Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: You're listening to the Doc Lounge podcast. This is a place for candid conversations with the healthcare industry's top physicians, executives and thought leaders.
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[00:00:21] Speaker B: Welcome to the Doc Lounge podcast, where we dive deep into the world of healthcare with industry leaders and innovators. I'm your host, Stacey Doyle. And in today's episode, we're joined by Alan Cooper, the co founder and CEO of Readylist, Inc. Readilist is revolutionizing hospital operations with its mobile friendly software that guides support service teams through best practice cleaning and room preparation protocols. This not only ensures cleaner and safer facilities for patients and staff, but also helps hospital systems save money and time, ultimately improving patient outcomes. Alan is a passionate advocate for helping the behind the scenes workers in hospitals, and through his leadership at Readylist and encelaventures, he's driving innovation in healthcare. Join us as we explore Alan's journey, the impact of readylist on hospital operations and its insights on the future of healthcare.
Welcome, Alan.
[00:01:13] Speaker C: Yeah, well, thanks for having me on. Appreciate that.
[00:01:17] Speaker D: Tell us a little bit, how did you, you know, get into this, this line of work? It's very interesting and I know you have a background that's more tech focused, so give us some information.
[00:01:29] Speaker C: Yeah, it kind of started out with kind of the quality world initially about 17 years ago, where we are focusing on quality of care, how do we improve that type of lens? And, you know, worked a lot with the ehrs and the like. And probably about ten years ago, as we're doing that work, one of our colleagues approached us with an idea that he came to us and said, basically we have a new hospital that's coming up and we're looking to try and transform this as kind of a new way of operating in the background in operations. And he asked us to put together and create a software that helps support the hospital services in the background. So we were fitted and understood the hospital healthcare industry and this was a great opportunity for us to dig even deeper with someone that was a knowledge experts in this space and got us involved. So that's probably been about ten years.
[00:02:29] Speaker D: Ago, so I love that. And so tell us kind of what, what does readylist do? Just tell our audience because they might not be familiar about, you know, how you guys set this up and how it works.
[00:02:44] Speaker C: Sure. Yeah. So at the end of the day, it's kind of a system that's kind of tailored towards operation and services in the kind of like supporting kind of the front end of patient services. So at the end of the day, we look at it like doctors, providers and the like, and even administrators at that point, leverage, you know, ehr. And that's how they kind of manage and treat their patients. And basically that's kind of the Bible of how they actually do and conduct their work. And, you know, basically have all their data related to their patients. What's kind of missing is the other end of it is since there's services out there that have to kind of support the well being of the patients, the rooms and the like. To support the patients, we created a software that kind of helps that side of the world be able to be more effective, efficient, and basically accountable, to be able to do the right things consistently, the right times. And so the software itself actually provides a dashboard for the supervisors and managers to be able to actually understand the landscape of their hospital. Where are rooms being turned over and cleaned, where are the floors and all that stuff being conducted and cleaned. And at the end of the day, it gives them a high level lens of what actually is happening in my hospital at any given time of the day. And it enables actually the cleaners themselves and the floor cleaners themselves to be able to actually be instructed actually what is expected of me for this particular activity. And it really kind of elevates their job in some ways, you know, and instead of just my muscle memory of the head and remembering everything to do, each room in a hospital is different.
There's units that are completely different than the other units, and there are different expectations on those particular floors. And to expect any individual to remember that day over day is challenging, especially when you're new. So at the end of the day, it's an all encompassing software that helps the services team to be able to operate and clean and turn over rooms effectively and, you know, efficiently.
[00:04:59] Speaker D: So I love that. So is, I'm assuming, is there some type of kind of check in system or how does it work once, you know, once somebody comes in and they performed the cleaning service, how does it work from their end?
