West Henderson Hospital CEO Chris Loftus: Ending the "Best Healthcare Is the Airport" Narrative | Fargo Talks

Description

Where's the best hospital in the Las Vegas area? Chris Loftus, CEO of West Henderson Hospital, part of the Valley Health System, sits down with Jeff Fargo on Fargo Talks to answer the questions patients across southern Nevada actually search: how long are ER wait times, how do you compare hospitals using CMS star ratings and Leapfrog grades, what are the stroke warning signs (BE FAST), and how does hands-only CPR work.

Located in Henderson, Nevada, West Henderson Hospital draws patients from across the Las Vegas valley, from the Strip to Southern Highlands to Sun City Anthem, and from neighboring states. Chris shares how the hospital went from opening its doors to being voted gold for Best Hospital in the Las Vegas Review-Journal's Best of Las Vegas 2025, why it was built at 150 beds with a master plan to expand to 450, and the "Who Packs Your Parachute" philosophy behind its culture. He also explains why every elective surgery patient gets a personal call from a hospital executive the night before their procedure.

West Henderson Hospital is part of Valley Health System, a network of acute care hospitals, freestanding emergency departments, and behavioral health facilities serving Las Vegas, Henderson, and southern Nevada. Valley Health System's parent company is Universal Health Services (UHS), headquartered in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Chris Loftus is the CEO of West Henderson Hospital in Henderson, Nevada. A former Duke University and professional soccer player, Chris chairs the American Heart Association's Las Vegas board and led the opening of West Henderson Hospital as part of the Valley Health System.

IN THIS EPISODE

0:00 How a hospital stay became a podcast episode

2:07 What drives a hospital CEO

9:22 150 beds to 450: the master plan

12:03 What is Valley Health System?

14:58 ER wait times and door-to-doctor times

24:06 Best of Las Vegas gold

30:45 How to compare hospitals: CMS star ratings and Leapfrog grades

34:00 Who Packs Your Parachute

43:01 Walking into the ER: admission to discharge

46:16 Why the CEO calls surgery patients the night before

51:31 Service lines: spine, bariatric, cardiac

53:45 Heart attack and stroke: BE FAST and hands-only CPR

1:01:30 The Allegiant Stadium CPR event

1:05:50 Community partnerships and Kids Heart Challenge

1:10:46 From pro soccer to hospital leadership

1:21:57 The Serenity Suite and taking care of staff

1:40:57 AI in healthcare and patient health records

1:52:24 What's next for West Henderson

CONNECT

Fargo Talks is hosted by Jeff Fargo, founder of Fargo Factor, an AI visibility firm in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Website: https://www.fargofactor.ai/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jefffargo/

