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[00:00:00] Today on Town Hall

(INTRO) I slowly shifted the focus to, I want to be the best leader I can be, but in order to do that, I have to prioritize my health first.

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 town hall show is designed to bring insights from practitioners and leaders. on the front lines of healthcare. .

Alright, let's jump right into today's episode.

Hello everyone. My name is Karla Arzola and I am here in one more episode of This Week Health. Today's guest is Cally Cripps. VP of Technology and Analytics for Aurora Mental Health Center. And she has been in healthcare for about 14 years.

And she's also the founder of Systemagically. Cally, welcome.

Thank you. I'm really excited to be here this morning and chat with you.

Oh, [00:01:00] 100%. Thank you for the time. Super appreciated. I want to talk about your career as a technologist, but also as a entrepreneur.

Because you have done something phenomenal, and I really want to dig into it. And we were just saying, I had some questions for you. And then yesterday I saw an article that was published in chronic boss collective. And I just loved it. And I'm like, Okay, we need to pivot and talk about that. So quickly send you I'm like, Hey, a little bit of change in planning.

And so thank you for that. I appreciate it. But why don't we start with a quick introduction?

Yeah, absolutely. So I've been working in the IT space of community based mental health for about 14 years now. I fell in love with this space as soon as I realized how much everybody you work with cares about what we're doing.

It doesn't matter. If they're a direct care provider, or if they're on the administrative side, everybody in this space is here because they have a personal connection or a reason to do the [00:02:00] work that they're doing for family, friends, community. And with that, going up through different levels of leadership, I've been able to interact with all kinds of individuals, and I saw a lot of the same things that I was seeing in the health advocacy work that I was doing, and it really transformed my kind of leadership style to be very focused on.

people and are they thriving in life? Because I want people to be happy, which probably seems, silly in some ways, but you spend so much time at work and you spend all of your time with your health. And so anything we can do as leaders in the workplace to make that experience better for others has just been, really important to me.

And then outside of, work and health fund stuff, I have a little dog named biscuits. He's adorable little troublemaker and I'm an auntie and just generally enjoy trying new things and. Expanding my hobbies [00:03:00] constantly.

thank you for the introduction. That's super sweet.

You and I met at a conference, ironically in Atlanta and we live in the same city. So it just tells you how small is the world because we end up meeting somewhere else, even though we live here in Denver. And so I was so happy and we were sitting in the same table, which was great.

Yes.

I was like, wait, what? So anyway, super excited about this conversation. So there's a lot of things that I learned about you when we were sitting at the table and it prompted me to say, Hey, why don't we get together and talk about more? Because what you're doing outside of your job it's amazing.

And so I'm going to take a step back. So I was talking about the article that I read yesterday and so you have a chronic. Condition and you talk about that. So you said my illness has made me the leader I am today and it is my responsibility to take others with me. And then you call yourself the chronic boss.

Is that right?

[00:04:00] That's the name of the networking community that I joined is the Chronic Boss Collective and it's full of people that have some sort of chronic

illness condition. Gotcha. Okay. Thank you for the clarification. And then in the article, you talk about your journey and you said that it provided you with a fuel to promote corporate wellness.

And as a result, you established systematically, that's correct. Okay. And then so walk us through your journey in terms of how this chronic condition impacted your life.

interestingly, I was very fortunate, especially about 20 years ago now to have gotten a diagnosis very early on.

So when I was about 17, 18 years old, I received my 1st of my collection of chronic illnesses. I call them of endometriosis and P. C. O. S. at the same time. And at that time, the average diagnosis. Period was 10 to 12 years. So the fact that I got diagnosed in under a year was mind [00:05:00] blowing, but I was also given some fairly large diagnosis is with almost no tools in my tool belt at that point in life to deal with them.

And as you would imagine, having a chronic pain disorder and various other things, I started down a somewhat self destructive path in life. And my saving grace was that I've loved working. I joke with my friends that I think that I was born wanting to be a CEO, and I just love Learning about organizations and I love process and I love making things better is how my brain thinks about it.

And so the 2 kind of came together when I came into the community based mental health space a little bit after college. And started just hearing all of these things about behavioral health and substance use that were not even in my zone of awareness at that point in my life until I started working there.