[00:05:16] Speaker C: Yeah. So depending on what is the activity itself, whether it's a discharge clean where a patient leaves the room and it has to be turned over and cleaned for the next patient, or just like a typical daily clean that just patients in the room, and you got to be able to do the appropriate things at the end of the day. You know, the cleaners themselves actually have a checklist, electronic checklist that allows them to understand exactly what they have to do for the type of clean and the activity for that particular moment. So it kind of takes away the guesswork and takes away the subjectivity. And I think sometimes the subjectivity of any types of work or task sometimes doesn't always go as expected. And this kind of objectives inject objectiveness into it, which is pretty powerful. And then it also enables the managers and the supervisors that are trying to work with their staff to know exactly where are their areas of opportunity. Where do we see some low hanging fruits of things that need to be adjusted or corrected in these activities? Right. Maybe there's. Because that's the nice thing about this. There provides a lot of reports in the light that because you have data now, right. And some of these non electronic systems, it's hard to gather the data to really make effective theories on what is really going on in my hospital.
[00:06:42] Speaker D: So this is where I think software can really kind of help, you know, hospital systems and manage, you know, from a financial, from, you know, a time and really from a, you know, saving lives of patient standpoint. So I think that, you know, is such a great thing. And I wanted to share that with, you know, our audience, anybody that's within, you know, the hospital and healthcare system, you know, space. But tell us, I mean, has there been a story where readylist, you know, really significantly improved, you know, the outcomes in a hospital setting?
[00:07:22] Speaker C: Yeah, we have a few clients.
Most actually fall into this space. But, you know, the more common story is, is that hospitals are audited in certain areas. And what one of them is the cleansiness of their hospital? Are they doing the right things and the right protocols to be able to show external auditors that they actually meet the compliance that's required to minimize infections. And our software basically does two things. One is it provides the data readily available to the managers and the directors to give to these auditors to show that, you know what, we're actually taking the one extra step here, that actually we're documenting everything we're doing. And, you know, we may not be perfect at times and that's where kind of inspections come into play and we course correct. But at the end of the day, we document everything we're doing here and we, you know, you can kind of see that at the end of the day we're progressing and be able to turn over our rooms in a way that's minimizing the infection stuff because that's kind of what they care about is we don't want to have inpatient types of infections coming and transferring between patients. Like that's, you know, that's not a good practice. And that's not going to help the hospital in terms of, like, their HCAP scores and alike. You know, like, patients are going to notice those types of things and they may be leery to want to either have an operation there or stay there, unless, of course, they have no other option. So at the end of the day, like some of the success stories are, is we get those feedbacks of, you know, we're so grateful to have this information, this system, to be able to be able to manage through these types of things, which typically, typically takes two or three months for them to organize. And with our software, it literally takes hours, like, for them to be able to pull together information. So that saves a lot of time for those that have to deal with those situations. That's one success story. The other one that kind of comes to mind is when we work with some of our clients, they start to uncover things with our tool in terms of their workflow and their processes and even their individuals that uncover new opportunities for them. And they wouldn't have known these things if they didn't have the data to understand these opportunities. So when we hear these types of things, they come back to us with, listen, can your software do this, that and the other, like, well, it doesn't right now, but we can work with you guys to extend something and actually create an additional module that then is encompassing into the existing system itself. And they're really appreciative how flexible and agile we are with working with them to satisfy some of their core challenges that they sometimes face. But just having the starting point to understand data, to formulate where there is opportunities of itself has proven to be very beneficial to them.
[00:10:26] Speaker D: I love hearing kind of the impact that it's made. Do we know off the top of our hand how many hospital acquired, you know, infections come from kind of not cleaning the rooms? There's stats around that.
[00:10:42] Speaker C: There, there is. And, you know, at the end of the day, like, most of it is probably transferred, transferred through operations. You know, that's kind of the bigger one because that's where a lot of the, you know, you're opening up procedures and a lot of like, you know, the blood and all that stuff that comes out, like, you know, it's easier to transfer those things. And if it's not cleaned up appropriately, you know, that that impacts the patient. Unfortunately, when they're kind of going through something, trying to fix themselves and they actually kind of come away with a worse situation at times in terms of percentages, you know, I don't have it offhand but it definitely probably ranges around 30% to 40% is dictated on cleaning the rooms and be able to actually cleaning the, you know, some of our application allows you to actually make sure you have the right tools in place, and those are clean as well. So, and that's when the operating room, it really impacts it. But even when they're after operation, post operations, they're going into a room, and that room better be clean because they're probably more vulnerable as a patient after operations.