All episodes: https://www.fargotalks.com/

West Henderson Hospital: https://www.westhendersonhospital.com

#WestHendersonHospital #FargoTalks #LasVegasHealthcare

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Transcription

Speaker #0
Thanks, Chris.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
For coming on. I appreciate it.
Speaker #1
My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker #0
I have a bunch of questions for you. There's a great story about how this happened, by the way, which is wild. My first question is, are you and your wife considering a class action lawsuit against Hobby Lobby or Michaels because you're so attractive and you're not in any of their picture frames at all?
Speaker #1
No lawsuits that we're planning at any point.
Speaker #0
That's a travesty. I think that we need to talk to there's a law firm out there that wants to do some pro bono work. It's the easiest money you're going to make because, I mean, look at the guy. He's a stud. I guess first we could talk about how this happened. Just full disclosure so people know. Let's do it. Because if you would have said to me when I started this three years ago, oh, you're going to have the CEO of a hospital. I'm like, no. What? Because healthcare here, we know, does not have a great reputation. Except for West Henderson Hospital. My opinion, not yours. Full disclosure, y'all. I'm saying this. St. Rose can suck it. This place is five star. West Henderson's amazing. I was here for some stuff a month and a half ago. Was in the ER. And we came because Jen, who's a charge nurse here, was friends with my wife. Was here for two days and was blown away by the staff. Was blown away by how much people care. And I've always told people I've worked with, if you're not happy or if you see someone's not happy, look up. And so automatically it goes on to you of setting the standard here. And my last day I'm here, in comes Jessica Hensler, your COO. And I said, hi, are you going to give me the bill? And she was like, no, actually, I'm just making rounds. We try to talk to everybody before they leave. How did we do?
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
Do you feel heard? Do you feel like we answered everything and we did our best to help you out with what you're going through? And I was like, are you fucking kidding me right now? Like what's going on? And it was sincere.
Speaker #1
Absolutely.
Speaker #0
And that's why we're here now. And then we got in contact and just now it's like we've become great friends. Before I get into my questions, what is it inside of you that gets you up in the morning to be like? I want to make this place the best it can be in terms of West Henderson Hospital.
Speaker #1
Yeah, I mean, for me, right, we have a lot of pride. We're Henderson residents. We live right here. I want to be able to know that when I come into this facility, if your family comes in, if some of my friends, if some of my employees' families are coming in, that they're going to get the absolute best possible care. And I want those employees to be able to walk out in the community and say, yeah, I work there. I stand for excellence because that facility stands for excellence. And it means the world to me for people like you to be able to come into the facility and say, you know what? All those little things matter. All those little things when I'm having potentially the worst day of my life. This means so much to me to be able to have someone smile at me, to someone to come in and show compassion and really say, I'm not here to talk about a bill. I'm not here to talk about anything else other than have we exceeded your expectations? And if not. They will be exceeded before you leave this facility because you're our community member, you're our neighbor, and I want you getting the same level of respect and same level of care that my family would get when they come into the facility. So that really motivates me. I want my team to be proud of where they work. My biggest fear on any given day is somebody wakes up and goes, oh, man, I do not want to work there. I don't want to report to that person. I don't want to work with those teammates who don't care. And we place so much emphasis and so much pride on making sure we take care of each other as a family and as a team so that people enjoy coming to work. They know they got a lot of people that have their back so they can go take care and have the back of our community. So it's that's what really motivates me.
Speaker #0
Which is absolutely unheard of in Southern Nevada. Sorry. Again, I you can't say it. or, you know, if you can, you will, but I'm saying this is just me. I'm not, I'm holding harmless all of West Henderson hospital, Valley health system, their licensees, affiliates, and, and anyone else affiliated with them. But it's like, if you live here long enough, you know, that the two biggest challenges in Las Vegas and in Southern Nevada are education and healthcare at every level, at every level. And so this facility is like, Just it's like the Powerball lotto ticket. And when it's everybody again, I know it from personal experience. My wife has been here. My son has been here. I've seen it several times. It's not just a one-off thing.
Speaker #1
Right.
Speaker #0
Chris. And that it's everybody from the doctor making rounds to the person coming into your room to change your garbage. All the techs, all the nurses, all the assistants, everybody gives a shit. Everybody. How often are you or is the culture here reinforcing that we care policy? But sincere, not fake, like you're going to McDonald's and they upsell you to bigger fries. This is like, no, we're sorry that you have to be here. But if you have to be here, we're going to give you the best experience possible and exhaust. every bit of our resources to make that happen.
Speaker #1
Yeah. I mean, our leaders will tell you, I mean, it is incessant how much we talk about this. So, um, you get one chance to open a hospital, right? You, you don't get to get six months in and go, now we should fix some things. Now we should sort of change, what we're all about. Um, I've, I've spent my entire life on teams. I've spent countless hours on great teams on teams that I've had some dysfunction on them, whether it's through sports or other career things. And you take a lot of lessons learned from that. And I am a very, very, very big believer in making sure that you build your foundation off of your core value. Now, we don't just go out onto an AI platform and say, hey, give me some core values that I should think about that I can just put up on a wall and say, yeah, that's what we follow. We live and breathe these every single day. Now. Our five core values are teamwork, integrity, compassion, excellence, and respect. It's the acronym TICER. And my team will tell you, I talk about these incessantly. It's not just something that I say. It's not just something that we reference every once in a while. Every day in our safety huddle, we're talking about these. And our philosophy is you can't be good at three and excellent at two. You can't be phenomenal at four of them and not so great at one. In order to get to be on the team here, you must be absolutely phenomenal at all five of them. And we hold people accountable to them. Our medical executive committee sat down and embraced these as well. Every physician on that medical executive committee put their face, a photo, and signed it saying, not only will we hold ourselves accountable to these, every new physician that comes on to staff, you You will be getting this one pager with our photos, with our signatures telling you we will hold you accountable to these things. It makes conversation so much easier because people want to be a part of an organization that they feel proud to work in. And when we hold high standards like that, our belief is A players will want to work with A players. You want to be on the same team with people who elevate you to the next level. I don't want to be on a team with someone who says, I love that your standards are that high, but mine aren't quite as high. Can you meet me halfway? No, because you're not going to make me better. I'm not going to make you better. And then ultimately that translate into poor patient care. And that's not what we're about here. So we talk about it nonstop. Like it is at least three or four times a week where, hey, great teamwork. Hey, I love the integrity that you showed by doing X, Y, and Z. The respect that you've shown your teammate with how you behave, the body language that you show, the way that you showed eye contact when they're talking to you, the way that you've truly listened to them and given them your full attention. And when you reinforce those over and over and over, people understand, oh, that's the expectation. And then those A players come in and go, I kind of like being around that. I really like getting that same level of care from my teammates. that I can give to the community. So it's a, it's a massive part of what we talk.
Speaker #0
Positivity is one of the greatest, like just conductors of growth.
Speaker #1
Absolutely.
Speaker #0
Right. And there's so much crap in the world. You can go online or watch TV and it's like, Oh, we're bombing who, who's hating on who right now. And, and, and so it's to have a place that you're getting paid to go to what you're getting paid to be here and to actually be positive.
Speaker #1
Right.
Speaker #0
And to be proactive in terms of wanting to help and serve is bananas.
Speaker #1
It's everything.
Speaker #0
To me, it's absolutely bananas. So you're a 150-bed facility today with a master plan to expand to 450.
Speaker #1
Right.
Speaker #0
Walk me through what that growth looks like over the next several years.
Speaker #1
Yeah, so when you open a hospital, you don't just want to build endless amounts of beds, and then they just sit there for years, right? So we're very, very strategic. We're part of the Valley Health System, seven hospitals here within Las Vegas. We're pretty good at it. We're pretty good at knowing where the market needs some additional help. And how do we build the facility to not only have the right service lines, but the right size for the facility? So we'd rather start at 150 beds and then have a plan to be able to build up. The nice thing is I have the full blueprints. I know exactly what 450 beds looks like. We've designed the facility. We know how it expands, where it expands. There's lots of shell space around the facility so that we can say no one gets to steal the space next to pharmacy because it's dedicated for pharmacy expansion. When we go to 450 beds and that's throughout the entire facility of dedicated shelf space, how we expand into that. So, you know, there's no exact timeframe on here's when we're going to expand. It's sort of how do we grow with the community as a community utilizes the facility. But we don't want to be behind the eight ball when the community starts, you know, embracing the facility even more and we start growing rapidly. we don't want to go You know what? Now I've got to wait a year to get with an architect to get a whole design done, then start the construction and the permitting process. No, we know where everything's going. We're ready to go with the master plan of how we expand. So right now we already have two towers. You got a seven story tower and a five story tower, a whole seven story tower. That's 150 beds already built out. The five story tower is shelled on floors three, four, and five. But when we need that. We're already shelled out. We're ready to go. All we have to do is just build out the interior of the unit. When we start to get to the fifth floor and we're going to build that out, we add on floor six and seven. So then you've got two seven-story towers that make up 300 beds. When that gets filled up, we just tack on another tower onto the other side. It gives you sort of a T-shape. And then you've got 450 beds with 150 beds in each one of those towers. And. We grow as the community grows. We look at service lines that are demanded by the community and what's needed within the community. So really smart design by UHS. And I think we're poised and in a good position for growth as it develops.
Speaker #0
And Wes Henderson Hospital is a part of Valley Health System. Absolutely. Correct?
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
Can you kind of walk me through for people that don't understand what that relationship looks like?
Speaker #1
Yeah, absolutely. So, um, Valley Health System has six full acute care hospitals. So that's Centennial Hills, Summerlin, Spring Valley, Valley, Henderson Hospital, and then West Henderson Hospital. We also have a specialty hospital that's under the license of Spring Valley called Valley Health Specialty Hospital. We do outpatient surgeries there, but we also have inpatient rehab there. That's a five-star rated facility. It's absolutely phenomenal. That does really good care for patients within our community. And it's a center of excellence where we can get all of our patients needing inpatient rehab sent to that facility. We also own two behavioral health facilities here within Las Vegas, which are Spring Mountain Treatment Center and Spring Mountain Sahara. And then included in all of that is also freestanding emergency departments. So right now we have nine freestanding emergency departments. As you can tell, it takes a long time, a lot of resources, a lot of money to build a hospital. So these freestanding emergency departments. As the city of grown have been phenomenal because it allows us to sort of get our access out into other parts of the city where it doesn't take as long to build, not as many resources. We have nine of those throughout the city. And then part of the Valley Health System we also own out in Pahrump Desert View Hospital, which is a critical access hospital. So a lot of access to care within Las Vegas. Our parent company is Universal Health Services out of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. We own about 30 acute care hospitals throughout the United States and over about 330 behavioral health hospitals throughout the world. So the company is very mission driven on extending our reach and really helping people, whether it's in an acute care setting or a behavioral health setting.
Speaker #0
That's wild.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Big company doing a lot of great things.
Speaker #0
I know King of Prussia.
Speaker #1
Yeah. The mall up there, right?
Speaker #0
What's the geographic service area for? West Henderson Hospital. What is the hospital built for?
Speaker #1
Well, you know, as the city of Henderson has really grown dramatically, obviously we're trying to grow with the city and we obviously have our primary service area, which can range anywhere across the city of Henderson, across St. Rose Parkway, over into Las Vegas, over into Southern Highlands. But I can tell you, we have people coming from all over the place. We have people coming from all over Las Vegas. We have people coming from surrounding states. And that's what we want to be known for. Now, I'm not okay with just being known as like, hey, we're a good hospital within, you know, Henderson. I want to be known as one of the best hospitals in the country. And I've got an entire army of people in the hospital who are just as driven to make sure that becomes a reality. So we're here for everyone. Obviously, we don't have every single service line because we're a year and a half old. But as we said, we'll grow with the community and see what service lines are needed.
Speaker #0
When I was here with Brandy, with my wife, and I'm always asking because I'm a data guy, right? And so one of the texts that came in that was helping her out and we're talking, I go, who are you seeing coming in? And it was wild. She said, we actually have people now coming in from the Strip.
Speaker #1
Yes,
Speaker #0
absolutely. And so they're coming from, which is 20, 25 minutes away with several healthcare choices between there and here, but they are finding their way here for proper care.
Speaker #1
Yeah, I mean. I always get baffled by like the fact that people are like surprised by that because one, I think to your point, um, with your experience in AI, like you're really utilizing that like beyond what I see other people doing, but you can go out, you can search online, tell me about the best hospital experience. And, you know, people are going to look at reviews. People are going to look at what other people are saying. We're very proud of over a thousand five-star Google reviews, 4.7 star Google rating. That's the same as what the Wynn and the Bellagio have. I would argue we're doing it in a much harder industry. But I think
Speaker #0
You don't have comps here? No, no, no. Unfortunately,
Speaker #1
that's a little bit frowned upon.
