Stacking Small Wins for Big Impact: MultiCare’s Playbook for Sustainable Innovation

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[00:00:00] Bradd Busick: So what healthcare has gotten wrong is they’re too slow at applying the lessons from the failures, whereas private sector is expert at that. And I think at some point it only is gonna take one of these to hit. It’ll revolutionize how we. Engage with patients, whether it’s pharmacy delivery at home, you’re seeing Mark Cuban play in the, uh, cost plus drugs. 

[00:00:23] Bradd Busick:  we’re about to go launch drone delivery for, um, facility. and it’s kind of this philosophy of why not us? Like, why not healthcare?

[00:00:32] Bradd Busick: 

[00:00:33] Narrator: From Healthcare IT leaders, you’re listening to Leader to Leader with Paul Cannon Substituting for Ben Hilmes. Our guest today is Bradd Busick, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at MultiCare Health System. With extensive experience in both technology and healthcare, Bradd highlights the importance of getting the foundational tech right before diving into innovation and how he’s using AI to improve patient care and clinician efficiency.

[00:00:59] Narrator: He also talks about leadership emphasizing the value of authentic relationships. Brad’s Insights offer a powerful perspective on how healthcare can evolve through tech without losing sight of the human side of care. 

[00:01:15] Paul Cannon: I’m excited to get to talk to you today, Brad. I, I like talking tech and I like talking healthcare and kinda like the Reese’s Peanut Buttercup. I like it when those two things come together. 

[00:01:25] Paul Cannon: So, tell us a little bit more about MultiCare, and, and what you’re working on.

[00:01:29] Bradd Busick: Yeah, you bet. Well, Paul, thanks for having me. MultiCare is, located in the Pacific Northwest. We’re an integrated, hospital system, so, 13 hospitals. Tons of clinics all over the place. 48, community connect partners that are riding on our instance of Epic. And, lots of really diverse, joint ventures.

[00:01:47] Bradd Busick: all with the premise of expanding access to, to care. And so our demographic of the communities and. Patients we serve. being in the Pacific Northwest, ranges from, eastern Washington, all the way to, you know, your overlake up in Bellevue, which is Microsoft and Amazon and, you know, all of the, major companies that we see in tech, on the headlines every day.

[00:02:10] Paul Cannon: 

[00:02:10] Paul Cannon: as the CIO you, you’re kind of often picked at as the visionary, uh, for a lot of different things, but like what is your organization betting on in the next five years?

[00:02:19] Bradd Busick: The very easy answer would be, oh, we’re betting on ai. The actual, uh, truth is we’re, we’re betting on getting the blocking and tackling right, and blocking and tackling might mean getting out of the technical debt associated with COVID things like technical health platforms sprung up everywhere.

[00:02:36] Bradd Busick: People started putting things on pcards. we want a holistic solution, right? That satisfies many use cases, not just one. we wanna get our data. Right. Um, we actually want to be safe and have platforms that allow us to go and, um, partner, uh, where appropriate, but not introduce us to risk because they don’t have the technical debt or the technical acumen that maybe we do.

[00:02:58] Bradd Busick: And so we’re betting big on those things, uh, in terms of, uh, being able to scale and, um, that’s basically been the continuation of what we’ve done the last five years. And, um, I think that’s going to allow us to do a lot of cool things that. Everybody wants to talk about, uh, ai, et cetera, but, um, I think without the blocking and tackling, you’re, you’re sunk.

[00:03:18] Paul Cannon: No, I, I think that’s correct. everybody wants what?

[00:03:20] Paul Cannon: Sexy and cool, but, uh. You know, the blocking and tackling is the offensive lineman of the group, right? 

[00:03:25] Bradd Busick: It very much is. 

[00:03:30] Bradd Busick: I, I, I think there’s such an interesting play, um, around, One of the teams that is within IS and T at MultiCare. Um, but it, it is 100% the offensive lineman, and that’s our data orchestration team. So these are the folks that are integrating Cerners. They’re doing a data conversion from, you know, Allscripts into Epic when we do an acquisition, they’re the plumbing that makes platforms like Workday and Epic come alive that nobody cares about until it breaks.

[00:03:55] Bradd Busick: Right. And so when you think about trying to plug in an AI solution into rev cycle, or even in the clinic with ambient listening, without interop, none of the rest of it matters. And so trying to make sure that we have a playbook, um, for all of that, because of the diversity of our space, um, is a really cool challenge to have.

