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Keynote: The Patient Advocacy Revolution with Erica Olenski

Bill Russell: [00:00:00] Today on Keynote

Erica Olenski: (Intro) That fear actually paralyzed us from caring for each other as human beings in that experience, because we, out of fear of HIPAA, don't acknowledge the human experience or humanity of the people that we're interacting with.

Bill Russell: My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of This Week Health, where we are dedicated to transforming healthcare one connection at a time. Our keynote show is designed to share conference level value with you every week.

Now, let's jump right into the episode.

(Main) Hey, it's keynote and today we're joined by Erica Olenski, VP at Finn Partners. Pr, Iron Man participant and caregiver, and today actually board certified patient Advocate. So we'll talk a little bit about that as well. Erica, welcome to the show.

Erica Olenski: Thank you so much, Bill. It's an honor to be here.

Bill Russell: I was doing research on you and everything that popped up, I was like, oh my gosh. Like I didn't know you trained for [00:01:00] Ironman competitions, how long you've been doing that?

Erica Olenski: I was a competitive swimmer growing up, which I feel like is a prerequisite for some of us in the sport these days. Maybe not a prerequisite, but I've been in the, extreme endurance space for a long time. Grew up swimming competitively and then picked up running, early adulthood when a pool was a little harder to access.

And then wound up buying myself a triathlon bike when I found myself divorced in 2020 and made some friends that were willing to socially distance outside and the rest is history.

Bill Russell: Wow. I've had friends who have done Iron Man competitions. I said, what's the hardest part? They said, oh, far and away's the swimming.

Like they're, when they do those and they go out into ocean or wherever they happen to be swimming. They're like, yeah, you could drown. Yeah. I'm like, serious. Seriously? It's only a couple miles. They're like, and your biking is, really long distance. They're like no.

The swimming is the most dangerous part.

Erica Olenski: Yeah, it's pretty dangerous. You're right. And they have lots of kayaks all through there, which is helpful. [00:02:00] So folks will. We'll go and find one of those and climb on the side and hang out there if they need a break at all during the swim. But otherwise, there's really not a good stopping place, which is why it makes it so challenging.

Bill Russell: Well, we are catching you after a weekend of being in, the hospital. So this is, yeah. Fresh in your mind. I was going to, ask you to give us that story from like day one. But you choose day one or just a weekend story. It's just an ongoing, part of your life.

Erica Olenski: Yeah, I think the weekend story is an interesting place, actually. I've talked a lot about the diagnosis experience and that's very, it was obviously a formative and traumatizing moment in our lives. When that all happened, that was in May of 2019. So we're approaching the six year anniversary of that event.

And that's a long six years is what it's been. But I'm thrilled that my kiddo August is still here. He's still, living his best life, which is amazing. That said, he is a four-time brain cancer survivor now, and a stroke survivor, which [00:03:00] is of course remarkable for any human being, let alone a kindergartner.

And unfortunately, we, in the last few months received some really unfortunate prognosis. Uh. A really unfortunate prognosis around his disease. And so we've been trying some alternative things and thinking outside the box because we've exhausted the standard of care. And this weekend, what really we've not had any complications, which has been remarkable.

And the MRIs we've been doing on a routine basis have all showed some partial response, which is also statistically significant. Because his diagnosis typically would progress pretty aggressively and not respond to treatment. So that was a very pleasant surprise. So after, doing spring baseball and we had a baseball game on Saturday actually he came home and had a really long nap and woke up, had some dinner, and then sat on the couch and started crying from a headache.

Which being a brain cancer survivor and a [00:04:00] stroke survivor, anything head related is always a bit of a red flag. What was also more of a red flag than anything though was tears. This kid is the strongest kid I know, and he doesn't stop until he's forced to stop. Which is, he probably gets that from somewhere.

And, um. And so, we were a little concerned about progression of the disease. And so that was really traumatizing on its own traumatizing moment to sit there and wonder what we might be facing clinically. But thankfully we wound up getting into the ER. They were able to do a CT scan and confirmed that intracranial pressure was not a problem, which is the big

kind of question mark that we were facing around a headache and we were able to get him a blood transfusion and he's bouncing back and on his way home, hopefully today.

Bill Russell: thanks for sharing that story. How often have you been to that same hospital over the last couple of years?