Speaker #0
Son of a bitch. All right, fine. We'll have to go to King of Prussia. That's fine.
Speaker #1
But I think that I have these conversations with patients all the time who whether they're trying to decide where they're going to have their elective surgery. And sometimes people want to be closest to what's closest to their home. And often what I'll say to them is, hey, what's your favorite show that you've seen on the strip? Or what's your favorite restaurant that you have here? And they're like, oh, I love to go to this restaurant. And I would drive there, you know, 20, 30 minutes. And I'd say, would you drive 20, 30 minutes for your health, for your safety, for the care of you or your family? And I often get this sort of like, like puzzled look on their face. So like, yeah, why don't I do that? And so I think over time, you know, people will, will start to gravitate towards that. And. realize if it's not only just the experiences, how quickly can you get seen, right? We, we laugh and say, you know, you could drive 30 minutes to be here, be seen our door to doctor times, sometimes less than five minutes where you're going to get in the emergency department, be seen by a physician. We'll get you in, we'll get you seen. Oftentimes our discharge time for someone who doesn't have to stay here is around 150 minutes. So about two and a half hours, you come here. you're seen, you could get home, watch a movie, do your laundry, get the kids picked up from school in our facility, sometimes faster than you can go and even wait to be seen at other facilities. And so with the importance of being seen timely within healthcare, we just know we do it pretty darn well. And we think that's something that people should know.
Speaker #0
It is. And I can speak in personal experience. I was admitted and I was here for two days. my wife and son both in the emergency room, testing lab work, everything out in about two hours.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
Under the two and a half.
Speaker #1
Right.
Speaker #0
I know that cause I'm looking, I'm a data guy. So I'm like, okay, we'll walk in the door. And it was just, again, I love the analogy of like the win of Southern Nevada healthcare, you know, is, is really what it is. And yeah, you go to that property because that's a vacation. This is your health.
Speaker #1
Right, right. Well, and I think, you know, you referenced earlier, like the frustration, I think, within the community for healthcare. And, you know, I've only been in Vegas and Henderson area for about eight years, going on nine years, right? And this narrative still sort of exists within Las Vegas and that the best place to go for healthcare is the airport. And I can't tell you how offensive that I find that. I can't. tell you how infuriating that is for me of someone who dedicates more of my life here than at my own home to serving our community and taking care of people. I get frustrated for my boss who spent 40 plus years, Carla Perez, over the whole state of Nevada, spent her entire career improving health care within Nevada. My chief nursing officer, Joyce Milosevic, same thing, close to 35 years as a nurse here within Las Vegas. And... I hate it for them. I hate that that narrative exists. And when we've started, you know, opening a hospital and you have to have your mission and your vision statement, again, we didn't just go out to, you know, an AI platform and say, give me a mission and vision statement. We sat down collectively as an entire team and said, what do we want to do here? How do we want to be known? What type of legacy do we want to leave? And I can tell you, in addition to what gets me up every day. I want West Henderson Hospital to be the hospital that people say. That is the place where that narrative started to end. And that was the catalyst for healthcare changing in Las Vegas. And we feel very confident about it. It's the same conversation where we sit down and we say, let's talk about what core values that we want to have here. It's not me putting these together. It's 50 directors and leaders sitting around a table. And we had hundreds of core values. And we narrow it down to those. And we don't just say those are our core values. We painstakingly go through and define those core values and are very deliberate about every single word that's descriptive of what are those core values mean to us. And every employee in this hospital has it on their badge on the back of it to be able to reference at any given point. And we won't stop until that narrative is ended. And there's too many people working too hard in this city for the rest of us to say things like that. I feel the same way about the education sector. There's so many teachers and so many people that give so much to this community and it doesn't help by saying negative things about their industry that they give so much of. So my urging to the population would be things don't get better by talking negatively about them. They get better by people sitting around a table and saying, how can we fix this together collectively as a team? To your point, speaking positively about what we're doing well and where we're going. We're a young city. We're not a Mayo Clinic. We're not 250 years old. The city has grown rapidly in a short amount of time. And I can tell you in the close to 10 years that I've been here, healthcare has come a long way. And we are on a very nice trajectory for improved healthcare. I think Wes Henderson is set in a stand.
Speaker #0
What services does Wes Henderson provide that people in the community might not realize are available here?
Speaker #1
Yeah, so I think obviously emergency services, I think people know that. But I think what sort of gets confused maybe in this area is, oh, well, you don't have pediatrics. Well, pediatrics, a lot of pediatrics is done in an outpatient setting. There's not too many inpatient settings. And so that's why you don't see a ton of pediatrics on an inpatient setting in a variety of states, right? Bye. We go through an entire pediatric readiness program to make sure that our emergency department can handle any age and any situation that comes in through the emergency department. Our director, Krista Fredericks, is absolutely phenomenal. She's a former trauma pediatric nurse. And so the team goes as she goes. Our physicians are very well versed and everything's pediatric down there. And the team does a phenomenal job with that. So that's one thing that I think people get confused on of like. Oh, you don't have a NICU or you don't have a pediatric unit. No, but that does not stop our ability to be able to care for people that come through the emergency department. We don't have labor and delivery, but that doesn't mean, again, people couldn't show up to our emergency department. We can't handle it. And being a part of a phenomenal system like the Valley Hill system, we can get you transferred to phenomenal labor and delivery units here within the system. We do a lot of cardiac here. Our hope is in the future to be able to open our open heart program. Again, we've already got it built out. All the infrastructure is there. And so we've sort of said, you know, when you open a hospital, you want to walk before you run. You don't just want to open with all these major service lines because that's when mistakes can happen. We want to be very methodical of doing the things that we do really well. And now let's continue to add pretty prominent service lines. We have an employed bariatric surgeon, Dr. Mark LeDuc. He's an absolutely phenomenal surgeon. And so we see a lot of those patients who are looking to make that transition in their life. And we've changed a lot of lives by doing that already here. And I've done a really nice job with that. So we'll continue kind of looking at service lines. But you do all the bread and butter stuff that you would see in most major hospitals, orthopedic surgery, spine surgery, general surgery. And we have a lot of technology to help those surgeons. be very successful and keep patients safe here.
Speaker #0
Wes Henderson was voted gold for best hospital in the Las Vegas review journals, best of Las Vegas competition. That's a biggie. What year was that and what did that recognition mean to the team?
Speaker #1
Yeah. I mean, I think it's validation for all the hard work that we've put in. Right. So that was for 2025. So we learned about that, I think. And I think it comes out about December every year. But yeah, I mean, that tells us that. Look, we hadn't even been open a year yet. And look at the impact that we're making throughout the city of people, not just in Henderson, but are coming here from other parts of the city. And just like you are going, whoa, that was different. That was unique. That's never been the similar health care experience that I've had in other areas. And so, you know, my team will tell you, I push hard on them. I try and make sure they're reaching their fullest potential. And sometimes they don't realize that, hey, the reason he's pushing so hard is because when our family comes here, he expects the same thing for them. So I think that validated a lot of the hard work that we had put in. Opening a hospital is insanely difficult. There's so many moving parts. A lot of late nights, a lot of mornings, getting up early, a lot of weekends where people came in here and sacrificed quite a bit to be at the standard that we expected to end that narrative. And I think it validated a lot of stuff for us that all that hard work is worth it. Now you get to walk around in the community and say, I work there. I stand for excellence of who I am and what I believe in and my standards because that facility stands for those things.
Speaker #0
It's a badge of honor. Yeah,
Speaker #1
it really is. Yeah. Something we're very proud of.
Speaker #0
Like, I want to be part of that.
Speaker #1
Right. Exactly.
Speaker #0
And it's something that, I mean, I've been a content creator 35 years. I have never picked up my phone and said, let me tell you about this amazing hospital that I was at. Right. Are you kidding me? Yeah. Like, that's also why we're here, just because it was received well. Yeah. I did it just because, and again, for people that if you, as much as we. You know, like you were saying before about health care and about education system here. If it's bad, okay. But if you have a good experience, and especially if you have a good experience here, film a little video about it. Because it is a, as the Jewish culture would say, a mitzvah. It's a wonderful thing of karma to put that out in the universe. Absolutely. To say, hey, just so you know, and I said it in my video. I go, you know, we all get on the health care system, not Wes Henderson Hospital. And this is why.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
I just felt, I get goosebumps about it. It just felt good doing that. Right. Right. And I still feel good that it did it. And I did it. And that to be received, like your PR team is reaching out and saying, can we use them? Like, of course you can. I don't care. Like it was, it just felt good. And with all this shit going on in the world, it's just to be, have that little oasis of calm. And I know I can, I could put my flag on that. That's something cool that I did. And that like, if ever you're having a bad day or someone here is having a bad day. You can look at that and go, this guy likes us.
Speaker #1
Yeah, absolutely. And it was so interesting, right? So we're sitting there. I'm at home. I think it's 7, 8 at night or something like that. And our CNO, Joyce, sends it to our leadership team and says, have you seen this? And you sort of, you get the video and you go, oh, man, you know, which direction could this go? We think we do a pretty phenomenal job, but most of the time people aren't out there making videos on like. Like you did. Let me tell you about all the great things. And so you opened it and you're like, that is absolutely amazing. I've never seen someone take the time to do that, but also again, validate the things that we think we're doing here at the hospital. I mean, I showed that to anyone and everyone who would watch it. I shared it on every platform that I had. I took it to our MEC, our medical executive committee meeting, showed it to all the providers. We showed it to all of our leaders. We have sent, I mean, that night when I got it. I think I went through every contact in my phone and just forwarded it out to everyone because we were very proud of it. And I can't thank you enough for that recognition. But the employees need to hear that, right? These people trip over themselves to help people in the community, and they need that positive feedback. 99% of people are the carrot, not the stick. And I think that went such a long way for them. And so thank you again for that.
Speaker #0
Entirely my pleasure. And I would double down on it by. telling anybody if you come here and not if, when you have an amazing experience here, share it. Pick up your phone and just 30 seconds, be a little vulnerable. You don't have to disclose what you came in for. I don't want to hear about your lesions, but just go ahead and talk to me as your audience. Because again, in a sea of negativity, in terms of Southern Nevada healthcare, this place shines. And the more people could do that, I think what also, and it's free, like just do it and it feels good to share your experience. You know, when you have a wonderful time here, which who would say that? I had a wonderful time. West Henderson Hospital. I hope I don't get sick again. But if I do, that's the first place and only place I'm going to go to.
Speaker #1
Yeah. No, and we get that from patients, right? We get patients that say, well, I didn't. I think I would want to stay another night, but it's like a hotel here. Everyone's so amazing. So, and I would encourage people, right? I say this to patients and others all the time. Go read our Google review. Go out and take a look at what people are saying about this facility. It's not normal. It's pretty impressive. Every single Google review, every morning.
Speaker #0
In our huddle, 50 leaders, our quality director prints out every single Google review, and we read every single one of them. One, we want to give that positive feedback, but if there's opportunity, we are jumping on it right away. But we've been very fortunate to have quite a few five-star Google reviews that we're pretty proud of.
Speaker #1
I don't know if you do a competitive market analysis or not, but is there any other hospital in town even close, honestly?
Speaker #0
Not that I've seen. Now our specialty hospital. That's a little different. It's going to have elective surgeries there and inpatient rehab, which is usually like an amazing process. There's so many dedicated folks that work there. We're really encouraging and helping people get back to their full strength. But of hospitals that have full scale acute care hospitals with emergency departments, I'm not aware of any that have.
Speaker #1
I remember I'll, if I can find it, I'll send it to you cause you'll giggle. But I had such a bad experience at St. Rose Dominican. that I left a review, I think on their Facebook page. And I said, I would rather visit a leper's tent in like Senegal and be treated there than go back to that property. And I'll never forget this. Somebody reached out, but it was a very, it was somebody from the nurse's department or something, but they were so like, just, well, we see your review. We want to talk to you. It wasn't like, we're so sorry that we didn't meet your expectations. We'd love to hear what, you know, more about it so we can become better. It was awful. The voicemail they left me, I'm like, fuck you. Are you kidding me? And so it's, again, and it's something that you're going to hear all the time in this conversation is just people here give a shit. So when a family is choosing between hospitals in the Las Vegas area, what should they actually be comparing?
Speaker #0