[00:04:16] Paul Cannon: Yeah, I totally get it. on our side of it, I always hear, Hey, what are we doing in AI and what are we doing in ai? And I just wanna say we’re doing the stuff that our clients actually want, not necessarily, you know, the thing that that’s sexy at the

[00:04:29] Paul Cannon: time, 

[00:04:30] Bradd Busick: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:04:34] Bradd Busick: I, I would even say, you know, especially in healthcare, since we both, you know, play in this space, I think there’s some healthcare shops that actually don’t even know what they want. And, because of that, they’re actually saying yes to additional technical debt because they’re chasing things and the fruit may not be on the tree.

[00:04:48] Bradd Busick: The sad part is they don’t take a time to rip that tree out. They leave the tree and it becomes a stump and you, you know, hit it the next time you’re trying to mow. And I would say that a lot of healthcare systems are doing just that and they don’t have the governance, they don’t have the talent. Um, in some cases don’t have the money to go do this thoughtfully.

[00:05:07] Paul Cannon: Yeah, I could spend at least the next hour just talking about governance,

[00:05:11] Bradd Busick: Yeah, totally.

[00:05:13] Paul Cannon: kind of in lieu of the time, one of the things that you’re, you’re known for saying is that, you know, home runs are great and that kind of leads into that these home runs, but it’s more important to stack up the singles.

[00:05:22] Paul Cannon: can you kind of describe. That philosophy around getting those single base hits type of deals and feel like we’re on every sports analogy. So far. We’ve got offensive linemen, we got singles and base hits, but uh,

[00:05:32] Bradd Busick: Yeah, for, for if my wife was listening to this, uh, podcast, um, she’d say, I don’t understand any of this sports stuff. Can you guys just talk business please? so let me give you an example of, of a base hit, um, particularly as it relates to, you know, ai. we have gone, um, out of the gate intentionally with a couple of different platforms with the promise being this one.

[00:05:54] Bradd Busick: some of my closest friends are clinicians. Uh, they just happen to work here at. MultiCare and, um, that was true. But long before I, I joined, uh, this organization, so I got to hear a lot about the cognitive burden. you know, these systems are awful to use. There’s way too many clicks. And so that was something that I wanted to, to be able to go and solve.

[00:06:12] Bradd Busick: And so we actually threw some interop around some of these platforms with the promise of one, giving our clinicians time back. Two, having a more intimate conversation with a patient. Right. There’s nothing worse than your wife or my wife going in for an appointment and having her look at the back of a clinician’s head. Why? Because their back is turned to them while they’re typing in Epic or Cerner or whatever it is. So I wanted to alleviate that. And then the third, if we want to scale and we actually want to increase access for more patients, would something like ambient is the promise actually there? Now you and I both know when these things come out, everybody in there.

[00:06:53] Bradd Busick: we actually have gone head to head and seen, byproduct time spent in notes, time spent in charts, velocity of throughput time outside of scheduled hours, and then an overarching utilization. In some cases, we’re seeing up to 25% time reduction in notes.

[00:07:14] Bradd Busick: I never get to see this in it.

[00:07:16] Bradd Busick: So what started as maybe a single, once you get in there, it’s like, oh, maybe I can go steal second. And that’s exactly what’s happening here. We actually think that this capability will go past the doctor. We think it’s gonna go into nursing, and we’re kind of dreaming about The keyboard list clinic where I come in and say, um, okay, epic. Uh, I’m here with Paul. he’s presenting the following symptoms. Paul, tell me what’s going on.

[00:07:43] Paul Cannon: Yeah.

[00:07:43] Bradd Busick: it does it. we are literally right there about ready to take the jump and I, MultiCare is gonna be first.

[00:07:48] Paul Cannon: That’s awesome that I mean it, you talk about that and we do internally as well. And, and you guys are in such a great position to make those things happen ’cause you’re at the bedside. Uh, but just kind of the powers of the LLMs and 

[00:08:01] Bradd Busick: It’s unbelievable. 

[00:08:02] Paul Cannon: It’s, and at so quick. I mean, it’s one of those things where you, it’s, it’s funny ’cause when we talk to our sales folks, a lot of times it’s, Hey, what are we doing in ai?

[00:08:11] Paul Cannon: I’m like, if I told you today I’d be wrong in three months because it, it,

[00:08:16] Paul Cannon: it’s, it’s moving that fast. that’s awesome story. I, I do love it. So, I’ll be interested to see how it, uh, how it plays out for you guys.