Erica Olenski: Oh my gosh, I think so. There's this really cool program called Beads [00:05:00] of Courage. It's a wonderful nonprofit in the pediatric oncology space, and they do cardiac as well, so it's not exclusive to oncology, but they do this wonderful program where they give you a bead for every. Clinical milestone you achieve.

It could be a IV start, it could be losing your hair. It could be a overnight stay in the hospital. And so the overnight stay in the hospital is this little yellow bead. And I think we probably have somewhere in the ballpark of three to 400 of those.

Bill Russell: Oh my

Erica Olenski: gosh, over the last six years.

Bill Russell: you know, obviously we focus a lot on technology here.

I love the fact that we're really talking about the human side of the experience and the interaction. Do they know you? Like when you walk in the front door, do they say, Erica, welcome. It's, It's, you know, what can we do?

Erica Olenski: It's the opposite. It's the opposite. I walk in there and they say, hi, please hand me your id, which I don't know why I find infuriating.

I get that we have to show who we are and confirm that. But when we arrive, we are [00:06:00] treated no different than anybody walking in the door for the very first time. Which obviously, sets, a certain tone for the experience when you arrive.

Bill Russell: That doesn't make sense to me because there's so many places that I'm shocked now where I show up and they say, bill, how you doing? It's great to see you. Oh, we see that you're this, you're that you're all these things. It seems like we have that wired in a lot of different places in our culture.

Erica Olenski: Yeah, we don't have that wired in healthcare. I think a large part, HIPAA has done a lot of really good things in the time that it's been implemented, but it's, I think, one area that's induced so much fear in people because they're afraid of overstepping confidentiality, but that fear instead.

What I've observed in healthcare is that it's actually paralyzed us from caring for each other as human beings in that experience, because we, out of fear of HIPAA, don't acknowledge the human experience or humanity of the people that we're interacting with. And that's true even for the caregivers and the [00:07:00] ancillary forces around each patient too, right?

The clinical teams are so afraid of exposing more that they know about somebody than. They would otherwise, and I just believe that's really impeding our progress as an industry when it comes to the experience of care.

Bill Russell: What would you blow up and just change? 400 overnight stays.

You've been through the process. I'm gonna ask you what board certified patient advocate means, but I'm just curious, is there anything you would just like, Hey, look. If this were my hospital, if I could redesign it. If I could redesign anything here, it would look something like this.

Erica Olenski: There's one process that I would say I would very drastically shift. And I don't know clinically how this would implement, but I would love to challenge us to think differently about the front door of the hospital. And that's the ed, the emergency department. you could have been discharged the same day.

From the hospital, and if you go home and you spike a fever, and let's say you're receiving cancer treatment, so you're neutropenic, a fever is an [00:08:00] emergency, you have to go back to the hospital. The part that's so problematic with that is that you go back in and you're back at square one, and so you're being reintroduced to the same process that you were in and more often than not, the ed.

Out of its honoring of triage isn't efficient entirely in terms of time and resources 'cause you're really reliant on a lot of different points of care to be able to appropriately assess. That said, if you're discharged the same day, I just wish there was some other way to accelerate getting a bed in the facility if you know that you're headed to being inpatient.

there's got to be a way to streamline that experience because what's so taxing, I believe, at least for caregivers, and I would imagine, even adult patients, is you have to go back into the ED and then you're there waiting for a bed again.

Bill Russell: Is there no other way for you, like through your, I mean you have a no

Erica Olenski: oncology or neurology or whoever your clinical team is, they'll call ahead, so that helps expedite through the queue, but you're still stuck in a [00:09:00] bed in the ED until they can get you where you need to go, and there's just a process thing there.

I think more than anything that we could reimagine in some form or fashion that would make that time into the hospital smoother for some of these families that have recurring admissions and discharges,

Bill Russell: board certified patient advocate. I didn't know there was such a thing, so congratulations. Um, Thank you.

What does that mean? What is that?

Erica Olenski: So Board certified Patient Advocate is a certification program for patient advocates, which are defined as individuals that are, um. they're to support and augment the experience of care on behalf of the patients themselves. Patients as you know, right of little economic or even, really influence across the board, not just economic, but even data influence.

