How Does Providence Lead Healthcare Innovation After 161 Years? Hear From CEO Dr. Rod Hochman and Chief Digital Officer Aaron Martin

In 1856, the Sisters of Providence began establishing hospitals,
schools and orphanages across the Northwest, and that humble
beginning planted the seed of what is now one of the largest and
most innovative health systems in the country. Providence brings
together more than 119,000 caregivers across seven states, 51
hospitals, 829 physician clinics, and many other health and
educational services.

Being headquartered outside Seattle – with the access to tech
talent that location affords – is just one element that has
allowed Providence to flourish amid the rapidly shifting
healthcare landscape and the pervasiveness of digital
transformation. The organization’s foresight to get ahead of this
shift was honed under the leadership of Dr. Rod Hochman as CEO
and extended through a number of strategic hires, including the
addition of former Amazon executive Aaron Martin as Chief Digital
Officer.

In this episode of Healthcare is Hard, Keith Figlioli talks to
Rod and Aaron about the longstanding values and evolving
strategies that have kept Providence at the forefront of U.S.
healthcare for so long, and how they plan to build on that
history. Their conversation touched upon a wide range of topics
including:



Partnering inside and outside the industry. As more
organizations enter the healthcare market to force disruption,
Rod goes beyond recognizing the potential of partnerships and
points back to a document from the health system’s founding
sisters that calls for seeking partnerships.He describes the
document as a constitution that remains relevant today as a
means to inspire the organization with the values that inspired
its founding sisters nearly 175 years ago. In that spirit,
Aaron describes later in the conversation how Providence works
extremely closely with other health systems and has had more
than 120 visit over the past two years to work collaboratively
on the challenges they face.


The roadmap for new entrants. Thinking back to his days
at Amazon, Aaron talks about how he couldn’t imagine a
conversation with Jeff Bezos suggesting an opportunity in a
low-margin business that’s very complicated, fraught with
legal, brand and other risk, where life and death is actually
at stake. For these reasons, Aaron is doubtful that tech
companies entering the market will get into care provisioning
in a big and meaningful way and believes that partnerships
between health systems and companies like Amazon and Microsoft
will be critical.


A focus on SDOH before it existed. One unique piece of
trivia Rod shares about Providence involves its continued
investment in areas such as housing and education. The system
runs an 85-year old liberal arts college in Great Falls,
Montana, a high school in Burbank, California and manages
public housing for seniors and low income populations in
multiple states. In other words, Providence was invested in
social determinants of health long before others were thinking
about them, providing a high degree of knowledge and experience
to address these increasing challenges.


Diversifying revenue. In the future, Providence will not
be able to exist on patient care revenue alone, according to
Rod. That’s why he’s set a goal to create $1 billion in revenue
with a 20% EBITA from things other than patient care within the
next three years. He talks about the need to become a services
company in order to achieve this goal, and gives examples of
what that involves.



To hear Rod and Aaron talk about these topics and more, listen to
this episode of Healthcare is Hard: A Podcast for Insiders.