[00:11:48] Speaker D: That makes a lot of, a lot of sense. Tell us a little bit, what are some of the key benefits of integrating, you know, your software solution, you know, to really guide patient care? Like, how do you speak to, when you're speaking to a hospital healthcare system.
[00:12:08] Speaker C: How do you address that for patient care? Everything about this, the end result is about the patient from our standpoint, is how can we create tools to help support the services area, to be able to actually make meaningful change and beneficial stuff for the patient. Because the whole point of a hospital is to manage and treat a patient at a highest level. And if the providers do their job, which they do, the service people have to do their job, but they also have to be equipped with the right systems and tools to do it effectively and efficiently, consistently, every single time. So from our standpoint, you know, gathering the data to be able to understand exactly what is going on and give the managers the ability to feel as if they have control over their situation. And what I mean by that is if they don't exactly understand kind of which rooms are being cleaned and what types of cleans are being happened and which resources are doing what, it's very hard for you to make any material changes in your people and even your processes when you don't feel you have a sense of control. And I think that's kind of the biggest thing, is giving and enabling these managers and supervisors with something that allows them to direct their team appropriately in some ways.
When there's an emergency happening in a given room, especially with the COVID and the like, if you're not going to the right room at the right time, that also is a big impact on some patients that are vulnerable. And I think integrating a software like this enables them to be able to do it efficiently in a way that is reliable at the end of the day. So for me, data is such a big thing. I also think that onboarding is a big one. There's a labor shortages in hospitals, as you probably have talked to many others about, and it's across the board, it's providers. It's the doctors, it's the staff that supports them as well. And trying to get some of those service individuals to be trained effectively the right way and be able to onboard quickly is very important. And if you can't do that, it just delays everything. And it takes additional resources to do what could be done with one resource. So the table, the system kind of enables them to be able to do that more efficiently and effectively. And it's like, it's one of those things where it's like, you know, you can be trained one time, you may comprehend 20% of what, you know, did training. If you don't have this reoccurring training going on, which our system inherently does, you literally have to look at what you're doing every single time you do it. Eventually, you know, you're going to be trained faster and you're going to be trained with best practices is which we're trying to ingrain.
And we also like, look out there and work with our hospitals. What are the protocols that are changing so that we can bake those into our system? So then they have real time change happening versus trying to course correct individuals. When, you know, when you're in a routine inherently, it's hard to change. Right. And if you don't have something in your face trying to kind of like, effectively push you to that change, you sometimes do backwards types of things and you don't even know it.
[00:15:49] Speaker D: Got it. That, I mean, when you're talking about the shortage, you know, obviously we talk about that all the time on the physician side of things, but it's really interesting to hear that obviously that's. There's the same thing that's happening with the support staff, like you mentioned. So the ability to ramp up, you know, those team members in a quick and efficient manner, I could see would really, really benefit a lot of these healthcare systems and hospitals.
I also had a question for you in regarding.
Obviously, the software will help.
Everybody who's managing a healthcare system or hospital is running a business. And so with that comes obviously the need to want to balance and be profitable. So how does ready list help hospitals minimize profit leaks?
[00:16:46] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, to me, I look at profit leak in many different ways. You know, either profit leak of you're not managing things enough to know that, you know, we're doing things that are being more costly and they could be avoided. They also are profit opportunities. Right. And I call those kind of leaks as well, where you missed an opportunity. And guess what? You can't get it back right. And so we kind of COVID both ends of the spectrum on that. So from a cost perspective, our goal is to provide a way for the cleaners themselves to actually do their job faster and more efficient because they know exactly what is expected from them and there's no guesswork. They just have to look at the thing and eventually muscle memory comes into play and they can do it faster and more efficient.