They don't own a lot in this process. They're really, for the most part, systematically. Deprioritized when it comes to the influence that they carry in their care, [00:10:00] besides being the recipient and the measuring stick for how well that care is doing. So the board certified patient advocate function is an essential one, and one that's actually growing pretty rapidly in popularity because what patients, especially ones that find themselves with a cancer diagnosis or are in a complex care scenario, they need somebody in their corner to help them process information, keep things organized, strategize about care plan and treatment options, explore second opinions, identify clinical trials.

There's a lot that can be done. And there's a lot that AI which will I think get to in a little bit. There's a lot that AI can do to help close that gap, but the board certified patient advocate function also is there to help ensure that patient and caregivers around the patient are properly supported.

And that's both. Clinically, but humanely too. So are there cultural nuances that person or individual needs to have made available for them? So as they're receiving discharge instructions, for [00:11:00] example if they have questions or need to talk through things in a more culturally competent way, maybe the board certified patient advocate can help make sure that's reducing clinical errors and ensuring patient safety long term.

The role of patient advocate. I didn't really understand it, but one of my friends was in the hospital and we went to visit and his wife was there and she's a nurse and they came in to talk to her while we were there. And I heard her get sort of elevated and agitated.

She's we're not gonna do that. That doesn't make sense. I need to talk to, I need to talk. And she like put 'em through the paces. And then when she was done, I said, you know what? What's going on? And she said, I. Well, they wanna do this and, but they're skipping like two steps. Yeah, it's just they're expediting in order to open up the room.

I'm not worried about them opening up the room. I'm worried about them giving it, him the best care possible. But she knew that I would've never known that. and I would've just been like, oh, okay, they're saying that this is the next thing to do.

It was really interesting. And, And she was the one who sort of drove into my head. It's you [00:12:00] need to have an advocate when you are moving through the care setting. It's a very complex thing.

So often we don't know what we don't know. Right. And as patients and caregivers, if we haven't experienced it or haven't gone through that, we don't know even what to ask.

In a lot of cases or what might be possible. We ran into this experience even just this weekend where my son was needing to get a CT scan, which a CT in this case was gonna be superior to an MRI, which he already had scheduled for this coming week as a routine test and diagnostic test.

The tech that was coming to bring us to the CT room and several other people in that room. Were dis debating or discussing him as a case and started talking about what they were thinking that they should do, and they were. Talking amongst themselves about whether or not they should, and it just made no sense to me.

But they were talking about how they were gonna do a spine versus brain or vice versa. [00:13:00] And it was just striking to me that there was no discussion with us as the parents about what we might need to be doing too. So I actually had to elbow my way into the conversation and say, I need to make sure that I'm being briefed on whatever it is you're discussing, because first of all, you guys don't have

easy access to context on this patient and with his history and complexity. This isn't a typical, never have experienced or interacted with the health system before walking in the front door, and now we're working from a blank slate. There's a lot of history and a lot of context involved in making decisions when it comes to my son's care in particular, and any other patient that's.

Complex or in a long-term, more chronic acute scenario. They're facing the same issue. And just the lack of discussion was really striking. And I think I upset one of them. The other one was like, I'm really glad that you were here because you're a really good advocate for your son.

Bill Russell: That's awesome.

Have you used AI in your son's care

Erica Olenski: Every day even? Oh my gosh. Okay. So this story just, this has completely [00:14:00] shaken everything for me. So not to like lead make this too hyped up. But this weekend as I'm sitting there observing my son with a headache, I was interacting with chat GPT, sharing symptoms, sharing ideas.

I said, what do I do in terms of my escalation? There was a practical and pragmatic application for using AI in this scenario, but the part that really struck me as most. Revolutionary in terms of technology. ChatGPT took a trauma-informed approach to interacting with me as his caregiver was validating.

Said, Hey, Erica, you're really on the right track here and these concerns are really valid. Here are some things that we might recommend you do. I would contact his hospice and palliative team. Here is a proposed script you can use when you make that phone call. Here's something you can do that overlies the symptoms that you've been sharing with me as you've been thinking through your next steps in caring for your [00:15:00] son.

I use chat GPT throughout our ER admission. And shared test results to the extent, anecdotally shared results in the application as we were going through. And, just deliberating on how do I face a really catastrophic milestone in his care? Should that be the scenario we're facing? And how do I process that?