And then I started, listening and being like, Oh, [00:06:00] maybe I could benefit from what we do here. And so I started my own behavioral health journey. And with that, I dabbled in different health communities. Really over this entire journey, and one of the things I didn't ever quite resonate with was the stuckness that can happen, but then I began to see why is the stuckness happening, and it was because people were being referred to different things piecemeal instead of this holistic picture of your mental health with your physical health all together.

And the more exposure I got to that, and the more I had my own experiences with health in the workplace and the ebbs and flows, and seeing everybody I interacted with, I realized who isn't struggling with trying to balance their health while they're trying to have their careers. And I kept seeing so many people who felt like their career was getting the brakes slammed on, or they couldn't do it because.

Is standard workplace is go with chronic illness. You can't do [00:07:00] that. It's an ebb and a flow. And so sometimes it's, full speed ahead. And sometimes it's no, I need a break and I need to pause. so throughout that journey, I realized that whenever I showed up, not taking care of my health 1st.

Because for a long time, I was extremely focused on I need to make money and I need to make sure I have health care, because if something happens, how am I going to take care of myself? But in doing that, I focused on work inappropriately and then I realized that then I was showing up poorly for people that I was trying to help.

And so over time, I slowly shifted the focus to, I want to be the best leader I can be, but in order to do that, I have to prioritize my health first. And I believe that everybody should be prioritizing their work. I love a cheesy quote. And you can't pour into others from an empty cup, right? And so that's where you've got to center your health, and then everything else can start moving around that as you get [00:08:00] better control over that.

So that's how it Wove the two together is being able to see the experience from in the workplace on the system side. And being in health advocacy groups and interacting with others with similar conditions to myself being like, oh. There's a way we could connect the 2 here.

I love that you said that because you talk about your ups and downs.

And like you said, you want to show it up 100%, but you couldn't. And those are things that we can control and people don't understand. And you said, sometimes that forces you to put. Whether it is your career on hold, which, you were saying, I love working and you wanted to thrive.

You just couldn't like you just couldn't. And then I love that. You said also don't let anybody convince you that your health should lock your potential and then you said , seek out environments that value you as a whole person. And so this is what prompted you, you say, to continue to pursue your career in IT leadership.

Yes. And then also you mentioned something super interesting. [00:09:00] You said that there is a correlation between chronic illness, substance abuse, and mental health. Why is this? Just walk us through this.

Yeah, and obviously this is from my own experience and why I believe this.

And there's a couple reasons, and they all flow together. 1 is with many chronic illnesses, there can be a large lead time on a diagnosis. And so let's take endometriosis. For example, if it takes 8 to 10 years to get a diagnosis. That's eight to 10 years of your life. You're struggling with something that you don't have an answer to.

And then once you get a diagnosis, getting the appropriate and accurate treatment can take longer. So if you think about that, that is 10 years of your life where you're struggling with something that is an unknown. And so if you think about that's going to take longer. have an impact on your well being because any person not knowing something for that long and [00:10:00] having it have a day to day impact, that's going to probably cause some symptoms for you.

It might be anxiety, it might be depression and so that's a starting point. And then also within these spaces, and granted like we've come a long way over the years, But 10 years ago, I was going into these health advocacy groups and I was seeing people getting handed prescriptions for pain meds because they were in pain, but there wasn't a diagnosis and there wasn't more than that.

And there was no referral also to behavioral health to help you manage this. And so naturally, if you have a pain disorder and the only thing you're being provided is pain medication, that is a slippery slope, right? Because you're not getting other tools added to your tool set so that you have this comprehensive approach and I would pause for a second to be very clear that I'm absolutely not saying that these things are in your head because that's actually been told to me.

Kind of the third [00:11:00] element here twice in my journey. Okay. After I've had a diagnostic surgery to confirm endometriosis, I had two providers tell me it was all in my head. And can you imagine being told something is in your head when you've already had two major surgeries for it? And that is a very common experience.

And so those three kinds of avenues, dealing with something very unknown, dealing something that makes your body feel terrible and then not be providing a comprehensive wraparound set of treatment. Or then second guessing yourself. Those are going to lead to varying levels of behavioral health issues, substance use issues and.

They all tie together, right? If you experience all three of those, you can see how that would be very impactful to someone's life.

100%. That makes total sense. And I know that's some of the reasons that you're so passionate about working on the mental health space and also, trying to come up with solutions on how to [00:12:00] help people.