Yeah, so I don't think a lot of people understand this, but there's a lot of publicly reported data and scores that are out there for people to review. So in a short pinch, right, obviously, if you're trying to figure out, you know, where do I want to have my surgery or where do I want to go? Which emergency department do I want to go? It's not truly like I have to be there in the next five minutes, but I need to get there at some point today. Google reviews, I think, are pretty powerful. Um, you know, there's other platforms where people can go out and review data that I reference. A lot of that data is in arrears. So it's older data, but it's data. It doesn't lie. It's not like every year there's a new leader at a hospital. It's the same leadership team. It's the same expectations. It's the same standards. So two that I would encourage people to look at one is CMS star rating, right? So this is based off of data across the entire country. you CMS is Medicare and Medicaid services. So these are payers across the entire country. So you can see what results are. And so anywhere from a one to a five star facility, you can go out and take a look at people's rankings and it's based off of data. These are things like patient experience scores, infections, falls within a hospital, all things that matter for patient safety within a facility. And the other organization is called the Leapfrog. organization. So Leapfrog is a third-party organization that again takes data from hospitals, calculates it, and puts it into, like you would experience in school, a letter grade from A to F. So it'd be critical for people to go out and understand what type of facility am I walking into or what type of facility do I want to get my care at? Are they in A, B, C, D? You know, For me, I'll just tell you. average health care is not okay, right? And we need to be striving across Las Vegas to make sure we are a hospitals. And that comes with a lot of work and a lot of effort and dedicated effort to really understanding those metrics and putting processes in the hospital to keep our patients safe. So because some of that data is old, it's about two years old, West Henderson won't get our first leapfrog letter grade until about... two, two and a half years of being open because then we got to submit that data. But we obviously track the data. We know everything about it. And I'm confident it will be a lot of a great day.
Speaker #1
If you're not, the place needs to be scrutinized. Like, yeah. How was Wes Henderson different from the other hospitals serving Henderson and Las Vegas?
Speaker #0
Well, I think it goes back a lot to that service, right? and how we treat not just patients, but their families, our teammates that are in the hospital. You know, we talked a little bit about sort of a philosophy that we talked through here at the hospital is packing each other's parachutes. And that's not just with our teammates, but that's for the community as well. And so when I was a freshman in college, my coach sat all of us down on the first day, read us this story. It has been tattooed on my brain since I heard it. I've applied it in my personal life. We talk about it here in the hospital. We have awards based off of it. Attention, please. Attention, please.
Speaker #2
We're on the response team from 705. Attention, please. Attention, please. Rapid response team, room 705. Attention, please. Attention, please. Rapid response team,
Speaker #1
room 705. So, yeah, we're really at the hospital. That just happened, and I hope they're okay.
Speaker #0
They will be. I got an awesome team.
Speaker #1
Good answer.
Speaker #0
And so, you know, the story that is called Who Packs Your Parachute? And so Charles Plum was a U.S. Navy jet pilot in Vietnam. and after 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. So he ejects, is captured, and spends six years in a Vietnamese prison, communist Vietnamese prison. So he survives that ordeal and lectures on lessons learned from the experience. So one day, he and his wife are sitting in a restaurant and a man at another table comes up to him and says, you're plum. You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft Kitty Hawk. You were shot down. And Plum looks up at him in amazement and says, how in the world did you know that? And the man looks right back at him and said, I packed your parachute. And Plum gasps in surprise and gratitude. He can't believe it. And he's like, it worked. And the guy says, yeah, I guess it did. And so, you know, he leaves that experience and he can't stop thinking about that guy. And he wonders how many times I might have seen him in a Navy uniform, a white hat, bib in the back, bell-bottom trousers. Walked past him on the ship and not one said, good morning. How are you? Or anything because, you see, he was a fighter pilot. He was a big man on campus. But he thought that night about how many times had that guy been in the bowels of the ship, carefully weaving the folds and the silks of each time, holding in his hands the fate of someone he didn't even know. But he gave everything he could because he was packing the parachutes of his teammates. But when we talk about this concept. of packing parachutes at West Henderson, we think about it in two ways. And first, always is with each other as teammates. And I think patients and visitors and families, when they come in here, they feel that. They know that we have each other's back, that we look out for each other, that we ensure that you're going to enjoy working here with our team because we have high standards, but we have your back. I've got a meeting every single morning, our safety huddle every morning. We have 50 directors in there. I don't make these expectations. They do because they're a family and they care for each other. If any director at any point says, hey, you know, bear with me today. I had someone call off and I might be a little slow on doing A, B, and C. 49 other directors turn to them and go, how can we help? What do you need today? You're not on an island. We're all here to help you. And that is unique and it is different and it makes it special to work here when everybody packs each other's parachutes. We even have a badge that we give to select leaders and select individuals at the hospital. It's yellow. It hangs below their other badge with black font and it says parachute packer. These are people that if I went to anyone in the facility and I said, you know, this individual and said their name, everyone goes incredible, amazing. You could ask that person to do anything. They'd give you the shirt off their back. And when everybody feels that strongly about that person. It's sort of like the golden ticket. We want you wearing a badge that says parachute packer. We want your teammates seeing that. We want new employees coming in and going, that's someone who I should emulate their behavior and rewarding that person for what they do well. Now, the second way that we talk about packing parachutes is with our community. And we're in one of the oldest living communities right behind us, Sun City Anthem. Unfortunately. When you're in some of those communities, some of those individuals are the only living person in their sphere of life. Their spouse might have done. Their friends that were closest with them might have passed. They might not have children or have family close here to take care of them. And when they come in the hospital, they're terrified. They don't know if when they left their house, if that's the last time they're going to go into their house. And I talk with staff about this all the time. I bring up Let's talk about a particular institution. At this institution, they take away your clothes when people can come visit you, when you get to eat. And nine times out of ten, people say, a jail or a prison. I say, I'm talking about a hospital. We take away a lot of your independence and a lot of your dignity so that we have easier access to your body. We create an environment where we don't have too many people here visiting so you can really rest. We control your diet. Sometimes it might not be appetizing to you to be on a cardiac diet where you don't get all the tasty salts and stuff. And I get asked this question all the time from people every day. They say, hey, Chris, how's it going? I'll greet them and then they'll say, how are you? And I say, I'm healthy in a hospital. It could be a whole lot worse than this. And what I want people to remember is our job to pack the community's parachutes. Every patient, and this is widely studied across healthcare, across the world, they want three things. Don't hurt me, heal me, and be nice to me. And we do those first three things phenomenally well here, but we have to remember in any given situation, we didn't come underneath the emergency sign today. They did. And whatever you have going on in your life, anything that might be frustrated or a little bit of anxiety for you, I promise you it's not as bad as that individual who might be the only living person in their sphere of life. And it is our job to give everything we can to them, to not hurt them, heal them, and be nice to them. And when we pack their parachutes, they're going to pack our parachutes in supporting us as an community. So a huge philosophy for us here and one that we take a lot of pride in.
Speaker #1
Something that when my wife Brandy was here and discharged, but Dr. Hammond,
Speaker #0
right? Yeah, he's the man.
Speaker #1
He's an asshole. I want to look like him. Bald, guy's a stud, like negative body fat. I'm like, motherfucker. I'm joking. Amazing guy. I'm with Brandy like the next day. We're driving down Eastern. Her phone rings and she looks. I look over and it says West Henderson Hospital. I'm thinking it's... Like, again, it was good. I had an AI thing reach out to me afterwards and see how am I doing, which it was very good. I know AI. It was good. It was Dr. Hammond. How are you? Just checking to see how you're doing. What? Like, that's the stuff that you talk about. Parachute packers like, oh, my God. And that he cared enough just to check on literally the most important thing in my universe is my wife. not. And that's not just a person. A thing is my wife. She is my alpha, my omega, my everything, Chris. And for him to do that, like, I was like, you know what? Just because you're negative body fat and because I'm literally looking at all my faults because of you, I love that guy now. Love him.
Speaker #0
He is the man. He's our associate medical director here. Him and Dr. Marco Hernandez have been just. Such wonderful additions to our team here. But they're genuine. He's not doing that because we ask him to. He's not doing it because there's some mandate you must call so many people a day. He cares. And I get so many compliments on him, not just from patients and families, but from staff. We have lots of providers here. It's very unique. that staff will fight over the shifts to get to work with those doctors because they just enjoy them as human beings, as people, as someone that has their back on any given shift. So, yeah, he'll enjoy that. He's a great guy.
Speaker #1
Hernandez was my doctor when I was here. Stud.
Speaker #0
Total stud.
Speaker #1
Came in from California. Moved from California, which is known for good health care. Shit show of a state, but known for good health care. We know this. But came here. Like, he's got a place at Anthem. I'm like, dude. So it was just, again. This sounds like an infomercial for West Henderson Hospital. I'm like, no, it really is the truth. And so keeping along the lines of ER, walk me through what happens when somebody walks into West Henderson ER from admission to discharge.
Speaker #0
Okay. So there's really two avenues that you can come in. Obviously, you can drive in private vehicle. You're going to come in through the main lobby or you could potentially come through an ambulance or EMS on the back door. Um, oftentimes you're going to come in and what people are often saying to us is like, it feels empty. I'm walking into the emergency room lobby. Good. That's how it should be. Should not have a bunch of people out in the waiting room waiting to be seen. We were very intentional about how we built the emergency department, having extra space for when we get large groups at a time of people coming in. So oftentimes when you walk into our ER lobby, you're not going to see a whole lot of people in the lobby. because our triage team is so good getting them seen you're going to be greeted by someone right away seen and then taken back into your own bay so we don't want you waiting out in the lobby You don't want to be waiting out in the lobby. We want to get you back and seen. You're going to be seen by a provider. I told you our average time is less than five minutes by either a nurse practitioner or a physician, depending upon the acuity of what you have. You'll be assigned your own dedicated nurse who's going to come in, introduce themselves, and feel like your next-door neighbor, one of your closest friends, right? They're amazing at this. Regardless of your situation, they have so much compassion. They're so good at what they do. and a lot of experience down there. So you're going to go through that process. The physician's going to work you up, make sure that they understand what's going on with you. And once we get all the information to you, what we pride ourselves on is making sure that you clearly understand our plan for you on that day. We call it our plan of care. The doctor's going to talk to you about it. The nurse is going to talk to you about it. Any other ancillary staff that are with you are going to keep talking about it. We do not want you confused. We don't want your family confused. When someone comes in, they have enough going on with anxiety of just the situation. And what we find is when people get a sense of control back, by that I mean they understand what's happening. What's going to happen next? What does that mean? Explain that to me. And we take a lot of time to explain that to patients and physically see them go from tends to, okay, I understand what's happening. Oftentimes, it's just the anxiety of the unknown. They don't know what's happening next. So we're going to get through that process. Make sure you have everything. Get you discharged with the appropriate discharge information so that you're informed on next steps after you leave the hospital. If we need to get you set up with a specialist, if we need to get you set up with other avenues of continuity of care for you, we will help you with that process. And like I said, on a discharge for the ER where... We're about two and a half hours of getting people in and out on average. Which is crazy.
Speaker #1
Most ERs here, you're waiting for three hours. Yeah. Just waiting. Waiting for three hours. Here it's in and out on average two and a half hours.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
Bananas. Bananas. You mentioned calling elective surgical patients the night before surgery. Why does that matter clinically and from a patient experience standpoint?
Speaker #0
Yeah, so we've prided ourselves on this, right? So every single department in the hospital we've challenged with create a wow moment. Create something that shows patients that you care about them so much and that you're so focused on their safety and the steps that they're going to need to follow. And sort of like we talked about in the emergency department, what's coming next? And that you're not just some number going through the machine. of being in healthcare. And so we as a C-suite team said, well, we can't just ask all of our leaders to do that. We have to walk the walk and do it ourselves. And so it was a week of sitting down for two, three hours at a time every day. And everybody has an idea. And we kept saying, but is it a wow moment? And by wow moment, we mean we literally want people to say to us after we do whatever it is, wow, I've never had. a hospital or someone in a hospital do that for. And so our wow moment for our executive team combines the two things that you asked about. Something clinical to improve safety, but also showing people that we care about them. So every single elective surgical patient that has said to us, that's where I'm choosing to have my procedure done. Our C-suite member gets their names and their phone numbers and their procedure and their surgeon. And we get that list and we call every single one of those elective surgical patients the night before their surgery. The call usually goes something like this. Hi, Mrs. Smith. This is Wes Anderson Hospital calling you about your procedure tomorrow. Yes. And I say, well, my name's Chris Loftus. I'm the CEO at Wes Anderson. And I see we have you on our surgery schedule with Dr. So-and-so tomorrow. And they say nine times out of 10. I'm sorry, who is this? And I have to repeat, my name is Chris Loftus. I'm the CEO of the hospital. And I just wanted to call and introduce myself to you for the procedure tomorrow. About another nine times out of 10, I'm now put on speakerphone and they say, honey, the CEO of the hospital is on the phone. And now I'm talking to two people, sometimes the whole family. And we brag on the surgeon. We brag on their OR team. We brag that we've traditionally done thousands of these procedures. And we are experts at this. We are really good at this. And any anxiety that you have for the procedure tomorrow, let it go. Get some rest tonight because you're in great hands and we're going to kick some butt tomorrow for your procedure. Um, and nine times out of 10, what I hear is, wow, I can't believe that the CEO of the hospital is calling me for my procedure. My response is you've placed your trust in us for one of the most, probably anxiety risen days of your life. This is the least I can, and I can tell you it's the best part of my day. Every single day. I love making these calls. And then after their procedure, we go visit them. They get our. personal cell phone number they get a card signed by the entire executive team and then within that envelope with the card is a little paratrooper why because we give them a memento to say we pack the parachutes of arkham so um i absolutely love getting to make those phone calls and get to go up and visit with the people but there's a service excellence aspect to it right but there's a lot of questions we can answer for them What am I going to experience the next day when I show up at the hospital? Can my family come? What time should I show up? After their procedure, hey, I'm experiencing a little bit of this. Okay, we can navigate those things together. But they know that they have a concierge that's for them and with them along that entire ride. And their family has our cell phone numbers also. So every single patient, I mean, my team will tell you, I give my card out like it's nothing and has my cell phone number on it. And I tell anyone and everyone, this is my job within the community. I feel privileged and honored to be able to do it. It doesn't matter if it's tonight, tomorrow, two years from now, you, your family, your friends, you need anything. I expect a phone call and we will get you taken care of. Sometimes not just here at West Henderson, but any of our Valley Hill system.
