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Executive Interview: The Importance of Community-Driven Care with Leigh Williams

[00:00:00] MEDITECH empowers healthcare organizations around the globe to expand their vision. of what's possible with Expanse, the intelligent EHR platform. Expanse answers the demands of an overburdened workforce with personalized workflows, interoperable systems, and innovative AI applications, all working together to drive better patient outcomes.

Discover why healthcare organizations of all types and sizes choose Expanse to meet the challenges of the new era in healthcare. Visit EHR. MEDITECH.c Com to learn more.

GMT20250714-172930_Recording: I'm Sarah Richardson, a principal here at this week Health where our mission is healthcare transformation powered by community. Welcome to this executive interview, candid conversations about leading with purpose.

Let's connect.

Sarah Richardson: Thank you for joining us on Flourish, where we spotlight healthcare leaders driving transformation, and today's conversation is with Leigh Williams from Augusta Health.

We're gonna focus on [00:01:00] leadership in healthcare it and her partnership with MEDITECH. Leigh, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me here. I'm really glad to talk with you today. We're thrilled to have you here as well, and please tell us a bit about yourself and also Augusta Health. Yeah, so

Leigh Williams: my name is Leigh Williams and I'm the CIO and Vice President at Augusta Health.

We are a 255 bed community hospital and health system with about 30 clinic locations in Central Virginia in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley. We are an independent community health system, so we are of the community, for the community by the community, and very tied into providing healthcare services for Central Virginia.

I've been with the organization for five years now. My career has been in academic medical centers. I love being at Augusta Health because we are very mission driven. We are very successful in that mission, and right now I have the. Absolute honor of leading the [00:02:00] EHR implementation. We're putting in MEDITECH's Expanse product to go live next June, which is 188 days from today if anyone is counting.

So next June, first we go live on a new EHR.

Sarah Richardson: That'll be such an exciting milestone for the organization, especially with such an advanced new product from MEDITECH and really being able to harness everything that they are bringing to the table. Healthcare leaders today. Navigate so many challenges.

How do you and your team stay positive and also lead effectively during a time of not just the digital transformation, but also something like an EHR transformation?

Leigh Williams: Yeah, so I, I do a lot of organizational change management and trying to figure out how to do that very difficult thing. I think the last five years have been tough for everyone.

There's been a lot of challenges, whether they are pandemics or it is budget constraints or changing regulations rapid. Evolution of technologies. We've had bursts of AI [00:03:00] and different tools become available, and so many pressures in healthcare to do everything faster, better, and cheaper. So one thing that I work with my team on is to get really excited about the work that we're doing.

There are so few levers that our organization, that any healthcare organization has to be able to say. We're gonna scale that up. We're gonna do more, and we're gonna do it with the workforce we have. We're facing workforce shortages, so we want to not just throw a whole bunch of bodies at something, but be able to scale while constraining some of the, constraining the costs and that.

Gap is difficult to solve with things other than technology. So I talk to the team and we get really excited about why are we doing this

[Mic bleed]

What impact is it going to have on our community? What's it going to have on our caregivers, our team members here within the organization? For our patients and then for the health of our community, and it's an exciting [00:04:00] time.

There are so many things that we are transforming based on the technologies that we have today here in 2025. So I look at it as a gift, an opportunity to leverage technologies that simply have not existed before and be able to move us meaningfully forward in our journey to cut costs and yet provide even more and better services.

Sarah Richardson: I am so grateful you leaned into organizational change management. I actually consider that the most important aspect of how to implement the right solutions at the right time and get people to feel like they're coming along with it and understanding how it impacts, especially in rural healthcare because.

Expenses increase reimbursement changes. There's this constant growing concern about sustainability of rural healthcare today. In addition to using OCM and doing new digital transformation initiatives, what are some of the innovative strategies and funding efforts that are helping rural systems remain viable and effective?

