Providence Health CEO Sounds Note of Optimism

joins us on the phone from Seattle. Dr Hawkman, Really nice to have you here with Caroline myself. Oh great to be with you. And can we just say your team is incredible, Jason, Jason said it right off the top.

I mean they have really from the get go. When we were still working in our offices, we were talking to your team and they really helped kind of set the stage, made us have a much clearer understanding of what you guys were dealing with and what you know now we all know would eventually, you know, move to

some of the hot spots around the country. So we thank you for that and really thank you so much so help us understand where we are because you know, One of the benefits of you guys being on the front lines as you were, and as Carol said, you know, unfortunately as it has moved eastward in many ways, is we're learning a lot from talking to you and your team. Give us a reality check, because this is a virus

that knows no borders. Uh. This is also a virus that is not moving in any really predictable way, at least in terms of kind of where it keeps popping up. What's the reality check here for us? Dr Sure, so that you know the thing that we had. We were lucky enough, I guess, because we have the first case January twenty one in h Washington State, and that put us on the alarm because we knew once we have

that case, this this is going to spread. And of course we had the Kirkland Nursing Home and then more and more. But I think we have to understand. I'm also an in and alogist by training, that was my degree. So this this virus has been out and around and it's not like it just pops up somewhere. So what we're finding out a lot of asymptomatic cases, relatively mild cases. So what we really think it's not like this thing is just kind of spreading from one town to the next.

That in a lot of cases that's there and then what happens the people get together or it you know, it breaks out in the nursing home and then you have a flare and it's up. So a lot of us believe a lot of this has been out and around us for a lot longer than we really believe

it to be. The good news for us is that we've been at it longer, and we stayed pretty pretty hard on social distancing, so we're really starting to see not only we're starting to see the real decrease in the number of cases things are opening up, and actually some of our hostiles are half empty because we stopped a lot of elective surgery and whatnot, and we're actually trying to think, how do we turn this back on

carefully and what do we do next? So what you're going to see around the rest of the country, and are these what people would say, are what seem like outbreak, but there's kind of be flares in cases that are there, and it takes a while. Both ways, you did on top of it, and i'd say more there a little later on getting on top of it, and particularly in densely populated areas. You know, it has a tendency obviously to spread a lot easier than it does in a

less dense settings. So I need we want to ask you, you know, Dr Hawkman, you know, what does coming out of this look like? And I know there's a bunch of steps and we'll get into that, but what does coming out of this look like? In your view? It's gonna look so like people start out waves after what's the second waves look like. I think it's more akin to ripples that we're going to see. So we're going

to have to live within Spyrus as long. I hate to say it until we have a vaccine, but I think we can get into a better relationship with it and be able to manage and control it better. Obviously, as more people in the community have been exposed have some level of immunity, we've it better at testing and

then you bring things back. But we're going to have and we should expect in places like Washington or California or other places that there will be these little ripples that occur where there'll be in some cases that breakout. We've got to you know, that's where the isolation. Getting on top of it early really makes sense. But we'll have that. We're gonna have to live with that. I have to say through the end of the year. Now is it compatible? You know, we live in a real

tech community. So following Amazon, Microsoft, we're all talking about how to get people back to work and be able to do that safely. And we think we can we can gradually open that up, but we aren't gonna have We're not going to see the end of the COVID nineteam, but it'll be a lot more. It'll be easier to control it, easier to to to diagnose it. And how much do we worry about her or how should we be thinking? Uh Dr Hawkman and and obviously a lot of this is unknowable, but just our day to day

live lives. Once it gets back to some measure of normal in that period where we don't have a vaccine, where isolation has to happen, what does sort of day to day social distancing look like if we're actually out in the world. It's one thing to sort of essentially be in your house, be with your family, but if you're going to work, if you're doing certain things, what what's the responsible way that we should think about living.

So we have let's hoell, you have a business as a hundred of people in an office, or you've got a construction site. You know, those are relatively self contained, so you're pretty much with that group of people for the day and then you come home. Those are a little easier. In the perfect world that you'd love to do is be able to COVID test everyone beforelet me go back to work. Know that the all COVID nineteen negatives,

and those are actually pretty controlled settings. So office setting or news froom setting, or construction site, you know, those those gets there. There's some of the trickier ones tend to be places there's a lot of contact with the public. But let's face it, today, our grocery stores that are open, we're able to manage that. So some of those things that we're doing with masking and some distance between people, not getting a big crowd of folks together will be

the way we manage it. So it's ask me, when's the next time we're going to get three hundred people together in an auditorium. I don't see that happening for a real long while. You know, that's not going to happen, but people in a work setting where they can kind of keep reasonable hygiene distance potentially masking, uh, construction sites and retail, you know, particularly small detail starting to get small retail back where you just use common sense in terms of how you do it. And I think we

have to be more ubiquitous with with masking. That will be part of what we're gonna deal with because it's not going to stop it, but they'll keep it control. Right now, our guest, Dr Rod Hawkman, he is President and chief executive officer Providence Joseph Health, on the phone from Seattle, Washington. As you know from our loyal listeners, this hospital is part of a massive uh ST Joseph