Speaker #1
It's, and we've talked about this off camera that I've always said there's two, and I'm from upstate New York. So you say like, I got a guy. Do you need something? Yeah, I got a guy. The two places you want a guy is the DMV and the hospital, preferably the ER.
Speaker #0
Right.
Speaker #1
Right. And so, and we've, I, I, I did not play the card with Jack. I pulled the card. I played the Chris card with my, with my wife, with Brandy. You were just like, tell me when.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
When, when are you going to be here? And we were met at the door with a woman smiling with a wheelchair. Brand's like, I can walk. She's like, nope, have a seat. Nicely. Yeah. I was like, nope, we're here for you. Let's go. Absolutely. it was just You walk the walk, man, and more people need to know about that. We touched on this a little bit before, but I wanted to kind of put it in a neat little box for you to answer. What clinical service lines is Wes Henderson investing in right now?
Speaker #0
So from a surgical perspective, spine's a big thing for us. So we have some very talented spine surgeons who are on staff here. A lot of phenomenal, phenomenal technology to help those surgeons and getting. more minimally evasive and big procedures, right? And so we want to make sure that we have the latest and greatest technology for people to utilize. We have orthopedic surgeons that are here as well. We do a good amount of that. I talked about bariatric surgery, which is a big service line for us here at Wes Henderson. We are, the acronym is MBSAQIP. That's the accrediting body, MBSAQIP. So we are accredited by them. for bariatric surgery. We have primary heart attack accreditation from the Joint Commission. We have our stroke accreditation here at the hospital. We are the only hospital in the state of Nevada that is sepsis certified by the Joint Commission. So for people coming in and then eventually we're going to be expanding and doing more cardiac. So we have cardiac catheterization lab, electrophysiology lab right now. We like to say cardiac cath lab is sort of like the plumbers, if you will. Electrophysiology is like the electricians for your heart. So we have both of those capabilities. And then we will be expanding in the next year or so into open heart procedures here at the hospital. So, again, when you open a hospital, like I said, you want to walk before you run. We don't want to have too many things going on. But everything, general surgery, we do urology surgery here. We do some OB surgery here as well. So, or excuse me, we do some GYN surgery here. And so, yeah, a lot of those bread and butter things that you have within a surgical department and cardiac walk, big for us here.
Speaker #1
When someone with a cardiac event or stroke symptoms, when they're experiencing those, what's the protocol when they arrive at Wes Henderson Hospital?
Speaker #0
Well, a little bit. the, the, biggest priority we should talk about is a little bit before they get to the hospital right and so um i'm the chair for the american heart association here for the las vegas board and so um it's really important to me it's our nation's number one killer cardiac issues and we just should not as a nation be having so much of this going on but a lot of it is just recognizing those signs and symptoms before you go to the hospital and what frustrates us a lot of us in the health care industry is the people who yeah i've kind of been experiencing this and this discomfort has been real heavy for a couple of days now well it's really important for people to understand that we say within health care is time is tissue so you If you're truly having some cardiac event, when blood flow is not getting to certain aspects of your heart, that tissue cannot reproduce. It's dying. So if you're having a heart attack, we need you to get here as fast as possible. But even before getting here, we need to make sure that someone within the healthcare field gets to you as soon as possible. And so a huge message I would have to everyone is call 911. Get an ambulance to you. We have several people that constantly happens where trying to drive their loved one to the hospital who's having chest pain. And then if something happens to them while they're in the car, you might be hysterical. You might be focused on them getting a car accident, hurt yourself, them or others on the road. You've got to make sure that we get someone to you as soon as possible who knows what they're doing, who can get life-saving techniques and or drugs in you right away. So. I can't emphasize enough, call 911 if you're having any of the symptoms. The other thing is every household, there needs to be at least one person who's CPR certified. Got to learn CPR. What we know through the American Heart Association is that most heart attacks happen within the household. About 70% of people who are going to have a heart attack have it within their own household. And if you don't start CPR compressions very quickly after someone collapses, it... increases your risk for mortality by two to three times, right? So starting those compressions sends blood flow to vital organs like your brain and other areas so that you can survive, have a better chance of survival in some of those instances. So every household needs to have someone that knows how to do it. Everybody needs to be able to teach their children. And it's changed, right? It's not the 15 compressions, two breaths, 15 compressions, too, bros. For adults, it's just do compressions. That's why we call it hands-only CPR right now. So just keep doing compressions, about 100 to 120 beats per minute, about two inches of depth, and just keep those compressions going. Lots of songs out there that you can look, get used to the beat. One of them is the Bee Gees, Stayin' Alive. That's hilarious, really. Yeah. So there's hundreds of songs that have that same beat. So from a cardiac standpoint, We need you getting in here fast. And then if you're coming in, as soon as you are talking about chest pain and you're getting triage, you're getting rushed back immediately. We have timeframes that we expect to hit. And if you need to go to our cardiac cath lab because there's a blockage, we save lives every single week here at the hospital. Another one he asked about is stroke, right? And so that goes sort of in line with sort of that number one killer in the country is cardiovascular disease. and so stroke is often... sometimes a vascular issue. And same thing, we need people to recognize the signs and symptoms, and we need people to call 911 to get to the appropriate facility. And so the acronym that's out there, that's been out there for a while, is BE FAST. The word BE, so BE stands for balance. Oftentimes if you're having a stroke-like symptom, your balance might be off. E is for eyes, so is your vision getting blurry on one side? Are you having trouble visualizing things? F is for facial drooping. Oftentimes you're going to see, you've heard the stories that someone might have one side of their face that's not working. Oftentimes you can ask someone, can you smile? Can you stick your tongue out? Do you see something dramatic of smiles crooked or the tongue is falling to one side? Really important to be able to ask these questions. A is for arm. Can you get people to raise both arms? Oftentimes, if you're having a stroke on the left side of your brain, the right side of your body is not going to be functional. So ask them to raise their arm. S is for speech. Ask them questions, get them to talk. Oftentimes someone suffering stroke-like symptoms is going to have slurred speech. And then T is for time, right? Time is tissue again. Same thing with your heart, with your brain. If you have parts of your brain that are not getting blood flow, it's causing major issues. So call 911, get someone to you that knows what they're doing. Make sure we can get you to the closest facility for a life-saving stroke intervention. So. Um, same thing. If they come in through the emergency department, you've got these symptoms. You are a massive priority for us. We are stroke certified and we are going to get you back and get you treatment as quickly.
Speaker #1
How does West Henderson hospital handle the handoff between the ER and inpatient care?
Speaker #0
Yeah. So the nice thing, right? So we talked about Dr. Hammond's group, um, same group is over our anesthesia group, right? So if anybody comes in and has to go up and have a surgery, amazing Amazing communication from our ER physicians to our anesthesiologists and upstairs for any type of emergent procedures. Amazing handoff from our inpatient team. So you're going to have those same ED physicians and what we call hospitalists. Imagine that's like your internal medicine, your family care doctor who works here at the hospital. When you get admitted, you're going to be assigned on a hospitalist and they're going to be like the quarterback of your care. They're going to be reaching out to other specialists and other. consults that they need through specialists to get you the care that you need. And then handoff from nursing in the ED to the nursing team upstairs is flawless. And we want to make sure that every piece of information goes with that patient upstairs. And then at every shift that you have, if you're here for a overnight stay, you probably experienced this. You're going to get what we call a bedside shift report. Your nurse is going to work from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. Your nurses are going to come in together, go over your entire plan of care at least twice, one on your whiteboard, one with you verbally. They're going to ask you again, can you articulate that plan of care back to us? We go over that plan of care 10 times a day. When I do leader rounding, we're going to go over that plan of care again. I'm going to go over it with you and ask you to articulate it. The physician's going to do it during his rounds. But all of these handoffs, it's critical that we're handing off your plan of care. care. And I want you to almost be annoyed how many times we go over the plan of care. I never want any confusion from you. I never want you to misunderstand something. I never want to be using medical jargon that you don't understand. We go over a lot. It gives you a lot of opportunities to ask questions, but that handoff from ED to inpatient is flawless. And you'd be impressed by the care just as much in the inpatient setting as you are in the. I was,
Speaker #1
I was, happened to me. I was. This is something that this is going to air later on, but I want to ask this question. I'm going to get you this clip because it's important to the, to the facility and what you're doing. And so I felt I'm calling an audible on this one, the Guinness world record attempt at Allegiant stadium on June 13th for most people performing CPR in 12 hours, walk me through what happened and what set you out to accomplish this.
Speaker #0
Yeah. Well, I think. You know, look, we want to give back to the community in more ways than just caring for people sort of on the back end of when they're having a traumatic experience. And so we look for partners and people who care as much as we do and people who want to influence the lives from a safety perspective across our entire city. And we take a lot of pride in giving back to the community. And so we have an absolutely incredible... incredible intensivist and so an intensivist is sort of like a hospitalist but they're in our icu higher level of of acuity for those patients and these intensivists are your quarterbacks of care when you're in the acu but we've been fortunate enough with our close proximity to the raiders the chief medical officer for the raiders dr navdeep singh is on our staff here at west hospital um and he's one of those doctors that staff fight over getting on the same shift of him Just an. a very special human being. I can't say enough about him. We're so lucky to have him here in the city. And so Dr. Singh and I've had a relationship, prior to us even opening. And he came to me and said, I really want to do something special. And I have this idea. And this idea came to him because of something similar that happened with someone close within his family. So, um, a close friend of his son's actually passed away. because of having a cardiac event and no one was there to be able to start those life-saving compressions on him so um he said i want to break a world record by teaching people and getting people out to learn how to do CPR. And I don't think the words could come out fast enough out of my mouth to say, I'm in. How do we do this? So this has been a labor of love for us. We've been doing this and planning this for about a year and a half now. So we are partnering with the Las Vegas Raiders, Intermountain Health, and West Henderson Hospital are going to be the three entities going for the world record. So this will be at Allegiant Stadium. Participants will get to go. and three really cool areas so there's one area of the stadium called the champions lounge this is normally like a vip area a really beautiful area with like a bar and and and kitchen area to serve guests there all the participants will go into the stadium start there with a briefing video by one of the players uh that's on the raiders uh they'll then go out onto the field so you're going to go get to walk into allegiance stadium go you down on the field where all the superstars are and we're going to have lots of mannequins laid out and you're going to get to go attempt a world record attempt of performing cpr on a mannequin for 30 seconds if people haven't ever performed cpr before no problem we have educational video and then we're going to have a training area out on the field with cpr certified folks they're going to be able to say let me show you how to do this first let me build your confidence before you go do the actual attempt so they'll just have to do 30 seconds of hands-only cpr and a mannequin when they're done they'll then get to go up to the Coors Light landing area of the stadium where you see the big torch we'll have all sorts of activities engagement refreshments from everyone and it's going to be a phenomenal event the current world record is 3,319 and I mean come on Vegas we can beat that record and we can save lives when we're doing it. So I'm really proud to work with Dr. Singh, the Raiders of Intermountain on this. And I think it's going to be a phenomenal event for our city. A lot of hopefully national attention around this event for doing something good for our community.
Speaker #1
Great. It's great. What other community organizations does Wes Henderson partner with regularly?
Speaker #0
