Mel Hall: Former CEO of Press Ganey Associates (Raise the Line)

Hi, I'm Shivani. Thanks for checking out our raise the line interview series.

In which me and my cohost osmosis chief Medical Officer Dr Rishi Desai explore how to strengthen our healthcare system with some amazing leaders in medicine, technology, education and government and they have some great advice for people starting careers in healthcare as well.

I hope you'll watch these highlights and then go listen to the full podcast interview wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm sh and today and raise the line.

I'm happy to be joined by Mel Hall. Mel was the former ce of Press Ghany Associates, which many of you in healthcare know, it's used by thousands of health systems and hospitals around the world.

Mel has focused his career on improving patient care across the world. But before press Gy, he also served as a Methodist minister in the inner city of Detroit, which we're going to get into how a minister becomes a CEO of a multibillion dollar company.

So, Mel, it's a real pleasure to have you on the show today. Well, thank you very much.

It's great to be here. I certainly admire what you all are doing and uh I guess as it relates to my background, maybe all it proves is I can't hold a job for very long.

I don't think that's true at all. Or maybe you, you have too many interests to see him.

So on that, I'm curious, uh how did you go from being a, a Methodist minister to then becoming CEO of prey? Well, I was interested in uh in, in being in Detroit, in this uh poorest and most densely populated community because II always felt like uh our belief system ought to follow, flow through our actions.

And so I was always more interested in demonstrating and putting into practice what uh I tried to believe more than just talking about it.

And so this community center and church allowed me to do that. And so that church was filled with programs for senior citizens, for youth job training programs.

And for me, it was important to sort of demonstrate faith throughout the week, not just on Sunday or Saturday as it turns out, it was probably about the best education I've ever received.

You know, what advice would you give an early stage clinician or provider at this point? And then on the flip side, what advice would you give a patient given that you spent so many, so much years, so many years giving voice to these patients?

Well, I'm not sure I'm in a position to give advice to a clinician or AAA physician. But uh other than to say, uh I think most people get in health care because they want to take care of people and they wanna make people's lives better.

And so whatever the support team around the clinician or a physician can do to remove distractions that take them away from patient care or distractions that take them away from delivering care to patients.

I would be in favor of and I, again, I think that's part of what osmosis is doing when they get in those encounters with patients, they can focus completely on the patient.

And so again, far be it for me to give advice to uh clinicians within health care and other readers, there's almost this skepticism about expertise.

Uh and I, unfortunately, that has bled into pardon the expression into health care. And so when someone is with their physician or with their health provi healthcare provider, there's some sense of sort of giving oneself to the expertise uh that I think is important and I think is somewhat missing in healthcare.

Now, thanks for watching this preview of Raised Line to hear the full interview. Check out all of our podcasts and subscribe to the series.

Please go to osmosis.org/raised Line podcast or listen wherever you get your podcasts.