The other thing that I look at is when the supervisors and managers are actually overseeing their staff and they do inspections on some of these rooms, they can actually give real time feedback to the cleaners on any areas that could be done better. And sometimes it's a personnel thing, sometimes it's activity that maybe it's not very clear to them and they notice it across the board that like, you know, 90% of people doing this particular action are doing it wrong. Well, is it really the cleaner at this point or is it the action? And maybe the action needs to be evaluated, right. So at that point, in terms of like the, the profit leak is like trying to not redo things is a big thing, right. So, like when you clean a room, we want it done right the first time. And if you have to go back and clean it again, that's, that's inefficient. Right. That's an additional cost that took away something else being done that can't be done now, or you're making the supervisor. And that's sometimes what happens. Sometimes the supervisor's already there and they'll clean it. A supervisor is more costly than a cleaner. So now you're having someone at a higher price point doing something that someone else should be doing. Or in some cases, nurses, you know, and the nurses are now being taken away from treating the patient because the, the room was not turned over correctly. It's missing either equipment or it's just poorly, you know, clean in the first place, or it's not, at least to the expectations of nurses. So now you take away a nurse from treating the patient to do something that should have been done right the first time. So those are kind of like three different areas from a purely a cost perspective, if you look at from a profit perspective opportunity, I look at it as when surgeons, you know, in the or room, if there's planned surgery supposed to happen at 05:00 a.m. in the morning and there, and let's just say there's eight operating rooms that need to be cleaned. If those are not done in time, well, they may have to cancel that and guess what? That is gone. You can't recover from that surgery again because now you have to reschedule and that one slots can be taken up from something else. So that's that missed opportunity that the hospital doesn't gain and you can't get it back. I mean, it's at that time is gone. So making sure that those things are ready to go. So when the surgery is ready to happen, that part is behind them. And they don't have to worry about that now. They can just focus on the patient itself and do what's necessary to get that job done. So I kind of look at it as either profit opportunity that's missed or the cost part of it that could be more tightened up.
[00:20:23] Speaker D: Smart way to look at it. What advice do you have for hospital leaders that are looking to implement new technology solutions to improve their facilities operations?
[00:20:35] Speaker C: Yeah, what I've seen, and this is probably more common knowledge than not, but I'll just reiterate what my point of view is, is that if it's not bought in from the top down, it's probably not going to work very well. And the reason for that is that there's not going to be enough support from the top to ensure that it's being implemented successfully. And then also once it's implemented, it actually still is being used thereafter. And if, you know, call it directors or managers and the like are not supportive of this thing, then people that are actually using the tool on a daily basis will stop using it because they feel like they don't have to use it. So if it's not bought in from the top and really kind of supported with resources, you know, resources could mean many things, it could mean additional tools, more people.
And a lot of that is really kind of the, kind of like the onboarding part of it, and then they should be shut away thereafter. Right. But if it's not supported to be successful, more times than not, any technology type of thing is going to not work and it's going to fail and it's going to. What's going to happen is that the tool itself is going to be looked at as well. We shouldn't have bought this tool, and sometimes that's the case, but many times if it's not supported from top down, it's really that engagement and the backing of it that ends up failing the tool itself. So for me, I look at it as that. The other piece is if you got the support from above and everyone's supporting, and this is a mission critical touch of thing that we're going to go across the system with is evaluate your people and your process as well. Don't assume just because you throw technology in the place that's going to fix everything. Sometimes technology is going to highlight things that are not working appropriately in the first place, and you may not even know that until you actually kind of get into the role of implementing a technology. So I think evaluating basically all three, I kind of look at like a three legged stool, right? One of those things falls apart, the whole stool falls down. So for me, embracing the other areas is just as meaningful as the technology itself.
[00:22:58] Speaker D: That's super helpful, and I think that will resonate with our audience of just getting that bind for really to become a successful implementation and something that the whole team embraces.
Want to switch gears a little bit now and just pick your brain a little bit. Obviously, as an entrepreneur, how do you approach guiding your team to come up with these software solutions that really kind of meet the unique needs of all the different healthcare facilities that you're working with?