So, um, Obviously, I'm close with the American Heart Association, but one of the events that we do here at the hospital is called a First Friday event. And so we sat down again as a team and just said, we don't want to just be known as a place where you go to for a traumatic event. We want to be known as your community hospital where we do events and we give back to the community. So, um, Our director of provider relations, Troy Traynor, had this awesome idea and sort of said, well, what if we did a first Friday event and really brought the community to us? And we all kind of sat there and smiled and said, that's pretty special. Let's do that. So we started those in October of last year. We continued them through May. We're taking a pause because it's just so hot outside and we just don't want people getting sort of overwhelmed by the heat. We'll probably kick them back up again in October, probably do three in the fall and three in the spring. But in terms of who we've partnered with through the American Heart Association, we have a program through there called the Kids Heart Challenge. And if you remember like D.A.R.E. when we were growing up, it's similar to D.A.R.E., but everything is about something healthy and teaching kids the right way to live a healthy lifestyle. So we go into schools. The leader of that program is Leland Brandon. He is phenomenal. No one has more energy than Leland with all the kids, but he's known all around this valley for getting in the schools and sort of being that Kids Heart Challenge leader. And so within these schools, kids can raise funds for the American Heart Association for life-saving research and education. And Leland gets the kids excited about our categories. And these categories can be things like, are you drinking enough water? Are you breathing clean air, not smoking or vaping? Are you exercising regularly? Are you getting enough sleep at night? Are you exercising and eating properly? And when they do these things, they get little awards and little key chains and the kids go wild for them. And so we've had some schools around here who have been some of the highest fundraising schools for the Kids Heart Challenge throughout the United States, even in the Western region. So we've done Southern Highlands Prep. one of the highest fundraising schools, we invited them to our first Friday event and said, let's celebrate you for what you're doing for raising those funds for a cardiac-related issue, but also let you meet some people who work in healthcare. Meet that nurse that you might have an aspiration to be. Meet that doctor who you might have. dreams of becoming and learn that we're not a scary place. You have community members and neighbors who work here, who care about your safety and your health. And we're here to give back to you and have you come on our site. We have live music, food trucks, and normally a partner in the community that we want to work with. So we've done Southern Highlands Prep. We've done Pinecrest Sloan Canyon. We've done Freus Elementary, all sort of within our backyard. And we have plans to do even more schools in the fall. We've also had Vegas for Athletes, amazing organization that is going around the city and giving free EKGs to kids around the city. That's not normal. That's someone else in our community saying, I want this narrative to end and we're going to do big things in our community. They've done over, I think, 1,300 EKG screenings within the city. they have identified several kids with abnormalities and several of them with life-threatening abnormalities. They have an event coming up called the Summer Games that they're going to be doing all throughout the city starting this June. So we're going to partner with them and go out there and do some good stuff. But we like getting involved with social well-being and teaching people of how to be active, how to get it out. We've done sponsorships with Girls Youth Basketball, Little League. uh we're an exclusive sponsor down the street at chicken and pickle why because it's active and we're getting people outside and so uh we've got some more coming in the future but uh between everything with american heart association and getting out with these other organizations we're trying our very best to show the community that we're here for them and we're not going anywhere your your line of chicken and pill could be something like i hope we never meet exactly but if we do you're in great hands yeah and that's what it is we say that to our patients every day hey, thanks for placing your trust in. and us. It means the world to us that you came here. I hope to never see you again, but if you do, I hope you give us the opportunity to care for you because it's a privilege to be able to do so.
Speaker #1
It is, it is, it's refreshing. You're a former collegiate and professional athlete. How does that background translate into healthcare leadership?
Speaker #0
Yeah, no, I've been, I've been fortunate enough to play college soccer at a high level at Duke University and then was able to play professionally in the United States and in Europe for a little bit. And I think through all of that, what it's really taught me is the power of really investing in your team and making sure that you're elevating each other. And that has really translated into my career and healthcare because it's not just on my teammates, right, that I'm working with, but we get to influence a massive community thing in healthcare. So It's really helped me lead. It's helped me push on people when I know they don't want to be pushed, but because I know I see something in them that they haven't quite seen themselves. And it's also taught me a lot about competitive nature, how to really push on things that matter and push collectively as a team. I want to win, but I want my team to win more than I want to win. I want them to experience the success. I want them to grind and go through things, but know that it's all worth it at the end when you collectively get to stand up as a team and say, look at what we did. And it's even more special to say, look at what we did, but look at what we did for our community. And you get to walk around this town now and be proud, the organization that you get to represent. So it's been meaningful. I think the other thing, you And being in those competitive landscapes at high levels is you learn a lot about people. You learn about what they can go through. You learn about what motivates them. Some people need a pat on the back a lot. Some people need to be told you're better than that. And I think you can do better. Everybody's motivated by something different, right? And being in those teams in that environment and being leaders on those teams, whether it was a captain or being in... tough situations and big moments you get people's true colors when you know what hits the fan and
Speaker #1
I've got he meant shit because he's a good guy so he's not going to say shit he meant shit like the poopable is shit go ahead but
Speaker #0
I feel so fortunate I just have so many people that I'm surrounded with that just care so much and you want to bust their butts for each other and for the community.
Speaker #1
My next question, and I'm going to preface this, but I think the answer is, the next question is, what do you see as the most important role of a hospital CEO? For me, I would say it's being able, and you can do this well, it's reading people.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
Whether it's... people coming in, your clientele, your customers, patients, or your team that you have here. Am I right with that?
Speaker #0
It's huge. It's massive, right? And so a lot of that, you know, I think people get sort of lost on this idea of a hospital CEO and what they do. But I'm a leader and I'm surrounded by other leaders and we build teams and we go after goals and metrics and things that we want to influence. But you're absolutely right. We've got to get the right people in the room. And I think that's one of my major responsibilities is getting the right team. I want people who care as much as I do. I want to see that and feel that. And people might not have all the technical ability or the education yet. I can teach that. We can work with you on that. But show me that you care. Show me that you value our core values as much as we do. And then you get to be on the team. And then I will invest in you because I'm going to pack your parachute, make you reach your full potential. So that's priority number one. And yeah, I think I look, I'm the youngest of two of three kids. My parents were absolutely phenomenal. My brother's 10 years older than me. My sister's eight years older than me. I feel pretty spoiled to be able to almost get raised by like two sets of parents. And when I spent my life out at soccer fields around older, you know, my brother and sister's friends and watching and you take a lot away from that and you learn that emotional intelligence. And so it's a big part of the role of being able to read situations and understand stuff for the patients or for your staff. But I think the two. The two areas that I would say for me that are most important, and I sort of make fun of the CEO title at times. I'm like, okay, you know, it's three letters, and I think it's given more weight than it really needs to. I see myself in the hospital as a hospital CEO, as the chief quality officer, and the chief vision officer. And my team knows quality and safety are above everything else. It's safety first and everything that I am going to be pushing is on quality. We have a weekly quality meeting. We don't meet every month. We don't meet every quarter. Every single week, I am going to have key players in the room going over all the metrics that make up CMS star rating and make up leapfrog. Why? Not because I want the accolades of those things. That's the collateral that comes with putting safety. But it's because... If your family member comes in here, I want to know that they're getting the absolute best outcomes that they could possibly get so that they can still be a valuable person in our community. So that your life doesn't get dramatically impacted because we did something wrong. And we like to say we have a healthy obsession with quality here. And we have done a phenomenal job. And I think we're setting a bar for high quality. And so that is going to be priority number one as a hospital CEO. The other thing... I say that I'm the chief vision of, and let me explain what that means. Right. And I think this doesn't just apply to me as a hospital CEO, but like any leader in any industry, most employees are going to leave an organization or leave their boss because they're frustrated because they don't understand the who, what, when, where, why, how people will work for a while and they'll do stuff because, you know, that They're passionate about why they got into it. But when they're frustrated and they don't understand what they're doing, that can only last for so long. So the analogy I always use is, Jeff, that would be like me saying, hey, you see that car down there? I want you to get in it and drive. And you're like, where am I going? I go, no, no, no, just drive. You're like, all right, well, we're in the middle of a podcast. Am I going east-west on St. Rose? And I go, no, just drive. Say, well, you know, I've got other things to do today. Am I going to be done with this drive by at least like two o'clock? And I said, no, just drive. And you're like, well, is there any particular place that I'm going? And I just say, no, just drive. You might do it once, but by the time you get down in your car, you're going, what the heck is he telling me to do? This is, this is ridiculous. I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing now. I don't even know if I'm going in the right direction. And that's very frustrating. But as a leader. My job is to articulate the vision very clearly for people. Now, if I take that same analogy and I say to you, hey, Jeff, you see that car down there? That's mine. It's brand new. Here's the keys. I want you to get on the I-15 and you're going to drive north and you're going to get off on this exact exit. You're going to go to this location and I have someone waiting in the main area for you, the lobby of where you're going, and they're going to give you a box. And it'll take you approximately 15 minutes to get there, five to have that interaction, another 15 to get back. Oh, by the way, my chief nursing officer, Joyce, has been there before. I'm going to put her in the passenger seat. She's going to go with you. I've got you AAA if you get a flat tire. I've got you GPS if you... sort of need the extra directions on the way there. And here's my cell phone number. Call me any way along the way and I'll make sure you get there. And if you could do that for me, it'd mean the world to me and it'd show me how much of a great teammate you are. That is a vision. And people will follow that vision if you articulate it right. But it's not just one time. It is over and over and over. I tell my team all the time, you can talk until you're blue in the face and you can tell these visions. you know, expectations for everyone. You can go over this information, but the reality is about 50% of the people actually captured what you were saying. Your job is to do this over, And when you do that, you're going to get people who magnetize towards you who say, I always know what's going on. It doesn't matter who I am in the organization. It doesn't matter if I'm the starter on the team that's out on the field or the guy on the bench that doesn't get a lot of time that coach communicates the vision and where I fit within that vision constantly. And that is what builds a really good team. And it builds a lot of people who rally around that vision so that they're not confused on what they're doing. They know what they're doing. And our priority goes back to quality and safety because we know that that's a priority out of the facility. And so I pride myself a lot on making sure that I am the chief quality officer and the chief vision. as a hospital to you.
Speaker #1
Being the baby of three, like really like a big age difference, do you find that you have a heightened sense of empathy?
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
And does that help in curating, you know, the drive and vision and culture that's created here at West Henderson Hospital?
Speaker #0
A thousand percent. It's hard to get away from it at times because anyone that works in healthcare will tell you this, we feel very strongly. We all got in this industry because we like helping. We're going to do that. Let's do a damn good job of that and make sure that we are leading the pack. But yeah, again, I've been extremely blessed to not only have some amazing siblings and parents, but family around me. My wife is, I mean, you've met Carol, just another level of human being. And it's really helped me within my career to have those people to go and say, here's what I'm experiencing. What would you do? What do you think? And know that you're going to get not only just advice, but impeccable advice that you can apply. But it's absolutely helped me become a better leader, a better compassionate person within the hospital, but to really feel what people are going through, through the person in an emergent situation.
Speaker #1
I want to switch gears a little bit now and talk about your employees here. Yeah. The Serenity Suite for employees. whose idea was that and what does it say about how you think about your staff?
Speaker #0
Yeah. So, um, I, I don't exactly remember whose exact idea it was, but I'm leaning towards Joyce, Miloskvits, our, our CNO. Um, we actually started this when we were back at Desert Springs hospital, before we closed that we have that here. So when we were building this at West Henderson, it was like, no brainer, we have to do this, but. So the Serenity Suite has three really nice, very expensive massage chairs.
Speaker #1
It's the ones you get at Costco.
Speaker #0
Yeah, yeah. Like,
Speaker #1
they're nice.
Speaker #0
They're legit. Yeah, they're legit.
Speaker #1
They're legit.
Speaker #0
Yeah. So an entirely dedicated space in West Henderson Hospital. First come, first serve for any of our employees to go and hang out, take a break, and get a really nice massage in the middle of their very stressful day. But for us, I mean, I wish I could do so much more than that for our employees. These people give so much of themselves. They sacrifice. And that's a word that I always come back to is like the sacrifices that they make to care for other people, not just on the daily routine of being here and putting in the long 12-hour shift or, you know, the long nights or the early mornings. But there's a sacrifice that their family has to make as well. I don't think people realize that in the service industry, whether it's health care, education or our first responders or police officers. their family takes a brunt of that sacrifice as well. And so that's the least that we could do. Before we opened the hospital, we had family night where we invited all the employees to show off the facility to their families. And Serenity Suite was certainly a popular area on that night. But we have a bunch of A players here at West Henderson who just give so much of themselves. So it was an easy add for us to make sure that they had a safe space to go in and relax.
Speaker #1
I saw it and I was like, are you kidding me? This is bananas. This is bananas. It's very cool.