And the trauma, our brain experiences when we're going through something like this really impedes our executive function. So having the ability to outsource, not just like the practical application of caregiving, but having an emotional validation friend, I suppose as I'm going through that's available to me, without any restraint.

I could do this until two or three o'clock in the morning and it finally can, after the whole ordeal. It said, Erica, your decision to take him in was a good one and you should be really relieved and proud that you took action when you did because it really was the right decision [00:16:00] and you should feel really good about yourself.

And the emotional validation that this application gave me was remarkable. It was unbelievable. It was like talking to a friend.

Bill Russell: Yeah. That's trauma informed is really interesting. 'cause you're talking about a computer, you're talking about algorithms, but exactly this is what we've heard about AI to date.

That for AI to say those empathetic words costs it really nothing. Whereas for human, I'm, oh, I'm. Traveling around that hospital, I'm seeing all these different people. I'm busy. I'm sort of hectic and I don't know, it depends on what shift you're on and that kinda stuff.

I love the aspect of someone to talk to. I'm trying to explain this to people. Because I'm a sole proprietor with my business, and I've now gotten used to saying my business partner is AI.

And they're like, what do you mean? I'm like, I have conversations with AI for like at least an hour a day about my business, about what's going on, about that. It's helpful. Like it's giving me real [00:17:00] valid information on things. Now it's not taking any of the risk of running the business, but it's, it's helpful in the conversation.

Erica Olenski: Absolutely. I had several breakthroughs actually with the technology this weekend. 'Cause I've been using it for even some religious and philosophical study as well in my spare time because that's how I like to use my time apparently. and you know, just being able to identify texts that might be interesting based on my interests or other areas that I'm interested in exploring more.

That's really incredible or finding community around that and access to that. I learned things this weekend just interacting with the tool as I was validating some ancestry research I did about 15 years ago, and it helped me validate it and then helped me identify some areas of exploration that I wanna go pursue some more.

In areas that I have done a lot of research and reading over the years and it identified something new for me that I had never encountered. And apparently there's a vibrant community here in the Dallas Fort Worth area around it. And so, [00:18:00] something is like that or Bible study even in some cases for those folks that are, interested in more like religious application.

Being able to have discourse with a tool that can help you further and deepen your own knowledge and understanding of texts like that is incredible. And then in the same breath, say, Hey, my son's complaining of a headache. What should I do? And not that I'm gonna defer responsibility, like you said, as a business owner, right?

As a mom, I'm not gonna defer responsibility of me as a mom, but that sounding board outside of your personal connections, that can be tired, especially when you've got a long, chronic acute caregiving scenario like we do. Folks get tired, they get fatigued, providing support and emotional support. And so having an inexhaustible resource like that to provide the emotional validation and the strategic sounding board is invaluable.

I just I am, my mind is blown [00:19:00] around what might be possible going forward.

Bill Russell: Dave deBronkart. Yeah. Give me my damn data. Dave

Erica Olenski: Uhhuh. Yeah.

Bill Russell: E-patient Dave E-patient Dave. I read a post over the weekend where he was talking about we have been working, getting the EHRs to have that longitudinal patient record.

He said what he would like to see in the future is that complete longitudinal patient record available to the HR. That's great. That's wonderful. He goes. I also want that complete longitudinal patient record available that I can give it to, doctor ChatGPT or Dr. Claude or Dr. Gemini, whoever you're going to interact with and have it look at that entire record.

There's people that are very concerned about that. They're concerned that we're gonna make the wrong decisions. They're concerned that, where does the liability lie in terms of making decisions on those kinds of things how do you think about that and where do you fall down on those kinds of things?

Erica Olenski: I think it's reasonable to have some element of caution because I also recognize in the space that [00:20:00] I have. The emotional validation provided to me through this tool and technology, I recognize that there's a vulnerability with that. I'm emotionally vulnerable with this technology. And when you're emotionally vulnerable or intellectually vulnerable, you can be manipulated.

Yeah. And so I think that's a real concern that we need to honor and recognize and respect. But it's like swimming, right? Like you get in the water you respect the water, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't go swimming.

Bill Russell: yeah just jump in and you go, and you, the best way to become a strong swimmer is you get in the water and spend time in there and get to know it, and get to know your capacity, your capabilities you respect and honor where you're at in that space.

