to actually maneuver around the downtime operations and making sure patients are taken care of. So as we kind of start closing this, um, you know, I just want to go kind of back a little bit to the leadership part and you know, anything because we have all you know, our listeners, I think many might be in management, but many are not. So I mean, maybe for both, you know, for for everybody. Like, what is you know, any last advice that you would give, you know, for somebody um who is looking to kind of grow into their career and just just being a better leader, you know, is it for me, I would say personally, for me, if I'm I'm a better leader, if I'm cultivating the right relationships, right, with my team members and and with our clients. So, yeah, I mean, if you want to give us some final thoughts about the um the leadership and then maybe a little bit about you know how people can find your your upcoming book and how to reach out to you.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. So um the thing I would say that for team members and leaders is to have the conversation about where the team member wants to go. Um, first time I offered anybody an assistant manager position, they said, Yeah, I don't think I want to be even in leadership because they had been in leadership before. And it didn't occur to me. I'm always the person again, as I said, I think in the beginning, I always wear how do I get to the next place? How do I how do my manager how to become a senior manager? Right. Um and so I would say make sure that you're helping to guide the team member where they want to be. And for team members, talk to your leaders about where you want to go. They they may not know. Um, I I spoke with a CIO recently, and he wants to move into a CFO position. I wouldn't have thought about that. And and so, and that's you know, a different level, but think about you know having that conversation and then talking about okay, what needs to happen to get there. As far as this matrix that I spoke about and what the book is about, from a leader perspective, I think it'll make a lot of sense when you read it. There are a couple of really eye-opener for me. Um, we go through novice to expert. This is what a novice looks like. This is how you lead a novice, this is how you can identify a novice, um, what makes somebody a novice. We go to an advanced beginner, we go through competent, proficient expert. And so we talk about each of those levels. And the the biggest exclamation mark for me was when I um started working at a position I and I'd been doing informatics for a long time. They said, Hey, here you go. We we we coded this piece, and I looked at it and I looked at it, I said I said, it's it it doesn't, it needs more. Great job, it needs more. So they said, Okay, so they they took it away, they brought it back. I looked at it, I said, Great, we're on the right path. We're missing a couple of pieces. This is what I found, and it needs more work. And they worked on it, they brought it back, and they're like, Okay. And I said, All right, and I said, please don't break it. That, and I'll tell you why that was so profound to me, is because as a clinical informaticist, um, and somebody very experienced, you you know it's a it's mantra, right? You don't test something to see if it works, you test it to see if you can break it. That is a proficient skill. That is not a novice or an advanced beginner or even a competent. That is a proficient skill. And so that was kind of an eye-opener of oh, they didn't understand that. Now I teach my team that now. So as you see what that means, it also has helped me to develop team members into that type of understanding and thought process, even before they're trying to become proficient. We start from the beginning. And so some of those rules. So going back to as a team member, you can read the book, you can look at this and talk to your um leaders about how would we how would we fill this out so that I know where I am, because this is where I want to go. And as a leader, you can be proactive to think about your team, the skills, the hard skills, the soft skills will walk you through it. It's a it's a I have been told an easy read. I hope so. Um, and it's not a long book, it's 80 pages, but it gets you what you need. It's packed full of information, so it's a very fast read. Yes, it's it's it's not a long book. Um, I don't think you'll be bored through it, but it'll help you to be able to map out all your team members so that you can see exactly where everyone is. And because we have this and it works so well, when I have somebody that's now mapping and performing at a level two, I can give them and offer them that promotion because I know they're already doing the job. I don't promote somebody into a role and say, Whoa, I hope that they can do everything I'm gonna ask them to do. Um, so it really sets them up for success. And it also, from a HR perspective, gives you a really great um way to discuss why this team member needs a promotion. It's because what they're already doing is that level of work. I don't know if I answered your question, but I'll talk for two hours if you if you let me.
SPEAKER_01:No, I'm loving, I'm I'm learning so much as we continue to go. And and where where can everyone find your book?
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. Um, yes, so uh the print book is already available to order on Amazon. I should have the Kindle version on Amazon very soon. It's also on Lulu Books. Um, and so if you'd like it, go out there and take a look, take a look at it. Um, you know, I I hope you love it. Give me your feedback. Um, you can reach me at Julie at contingencyhealth solutions.com. Happy to take any questions about the book, about contingency planning, um, anything that I can help with. Love to hear from people.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, thanks again for for joining me on this beautiful Friday afternoon and wish you a very amazing happy Thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, happy Thanksgiving. Um, so somebody uh said something to me a couple of days ago that just really stuck with me. And I I really want to pass it along. And it's they said, What if the only thing you had tomorrow was what you thank God for today? It was something. And so with Thanksgiving coming up, and you know, we were really mindful and thankful on Thanksgiving, we should be mindful and thankful every day. Um, just think about that. Think about being thankful for the things that you want to have in your life tomorrow. I thought it was an important message.
SPEAKER_01:That's a beautiful message as we close this out. And thank you again for listening to This Week in Hell Tech. And Julie and I wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_00:Happy Thanksgiving.