[00:08:23] Bradd Busick: Me too. We’re, we’re measuring, early and often, uh, because part of what I think needs to happen here is we need to demystify, you know, the magic of this. And, and I actually do believe it’s gonna become a commodity. I I do think patients will choose to have this because of a more intimate relationship with their provider.

[00:08:42] Bradd Busick: Some of the patient notes that are coming to us after we send out the surveys, They’re heartwarming of, this is the first time I actually got to actually have a conversation with my doctor. This is the first time I actually felt heard, which if I’m talking about, you know, some of the most vulnerable situations people are in and meeting people where they’re at, in even a, you know, marginalized state, you want some intimacy, uh, you don’t want to be scaring out a computer screen.

[00:09:09] Bradd Busick: And so for it to be able to bring that to the clinical community, I. It’s fantastic. One, from a partnership perspective. Two, it fosters trust for the next thing that we might try that may not have the same results as the single. And so, these are all pushing the right way to build more goodwill.

[00:09:27] Paul Cannon: No, I think you’re right. And the intimacy thing is, is super, super important 

[00:09:31] Paul Cannon: kudos to you guys. you spent your entire career in technology, uh, and the last handful of years has been in the healthcare space. I have spent, my entire time in healthcare, uh, technology. 

[00:09:43] Paul Cannon: again, since you have both experiences, what is healthcare getting wrong and what is healthcare getting right.

[00:09:49] Bradd Busick: To jump to the end of the, the movie, The difference, um, or lack thereof between you and I, is that, uh, both of us have no hair, um, are stressed and, um, at least for me, I’ve probably aged more in healthcare than I would’ve and I’ve been outside of healthcare. 

[00:10:03] Bradd Busick: Um, so I, I actually started Paul, uh, the first day of COVID.

[00:10:06] Bradd Busick: I. I 

[00:10:07] Bradd Busick: was in new employee orientation and they, this woman tapped me on the shoulder. She said, excuse me, are you Brad? I said, yeah. And she’s like, we need you in the command center. And I got pulled out and, uh, joined the command. I didn’t even know what that was. The irony was, uh, we stood up a, command center.

[00:10:24] Bradd Busick: We were on the phone with the WHO. I was talking to my old colleagues at the Gates Foundation, and we were all trying to compare notes of what this thing was. And I thought, if you’re an adrenaline junkie. Which I, I kind of am. this is a place to go and, and make an impact. Um, and I’ll tell you, I have seen some of the most, life changing experiences, uh, through rounding, through being in patient rooms, watching, you know, patients, get to say goodbye to their loved ones, uh, on a technology that we provided because they weren’t allowed to go in the room because of COVID.

[00:10:57] Bradd Busick: I would not have gotten that at the Gates Foundation. I would not have gotten that if I was on the payer side of the equation, if I was at Boeing or Ralph Lauren, or I wouldn’t be able to see any of that. and so I will say that healthcare, uh, at the heart level, I think has the ability to rewire you to think different about impact.

[00:11:15] Bradd Busick: What I think healthcare gets wrong is it’s arrogant. Healthcare is arrogant because we look at these large companies like Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, uh, Microsoft, if you follow any journals or LinkedIn, um, we almost celebrate when these companies fail. We’re like, well see. They can’t crack it.

[00:11:38] Bradd Busick: And yet what they don’t realize, Paul, is for Amazon to go lose $4 billion on a, an idea for an urgent care clinic. That’s more than the net revenue of most of the hospital systems on the west coast. And for Amazon, it’s a write off. They’re gonna take those lessons and apply it to their next healthcare venture.

[00:11:58] Bradd Busick: So what healthcare has gotten wrong is they’re too slow at applying the lessons from the failures, whereas private sector is expert at that. And I think at some point it only is gonna take one of these to hit. It’ll revolutionize how we. Engage with patients, whether it’s pharmacy delivery at home, you’re seeing Mark Cuban play in the, uh, cost plus drugs.

[00:12:21] Bradd Busick:  we’re about to go launch drone delivery for, um, facility. and it’s kind of this philosophy of why not us? Like, why not healthcare?

[00:12:30] Bradd Busick: and I’m wildly competitive. I love taking Amazon Outback on this, in my own market.

[00:12:36] Paul Cannon: Yeah.

[00:12:37] Bradd Busick: Our patients deserve it, and they, they’re willing to pay for that on demand delivery of their pharmacy.