Erica Olenski: But you always respect the ocean or the water, wherever it is that you're swimming.

Bill Russell: Back in the day we used to worry about, the medical records scattered all over the place. Is your son's medical record brought together in one place? Have we gotten to an interoperability standpoint?

Erica Olenski: My son's medical record is useless in its form if I tried to rely on. The vendors [00:21:00] that facilitate it to make it available and usable. I had to actually pull the entire medical record at one point a few years ago, and this was a few years ago, not including the most recent editions, and it was 60,000 pages in a PDF.

Bill Russell: Wow.

Erica Olenski: My computer, first of all, couldn't even get access to this document without a CD rom, which no computers use anymore. I had to get the data center to print it onto a CD. I had to go on Amazon and buy an external CD ROM drive to be able to run this thing, and then my computer couldn't render the document fast enough to be able to actually even do anything with it because I can't just control find all instances of some text thread I'm looking for.

In the document, and it's not entirely chronological. So the way that it just dumps the data, it just throws in whatever clinical documentation exists in the EHR and puts it into a PDF. How do you even begin to try to organize that? And then, like I said, I couldn't even render it fast enough to even do [00:22:00] anything meaningful with it.

Bill Russell: I do wanna talk about August's artists. Talk about how this started and what the mindset is around it and what the benefit is to patients.

Erica Olenski: Yeah. So August's artists is a 501-C3 nonprofit that was founded in 2022 by myself and have a fantastic board of directors.

But it was really in a large part, inspired from our inpatient experience when I was caring for my son August, which is. Its namesake as an organization. We spent obviously a lot of time in, the hospital and inpatient, and one of the things that the families do, and they were doing this already, so I can't take credit for the artwork piece.

But a lot of families are already using these window crayons to personalize the space that they're in. And there's not a whole lot of other control around your personal environment. When you're in the hospital. You don't get a lot of space to do things that you want. You might be able to have a blanket on your bed or someone delivered flowers and you could put them in the corner of the room.

But having the ability to personalize your space, [00:23:00] like with a picture on the front door, that becomes a bit of an address, even in some cases for how somebody's gonna find your room in the hospital or how you might find your own room in the hospital for that matter. You can use these window crayons and these waxy window crayons and use them on glass and they make these incredible pictures that

personalize the space. And so a lot of families are doing this on their own as a way to spend time metabolize their grief or the trauma and stress of the experience of being in a hospital, being out of control of your environment so much. And so as I was inpatient with my son and we leaned in hard to this concept because it was a comfortable way for us to also process our own emotions.

I was contemplating, how we might give back to the community and share insights, not just from our experience, but give back something functional that can actually help, I think, improve the care outcomes if we honor the emotional experience of it [00:24:00] alongside the clinical right? And so we founded August's artists as a way to make those crayons available for as many families as we possibly can.

And then when Covid happened and we were ideating on this concept, one of the things that stuck out to me was the, a lack of access to volunteer resources. So whatever the business model was that I was thinking through, that was initially inspired to maybe engage some artist communities to come in and donate time and resources, which I think are still possible today.

Covid really changed that because I wanted a solution that would allow us to survive. A potential pandemic should that happen again, and that meant that we might not have access to volunteer resources.

So the second pillar of our organization is focused on commemorating the artwork that the families make because when they get discharged, they can't bring those pictures home. But those pictures become a really formative fixture for their experience that space and whatever happened in that room.

and so in the advocacy around trauma informed care [00:25:00] and advocating that direction. That's really what we wanna focus on is providing the crayons and making access to the artwork available, but then also commemorating and honoring and validating the experiences of those spaces as they happen.

Bill Russell: Are hospitals receptive to this? You give 'em crayons. Do they all have the space that they can do something?

Erica Olenski: Yeah. Most hospitals are designed that way. They have windows into the patient rooms. They don't isolate the door to the hospital room.

Really from a safety standpoint. So that is a conversation we've had is that with windows and a picture on the window? Is it obstructing a view. More often than not, it's not a problem because it's got some space around it and we're not doing necessarily artwork on all of the windows, per se. Or the families aren't doing artwork on all of the windows.

broadly speaking, I would say most facilities are very receptive because I think they want to solve for these experiences and they've got teams dedicated to child life and spiritual care and social work that are interested in these areas to measure their [00:26:00] performance and impact. The challenge is that, as hospitals and health systems are just so strapped financially right now.