But you also mentioned, obviously we're all trying to do the same thing. And trying to do the right thing, I shall say mental health, it's not a new thing, it's more like now we are trying to be more open about learning what are some of the struggles and what are some of the things that we could do for mental health and all of us in some way or another have had, Mental health challenge.

But you also mentioned, but there's still gaps. There's gaps on providing that service. And that's what you created Systemagically . Can you talk about some of those gaps that you're trying to bridge in terms of you talk about your tool set? And I know that you're a coach.

You're also do breathing exercises. Tell us about what are some of the gaps that you're to bridge

the founding premise of the Systemagically piece is that you only have so much time and you have only so many resources.

But there's a lot of overlap between the skills and it's going to take for you to manage chronic health conditions with the same skills that are going to make you [00:13:00] a better leader in the workplace. And so I just started thinking, what if we don't treat these like they're 2 entirely separate things?

What if we teach budgeting? So you can manage your personal budget and how you're going to manage your health care and your life. At the same time, we teach how budgets work in the workplace. What if we do the same thing for project management? Time management? These are not separate skill sets. They're very similar.

Now the scopes might expand and how much you're looking at is different, but the fundamental underlying principles of how you go about those things are very similar, and I am in love with process and procedure. I think my way of tying this all together is how do we create systems together.

That allow you to manage all of this and know when something is going to fall to the side versus when it can't. And so you do requirements gathering. You can do that in your personal life the same way you do it in an organization. But the health piece comes in of [00:14:00] that on a daily basis, everybody, whether you have a chronic health condition or not, health should be your focus.

So if you think about, I think it's pretty common for people to talk about juggling different balls and some are glass and some are plastic and you don't want to drop the glass ones. I've decided that you have one crystal ball and that's your health. And under no circumstances, can you drop that ball?

And so I started looking into ways that I could help leaders do the corporate, the 9 to 5 thing. How do you become better at your job? But then also, here's breathing exercises. If you're getting overwhelmed or stressed out in the middle of the day, or you're having a bad pain day, here's some ways you can breathe through things.

And then there's different levels of breath work, but I've also found out that the more intense kind I do, sometimes it's extremely good for processing things and just giving your brain space to think about stuff versus everything being a to do list and get into that subconscious. And I think we're [00:15:00] aware in the behavioral health space that a lot of stuff is stored within your body.

And so then I started pursuing a Pilates certification because. How can we move our body gently while we're on our desks or when we're at a conference and you sit in a chair from 8 in the morning until 10 PM, in sessions and then dinners and networking like that can be a lot for people.

And so how do we. Integrate these wellness things throughout the day versus it just being like, oh, I have to find an hour at the end of the day to go to the gym when you're alive for 24 hours in a day, and so how do we bring it in throughout our work day? And then how do we demonstrate that back to our staff?

Because I think that you as a leader have to demonstrate that it's okay to take care of yourself. And let them know it's okay to do that, too. So I personally am a mad overshare because I want people to know hey, I'm going to therapy. I'm going to the doctor's office. I'm going to take a walk right now on this [00:16:00] meeting because I need some fresh air and just really trying to lead by example, and then help other leaders.

Who are really wanting their staff to be well taken care of because, fun fact, there's a lot of literature out there that the healthier your employees are, the more they feel taken care of in community, the more productive they are. And so I'm fully aware that we have to balance the fact that we are businesses that need to bring in revenue.

But I think the way we can tackle this is making sure our employees feel empowered and healthy because then they're going to do their best. to help the organization succeed.

I love what you're saying because I am 100 percent believer of that. Our lives are not just work. There's a lot of things going out behind the curtains, things that we don't see.

And like you said, it's very important that we understand the people That we work with and provide that space to be, for whatever they need, whether it is to have to go to the [00:17:00] doctor. I'm just feeling overwhelmed. I have to take my child to an event or whatever it is.

Feel like before taking time for those spaces was very stigmatized oh, my God, here goes another hour. And, how long is it going to take you and productivity? And I do believe that providing those spaces for people that just makes them feel. Less stressed and more engaged as well.

We as leaders understand that people have a life on the other side. And agree with you. It's extremely important to buy those spaces for people. So I'm so glad that you're saying that in a side of all the other things that you're building and providing, to leaders with those tools.

So they can have a holistic approach into their professional life.