[00:12:43] Bradd Busick: Like, who wants to go wait in line with a bunch of sick people for medicine? Nobody. So just deliver it to me wherever I’m at. And so we’re, we’re launching that in about six months.

[00:12:52] Paul Cannon: Awesome. I have a niece and a nephew in Snoqualmie. If you’re looking for

[00:12:56] Bradd Busick: Um, let’s do it. It can go to Salm. It can go to Snoqualmie, 30 miles.

[00:13:01] Paul Cannon: That’s cool. you know, I hadn’t really thought of it from that perspective when you say that healthcare is arrogant. I come from a Cerner lineage, uh, 20 plus years there. Our, our former CEO Neil Patterson was incredible at creating vision. the mantra there was, you know, healthcare is too important to stay the same, but.

[00:13:22] Paul Cannon: You’re right now, looking back on it, we did celebrate when Microsoft got

[00:13:26] Paul Cannon: in and, and screwed it up. 

[00:13:28] Bradd Busick: I would say, I mean, I’m, I’m watching the Oracle, what I’m gonna call the Oracle rebuild really carefully. it’s analogous to SAP. And workday back in the day where Workday was, this small little cloud-based company that’s now turned into a juggernaut and SAP, uh, and Oracle tried to go rebuild from bare metal to, to a cloud-based when you’re cloud native. There’s just a different level of scale and I’m watching what Oracle is doing carefully. it won’t be tomorrow, but it, it will be, in our tenure where Oracle’s gonna grab wild market share because of how elegant interoperability and how seamless it is, because it can scale quicker than Epic or any others.

[00:14:13] Paul Cannon: good insight. I, like I said, I hadn’t thought of that perspective and all those years I was part of the problem and didn’t even realize it.

[00:14:20] Paul Cannon: But you’re right, like

[00:14:21] Paul Cannon: we 

[00:14:22] Bradd Busick: be.

[00:14:22] Bradd Busick: 

[00:14:22] Bradd Busick: I’m pretty bullish on, uh, a partnership model I mean, and I say this to our board and, and to our leadership team a lot, MultiCare, and I don’t care if you’re Providence, if you’re Banner, it doesn’t matter. Intermountain Paul, we’re never gonna have the amount of people focused on security as Microsoft is, as Amazon is, or we’re never gonna have the, the amount of people that Google has to focus on engineering.

[00:14:49] Bradd Busick: why would we be in that game?

[00:14:51] Bradd Busick: So we’re, we’re very bullish on partnering where appropriate. I think intellectual arrogance will become the downfall of, of healthcare if we can’t, get our head on straight here and figure out where to partner.

[00:15:01] Paul Cannon: Well, yeah, I totally, totally agree.

[00:15:03] Bradd Busick: so can you tell me a little bit aboutwhat’s your feelings on leadership in general?

[00:15:08] Bradd Busick: I want to be the kind of leader that I would want for myself, 

[00:15:13] Bradd Busick: and that doesn’t mean I’m always right, but that does mean caring about your team, understanding what’s happening in their lives 

[00:15:20] Bradd Busick: wanting them to climb as high as they wanna climb, make as much as they wanna make, even if that means it’s outside of your own team. And I don’t think that philosophy is shared by a lot of people. and yet I will say that’s a very healthcare centric lens to want to protect it and keep it in-house.

[00:15:38] Bradd Busick: And I don’t come from healthcare. And so I want people to go do what gives them life. And if that means outside of my team, I’m gonna help ’em get there.

[00:15:45] Paul Cannon: Yeah, I love that philosophy. Our, uh, our CEO here at healthcare IT Z is the reason why I’m here. Just a good human being. part of his philosophy is very similar to like, I. You put your, your needs aside for the greater good and in the end it’s a weird thing. ’cause selfishly it ends up feeling better for you at the end, right?

[00:16:06] Bradd Busick: It does. I get a lot of joy. I mean, I, I think we’ve launched out of my own team in five years. four other CIOs.

[00:16:14] Bradd Busick: and there’s a super cool, you know, back to the sports analogy, I’m, I’ll never forget watching the show, uh, watching football with my dad, and there was a picture of Mike Holmgren in Green Bay standing with his offensive coordinators and defensive coordinators in his living room in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

[00:16:29] Bradd Busick: And, um, at that time, Al Michaels did a spotlight on all of those people that are now head coaches, owners, co-owners. And I was like. that to me is the definition of being a force multiplier. So am I sad that I don’t have that bench, uh, on my own team? Yeah. I mean, there’s certainly gaps that talents and gifts that those people had, they’re now leading in the same exact way in their own organizations.