Speaker #0
Also, you saw it's got a great view, right? They have windows in there you can look at. And throughout the facility, whether it's offices or break rooms for staff, we have windows for them to be able to look out. Hospitals are places where oftentimes there's not a lot of sunlight coming in. And so huge windows and patients rooms, but we want to make sure that our employees are able to get some sunlight throughout the day as well. So it was a big call for us to do.
Speaker #1
Details matter.
Speaker #0
Absolutely.
Speaker #1
And you didn't inherit this facility. You built it, right? You oversaw it. And so you can see that it was done with meticulous idiosyncratic detail that almost every square foot, you know, has a reason.
Speaker #0
It does. I think what UHS, our parent company, does is they're pretty darn good at this, at building hospitals. And we've gotten better every time that we've done it. And we don't just build a hospital and go, hey, well, the lessons learned from that only apply to that market. No, we share that across the entire company. Our design and construction team has been phenomenal. SR Construction who built the hospital for us where intimately involved. And so it was an army of people sitting down and putting quality and safety first, putting the patient experience first and making sure that we thought through every detail. The standard patient rooms that we have here are the same throughout any UHS facility in the country. So we took a room and had every leader, every nurse, every chief nursing officer in the company with design and construction say, where do we want? everything placed in the room. So it's consistent throughout the country. If we have nurses that might float from one hospital to the other, it's not different for them. They know that patient room and it's led to safer outcomes and making sure that we have arm bars from the bed to the bathroom to prevent someone from falling. So a lot of details have gone into it and it's a beautiful space as well.
Speaker #1
Are your rooms, like if you look at the average square footage, let's say in town or of other hospitals, yours seem bigger.
Speaker #0
Well, we hope they feel that way, right? They're a good size. They're all private rooms. You're not going to have any semi-private here. And they're good square footage. So they've also got big windows to make the room feel a little bit bigger. But yeah, they're a good size room. And then we have some that are even bigger requirement in Nevada for people that are persons of size or they might have a strut system in the ceiling in case people can't get up on their own. so we have several of those on every unit. Those are even, even bigger square.
Speaker #1
A couple observations I have having now, I should be a part-time employee for Christ. Yeah. Come on in. Yeah. It's, you fit the mold. I'm an, I'm an only child empath. Thank you. Thank you. Um, that your doors are, they're thick.
Speaker #0
Yes.
Speaker #1
Because, and even Brandy, my wife said, she's an RN. And she's like, you don't go to the hospital to get a good night's sleep. I had some of the best sleep ever when I was here. You're like, I have a bad lower back. I got to raise my knees up. Like I told you before, I was busting balls. I'm like, this is going to cost me five grand for a new bed. Because I'm going to go to those Tempur-Pedics now probably because it was wonderful. When, and so a lot of hospitals, they'll kind of shut the door, but they leave it open and you're bing, And then going off. Here they shut the door. I had some of the best sleep ever when I was here because it was quiet. Right. The bed was comfortable. The room seemed bigger. And again, it's a whole psychological thing. But if I'm here and they're going through everything with me to figure out what's wrong with me. So there's a stress level there. A bigger room. I'm like, I'm okay.
Speaker #0
Yeah. No.
Speaker #1
Sorry to stop you, but I'm okay here.
Speaker #0
Right.
Speaker #1
What was to me the biggie.
Speaker #0
Right. Yeah. And that's the whole design, the aesthetic, the, um, how we've laid out color palettes, everything in every inch of the building has been thought through with that in mind. And, you know, we get patients tell us all the time, this is like a hotel room. this is amazing. obviously the beds, you know, can move in any direction you want to make sure you're comfortable and not having any skin breakdown. but yeah, it's, it's a, it's a special environment. Those doors are very thick. They cut down on a lot of noise. And it's every patient's preference. If I want the door open, hey, no problem. We'll leave the door open. Some people don't want to be kind of closed in. You want the door closed, no problem. Just know that you probably won't hear a whole lot out in the hallway. And I've had patients tell me it's almost too quiet in here, which it's their room. When they are here, it is their room. And so we honor that and make sure no one's going in that room unless they're invited to come in the room, that they're welcome into the room. And we want it to be a healing environment for patients. Hospital's already scary enough for the anxiety that it drives. But if you're having to deal with all the other noise in the background and inconsistencies on what you should experience in a hospital, it doesn't give you the time to heal in the way that you need to. both on the physical and the mental aspect. So I'm glad to hear that because there was a lot of effort put into it to make sure it didn't just look nice, but a true healing environment.
Speaker #1
I mean, you know me pretty well by now. I'm going to tell you what I think. If there was something I think that was wrong, I'm going to tell you also out of friendship. Absolutely. Because that's the only way you can grow.
Speaker #0
Absolutely.
Speaker #1
And, you know, if you want to leave a bad Google review, fine. But the better way to make the change is you have. your phone number or Jess or at a C level to go, Hey, just so you know, I stayed there and this, this wasn't great. It didn't meet my expectations. I think, again, I'm putting words in your mouth, but to me, sometimes that's even better than a five-star review because it's an opportunity for growth for you as a CEO.
Speaker #0
A thousand percent. And, you know, like you experienced when Jess came up to see you, right? That's not just C-suite. Every single leader that, you know, the 50 liters I'm talking about in our huddle every morning. They all are assigned rooms in the facility. I have my own rooms. It's the same rooms every day. Every single patient in this hospital will be rounded on by a member of the leadership team every single weekday. We obviously can't come in every single weekend and do that, but our cleanse soups do that on the weekend. But every day, a member of the leadership team is going to come in and talk to you and go over those questions. We have a litany of questions, all with the thought process of. Are we exceeding your expectations? And if not, give me the feedback now so I can get it fixed before you leave this facility. I don't want feedback three months after you left. Tell me in the moment and we will respond in the moment and get it resolved because I don't want you having an experience here where it's, well, these eight things were great, but items nine and 10, I wish I could have gotten those fixed. Didn't we? We could have fixed that. in the moment when you were there. So every patient, before I go in and visit a patient, I'm going to that nurse and I'm saying, there are five things that I want to go through with you. I want to understand the plan of care of this patient. I want to know something personal about the human being in that bed. Tell me about them. What sports do they like? Do they have family? Do they have kids? What are their pets' names? Tell me who I'm going to talk to, not just the diagnosis in that room. Tell me we track every single call light that's pressed in this facility. We know how quickly our staff responded to it. We know how many times you use the call light. I want to know that information before I go in the room. So I can say, hey, I saw you use your call light more than 10 times yesterday. How can I reduce that today by getting people in here more frequently? In addition, and even more to the hourly rounding that we already do. I want to know if our team has gone over their medications and the side effects of those medications so that when I go into the room, if they have any additional questions on that, I can encourage them to download an app that we have where they can read about the exact details of the medications that we're giving them. It also has kudos on there where they can give kudos to staff members. I want to know all of this information before I go into the room so that when I'm going over the plan of care with a patient, they feel, man. everybody is on the same page here. Even members of leadership when they walk into my room and it's not something that I'm doing to impress the patient. It is what I would expect if my family was in the hospital. It's my job. It's our responsibility in this community. It's the only way we end that narrative that the best place to go for health care is the airport. It's not the best place to go for health care.
Speaker #1
Something that I would suggest and take it for what it's worth. But everyone celebrates wins. That's an easy one. That's a layup, right? That's a goalie has fallen over from vaping and you have an open net and you just go ahead and score a goal. Celebrate your fixes.
Speaker #0
Yes.
Speaker #1
Because then. it shows vulnerability to brand. It shows that, Hey, we know we're not perfect, but we're striving to get there every freaking day. And this happened yesterday that, you know, this happened, it was fixed in this amount of time and moving forward. This is how we've learned from that process.
Speaker #0
Absolutely. And it is massive. So every morning in safety huddle, the very first thing that we talk about is safety wins that we've had. Our director of, Risk here at the hospital, Talia Atienza, amazing former ICU trained nurse. She's created a whole program here that we call our Lifesaver program. And these are team members at the hospital. We have an internal reporting system called MIDAS. If they report, hey, this was an issue or hey, the director goes out and said, we had a close call or an item that needed fixed and this employee did this. We bring that employee to our huddle in front of every single leader in the hospital, and we recognize them for that good catch, what we've learned from it, how we can prevent that from happening again. And then they get a certificate signed by us that says Lifesaver, and they get recognized in front of all the leaders at the hospital. And it's been a very well-received program. But yeah, in healthcare especially, you can't sweep any of those fixes under the rug. You have to talk about it because. If a couple of people saw it, well, we got a lot of employees here. We need to make sure that everybody understands us and everybody can learn from it.
Speaker #1
I'm going to pivot a little bit. We're a community that, I mean, a lot of influx, right? Out-of-towners. What would you want a family moving to Henderson from another state know about the health care available to them?
Speaker #0
Yeah, again, I would encourage them to go out and look at stuff online about what is the data saying about these hospitals. but What I would want them to know is that anything you've previously heard about healthcare in Vegas, go experience it for yourself and make sure that when you're coming to our hospital, you can compare that to your other experiences. Because I think we are unique. I think we are different. And we're hearing that from community members. So I would want them to go to the hospital. Go visit the hospital. You don't have to be sick. to walk into the doors and get an experience of what's closest to me, what's available to me, go out online and explore the services that are offered at these hospitals. And then really one of the main things that I think people moving here need to do is get established with a primary care physician. There are too many people who show up in our emergency department with something that could have been prevented if they had stayed on a regular schedule with their primary care physician. And the concern is, is people are starting to use emergency departments as primary care physicians, right? There are a lot of talented people out here as primary care physicians and need to get established with a primary care physician and do your annual checkups consistently.
Speaker #1
Why is healthcare power of attorney something every adult should have regardless of age?
Speaker #0
Yeah, same thing, right? We're getting people who are coming to the hospital in very... acute and sensitive situations and we're trying to make decisions without enough information it also places a lot of burden on families when it's already a stressful situation and something unfortunate or a life-threatening has happened to a family member or a close relative or a friend and you're already dealing with the stress of that but now compounded by I don't have someone to make informed decisions on my behalf. And it places the healthcare community and, you know, ethical and critical decisions that they have to make. What do we do now? And so obviously we have our priorities and our protocols that we follow, but a lot of things can happen more efficiently and more effectively when patients and families have their power, their living wills and other things completed.
Speaker #1
What is one thing every person in Henderson should be doing for their health that most people are not?
Speaker #0
Exercise. I told you I lived in Sweden previously. I was fortunate enough to play soccer over there, and I did my entire thesis of my master's program comparing the American healthcare system to the Swedish healthcare system. Now, if they were a socialized country, it would not work here. The United States is too big of a country, but I can tell you that collectively as a society, they are not putting themselves in the healthcare industry as much as we are. We are spending close to 20% of our gross domestic product on healthcare within our company. Yes, we have a lot of great technology. Yes, we have a lot of specialists and can get patients in faster than they can in some other countries. But they're not needing it quite as much in other countries because they're exercising appropriately. They're making smarter decisions on their diet. It's taught at a younger age. And so... It's why I'm so passionate about what we do with the Kids Heart Challenge. It's need to be teaching our younger generation the appropriate way to care for themselves, the appropriate way to exercise, eat right, not getting into vaping or smoking, drinking enough water, making sure you're getting appropriate amount of sleep. All these things compound and then it hits at a moment in life and people are like, I wish I would have. I should have done this, right? all preventable things be active doesn't mean you have to go out and play some crazy sport or go do marathons i mean look at the amazing thing that you're doing every time you're doing a talk you're out walking that is what's so impressive to me it's like this is someone who's making time during his exercise or vice versa and so uh more people just need to get out and do that and be educated on what you're putting into your body, right? There are all sorts of locally grown, regenerative farms that we have. We have one come to our first Friday event. Every time we have a regenerative farm that comes here, that people can get delivered to their door, fresh produce that doesn't have all sorts of pesticides, all sorts of stuff on it. And so, think about those things. That's important for our community. I want to be on the proactive side of healthcare, not just on the reactive. People can do a lot for themselves and their families by just doing those two very simple. Get out and be active in some capacity and be mindful of what you're doing.
Speaker #1
We're in the homestretch. You've seen what I built for my own care prior to when I came into the ER at Wes Henderson. What was your honest first reaction?
Speaker #0
Jaw dropping. like I've known about AI platforms, not nearly at the capacity of you have, but you know, my wife, Carol is like really into it as well. And really darn good at it as well.
Speaker #1
She's very good. Yeah.
Speaker #0