Leigh Williams: Yeah, so we [00:05:00] really are focused on value statements and making sure that we understand the purpose of the work. What problem are we trying to solve, what value are we going to bring? And then when we understand the problem plus solution for the value, then it helps us to identify is this potentially something that could have grant funding?

So we do actively write grants. Continuously looking for funding sources, but they really deeply need to understand what the work is supposed to have an impact, like what is the outcome going to be. We also have the Augusta Health Foundation, which has been for many years, funding. Our health system based on the priorities of the team members who work here and the people that belong to the foundation.

So we have a community led board, and the foundation can be an incredible fundraising powerhouse for us. Most recently. One initiative that we had that the foundation was able to support was the neighborhood [00:06:00] clinic. So Augusta Health has a mobile, we have an rv and the foundation bought us that rv and it, what we do is we take the clinic to people.

So we partner with over 30 different local organizations in, supporting LGBTQIA plus communities. We support Latino communities, immigrant communities, different people that are unhoused at the moment, people that are facing behavioral health challenges. And we bring the clinic literally to the location where that community has said would work best for them.

And it's really been helping us to identify within the county, within our community, where are these services needed? Where do we have any gaps in being able to get into a clinic? So being able to pull the clinic up to a church or to a community center or homeless shelter, that enables us to bring that care out.

And the foundation was critical in providing the funding to be able to do that pop-up clinic model. [00:07:00] Beyond that, we are very focused on stewardship and making sure that every investment we do with the operational dollars and capital dollars that we have within the health system are focused on the main,

[Mic bleed]

metrics that we're working on to improve, and that it really is targeted towards our priorities.

Sarah Richardson: You cover so many aspects of what I see as a key. Reason why we need to have these community based healthcare organizations, because what you've described and how you're reaching your patients and your populations is a universal need.

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But so many organizations today have to reevaluate their environment.

They have to merge or affiliate with somebody else. What does that independence mean for you as a community-based and independent healthcare organization?

Leigh Williams: That is a great question. When I first, became a vice president here it was, I knew that Augusta Health had a really strong sense of independence, that it is a very important value for us.

And one of the things that I needed to [00:08:00] do was listen and learn about why. Why does it matter? Who cares if you're independent? Right? Like, what is that doing for us? And it, over the last few years, it's become really. remarkable to me how entrenched the independence is in our culture because it is one of the key factors that allows us to deliver healthcare based on the specific needs of this community.

So we are able to be nimble and respond like our COVID Vaccine campaign that we responded to. We had drive through clinics and physicians in parking lots, reaching through car doors and all of that. We were able to mobilize very rapidly because we looked at data, we're very data driven. Where do we need to have these services for the community and can make really good decisions for what's right for the people here.

And so we firmly believe that. By being independent and being focused on this one patient population that is, like I said, of us, for us by us [00:09:00] that community gets the very best targeted healthcare services that meet their needs. And so it's not simply independence because it seems nice, it's a nice moniker.

It truly is reflecting our commitment to bring valuable healthcare services right here in Augusta County to this population.

Sarah Richardson: With healthcare, always being local and building that trust with your community. Sometimes you're the only game in town and you don't wanna be the health system that of last resort.

People have to go there. Right? You have built this promise and this trust within your community. How does your organization create that understanding of what they need and respond to them with the timely services and access that's so important to their wellbeing?

Leigh Williams: Yeah, so we do a lot of listening. Every three years we do a community health needs assessment, and that is a very comprehensive asking.

What does this community need? And then together with Community [00:10:00] Partnership, we will evaluate the results of that survey, and that helps to inform and drive not only our strategic plans, but also tactics that we use on an annual work plan basis. Our board of directors for Augusta Health is comprised of 17 amazing community members who represent many different backgrounds and skill sets, and they are the ones that guide and lead us towards what services we will offer, how we will focus, where we're going to spend our money, what initiatives need to be taken on.