[00:23:29] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I'd like to take credit that we have this little R and D arm that's coming up with all these things. And to be frank, we're constantly working with our clients that together we kind of formulate ideas and we have such a good connection with our clients. Kind of look at as business partners, they're constantly, like I said, uncovering opportunities that can make their lives a lot better and the patient's life better and increase their HCAP scores. A lot of it comes driven, just being close knit with them. And, you know, sometimes they'll come up with something and then from that something we'll actually say, well, have you thought of this? And it's a very good collaboration between our clients and us on that. And I definitely empower the team to do that. Like I said, don't wait for me. I encourage them to constantly find ways to support our clients, and sometimes out of that comes new technology that helps evolve our system, but it also benefits our clients and then future ones that matter.
And we like that. I mean, we are very engaging with our clients. That's just kind of how we are, and it really aligns with our culture.
[00:24:46] Speaker D: You get the best ideas probably from that strong partnership and really building together and then obviously getting their feedback and then optimizing and innovating, which is what I love about ready list and all that you guys are doing. I want to give you the opportunity to tell our audience how, you know, if they want to explore and learn more about readylist and see if it's something that would, you know, fit for their facility. How do they go about doing that?
[00:25:16] Speaker C: Yeah, they can just go to readylist.com and, you know, that's an opportunity. Or they can. LinkedIn with me as well at Alan Cooper.
I also, we are also trying to push out, you know, not to plug this, but part of me when I, when we're working with our clients, we're constantly trying to, you know, increase and improve our technology, but sometimes we're looking to see how we can help improve their people. And so, you know, I always kind of offer, like, more leadership types of skills and training for some of the middle managers and even sometimes directors, because some of the people in these spaces, not all, but some of them actually kind of, like, evolve in their career, starting from sometimes a cleaner or a supervisor. And I think some of those individuals that kind of go into that path have a strong passion to grow into this. And I've seen it, and it's awesome because it's really, they care about their career and they're looking at it more than just a job.
And sometimes they're just not sure, like, what are the good best practices of leading? How do I make sure that my team actually buys into what I'm trying to tell them? Because it's hard. And if you don't know the right techniques to kind of do that, you may not get the results you're hoping for. And so we are, you know, we just kind of opened up a new website called EV's Navigator that we encourage, you know, managers and directors to kind of like, sign up for like 2230 minutes sessions with me. It's free. You know, it's really just kind of digesting kind of. Where are some of your challenges? And kind of debriefing on that and then doing a follow up to really provide them some really good guidance that they may sometimes hard to get and not everywhere gets it, but some are challenged by that. So it's also an avenue that I would encourage, if you're in that scenario, to go to. So.
[00:27:22] Speaker D: Oh, that's really, that's really neat. So that's Ev's dot.
[00:27:25] Speaker C: You said it's evs navigator.com.
[00:27:29] Speaker D: Okay. Evsnavigator.com. okay. That's amazing. Yeah. I think that I love that you are investing and giving back and you're seeing kind of people from where they're starting, like you said, a cleaner supervisor, and they want that upward career trajectory and how to go about doing that. So love those resources. We'll definitely share the links out with our audience but really wanted to thank you, Alan, for your time and just, you know, obviously sharing this fascinating world that, you know, I don't think everybody always knows what goes on behind the scenes to create safe, you know, safe hospital settings. And it's really great to learn about it from you and all the software technology that you're creating to lead and make sure that we are all safe.
[00:28:20] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, Stacey, appreciate you inviting me on. It's been a pleasure and I love talking about this stuff because it's a passion of this area. So thank you very much.
[00:28:31] Speaker D: Thank you so much.
[00:28:33] Speaker A: Thank you to all of our listeners. If you would like to be notified when new episodes air, make sure to hit that subscribe button. And a big thank you to Pacific companies. Without you guys, this podcast would not be possible. If you would like to be a guest, please go to www.pacificcompanies.com.
[00:28:51] Speaker B: Thank you.