It's impressive. Yeah. The things that she will show me, I'm like, you did what? But the same thing, right? I think you experienced with our triage nurse, with others, their jaw almost dropped like, oh my God, I wish more people would come in here. And... Healthcare is scary to start with. It's complicated to start with. And most people who are coming in don't have a whole lot of experience on how to articulate what's going on with them. And as I said, a lot of these individuals are not going to primary care visits consistently. So they're presenting with something and they don't know the last time that it happened, what it means, what medications they're on. They can't articulate things. But. When you're using that platform in the capacity that you did, I mean, talk about efficiency for the nurses to have an understanding of what's happening. I now have a medical history and I'm not going to prescribe something that might be in conflict with what this patient did or did not communicate to me. But when you have that information, providers can make such a more informed decision for you. there and it was it was absolutely phenomenal like our team is still talking about that of like why don't more people utilize that um and if people utilize it in combination with their pcp wow and
Speaker #1
all all people have to do is you know i created it's a health project folder i use claude i create a health project folder i upload i do a screenshot with my apple watch after every time i go for a walk. Every time I, if medication gets changed. I put that in there. Walgreens, CVS, Amazon, it's all digitized. Absolutely. Whenever I go to my doctor and I get patient notes in the portal afterwards, save it as a PDF. Upload that digitized PDF. And then it's a living, organic. you know, document that's there. And then, so heaven forbid, if you've got to go into, you know, for emergency care, things printed out with under 30 seconds, you walk in what that did for the triage nurse, the amount of time that saves for her to be talking to my wife is I'm there. They were thinking I was having a stroke. I wasn't, but it was like, they want to get me back as fast as possible, but you have to go through certain protocols first. Before you can bring people back. And so it's free. What I did was free. You just have to put the information in. Where do you see AI helping patients communicate better with clinical teams?
Speaker #0
Well, I see it if we can get that capacity driven in with the patient and their primary care physician. So step one is get a primary care physician, develop that relationship with them. but Make sure people are navigating that. And I think people need to just start to get a little more comfortable with AI. I think they're overwhelmed by the thought of it. But in reality, it's so much easier to use than I think people understand. It's like the more you use it, the easier it becomes, the more that it's almost like you're talking to like another person who gets to know you, understands things. And if they can continually update that and be in collaboration with their PCP. They're probably going to prevent some emergency room visits in the future. They're probably going to make sure that they get on a medication they didn't know that that would probably be beneficial for them or off a medication that they don't need to be on and living a healthier lifestyle. And so I see that really being something that's meaningful in the future. But to your example that you had, if people will stay on top of it and keep updating things And back to the other point is like. I think you're taking photos of like your meals, right? And uploading it. Yeah. Phenomenal. And that is absolutely critical for it continuing to understand you and what you're doing and then taking your Apple watch and what's being uploaded from there. It builds such a great picture that if people can continue to update it, get comfortable with AI, see their PCP, I think they will really enjoy it. And it's going to make things so much more efficient when you get into the hospital. Other component that I think people need to add into that is what's your insurance plan, right? What are you covered? Where should you go? Do you really understand what you signed up for, for your insurance and what it covers and what it doesn't and how it could be applied? Tying all those into one is, is powerful. It's meaningful, but ultimately I think it leads to safer patient care for patients.
Speaker #1
Again, it blew me away where I had an AI. person call me afterwards to check check on my plan and full disclosure i said it was good not great but also i'm an ai nerd yeah so i knew within the first 10 seconds right it was ai but it was still very good yeah right and so if that goes to the average layman that isn't that ai savvy it's perfect yeah it's perfect yeah we have uh so our company uhs has invested uh into an AI platform called Hippocratic AI.
Speaker #0
Um, and One of the things that we've started to utilize with it is what you're referencing is a discharge phone call. And all the daisy, a phone call. And so it's an AI agent calling you. But some people easily recognize it. Some people don't. Some people have such a great experience with whatever the name of the AI agent is. They'll call back and say, I want to talk to so-and-so. That's awesome. Really? Yes. Oh, that's great.
Speaker #1
That's great.
Speaker #0
And what we find with some people. Where's Daisy? Yeah, exactly. What we find with some people is... You know, they might not be in a hurry and they want to talk a little bit longer. The AI agent has no next meeting. It has nothing it needs to urgently get to all the time in the world. And sometimes people want to ask a little bit more. There's no irritated tone from a human being that like, this is the third time I've had to go over this information. Yeah, I'm happy to go over that information. I see a very powerful difference between those two things. And we do get... In some instances where the Daisy call is scored better than a human being call for those little intricacies.
Speaker #1
Well, you mentioned before, if I'm a 83-year-old guy who's a widower and I'm in Madeira Canyon and Daisy calls me because I had some work done here, I had to visit the hospital. You know what? I'm probably going to chat with Daisy for a while.
Speaker #0
Absolutely. And we do experience that.
Speaker #1
And how fulfilling is that?
Speaker #0
Absolutely.
Speaker #1
For me to be able to talk to, and it doesn't matter if they know if it's AI or not, to be honest with you.
Speaker #0
Absolutely.
Speaker #1
That it's. Because it's a wellness thing. Again, it's a mitzvah to be able to say, hey, for that 45 minutes, I had a great talk with this girl from West Henderson Hospital called me, Daisy. She's the best. Ask for her next time you go in there.
Speaker #0
Exactly.
Speaker #1
So I think that's awesome. What's the boundary you want to hold between AI assistance and actual clinical judgment?
Speaker #0
That's a tough one, right? That comes up quite a bit when we have this conversation. I think we're early on in the process. I do see things where I'm like. You can't take away that human component and that judgment and that experience that that person has had in this field. And sometimes what we see is a stoic person who's coming in and yeah, on paper it says this, but they're not really translating a whole lot to us. And between the person and what's on paper might look similar. And you get another person where you're dealing with a lot of the emotions and you're seeing there's a social context. what's going on here. And there's something that that sixth sense that happens within a human being has got to be relied on to make informed and smart decisions. So, you know, I think in the world of things like radiology, right, radiology is a field where I think AI is really adding some value. And a lot of the companies around the country are making investments in a combination between human being reading images and AI reading images and making sure they can work in tandem. Right. How do they support each other? And that's where I see a lot of it coming into play is like creating that human element that never goes away, working in tandem with AI to make informed decisions. But almost it's like AI and the human are packing each other's parachutes. Did you see
Speaker #1
Bezos had a great interview on CNBC?
Speaker #0
I did not.
Speaker #1
Oh, you've got it. I'll send you the link. Okay. It's phenomenal. I'm not a big Bezos guy. I am now.
Speaker #0
Okay.
Speaker #1
Because it's almost like he's going to run for president. Like the way the stuff he was saying, and he said that AI, if anything is going to cause a worker, a worker shortage, really, because it makes you so much more efficient. You can get more done. You're going to need more people to plug in to actually help execute things that AI is fulfilling all the little meaningful, you know, meaningless tasks that are in between that they can just take care of that stuff. Yeah. Right. And so keep in mind, and I've said this on my walk and talk videos, I now look at through a lens of when I go to get coffee, when I go, whatever is there, is there going to be an Elon Musk robot serving my coffee? And they're going to look at me and go, hi, Jeff, how are you? You want another double chocolate, you know, macchiato, whatever crap that stuff is for $9. Of course I do. Let me get my points and scan my points. Right. That's what's coming. Yeah. And. But is that going to put people out of work? I don't think so. Now, I shouldn't say that. Yes, in some areas, but in a lot of other ones, I think it's going to be a greater demand for human interaction because robots are doing the stuff you don't want to do. My wife right now, if you could have a robot that would just fold, do the laundry and make the bed, she'd pay over $110,000 for that right now. Done. Like, take it out of retirement. We're getting that. It's coming. The Optimus robots are coming. Like Musk has, he shut down the Model X and the Model S, the two flagship products, to free up space in his gigafactories to make these robots.
Speaker #0
Wow.
Speaker #1
And they're going to be putting out millions a year. And so it's coming. It's coming. And we'll look back at this in five years. You're going, oh, shit, Jeff, you're right. Look at all the robots we have now. But it's like they're doing this stuff that's either. hazardous, let them do it.
Speaker #0
Sure.
Speaker #1
Right? Or it's things that they can get it done and they don't take time off.
Speaker #0
Right.
Speaker #1
They're not complaining. You tell them exactly what your core values are, what your core mission is ahead of time, upload that in their mainframe. It's a done deal. What's one thing happening at Wes Henderson in the next 12 months that you're most excited about?
Speaker #0
Really probably getting our open heart program going. I don't necessarily know that it's going to happen in the next 12 months. That's cool. quite a process to start a program like that, but that would be next on our agenda of really kind of fulfilling that strategic plan that we had talked about when opening the hospital of being able to provide that service within the community. So, um, again, number one killer within our country. Um, we think we could do this really well, same level we do everything else. Um, and I think we'll attract a lot of high performers that want to be a part of what we do here at West Henderson. I'm excited for that. Again, not entirely certain it'll happen exactly within that 12-month time period, but it's on the strategic plan, and we're chomping at the bit to get going with it.
Speaker #1
If someone's listening and they want to bring their family's care to Wes Henderson, what's the first step?
Speaker #0
Come. If there's any component where you're thinking about utilizing our emergency room, come. With your primary care physician, if you're thinking about having a elective surgery, let's say you're needing to get a total knee replacement or a total hip replacement, talk to your primary care physician about that, that you want to be with someone at. West Henderson Hospital. That's where your preference is for the surgery. And they will know providers potentially that have association and privileges here at the hospital. You can go onto our website and look at all the providers who have privileges here. Anyone can reach out to me on via email, ask the CEO. I get that quite excessively. Hey, I want to have a surgery. does this doctor work at your hospital? And oftentimes the surgeon does. If they don't, we pursue that surgeon and say, hey, one of your patients is reaching out to us and has a desire to have surgery here. Are you hearing that frequently? Here's how we can provide you great service for you as a surgeon at the hospital. So most of the time when people are going to utilize a hospital, they're going to be having a surgery or they're going to be utilizing emergency services. would never tell someone to uh if they're having really critical situations and they need to get to the closest emergency department, get to the closest emergency department. If it's something that, you know, you're able to drive yourself, we think we're worth the drive. But for those critical things, call 911. But I think explore the hospitals, go out, walk in them, see how it feels to you when you walk in. You walk in the hospital, are people ignoring you and pretending they didn't see you and got their heads down and phones are like greeting you and saying. hi, good morning. Welcome. How are you? Because that's one of our meeting, one of our high performer etiquettes here that we expect of people within the hospital. So you're going to feel it when you walk into a hospital. You're going to feel the culture in the first five minutes that you're in the doors. And is this a place where I would feel comfortable having my care? If you're new to the community and you want to come meet me, reach out to me. I'd be glad to talk to you about what we offer here at the hospital. provide a tour to anyone at the hospital. We do them constantly to make sure people are informed of what we have to offer and what type of service we'll give to them if they're in an emergent or elective situation.
Speaker #1
When patients leave West Henderson, what do you want them to tell their friends?
Speaker #0
I want them to be able to say, if I'm ever in a situation that I need me, my family, my friends. I will not go anywhere else except West Henderson Hospital because I was treated like family there. I was treated with courtesy, respect. Everyone there had a smile on their face. Everybody you could tell enjoyed being there and working in that facility. They gave you the same type of respect and attention that you would expect if it was their family member and that it's worth the drive. Right. It's worth doing the investment and maybe a couple more minute drive because you're going to get seen faster. You're going to get the service that you expect and you're going to get safer care. And again, I would encourage people to go read the Google reviews. This is what people say already. Those mean a lot. But the ones that I love are when people say it is the best hospital that I've ever been to, because that doesn't just tell us that. We're the best hospital within Las Vegas. And it doesn't just say, hey, we won gold in the best of Las Vegas competition. We all know Vegas is a melting pot for a lot of different people from around the country. And people say, I came from New York. I came from this area who historically has great health care. But this is the best hospital I've ever been to. And I want that message spread widely, not just in Vegas, but around the country.
Speaker #1
It is... I'm a big advocate of legacy.
Speaker #0
Yes.
Speaker #1
Right? Like I love my kids and I try to do right as an example to them, but just to be a good person, like I said, like to pick up the camera and say nice things about anything to celebrate that. And I want to tell you as friends that your legacy for this property in another hundred years, when you're ashes and dust, the impact you will have had. on the community and the people around here will be immeasurable.
Speaker #0
Well, that means. More than you know. We've poured our heart and souls into this, and it's a big thing that I think of as well, sort of that legacy, how do you want to be remembered for what you did and how you impacted other people. I want other leaders to say, man, he was tough, but man, did he make us better as a team. Man, did he push us to new levels, but look at what we did for our community. And the hope is, again, even 10 years from now, Um, people in this community say that narrative, the best place to go for healthcare is not the airport. It's West Henderson hospital. They were the catalyst. They changed the expectation and the standard for healthcare.
Speaker #1
Agreed. Thank you, my friend. This has been great.
Speaker #0
Thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure. Appreciate it. Always welcome here. If you ever need anything, you just let me know. I'll get you taken care of.
Speaker #1
Thank you.