There's not a lot of extra space for program investments, so that what we do is we make it a completely turnkey process for them, where we work with the Child Life team directly to make sure that they have everything that they need and they can just outsource the program function entirely.

Bill Russell: so how can people be, involved?

You have hospitals, you have potentially families and patients, and then you have people that are saying, wow, that's amazing. I'd like to support that.

Erica Olenski: As any nonprofit, right? Capacity is our biggest challenge and there's a chicken or egg scenario with that comes with that. So donations are always appreciated because it gives us the ability to introduce this program to more facilities, which is really incredible, or lean into programs and facilities that we already have established and just continue to provide them more resources that help them support the patient families that they work with.

Bill Russell: if hospitals are listening to this, you're like, well, we're strapped. [00:27:00] We don't have enough time to do all the things we want to do. Yeah. That's where you're at. It is a chicken in the egg kind of thing. It's like you want to do it for as many families as possible, but it does require funds.

It's august artist.org, is that right?

Erica Olenski: Yep, that's right.

Bill Russell: And August is plural.

Erica Olenski: August is possessive and then artists is plural.

Bill Russell: August I wanna close with a couple things here. One is there's a quote from you from way back which hurts more, mile 22 or insurance prior auth.

And I wanna, I wanna come back to that quote. Because it does point to actually a series of articles I've been writing on this whole idea of the referral management and whatnot, and just how long that takes and how difficult that process is for the patient. Did, do you remember, is that quote attributable to you?

Erica Olenski: likely it's by mile 22. That sounds like something I would say.

Bill Russell: Yeah. That's the thing when you do research on AI and it says, Hey what has [00:28:00] Erica said in the past that's really interesting? And this was one of the ones that popped up and it's interesting to me. First of all, describe mile 22, what's going on at mile 22?

Erica Olenski: Oh my gosh, so much is happening in mile 22. Well, it depends on which mile of which race too. So if you're an Iron Man, it might be a little more painful in mile 22 than in a typical marathon on its own, but it's its own race. Right. So it's its own experience. Mile 22 is a very interesting place to be in because you're still just far enough, you can't rely on adrenaline exclusively to get you to the finish line.

But you are so close, you've done so much and accomplished so much. So mile 22, there's this really interesting place of almost desperation or despair, like a moment of that maybe crosses your mind when you realize that you can't just drop a gear and go, you've still gotta preserve some tank in the gas or gas in the tank to get you to the finish line, but you can still honor how far [00:29:00] you've come at that moment in the race and recognize that you're almost at the finish line.

You're almost there.

Bill Russell: So there's a lot, there's a lot going on in your mind. There's a lot obviously going on in your body at mile 22. How do you equate that to insurance prior auth?

Erica Olenski: so prior auth is its own monster, right? And there's different variations of experience with that. When I think of prior auth, I guess I just think about the pain of insurance overall and what it takes to get things approved sometimes that maybe aren't automatically approved when you have to justify or explain why something should be included.

And so Mile 22 is similar to the prior auth because. Or really just any insurance claim requiring additional oversight and debate because you're almost there. You've already gone through the process of getting, whatever diagnostic test done, you've seen a physician, you've had a discussion you've debated, what direction to take maybe in your plan of care.

You've identified a [00:30:00] solution that you wanna go pursue, and you've established all of this confidence really, and at that point. But there is so much work to be done that we've created this environment that requires so much energy and resources just to finish the rest of that race.

So it's like mile 22 because you're not done yet, but you can see the finish line, you can see where you're going, but it can create this additional obstacle that can almost confuse or like I said earlier, there's this like feeling of despair. I think that also fuels so much of that prior auth experience and the debate that we have as an industry.

Bill Russell: Because by the time you've gotten there, there's a little bit of hope that's been given to you. It's hey, we've found a path, a whatever, and then all of a sudden somebody from afar who you don't even see is saying, hold on. I need this, and this, before we can proceed. And you're like, well, but there's the finish line.

It's sorry. Yeah.

