Five years ago, I walked away from a great career, working for an extraordinary brand. And as a marketing executive, that’s kind of big deal. It’s worth noting I wasn’t unhappy by any means. In fact, I was rather comfortable in the life I had created. But sometimes we can get too comfortable being comfortable. And so I began a search for something more than a career, a journey in which I found myself thrust into the TeleTracking mission. As today marks my fifth year at TeleTracking, and because missions don’t come with readymade blueprints, I thought I’d reflect on five things I’ve learned endeavoring in the TeleTracking mission.

We didn’t set out to create a category. The Health System Command Center started off as an idea, with a few health systems putting it into practice. And because we had many of the right pieces—and outcomes that were impossible to ignore—a category emerged. Yet, at the same time, it’s still challenging―it requires customer engagement, committed and patient leadership, comfort with ambiguity, and willingness to pioneer. Not to mention the fact that there’s no such thing as “market share” when you’re creating a market, so however, do you keep score? I guess we’ll settle for what Gartner recently reported when they said that by 2025, half of all large health systems will adopt a Command Center.

Competition isn’t the toughest challenge. Organizational change is. I’m a realist—no one can go it alone to solve the backbreaking administrative burden our healthcare system has put on clinicians and operators. But by fostering collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement; recognizing health systems who are leading and innovating in Command Center operations; establishing standards and benchmarks for Command Center operational maturity; and creating a peer group framework to accelerate knowledge sharing we are creating the foundations for success. Take for example these guys. Or these guys.

Productivity is elusive―however not for a lack of trying. The demands on the healthcare workforce continue to grow, while their numbers remain in dramatically short supply. We have made it impossible for well-trained clinicians and leaders to perform at the top of their license and this needs to end. We owe it to clinicians the world over to ease them of the administrative burden the modern health system has created.

I feel confident saying everyone in healthcare is legitimately trying to make a difference. But even if we’re all in the same boat, we’re not always rowing in the same direction―and some aren’t even rowing, they’re still trying to figure out how to use a compass. The point is, to row in the same direction we need to be working off the same variables, same assumptions and same goals―and that can only happen with the right data. While no one has set out to make data interoperability particularly hard, I don’t know that the industry could have engineered a more complicated version if we actually tried. And so we remain committed to never letting access to the right data be an obstacle for our customers.

You really do learn a lot about how well a system is run when that system has to respond to a crisis. And this year, unfortunately, we’ve had more than our share―both natural and manmade. Yet, it still never ceases to amaze me how our clients respond when they receive those calls―whether it’s a tragic downtown shooting that no one saw coming or preparing for what was potentially the worst hurricane in a decade encroaching on the coast of Florida. Every time, our clients (and our TeleTracking employees) rise to the occasion―because they truly believe no one should ever wait for the care they need.
October 20-23, 2019 that mission will be front and center at TeleCon19, our annual client conference being held at the JW Marriott Turnberry Resort and Spa in Miami, FL. I hope you can join us for three days of interactive speakers and demonstrations to provide you with the solutions and practices that continue to shape an emerging category and the future of care delivery.