Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD of Cleveland Clinic Martin Hospitals Shares Insights and News

Dr. Rishi P. Singh, MD, Chief Medical Officer and Vice President of Cleveland Clinic's Martin Hospitals took time from a busy schedule to sit down with The Florida Business Forum Host Sam Yates to discuss the five-year journey the Cleveland Clinic has made in the acquisiton of the Martin Memorial Health System.

It's been a journey of endurance and positive growth that has not been without a few bumps along the way. 

From losing $70 million in revenue in the first year of operations under the Cleveland Clinic management umbrella to weathering the Covid storm, the hospitals located on Florida's Treasure Coast have helped the regions greatest treasure -- its human treasure -- remain healthy and maintain a positive health care attitude. 

This is an episode you must hear if you have an interest in one of the fastest growing regions in Florida. And, an episode that is focused on the positives and negatives of two medical institutions who have both survived more than 100 years of caring for patients of all types. 

Transcript

Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast: 0:06

Hello everyone and welcome to another informative episode of the Florida Business Forum Podcast. Let's open the Florida Business Forum floodgates and let the information begin to flow. Here's your Florida Business Forum information guru and Anchorman Sam Yates. Hello, everyone, the information floodgates are indeed open. And we have lots of information to share with you today, the number one business forum podcast in Florida and I'm going to start by giving you a little background information. I'm Sam Yates, your host for the Florida Business Forum Podcast, owner of Yates and Associates Public Relations and Marketing, I'm active in a number of healthcare coalition's throughout the state a consultant to the urgent care industry, and well connected to the state's regional area, aging councils, all 11 of them. So I do that as a little bit of a background, so that I can introduce my guest today and be quite, well spoken in some of the medical fields. But you know, I am not the expert, but I do have the expert with me today. I have the Chief Medical Officer, Vice President for Martin hospitals, Dr. Rishi Singh is here with us. And it's my honor and my pleasure, Dr. Singh to welcome you to the program today.

Unknown: 1:25

Thank you, Sam. Thanks for having me on the Florida Business Forum.

Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast: 1:29

I think it's really critical that right now we get information to the public about what's happening with with Martin hospitals, but I always love starting with my guest to tell a little bit about yourself. Yeah,

Dr. Rishi Singh, MD: 1:44

I'd love to. So I am an ophthalmologist by training. I've been with the Cleveland Clinic for 18 years, I was up in Ohio for many years, and I got a call to come down and to help with our Florida operations. And what we're doing in this area I didn't know much about Stuart didn't know much about Martin County, I've been thankful to be here, it's I've landed in probably the nicest part of all of Florida, I believe, and certainly in the nicest community and the people in this area that I've been able to meet.

Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast: 2:13

Now, you mentioned the ophthalmologist, you're also a professor of ophthalmology. And I really zeroed in when I was doing a little background information about you that the reason you got into that particular profession is because of the long term relationships that you have with patients. And I thought that said a lot about you. And it really, you know, brings to the forefront that you're a people person, most of all,

Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cleveland Clinic Martin Hospitals: 2:40

you know, I think that as doctors, we all want to care for people in in various ways, some want to do surgery on them, some want to take care of them in the medical sense. But some of the most rewarding benefits is to see the evolution of a patient over time. And Ophthalmology is one of those areas where you have the longest lasting relationships are probably all of medicine. And in fact, you can improve their welfare, which is really impactful to restore site or to improve site can be life changing for people. And it's really been my call to arms for many years, and I've been very proud to be an ophthalmologist.

Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast: 3:17

You know, one of the things that that impresses me with Martin Memorial, Martin hospital systems, it's a hard habit to break when you say Martin Memorial, but with Cleveland Clinic executives are practicing physicians, you're still a practicing physician.

