Warren Moore, FACHE, shares his experience settling into his new role as COO and future strategies he's looking forward to implementing to help workers in the organization and the patients they serve.
Warren E. Moore, FACHE, joined Inspira Health Network as executive vice president and COO in July. A healthcare veteran with more than 25 years of healthcare experience, he brings high reliability and quality care experience to his new role.
In his role as COO, Moore will lead the New Jersey-based health system's strategic growth strategy, and oversee the hospitals, health centers, and outpatient services operations, under the leadership of president and CEO, Amy Mansue.
During his first 90 days, he has had a strong focus on community, inside the organization and out. Earlier this week, Moore spoke with HealthLeaders about his experience settling into his new role and future strategies he's looking forward to implementing to help workers in the organization and the patients they serve.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
HealthLeaders: How have you worked together with Amy Mansue and other executives to get settled in your new role?
Warren Moore: I've had the pleasure of working with Amy for over 15 years in our past life. Amy's honestly a huge part of why I'm here. She and I share our vision and values, and how we look at our role as healthcare leaders. That focus is on the communities we serve, how do we assist them in bettering the community, and focusing on the health status of that community.
We also both share the value that our employees, from our medical staff to all of our employees in our organization, are the key to what we do. We deliver service that's human to human. That connection between our employees, our caregivers, and the individuals that they serve is something that Amy and I both value.
The rest of the team has been wonderful. I've been asking a lot of questions and doing a lot of listening. They are more than willing to help me understand the nuances of our communities, why things have been done certain ways, and the history behind things. It's been a great collaborative experience.
HL: What has your experience transitioning into the COO role been like over the past three months? What is the strategy behind your first 90 days and what would you like to accomplish?
Moore: It's been a great experience. I am excited to come to work every day because I'm working with an incredible team and a great organization. I'm focused on learning as much as I can about the communities we serve; getting to know community leaders, our physician and medical staff leaders; and looking to understand and truly engaged within the communities we serve.
I'm also looking for opportunities for us to partner with our community service groups that are out there, with law enforcement, with first responders, the educational folks in our community—the glue that brings our communities together—for us to collectively work together and focus on improving the health status of the communities we serve.
Inspira has a new strategic plan that's focused on how to better engage and meet the needs of the community around primary care, bringing specialized care to everyone, and creating access to that care in the community.
You have to understand the social determinants of health, the situation in our community regarding things like food insecurity, education, employment, those indicators are 80% of someone's health status. What we do in healthcare is only 20%, and that's only if we're doing it really well. Our focus is to make sure that we maximize that 20% while also partnering with other organizations and institutions to make sure that we're collectively helping to address social determinants.
The big goal for me is to understand those opportunities and to map out our strategy for the next three years on how we deliver on that promise of our strategic plan to the communities we serve.
At the same time, I'm also starting to build relationships. I'm appreciative to everyone that I've met, from local mayors, to educators, to law enforcement, key physicians, you name it, everyone has been more than willing to spend the time with me to help me understand their perspective and the knowledge that they can bring to the table.
HL: What does the health system currently look like during this surge in Delta variant cases?
Moore: Certainly, we are seeing the uptick. During the first week in July, we were at a low point where we had combined in our three hospitals eight COVID positive patients. As of September 23, we're closer to 70. It is following the trend lines that the Department of Health puts out based on all the predictive models. The number in and of itself does not compare to the last two surges that we went through.
The big difference for us right now, though, is that the demand for our services is incredibly high for everything other than COVID. It's not only us, there are other colleagues in South Jersey who are seeing this phenomenon of need and demand from the community for care in our EDs. That ultimately ends up with many admissions as well. We're running at or near capacity almost on a daily basis in all of our ERs and our inpatient units as well, and so that combination is putting a lot of stress on the system.
HL: What strategies will you implement to help the hospital recover from the COVID-19 pandemic?
Moore: Our frontline workers are truly heroes, and I know that term gets used a lot, but this has been relentless on them ever since the original outbreak of COVID. A big focus for us is on the health and well-being of our staff, and how to help them build resiliency because there's no such thing as healthcare without the people that provide the care.
One of our big focuses that supports all of our work and helps us be much more focused and improves our ability to provide the safest care possible to all of our patients is our journey toward high reliability and to be in a highly reliable organization. Inspira has been on that journey for multiple years now. It is a huge focus of mine; I am a true believer in the concepts of high reliability. That's what allows us to bring our consistency to the way we provide care every day, and make sure that every single interaction becomes of the highest level of quality.
Another big focus is about access to care. It's a struggle everywhere right now, but we do need to continue to focus on meeting our communities where they are, leveraging technology, and telemedicine and virtual services are a huge part of that. It's also technology in using artificial intelligence to provide better and faster care, and better clinical decision making, and the ability for folks to monitor their health status at home without having to be in the hospital. Those are the strategies that will be focused on over the coming years.
And then, working collaboratively with folks across the country and grassroots efforts in our communities to begin to understand how we can truly make a difference when it comes to behavioral health, and needs for behavioral health intervention, and substance use disorders. They need to be part of our strategy. It's truly a crisis in our country right now and it is in our communities as well.
HL: What other initiatives are you excited to implement as COO?
Moore: I'm excited about working with the team here to understand how we can leverage all the expertise of all the folks that are employed by Inspira, our colleagues here, as well as all the folks that are a part of our voluntary medical staff. As an industry, we haven't done the best job in the past of listening to and understanding the folks that are at the sharp end of care, the people that are right there touching the patient and delivering care. I'm excited because I know Amy believes in that, and I know that our new colleagues that have come to join us in the last few weeks, Robin A. Walton and Anneliese McMenamin, SPHR, SHRM-SCP believe that.
I'm excited to be part of those strategies and understand how we can engage more effectively and more directly with all of our colleagues here at Inspira. That's a big key for us in the future to moving the dial and improving the health of our communities.
Related: Inspira Health Announces New Chief Strategy Officer
“We deliver service that's human to human. That connection between our employees, our caregivers, and the individuals that they serve is something that [Amy Mansue] and I both value.”
—Warren Moore, FACHE, COO, Inspira Health Network
Melanie Blackman is a contributing editor for strategy, marketing, and human resources at HealthLeaders, an HCPro brand.