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  today on town hall.

(INTRO)  you don't need to go to Jackson to get your healthcare. We will bring Jackson to you because you're gonna see the same specialist here that you're going to see there.

I am Sarah Richardson, a former CIO and President of this Week Health's 2 2 9 community development where we are dedicated to transforming healthcare one connection at a time.

Our Town Hall show is designed to bring insights from practitioners and leaders on the front lines of healthcare. All right, let's jump right into today's episode.

(MAI N)   Today we are spotlighting one of the most inspiring rural health transformations happening in the south.

Dr. William Morgan went to Copiah County Medical Center for six months and stayed for over four years helping to pioneer initiatives that bring clinical and critical care closer to home from telehealth innovation to AI driven fall prevention. Dr. Morgan's leadership is proof that progress doesn't have to wait for big systems or urban centers.

Let's dig into tech, the team, and the tenacity it takes to truly serve a community. Dr. Morgan, welcome to the show.

Well, thank you. Thank you. A pleasure to be here, Sarah.

Likewise, and I love this story. You originally went to CCMC on a short-term basis, and four years later you've helped lead some major innovations.

What made you stay.

Well, you're right. I took the job as a six month assignment and the board of trustees were partially responsible for my State. They were pretty savvy with the way they encouraged me. But the main reason was when I got to Copiah County. And I actually live in Ridgeland, which is an urban center out of Jackson, Mississippi, about an hour away.

When I got there, I recognized the needs of the community and truly what it was like for people to live in a rural community. And with the learnings that I've had in my career, it just was such an opportunity to make a difference. And so, with the board support there understanding what we were trying to accomplish, and that was really to transform the medical center there, which is a critical access hospital into the model of what all rural hospitals within the state of Mississippi as, as well as the country might

In your background's internal medicine, however you transitioned into administration. And I'm curious what drew you to the leadership side of healthcare?

So I practiced internal medicine for about 23 years, and along the way you do various. Administrative roles, medical director type roles, and I think many people, and many patients in this country kind of feel like the healthcare system was broken.

And so, I was one of those. And so wanting to make a difference I went into the leadership role. When you take care of patients, you typically take care of the individual, but when you get into the administrative world, you really take care of the collective by transforming systems, and that trickles down to the individual.

So it's a different way to basically take care of people. But it gave me the opportunity to develop systems and people to become something they weren't.

And you've chosen to use Neteera for several of your core initiatives. I would love for you to walk us through your top use cases and how they're supporting care specifically.

You've got fall prevention using ai. You've got pressure ulcer, prediction and prevention severity index scoring and trending and reducing unnecessary ED transfers. I love, by the way, the magnitude of those types of endeavors in a rural setting, but what can you share with us about those efforts?

Yeah. So, we have partnered through our association with University of Mississippi Medical Center for Telehealth partnering with Neteera and another company called Artisight to launch these initiatives that you've mentioned. We've been doing this now for close to two years with our first project we launched was with TeleCritical Care.

And then the next one was tele dialysis. Then virtual nursing came into play, which Neteera is heavily responsible in that as a platform we utilizing. And then to come in January is a behavioral health initiative, but where we are currently is developing the tools, particularly with Neteera to be able to trend patient's vital signs.

So that we can predict what patients are deteriorating subtly and intervene in those patients prior to them having an adverse event. And then in the emergency room, our patient severity index with the AI we hope to accomplish with that tool is when people present. They will look at the specialty care and different types of care that we offer, and then statistically be able to predict is that patient a good patient to stay in our hospitals.

Currently that process looks like the emergency room doctor. We'll speak with our hospitalist, who will then speak our critical care physicians and say, okay, is this somebody we think can stay here? And also predict the length of stay is a critical care access hospital. Our length of stays are targeted to be less than four days.

So it's kind of a, recipe you have to follow to, to achieve all your goals.

You shared though that the importance of keeping the patient in the setting if you can. And so I'm curious about an example of a time. When the technologies allowed you to avoid transferring a patient or prevented an adverse outcome?

well probably two poignant examples. One is globally we have developed a algorithm which partnering with our critical care doctors who we think. Which stay in our hospitals based on certain diagnosis and need a TeleCritical care visit. So by using that, a typical example there, many patients with uncontrolled diabetes unfortunately tip into a condition called diabetic ketoacidosis.

And so prior to this technology that we have, the emergency room doctors, were automatically transferring those patients. An hour away to a higher level of care, which really wasn't necessary. But what was necessary was through this technology, getting our nurse practitioner hospitalist comfortable with the fact.

We can take care of these patients in our hospital with a higher level of care and we don't need to transfer the patients out. And so those are the types of critical care patients that previously just, kind of check the box, transfer them to Jackson. Well now a thoughtful evaluation is being done and assessment in the ed, and then a thoughtful decision about whether to keep them or transfer them in terms of the, avoid an adverse event. There's one. That certainly without this technology, we would not have discovered it, we had one patient who came in, a young woman I think in her late thirties, who was oxygen dependent.

And she brought contraband in and that contraband was a meth pipe. And so she actually had that in her bed with her, was going to light that pipe. But this was detected with her movements on the Artisight, Neteera technology. It drew the attention of the unit secretary to her room because again, it detects motion.

They saw what she had, they rushed in and was able to seize the contraband prior to her being able to kind of start a fire. So, that's an un unplanned benefit. But certainly in this case it prevented a fire and probably some safety

Absolutely. And what a win To be able to have that type of capability in a rural setting, which may not necessarily have been the case in the past.