Health system. It's about dollar system. It's fifty one hospital, seven states, UM, eight hundred clinics caregivers, So it's massive um. Dr Hawkman. So we were talking about kind of life after the virus and you said you don't see large groups gathering for a long time. Two questions, what's a long time? And so things like sports, concerts, um, kids going to college, Uh, you know, pick your thing, commuting, Like how do we you know, what are the events

we can do? What are the events we can't. You talked about office settings probably work, but I'd love more specifics you're thinking, because it's a really informed thinking. Sure. So I've had a whole bunch of university presidents call me and say, Okay, can I get my kids back in September? And if we do, how do we do it?

So we have good discussions about that. I said, when the kids, If you can get the kids back, which I think I think you can, it's preferably love to test them before they come back to campus and have as much information knowing that they're healthy coming back. And then in in the you know, you're not gonna have a lecture hall with three hundred people in it, but you could have smaller classrooms with some spread and probably do learning that's a combination of virtual and in place learning.

Uh So, kind of mapping that out and making sure to do it. So I think there's really some hope for universities because you can manage the population, manage the setting. I think in terms of large gatherings, you know, concerts, a lot of folks that have theaters in Seattle, it said, when can we get back to what we're doing? It's just gonna be hard to see unless we have a better control on what this looks like getting two hundred,

fifty or three hundred people in the same room. So for sporting events, I kind of think we're all going to learn to love golf a lot, and the question is whether you can do You can do some pro sports maybe without a large crowd. You know, that's control, but at least you can watch it on TV. So that's some of the ways thinking in terms of that. The good news is is that every week that goes by we learn more. So Alaska's really opening up. We're going to start opening up, and I think we'll learn

a lot by what happens. So every week or month that goes by, we'll get smarter about it and be able to kind of refine some of those predictions that are out there. But right now, if you ask me that's that would be off the top quick. Did you say so, I'm sorry forgive me. Did you give us a time frame for when we can kind of get

back to normal large groups? Is that a year away? Well, I think when when you're talking large groups like seeing you know, in our place, the Seahawks or the Mariners are doing that I gotta believe that we're not going to feel comfortable with that till we have a vaccine. And then the question on the vaccine, and you know, there's so much noise out there. I kind of laugh

when I hear it. You know, there's at least fifteen different companies working on vaccines, and part of it's working on there's some newer vaccine technology that uses Messenger R and A that might give us a vaccine faster than some of the others. You know, we're going to see how that is, because we've got to get better at getting vaccine faster than saying a year, a year and

a half. So that's what I'm looking towards. The best estimates are, you know, our December January, and then you'd start by vaccinating your caregivers and you know, kind of roll it out from there. But that's that's why conventional wisdom right now. So Dr Hagman, I have a fairly simple question that opens up a larger discussion, and unfortunately only have about a minute a half, which is should I go for my annual check up? Like what what should I be doing at this point when it comes

to normal healthcare? Well, you got to know what's on the list, and this is what really has a story, and a lot of health kiss being put off. We've seen about half the number of strokes and heart attacks that we saw last year. We don't know that all of a sudden the whole country has gotten really healthy, that's not it. So we think a lot of people are putting things off. So I would look down the list of what you know if you're being treated for

a chronic condition. Some of it. We've been doing thirteen thousand virtual visits a day with our patients, so it's also a good way to see if that's available. So at least you could do a virtual visit check in which a practitioner and then see, you know, what kind of testing you need or something to be put off. But I would check in and see if you can at least do a virtual visit for starters. Interesting. Interesting, How worried are you and now only have about thirty seconds?

How worried are you that you know you're gonna have some real disruption in your business financially over the next year or so? I wish it was next year. I'm looking at the May financials looks like so I'm the chair and like the American Hospital Association, so we're there. We're just on a call today with folks around the country.

We're really concerned about the hit the whole healthcare system is gonna take, even with some of the money that's coming from not d C. So that's gonna be a story that we're going to see evolve over the next couple of months. But I'm worried, particularly about smaller hospitals, but even large systems. Alright, well, we look forward to continuing the conversation. Uh, and as Carol said at the beginning of our chat, just really appreciate you and your team.

You guys have just done an unbelievable job amid obviously a lot of stresses and strains of helping keep us and our audience really honest about this. Dr Rod Huckman, Uh, he's the boss out of Providence St. Joseph. Help