[00:16:55] Bradd Busick: And, I love that. That to me, might be the most rewarding piece of all of 

[00:16:59] Paul Cannon: sure, sure. Yeah. I mean, you want a legacy. 

[00:17:02] Bradd Busick: Yep. 

[00:17:02] Paul Cannon: It’s your, it’s your, tree.

[00:17:04] Paul Cannon: as we wrap this up, I kinda like one of your, your lines and I’d love to learn more about that philosophy behind it, wanting more for your team than from your team. 

[00:17:13] Paul Cannon: It says so, so much in just such a great little line. I actually wanna use it for my kids, 

[00:17:19] Bradd Busick: I think this. pertains both, you know, professionally and, and personally. Um, I think it just as a philosophy and leadership style, if I’m blurring those lines, uh, that actually means I’m doing it right, and I’ll give you a real life example. I, you know, my dad passed away, um, this weekend.

[00:17:35] Bradd Busick: And, uh, the first notes that I got were from my teammates. Why? Because they knew step by step. What was happening, for the last four years, the power of being known, you can’t underestimate it. And the sad part is most people have never experienced it. And so when you zoom out at a transactional level, once you’ve had a taste of what it looks like to actually have an authentic relationship with your team, when you deal with someone that’s transactional, it’s like you puke in your mouth.

[00:18:07] Bradd Busick: nobody wants it. I don’t want it. And as a matter of fact, when I see transactional leaders, and You look at if the company’s performance, most of the time it’s why they’re failing. And so it’s not lost on me if I go zoom out and I look at, culture surveys for different teams around organizations.

[00:18:26] Bradd Busick: Those that have the best scores, have the best leaders. 

[00:18:29] Paul Cannon: Yeah. 

[00:18:30] Bradd Busick: if you adhere to this idea of wanting more for your team than from them it means one, I’m never gonna ask someone on my team to do something I wouldn’t do myself. people know when you want them to grow. That means if I want them to go get another degree, if, if I wanna go help them do that.

[00:18:46] Bradd Busick: and I think people feel that authenticity and as a result, all boats rise. We go faster, further, um, and harder. And um, that’s been true in my own journey with my team and it’s why MultiCare is it team is where it is right now.

[00:19:00] Paul Cannon: Without a doubt. Um, totally agree. it’s super important. Uh, your team’s lucky to have you.

[00:19:04] Paul Cannon: Well, Brad, thanks again for everything today. Uh, super inspiring on, on, not just kind of what you’re doing with the drones. Again, I’ll, I’ll pass you those resumes

[00:19:13] Paul Cannon: for the 

[00:19:13] Paul Cannon: kids. 

[00:19:14] Bradd Busick: do.

[00:19:15] Paul Cannon: but really on the leadership side of it, Again, you want a legacy. It’s not about the code you wrote, uh, it’s not about the IT piece that you did.

[00:19:22] Paul Cannon: it’s about the people that you impacted and, and as a multiplier. I, I love that story. So thanks again. I 

[00:19:27] Bradd Busick: thank you. No, thanks for having me. Good to be with you.

[00:19:33] Paul Cannon: ​Bradd is doing incredible work with MultiCare and shared some great insight into the evolving relationship between healthcare and technology. Here are a few key takeaways from our conversation. One, while AI holds great promise, healthcare organizations must first tackle the basics such as clearing, technical debt, establishing robust platforms, and ensuring data integrity.

[00:19:55] Paul Cannon: Okay. Without these critical building blocks, scaling innovation will be a challenge. Two. MultiCare is leveraging AI strategically with a focus on easing the cognitive burden for clinicians, strengthening the personal connection between providers and patients, and increasing access to quality care. Three, Bradd believes in wanting more for his team than from them.

[00:20:19] Paul Cannon: His approach centers on building authentic relationships. Mentoring the next generation and supporting his team members’ growth, even if that means seeing them thrive beyond the organization. What are your thoughts on Brad’s approach? Share your thoughts with us on social media or contact us via our website@healthcareitleaders.com.

[00:20:41] Narrator: Thanks for joining us for Leader to Leader. To learn more about how to fuel your own personal leadership journey through the healthcare industry, visit healthcareitleaders. com. Don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss any insights and we’ll see you on the next episode.