They have a direct influence in informing our strategic plans. Beyond that, we are a part of this community. So leaders serve on many different local organizations. We're in Chamber of Commerce and different other local groups. We partner with those community organizations that represent different communities within the larger community, and it is.

Always being [00:11:00] open to understanding what the feedback is and the input, and we have several patient groups that help and meet, even in our EHR implementation. We're going to be having some patients participate in some of the new tools and give us their feedback about how we deploy those, so. A lot of listening.

And then I would say the second component is we also do a lot of data. So we have an amazing data science program run by Penny Cooper. She is able, she and her team are able to, uh. Deeply understand from a data perspective, the health needs of the community. What the needs are from a diagnosis perspective, from different conditions, and that helps us to inform not only what we're getting feedback from the community and that input, but also what does the data tell us about our area and where does it make the most sense to bring healthcare services.

Sarah Richardson: I wanna be a patient in your community, but like the level of transparency, the fact that you go and listen, that you involve them in these committees is not common, [00:12:00] truly. I mean, you'll hear about patient advisory groups and you'll hear about different aspects of bringing in some of these conversations, but you're like there in those moments.

But that's also gonna be true for your team. They understand how these things are affecting patients and also clinicians. How do you leverage the emerging technologies to support your workforce, to bring all of these ideas into fruition? Oh, that

Leigh Williams: is such a great question, and it's such an exciting time right now.

I think this hearkens back to what we were talking about earlier with it is such a gift in 2025 to be doing a transformational initiative and have these new tools, so. When we talk about being able to scale, a lot of it is being able to scale the workforce and meet the needs of expanding our services.

[Mic bleed]

consumerism within healthcare, being able to provide patients with a consumer grade experience. I mean, it is, right now as we're talking, it is the week of Black Friday. Black Friday has become an entire event in the second half of November, and you can [00:13:00] buy almost anything and have it on your doorstep within 48 hours, and that's simply the world we live in.

So being able to leverage emerging technologies, particularly with those patient facing. Technology so that they are able to get very good, easy access to our services, but then also internally within the organization, leveraging robotic process automation, AI tools, anything that drives efficiency within the workforce.

And right now we are, our branding for our EHR implementation is called Care Reimagined. And our tagline is, imagine if. And we have challenge everyone here to think about what we want to be in the future. And then imagine if. We could make that happen. So one thing we have now is imagine if we needed to buy 10% of the paper that we bought last year, right?

Like, what if we just got rid of paper? Imagine [00:14:00] if our patients could self schedule to any service. Through different modes, telemedicine, virtual medicine, onsite without having to make a phone call if they don't want to, but also make a phone call if they do want to. So we're doing this process of really thinking about how to transform our services and take advantage of all of that new technology.

Expanse is going to be the backbone. That we deploy. So next June when we go live on Expanse, we'll have this new toolkit that we can then integrate a lot of different technologies with. We're doing a lot of partnership with other organizations, regardless of which EHR they're on, to be able to have good patient data, patient information sharing, and to be able to have the tools that we need within our own health system.

Sarah Richardson: Isn't it really special, Leigh, at this point in your career where you've done really big things at big organizations and now you get to come and do big [00:15:00] things at a smaller organization and you get to actually be part of all of it, part of the decision making, part of the Imagine If scenarios, and I bet you know, every single person inside of your hospital.

Leigh Williams: Well, I work hard at that. It's important that there's trust. I think trust is an incredibly, big piece of how CIOs are able to transform the organization because we do push people into uncomfortable spaces and to do things in ways that are not how they've done it. And we've got, we have team members who have been here for two months and team members that have been here for 40 years.

So finding that middle ground of how do we make everyone feel comfortable and adjust the workflows and really adopt what we're trying to do That is. Something that I think a lot about and put a lot of energy into, and I do think it's an amazing opportunity to step forward as a technology leader who's really here to serve those caregivers so that they can do their best work.