Dr. Rishi Singh, MD: 3:33

I am. So Cleveland Clinic historically has had physician leaders, and it's a physician led organization. And I always say this in the nicest way, we probably make bad business decisions for the good of patients. Because we're not the bean counters. We're not the people that are necessarily running a masters and Business program before we get to this spot. But the reality is that healthcare has become a business. It's a business we have to focus on from a profit and loss margin statement. But at the same token, we are a nonprofit organization that's very different. Sam overall, than some of the other hospitals in the area, we really focus on providing high quality care to our community, which is a very, very different focus than an HCA or a tenant facility. Those those hospitals are great, but they really focus on specific service areas. And that's a very, very different mission from us, and caring for our community through our hospital system.

Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast: 4:33

And I'm glad you said that because many times we hear about those specific care areas, and I think perhaps the general public does not realize what those general specific care areas are really our profit centers.

Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cleveland Clinic Martin Hospitals: 4:48

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that again, with our areas that we talk about when you look at the gamut of health care for maternal fetal medicine, the mothers who are laboring our facilities just here at night Have hospital for example, many of these hospital systems that you talk about HCA 10, they would never entertain a program that would take care of these people. Because they would say, well, their margins aren't very good. And you know, I have to be in a high volume business in order for me to do that sort of thing. Whereas we know it's a vital part of our community. We're the only place to birth right now in Martin County. Tomorrow, our hospital, which has faced, you know, upheaval of our finances, and certainly an uphill battle in regards to our cost of care. It decided that this was not possible, this would hurt our community, we have made strong commitments to continue this despite that efforts, and we balance that with the other things that are profitable in our hospital that do bring in dollars the hospital again, at the end of the day, it's to balance our books to make sure we are a nonprofit organization, whatever profit is made there, we put that back into the organization reinvest in the community. And I will say this much that one of the misnomers is that Cleveland Clinic is a large enterprise wide organization, which it is, but any money that is created and generated here is going to support our local Florida market, any philanthropy we generate here, goes to support local Florida markets. He doesn't go beyond even Martin County. And I think people don't necessarily understand that from a standpoint of how we operate as a system and what we're doing in here and locally.

Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast: 6:24

I think that's an important thing, because a lot of people and myself included, my son was born at Martin Memorial. And I just referenced it a few moments ago as Martin Memorial. That was quite a transition from Martin to Cleveland. Walk us through that. And for our audience, I have to say, in all honesty, Dr. Singh and I met a few weeks ago face to face and preparation for this and other things that are going on. And I was very surprised of how frank and honest you were about the finances, but walk us through that transition with with Martin. Yeah.

Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cleveland Clinic Martin Hospitals: 7:03

So you know, the Martin hospital system came to us about six, seven years ago and said, we really want to grow ourselves from a community based hospital into a tertiary care organization. You know, Martin Memorial system has been around since 1930. Cleveland clinic's been around since 1920, both historical improvements and accomplishments over those time periods. And Martin Memorial system had done a great job of being a good community hospital, one that you gave birth in. And one that we you potentially had some minor issues taking care of, and your last rites, you know, done in this facility. But the in between care, the cancer care, the heart care, the care for orthopedic issues, wasn't really being performed very much at all in the past couple of years, and certainly was being let go of I think a lot there was a lot of an ability to get those, those specialists here is to be recruited here to work for this hospital because of its name and its stature. And again, it had a great name as a community based hospital, but it didn't have a national ranking and all those sorts of things that go along with it. The Cleveland Clinic was asked to come in and to take over this hospital system. And by that we didn't pay $1. For the hospital, actually, we actually took it over and said, We will now go back and reinvest into the community will provide community based benefit will provide new services will provide more doctors will provide more building, and we'll do all that on our dime to help the community and to grow the community centers. And, you know, it's now been five years in the making of this agreement that we've just have celebrated the 50 year anniversary of it. And I can tell you, there have been a huge number of improvements since that five years have undergone and I'm happy to give you just a microcosm of them. But we've doubled the number of doctors we've tripled the number of advanced practice providers. We are the we've expanded care in 13 Specialties since being here and increase the number of care areas we can provide. We've increased our physical plant spaces, very in various areas and our ambulance centers, outpatient centers, those facilities, we've actually increased the number of births that we do we are now the largest place to birth both in the Treasure Coast between Indian River between Martin Hospital in North Hospital in our tradition campus with rebirth that as well. And we've continued to contribute dollar for dollar to the community we've almost contributed almost$350 million to both directed care philanthropic benefit in other areas here to the community. We keep doing that each and every year. We keep investing I just got the budget for next year. No, no surprise. we're reinvesting even further Other into our systems here. And we are challenged by a lot of things that hospitals are challenged by influx of patients, the seasonal nature, you can imagine if you were in a business where every day, the same 100 people showed up, it'd be fine, we can manage. But some year, some months, it's 300. And some 100 months, it's 50 people, because of the seasonal nature of what we see in the market, sometimes the cost of care has risen. As you can imagine, inflation costs, I think, Sam, you and I go to the gas pump, or we go to the grocery store, and things cost a little more these days than they ever have before in the past couple of years. And we're seeing an economic shift in regards to that. And so we've had to really adapt to that environment in this market very well. And it's been a it's been a slow, slow struggle, but we've been able to do it. And I've been very proud of our teams for being able to do so

Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast: 10:51

over the course of five years of making this happen, and bringing it to wear, it has gone through a lot of trials and tribulations. And today, you know, you're looking ahead to what's happening in the budget and everything. It doesn't always go smoothly, though. And I think we would not be hitting the mark, if we didn't touch on some of those areas that we both hear. And I know you hear because you've let me know. And our community knows about some of the problems. One is communication. And anytime I talked to somebody and deliberately asked them, what's your biggest concern complaint gripe with the hospital, and it's the telephone system? Tell us tell us about that? No,

Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cleveland Clinic Martin Hospitals: 11:38

it's it's an antiquated system. It really honestly is a system that is inefficient. And I have to be honest with you has been our biggest Achilles heel, and we are improving that drastically. We rerouted all the phones to the actual specific offices in which those patients are being seen now. But it is it was very difficult to do. So Sam, we had on a typical Monday, we get 13,000 phone calls that come into our center on a Monday morning. And that's, you know, very, very difficult to manage. As you can imagine that number of phone calls, the sheer volume alone speaks to the the fact that the community. And we've looked at this, by the way into marketing kind of survey, you know, you we can be of different demographics. And sometimes different demographics, use different communication styles, some use email, some use chat, some use our portal, some use our phone system, and phones appear to be important to still have here. And I think that that's something we're improving on as we do continuously in the process by embedding technology to call you back when it's time for your time in line, which is coming soon. All these sorts of activities that I think are very beneficial, but But that's I think that that's been the other one that that's sort of the I would I call the front pipe, the back pipe has been the number of physicians, doctors, advanced practice providers, because, you know, this has been a market in which it's been Florida is a very, you know, competitive market. And to be able to recruit doctors takes time, we can't just flip a switch one day and say, Hey, we're we have enough people, it does take weeks, months, even years to recruit the number of people we have. And I think that the people feel the tooth aspects I would say to you or our phone system, which again, is a work in progress. And the back area, which is number of providers we have, we're just increasing it rapidly over time. And just to give you a sense that we've we've doubled, you know, the number of doctors I told you before, but we've actually improved and gotten services here that were just never even here. Cancer Care, for example, is now embedded in our hospital with six doctors attached to it. That's a huge undertaking for any organization, and certainly ours, but we were able to do it.

Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast: 13:51

Along that same line with as we're talking about physicians, you have increased staff, but community wide there, there seems to be a perception that you're losing doctors, what do you say when someone doesn't listen to what you're saying? Well,

Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cleveland Clinic Martin Hospitals: 14:06

I think I think again, there in every situation, there's bad attrition, and there's good attrition. There are people that we came here and we literally said we're just the Cleveland Clinic and they said I'm out. And I don't really understand it. But you know, there are people that just don't want to be under organized medical care. They want to be in their own practices. And I don't blame them. They want to be in their own businesses. And that's perfectly fine for them to do to do that sort of thing. I would say there have been some, some one or two or three sort of regrettable departures for us as an organization. But it's never been that we've actually exited anyone just to be clear. So these people have left any individual has the freewill to leave on their own volition. And it's not because we haven't taken care of them or we haven't done anything else. It's really a lot of times voluntary nature. I can count on one hand, how many times we've have to eliminate a physician here for bad practice or behavior, because we actually have good doctors here for the most part. But there are those individuals who are just the squeaky wheels, unfortunately, and they think that we're pulling the wool over their eyes or something else. I can tell you, I live and breathe my organization every day, I wake up every morning, knowing that today's gonna be a better day than yesterday. And I have to be honest with you, I wouldn't be down here moved away from my family and moving them down to Florida. If I didn't believe in what we're doing here, we are making a difference in this community. But it does take a journey. I think that the the journey is something that people are a little bit impatient by, and I understand why healthcare is very scary. You know, just imagine, today, if you have a medical problem, you know, having to wait because there's not enough doctors and nurses and so on so forth. Thankfully, we've been able to hire a significant number of nurses and hire significant doctors, so it wouldn't feel that way anymore. But back about two years ago, we had a significant labor flux in the organization. Yeah, there were some really tough times. And so doctors got very frustrated. And some nurses got very frustrated with how many people we actually had. And that, again, was because it was COVID, traveling nursing made a ton of money. And rightly so I think nurses were underpaid for many years. And so they decided to go on the free market and get travel all over the country and get huge paychecks for what they're doing. And kudos to them to do it. But now we're back to a simpler time at different time at time post COVID, where we feel like we have a great team of doctors, nurses who are working together. And I am tickled pink to see what happens the next year or two with regards to what we can achieve with this team that's now in place.

Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast: 16:44

You know, I think I'll probably have a layman's perspective, sometimes our community doesn't quite understand, nor really in some cases, they don't want to know the intricacies or even the nuances of the health care system. I can say, in one particular case. And obviously I won't say by name, but there was a physician that that I know about that left, that could have been a liability. So for those that are thinking out loud, where we have, you know, a loss, sometimes as you said, it's for the better, but, but you know, those, that's business as well, when you're talking about influx of people into the area. And

Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cleveland Clinic Martin Hospitals: 17:27

I'll say this much, Sam, we're a quality driven organization. We pride ourselves on outcomes we meet every day, at 930 in the morning, and a huddle group. And what we're doing in that huddle group across the entire Florida region, by the way, is discussing our patient outcomes or patient experience, if there's been any deficits in care that have occurred, any errors in medical care that have occurred, and we elevate them to the highest levels of the organization. In fact, every day at 11 o'clock in Ohio, Dr. Mahalo Vic, who's the head of the organization listens to the report out of each of our hospital systems to understand what is happening each place. We are focused on quality, patient experience and outcomes. And that is a very different mission than a volume based driven mission that might be at another facility. And I know that, you know, our reputation has been tarnished for a lot of different reasons. Also, I believe that we have not been proactive, about talking about what great things we have done to this community, you know, this hospital probably would have gone under if it wasn't for the Cleveland Clinic supporting it through the last few years because of the amount of money that was required to keep the hospital on life support. When there was no nursing here, we brought in traveling nurses to a significant degree. And the first year I was here, we actually lost almost $70 million to our bottom line. And it was because of the Cleveland Clinic that we were able to make up that deficit. And this year, we're losing far less money than we did last year, which is a great thing. We're in the right direction, but we're still losing money. However, the Cleveland Clinic has a very strong balance sheet and is able to support us through this tough time. And they believe as well as I think our community believes that we can do a great job of improving the care that we provide those individuals who live in Martin and St. Lucie counties.

Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast: 19:20

After our first meeting, I took the opportunity to do a social media post on one of the neighborhood social platforms. And some of the comments were very negative and in the first 48 hours more than 7000 comments, people views. But I want you to know that the majority of those comments and posts were positive. So as easy as it is sometimes to get wrapped up on the negatives of everything. I think it's important for you also to know that there's a large segment of the community that is not complaining, but that is supportive of the hospitals and And

Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cleveland Clinic Martin Hospitals: 20:00

Sam, I can tell you first of all, I think good news sells better than bad news six days to Sunday. So the second thing is, is, you know, we take every patient complaint very seriously, there's an ombudsman who takes over the complaint, I get copied on all those complaints, we actually investigate each one of them, we have a response time of seven days to respond to every patient who has a complaint about us as an organization. And we take pride in responding to them, because we want to make sure we investigate each one look at its care, its source, see if there's common themes, we if there's a common theme of some individual or some areas, some areas of focus unit, we can certainly address that for the patient, and do that. So we take these, I think the bottom line is good or even not so good. We like to hear about those things. And I urge anyone who's listening to this to keep asking us and giving us feedback on what we're doing. I don't mind feedback. I think it's a very good guidance point, post. But the interesting thing to me, Sam, to be quite honest with you is the number of solutions that people come up with are great, and I'm happy to have solutions. But when you see things that are published in papers that are just totally false or call a false about us, it really saddens, I think the organization ultimately, there was a post this last two weeks ago in TCP palm, about somebody suggesting that quantum computing could solve the problems and Martin now, I have to say that is the most off base discussion anyone could have about this, forgive me for saying so. But the reality is that is a strictly a basis of personnel, people and process, it's really people process and technology that needs to supercharge our ability to take care of people. And the technology is not quantum computing, which only exists one at one place in the entire United States, which is in Cleveland, Ohio, actually. But it's actually the fact that we implement good processes to improve this. And when you're hiring individuals, as you know, Sam, and if you've run businesses, like we have, when you hire people, day one, they don't start to perform at the 90th percentile, they start to slowly ramp over time. And what we're seeing right now is those people that get into our services from a patient perspective, love the services we can offer. Those patients that can't get in are unfortunately are still troubled, troubled by it. And we're going to make more space for them. We're gonna get them in, we just need more time to do so I've been working toward that.

Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast: 22:29

I saw that same post and it was a it was a head scratcher. I was like what in the, you know, it's like, people talent. AI has a place in the medical field. But and 90% of the time, I think what people are referring to is artificial ignorance instead of intelligence, but that and that was one of them. And

Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cleveland Clinic Martin Hospitals: 22:51

we are using, for example, artificial intelligence to help us better staff, our hospital to better determine where there's variances in call volume so that we can get our calls answered at a certain time of the day, we're using artificial intelligence to answer people's messages. Chat GPT is coming to us to answer people's messages in our system as well. So there is value to it. It's just when you talk about these articles that get published in major major publications, by the way, and I have reached out to TCB pom and I've been surprised that they don't even proofread this stuff anymore, because it just seems like they're just fishing for anything to put in into their their journal. Because clearly they they could have come to us and talk to us about it and learn about what quantum computing offers, which is fantastical, but has very, very little relevance to what needs to happen in our communities and to take care of patients ultimately,

Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast: 23:47

to be real honest, the demise of local news at all levels is one of the reasons that that I'm doing this Florida Business Forum and other podcast because it's going away unfortunately, it for different reasons. But that's a good point. Well,

Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cleveland Clinic Martin Hospitals: 24:05

and I applaud your ability to do this and blog posting and things like that, that gets out when I do it myself. By the way, I have friends and neighbors of Martin of this area, I do them on next door. I do them on all these different media social channels. We have a big following even on tick tock for that matter what we're doing in the hospital, just to get that the word of we're providing the community. So

Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast: 24:28

another tool, let's let's touch on some of the positives if we've gone down the negative route and how you were addressing it, but I'll mention that what I know and let you fill in the blank cancer treatment trials.

Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cleveland Clinic Martin Hospitals: 24:42

Yeah, we were the first to offer them in Martin County here at our Wiseman Cancer Center and that wasn't first for the entire county. If you're a patient with cancer care, or cancer diagnosis, and you need to have care sometimes there's not always a treatment for you. You're hoping for are a clinical trial that you can get involved with that could potentially change your life. We had a total of 10 trials added to the existing number of trials that we had last year. And I'm actually doing one of them myself and helping that out as well. That is awesome.

Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast: 25:14

One that I'm familiar with through the various health care councils is something that started I believe that John Hopkins and that's the hospital at home, you're involved in that now.

Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cleveland Clinic Martin Hospitals: 25:26

We are yes, this is another great opportunity to transform health care in our community. We released this recently in in St. Lucie County, a traditional hospital, it's taken up huge uptake as far as delivering hospital care, in the comfort of your home, with our paramedic teams visiting you three to four times a day and nurse on call. With a monitor system, you don't even have to have an internet connection. It's all driven by self service. And so we can do it even in your own home with you. And this has been a huge benefit to our patients in our community community. It's avoided days within the hospital, the brick and mortar structure. And it's delivered high level high quality care that has high patient experience regarded. So we are the fastest growing hospital to hair care home program and is coming to Martin north and south hospital actually in February of this year. Something

Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast: 26:24

to look forward to there. It's the advances of how people are cared for it just fascinates me. It really is. It's amazing. As you continue to improve overall, one thing that comes up is the hospital grading system. I'm not quite sure that I agree with how those grades are made touch base on that.

Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cleveland Clinic Martin Hospitals: 26:47

Yeah, so you know, there everyone, and even including, you can have a rancor and Raider. And and every one of their methodologies are different. And so some sometimes the methodology changes and you perform really well. And sometimes it does not perform as well as we want it to. There's Press Ganey there's healthy grades. There is LeapFrog. There's a lot of these. And unfortunately, the LeapFrog score that we got this year was not optimal, but reflects data from almost two years ago. What leapfrog does is it looks at data not from just this six months ago, or even three months ago, it looks at some data in arrears for almost two years ago. And I remember Sam, when I talk to you about this, and what we were doing two years ago, it was a very bleak time in the Martin health system, we had lost a lot of nurses, we have a total component of around 1300 nurses, we were down to 850 or so nurses by that point in time. Just imagine that for a moment, 1/3 of our population nurses decided to travel at that point in time, or stop working because of COVID being so detrimental and concerning to them, which I understand. And so this was where this grading system came in about. Now, if you look at the other grading systems, for example, like healthy grades, we achieved five star status, which is the highest as you can achieve in nine specialties, cardiothoracic care, cancer care, lung care, orthopedic care, Mother fetal and maternal fetal medicine. All these areas, we were able to achieve a five star status, which is the highest you can achieve and meets national ranking in those areas. So just for comparator, I think again, that while these Rancors and Raiders are important to some, they're not the be all end all and certainly if they don't use data from very really irrelevant timeframes and becomes irrelevant to what we're talking about

Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast: 28:39

today. I have found that complainers look for the worst things that they can use to support their complaints. So it's, it's really why our rearview mirrors are smaller. So kudos for making things move forward. Another area your Ophthalmology is the goal I ophthalmology are we going to see an expansion into this area 100%

Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cleveland Clinic Martin Hospitals: 29:06

We've gotten the green light to do that. And we're raising the funds now to do so. And it's it's it's only a matter of time before we start to see up Thalmic patients and Ophthalmology is one of those unsung specialties of medicine in many ways it as an aphrodisiac, huge impact and far as welfare, but it actually attracts people for the first time to hospitals and to facilities to get care and it's very important for us to establish a footprint to help support our hospital system. Our emergency rooms et Cie ophthalmic patients as well as our outpatient practices would need to be supported by that. Just to give you a quick example, Sam 40% of the patients who have diabetes right now, in the count and Martin and St. Lucie counties gets their annual examination for diabetes or eye examination. That's well below standards of the community by putting an ophthalmology unit and we hope to scream closer to a 90% of those people. So we can prevent vision, threatening blindness, which occurs from diabetes, which is, again, the most common cause of blindness, the US and working age adults. So that's going to be a huge advantage for us to add to this, amongst other things that we can talk about to Sam, you know, we have a fast track program at our traditional hospital that is valuable to our emergency services there. And also, expanding the services we're going to be doing at South Hospital in regards to our mother baby unit, there is going to be additional adds to our facility to help our care for our community through these programs.

Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast: 30:35

Without going into details, because I can't go into details, but I think you know that I've been working behind the scenes and perhaps getting some hospital care into other areas of our community. We have a wonderful community, but it's a growing community. Is that growth a factor that that you have to deal with?

Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cleveland Clinic Martin Hospitals: 30:55

Oh, absolutely. I mean, we start we've we've now had the highest level of nursing 14% Higher nursing that we had four or five years ago to expand, what we can do in population growth is anywhere from three to five to 7% a year. So we've seen that growth every year, year after year, which is pretty, pretty significant. And so we've upscaled our workforce in order to do that we look at locationally, where we want to be we buy land, and find out practice areas to be where we want to be from a locational perspective. And we're doing all that right now. So definitely is an eye toward continually growing our organization through these these sort of overall structures and strategies.

Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast: 31:35

We've covered a lot of topics and I know that just the nature of our conversation, we could sit here and carry on for another hour, anything that we have not touched upon, that you really want to make sure that we get across before we wrap up.

Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cleveland Clinic Martin Hospitals: 31:50

So Sam, I think the first thing is, we appreciate the community that we live in as an organization, we value their feedback, I would tell you, if anything, anyone leaves with today, please give us more feedback. And what we could do better give us examples. I always tell everyone give me examples where I can make things better. And the organization can make things better. We have a huge team here and this invested in it. And that's the second point is we're invested here. We're not leaving, we're not selling we're not doing anything else. Yet another day goes by that other somebody doesn't call me with some weird rumor about what we may or may not be doing. The answer is we're gonna be here for the next 100 years. And as we have been the first 100 years in Ohio will be for the next 100 years and Martin, and we will continue to expand the care that we can offer a number three to our community, because I live here just like you do. And I want everything here and being able to be able to be accessible to our, our community. And certainly we didn't have that for a long time. And now we're getting that day after day and week after week.

Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast: 32:50

Most important question of the entire program. Can you come back for another episode in the future?

Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cleveland Clinic Martin Hospitals: 32:56

Well love to and love to give you updates as far as our progress, especially as we, you know, grow the program this year.

Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast: 33:04

One final observation, I'm looking out my window and I can see out the window to your side, nearly sunny skies. And having spent quite a number of my adult years in Ohio. I will take this weather over the Ohio winter, anytime.

Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cleveland Clinic Martin Hospitals: 33:23

I would too. Except in days when I guess yesterday it was 60 degrees. And I was walking around with a sweater on. Because I have unfortunately become very acclimated to your environment as much as you have been. And it's it's a real pleasure being down here. I have to be honest with you, I could not have asked for a better place to be I started this conversation by telling you how fortunate I felt because I didn't know much about Florida to be honest with you before I came down here. And I really found a community that that is enveloped in, in growing, improving and really helping those around each other and that to me is a big reason to be here and to grow this or entity. Well

Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast: 34:02

said. Dr. Rishi Singh, Vice President, Chief Medical Officer Cleveland Martin hospital systems. It has been my pleasure to have you on the program today.

Dr Rishi P. Singh, MD, Cleveland Clinic Martin Hospitals: 34:14

Thank you, Sam. Really appreciate it.

Sam Yates, Host, Florida Business Forum, Florida's Number One Business News Podcast: 34:16

And until our next episode of the Florida Business Forum, I'm Sam Yates Have a great day everybody. The Florida Business Forum is dedicated to showcasing Florida businesses and CEOs of all sorts to promote their business or not for profit in the only business forum of its type in Florida. Thanks for tuning in. And remember, have a great day everyone. And stay tuned for more business