Yeah,

And I know that you love technology and I want to ask you because I remember also that we're talking about you attended a few conferences lately and you're like, Oh, my God, Carla, there's so much we can do with technology and we're not there yet.

But if I had a dream, if I could have this is what I would do. And I know that you [00:18:00] have something specific. Can you talk about what is your dream? What do you think technology can do? To address some of these challenges in the mental health space.

Yes. I have a two part dream.

So I have something that's slightly more focused on behavioral health. And then I have this full picture, like pie in the sky dream, which I know so many of us are working towards this, which is why I love this space is everybody I interact with is genuinely trying to make health care better for people.

And so within the behavioral health space, we don't have the same benefit as physical health, where we have blood tests or x rays in different scans to be able to make informed decisions to get to a diagnosis. But we do have a lot of data. And so I'm seeing on the physical health side, there is a company that has now reduced the time to detection of breast cancer by five years.

There's another organization that has [00:19:00] reduced the diagnostic time on women's chronic conditions from 8 to 10 years down to 5 to 7 already. And so those things are looking at all of this data on the physical health side so that we can reduce diagnostic time. What I want to see happen in behavioral health is we use all of this data we have in all of these systems.

To start forming those kind of diagnostic criteria. But it's based off of conversations like this and notes in the chart, so it's much more difficult without those very solid kind of like markers that are available in other spaces. And what will happen over the next 5 years is we've already been doing measurement based care, right?

We have screeners and assessments that we know have certain indications, and then it moves towards certain diagnoses. What I would love to see us is expand upon that. And get to the point where we can say, you are a 30 year old woman with this background, you're [00:20:00] presenting with these symptoms, and we believe that this is your diagnosis says, and also, we know that this is the best starting treatment for this group of the population and hopefully then reducing diagnostic times and speeding up the time you get to the most treatment.

Helpful treatment so that treatment times can be reduced as well. And so we're on that path. Providers are doing this amazing work. And the 1 thing I definitely want to call out there is this is to help. Providers it is under no way to replace them. I do not believe technology ever replaces direct care providers.

This is to help reduce the administrative burden right? We joke about what did you have for lunch, but then we expect behavioral health providers to retain years of information to get this holistic picture of conversations. And I'm just not a believer that is a reasonable expectation of any human in [00:21:00] any field.

And so how do we start? Providing these kinds of insights so the provider can use their skills and their expertise and partner with data to make those changes. And then my dream high in the sky is that we get to the point where. You have, I'll just say a card that you can go in, you can scan in.

Any physical mental health establishment in the entire country, any other services to. And really any of the social determinants health arena, you can go into any of these organizations. And everything talks to each other. We have figured out how to get your chart from any location into a central repository that can be accessed by any provider.

And then you have a holistic picture of the person in front of you, and I believe that's how we move to preventative health care. Versus where we are currently, which is predominantly reactive health care, and I [00:22:00] think if we can get there, then we start changing health care across the board. And that's where people are working towards.

I do fundamentally believe that, but that's my dream.

I believe in the dream too. I believe that one day it's going to happen because I agree with you. Having that information available at the tip to the providers is important, whether you live here or you live across the country. I was actually on a dinner one time and Sarah, one of my colleagues was asking like, what happens to me if I go skiing?

And I break my leg, but nobody's going to have, your history. So whether it's in the mental health space or just some things as simple as, I broke my leg, the information is not available. And I cannot believe with all the technology we have, we, we can still make this happen.

So I have hope to

yeah. I think all the pieces and parts are out there. Now, we just got to get them all talking

to each other except to bring them together. 100%. I really appreciate your time. I love your [00:23:00] passion. I love what you're doing. And I can't wait to hear more about the strides that are going to continue to make.

Is there anything else that you want to say to close the segment?

one thing I'll just say to close it is if you're like a direct care provider listening to this conversation, it's okay to take care of yourself. I feel like a lot of people feel they have to give, and I believe that you can give better by taking care of yourself first.

And that I got to talk about the technology piece a little bit. I seems big and scary and seem very big brothery. But I also think it is fundamentally an answer to a lot of our problems. And it's how we create more efficiencies and we become more effective. And that's how we start tying this all together.

And so that in just generally speaking, everybody's having a better time.

Awesome. Thank you again for your time and looking forward to talking to you again at some point.

Yes. Thank you. Have a great day.

You too.

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