So I'm also curious how the partnership has aligned with, it's really your goal to maximize your resources, most of all. And back to that theme of keeping patients in their own community, how has it expanded your team's capabilities?

Well, it's expanded quite a bit in terms of the ability to have other subject matter experts oversee our patients with us remotely.

And so that is one benefit. But the other benefit is as people are discovering we have this technology, they're no longer seeing us as a sleepy rural hospital that doesn't know what they're doing. They're recognizing the investment and the resources that we have put into these projects I should say.

And so that alone is becoming a magnet. And so we feel like that the learning that our nurses are getting, we would not be able to get really any other way. They now are comfortable treating critical care patients, which they were not comfortable for. As part of our tele dialysis program, they learned how to access graphs and shunts to do tele dialysis, how to utilize and run this tele dialysis machine.

And none of this expertise existed prior to these projects and they really served as a platform for us to. Not only educate our nurses, but also build a sense of pride in them about what they're doing and what they're accomplishing

Well, it's unique for you in the state, the dialysis programs and others, which has been amazing.

And rural healthcare for you, you have mentioned is personal. How has the technology and really what's the vision for the future shaping some of your views about what's possible?

It's documented and there's statistics about disparity and care and outcomes that exist in rural communities versus urban communities.

This is primarily due to access to specialist. And so by virtue of these technologies, now what we tell our patients is, you don't need to go to Jackson to get your healthcare. We will bring Jackson to you because you're gonna see the same specialist here that you're going to see there.

So I think as our community has learned to embrace this, they understand what we are doing now. We had one patient opt out of this process of using technology to monitor our patients. And all others have opted in. So, they understand it's an added layer expertise and safety that we're providing

And you've noted that you're looking towards retirement, and I want the listeners to know, what do you hope continues at CCMC after you step back?

Continue this work and to remember despite all of the technology that we're doing, we cannot forget the humanity in medicine. I remember when I was a resident in training, which obviously was many years ago, Dr. JD Upshaw, who had trained at John Hopkins, was teaching us physical medicine.

He said, whatever you do, touch your patient. Whether that's a, taking their pulse,

hand on hand when you see your patients, touch your patients. So the key will be as great as we get with our technology. We don't wanna lose sight that we're not taking care of patients, we're taking care of people.

I love that you said that because isn't it intrinsically, the whole point of all the technologies and all the things that we're doing that you still want that human connection?

You want to know somebody else, empathetically when you're ill cares. And when it's your doctor or your nurse, your caregiver, it is so powerful when they connect with you on that person to person level. So I'm grateful that's part of the ethos of what. You were sharing as part of the overall plan at your organization.

I'm also wondering, what advice do you have for other rural health leaders who are trying to innovate despite limited resources and even with some of the upcoming potential funding cuts?

Well, I would say look for a willing partner there are many companies out there that can be partnered with, such as Neteera.

They are looking for partners. To develop their products. So we offer the setting in which these products can be deployed and studied and refined. And we validate our data Neteera was just on site July 29th, so we're constantly looking to improve what we're doing, validating the data, so they're looking for partners.

I would tell you also do not be afraid. Yeah, don't be afraid of taking risk and trying the technology. You will have challenges with adoption in the beginning. You must kind of, grit it out and continue to encourage your staff, your board, and your physicians and all providers that this is a worthwhile endeavor.

And then intentionality, be intentional about what you're doing. But there's a lot of funding available. There are funding cuts coming, obviously but still there's a lot of funding that is there. And our projects are mostly funded by hrsa. So with that, they're always looking, how can we improve healthcare?

In fact, this very morning had the opportunity to speak with commissioner Olivia Trusty She was just appointed to be the commissioner of FCC and she was listening about what we're doing and other technology things at University of Mississippi Medical Center.

The partnership in the Neteera is unique in that.

When they come and do the data validation onsite with you, there's all kinds of new use cases and ideas that pop up as you're working through that with them. How important has that been as part of this journey relationship, knowing that they're with you, side by side, onsite, looking for new ideas and they're willing to take that risk with you?

it's invaluable because again, none of us don't know what we don't know. And AI is still new. And when you see what it tells you, you have to validate it. And then a partner like nara, they actually, as we were trying to figure out is it, fact or fiction they actually came on site to help look at the product again after they had it deployed and worked through it with us as a partner, not telling us, you don't know what you're doing or whatever, let's see what's going on here. And my understanding is there are a few things that they can't quite figure out right now. So they were sending it back to their production team to have a look and and see what we find out.

And you've quoted the Overloaded Syndrome, Progress is what we hoped for yesterday. And pray we'll go away tomorrow. What progress are you most proud of helping usher into your organization?

I think it's a cultural transformation of what we can become. Many years ago, my wife gave me a coffee cup for Father's Day, and on one side of the coffee cup it said that man is a success

who brings out the best in others. And the other side of the coffee cup said that man is the success who makes the world around him just a little better place to be. So we're just little Hazelhurst, Mississippi. We're trying to make the world around us better, and hopefully that will lead to something greater in the future for others.

I couldn't agree more, and I am hopeful there are more leaders like you who take the six month initiative to stay four plus years and see what the art of the possible can really bring forward. And I'm grateful that it's happening with a partner like Neteera. Dr. Morgan reminds us that when innovation meets the heart, even the smallest towns can lead the way from preventing hospital transfers to preparing for tomorrow's tech

today, CCMC is showing rural America what's possible when you invest in people, purpose and the right partnerships. Dr. Morgan, thank you for being on the show today.

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