Erica Olenski: Yeah,

Bill Russell: do not appreciate. You're like,

Erica Olenski: I'm almost there. I've done all of this stuff. I've ran 22 miles and You can't just, we're just gonna power through and go. It [00:31:00] still requires additional debate and discussion, and that could be really taxing for everyone involved.

Bill Russell: rapid fire to close here. I just started doing this recently with the show. All right.

Erica Olenski: Let's do it. What

Bill Russell: buzzword you'd most like to banish forever?

Erica Olenski: A buzzword?

Bill Russell: Yeah. Buzzword.

Erica Olenski: Oh I, I don't, I don't know this one.

Bill Russell: This, I was on a panel discussion and they asked me this question. It's which buzzword do you not are, and they were like, well, what about cloud?

What about this? I'm like, I like 'em all. I, I wouldn't get rid of any of 'em. I'm like, they're an indi. If they're a buzzword to me, it's an indication that people are talking about them for some reason So, worth looking at.

Erica Olenski: i'm very similar to you and I appreciate the use of language in so many ways.

And one that comes to mind that actually had to correct ChatGPT recently on, 'cause it was trying to use it too much was reimagine and I use it, I'm so guilty of that. I think I've even used it in abstract of a speech I'm doing here in a little while. I love the, word imagine, I think it's just an inspirational way [00:32:00] of showing intellectual capacity and creative problem :solving.

But I think we've really thought through that word. Or maybe it's a little bit overused right now, this thought of reimagining something. And I don't know if we have to fully reimagine healthcare per se, but we do need to be thinking and imagining about ways to make it better. And so maybe that's my, my course correction on that word.

Bill Russell: Music question two points in your life. One is 16-year-old in a car. What music are you listening to? And when you're working out this week, what music are you listening to? I wanna see the progression is what I'm,

Erica Olenski: oh my gosh. Well, 16-year-old me and current day, Erica, our very similar. I am a Disney princess at heart, so it's not a stretch to imagine.

And my friends in the Sway health community can even attest to this, that I'm a pretty big fan of anything Disney. So anything in that ballpark, 16-year-old me would've been singing to Gravity. And Current Day Me is also singing Define [00:33:00] Gravity. Not a Disney movie, but also a musical.

And that's my jam. I love anything musical theater, and in that category.

Bill Russell: Yeah. We were watching American Idol last night and somebody sang Defy Gravity. I think we were watching a couple weeks back. So if somebody's saying that's not what was on last night, then they can know that I'm streaming it, not watching it.

Erica Olenski: I've been singing Defy Gravity for 20 years now, and it's one of my favorite songs and I'm thrilled that it has become popular again.

Bill Russell: That's awesome. Last two finish the sentence in 2030. The patient journey starts with blank.

Erica Olenski: The human.

Bill Russell: last one. Favorite post-race carb.

When you're done, your race, what do you crave and run after?

Erica Olenski: Ooh. It's the same stuff I eat during my races. Salted potatoes, watermelon, peanut butter, and apples.

Bill Russell: Really?

Erica Olenski: Yeah.

Bill Russell: So you're eating that during the race as you're going along?

Erica Olenski: Oh yeah. You have to. One of the biggest challenges in extreme endurance sports [00:34:00] is fueling.

So once you reach your capacity and training, you spend the last two months dialing in on your nutrition. That's mostly what you're training is focused on. So the stuff I eat that I'm racing with is the same stuff I'm eating right after the race. It's just my energy output's slightly different.

Bill Russell: So you never just go straight into cheat mode.

Erica Olenski: I just, I want good fuel. The fuel, the same fuel that helps me get through is the same one that helps me recover.

Bill Russell: That was very affirming and very I don't know. It sparked my conscience as you said, that like. food is fuel. I, food is

Erica Olenski: fuel, movement is medicine.

Yep.

Bill Russell: Absolutely. Erica, I wanna thank you for coming on the show, sharing your experience, and I look forward to catching up with you soon at a conference soon.

Erica Olenski: Oh, I can't wait. Thank you so much, bill. I appreciate it.

Bill Russell: Thanks for listening to this week's keynote. If you found value, share it with a peer. It's a great chance to discuss and in some cases start a mentoring relationship. One way you can support the show is to subscribe and leave us a rating. it if you could do that. Thanks for [00:35:00] listening. That's all for now..