Sarah Richardson: Just think of the power of your organization [00:16:00] expands as a backbone, organizational change management as a backbone, your data, the listening, and just the aspect of all of those pieces combined. You're gonna have such a successful go live. It's gonna be such a fun thing to ask you a hundred and is it 88 days from now?

180 8. What the experiences like how that, how your summer unfolds and how truly amazing that journey is gonna be for you. So with all of your experience and all of the incredible things you have teed up in your organization, what would you recommend to fellow and future healthcare leaders when they see, perhaps this is a time of the most unrest, it's harder to do things than ever before, and yet more important that we do it than ever before.

What would you say to them? So

Leigh Williams: alignment with. All of your bosses, who are your bosses? The bosses for me are every one of my peers on this floor, the CEO but also our board of directors and our community. Ultimately, it's that community and making sure that I clearly understand the [00:17:00] priorities and then we can help drive towards movement on improvement and.

That any kind of lack of understanding of what really is most important, that can absolutely derail projects. We have to make sure that we're all in on the same efforts and that we are not only rowing in the same direction, but on the same boat that we are all together with the chosen tactics, and that when we choose places to invest, we're gonna go all in and make sure that they are well adopted.

We don't have money to waste on. We do pilot and we will fail and say no if something isn't the right thing. But once we've decided to scale that we're going all in on something. It's really important that adoption is there and that takes unified, collaborative leadership. Helping move the organization forward.

Being prepared for that change, being ready to learn, being ready to adopt the new standards, all of that working together is so critical for [00:18:00] actually getting results because the figuring out and looking at brochures and thinking about all the nice things that are out there that's easy. The hard part is actually achieving the outcomes that you need in order to deliver the results that are why you're doing these major investments.

And so tracking and making sure that you get that adoption and that you do see the improvements that you want to see. So right now, I am, a lot of people are building an amazing software system. I'm pretty focused on once we go live, how are we going to measure and make sure that our priority journeys, our patient journeys, our workflows for our team members, that those really are transformed and that we've achieved the promise of care reimagined.

Sarah Richardson: [Mic bleed]

I have to ask you, in closing, what is your imagine if.

Leigh Williams: Oh, tell a joke. One first. I, uh, I like to say to my peers, imagine if we pull this off. That one's about the one that I come off, but I, I like to imagine if, imagine if [00:19:00] we improved the digital day. Of every team member who works at Augusta Health.

And I think that's so critical because if we can do that, then we're going to improve the ability to provide all of the services in a caring, kind, compassionate way to our patients. So I look at it as the challenge is right now to deliver an improved digital workday with more efficiency. Bringing joy back into their day because they get to focus on patient care.

So leveraging ambient AI and other technologies to be able to allow our caregivers to do their best care work, and that will translate to patients who are satisfied, they're happy, they're bringing joy to their lives and a healthier community. So that's what I would say. Imagine if we could literally improve the digital day of every team member who works here.

Sarah Richardson: I So I have no [00:20:00] qualms that you are going to pull this off. It's gonna happen. Imagine if we do it, you're gonna totally do it. And I will say, honestly, Leigh, with the story you've shared with us today, you're gonna bring a lot of joy to the people who listen to this and realize really what the art of the possible is and how care can be reimagined.

And so thank you so much for sharing your insights and for also your journey with MEDITECH and beyond.

Leigh Williams: Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity to share, and it's going to be a challenging time over the next few years. Let's step up as technologists and capture this moment to really help the world

[Mic bleed]

Sarah Richardson: Could not agree more. Thank you for joining us and for all of you listening, thanks for tuning in and keep flourishing. That's all for now.

GMT20250714-172930_Recording: Thanks for joining this executive interview on Flourish with Sarah Richardson here at This Week Health. We believe every healthcare leader needs a community to learn from and lean on. Join us at this week, health.com/subscribe. Share this conversation with an emerging leader. That's all for now.

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