Will Patterson is the founder and chief executive officer at Los Angeles-based CareRev.
Mr. Patterson will serve on the panel "The Most Impactful Change We Made Last Year and How We Did It" at Becker's 10th Annual CEO + CFO Roundtable. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference on Nov. 7-10 in Chicago.
To learn more and register, click here.
Becker's Healthcare aims to foster peer-to-peer conversation between healthcare's brightest leaders and thinkers. In that vein, responses to our Speaker Series are published straight from interviewees. Here is what our speakers had to say.
Question: What is the smartest thing you've done in the last year to set your system up for success?
Will Patterson: I've hired really good people. We've just added our new chief people officer, Patty Bedard and our chief operating officer, Filiz Genca, who also heads up our product team, and we have our chief growth officer, Amanda Duke. They're brilliant leaders who come from various backgrounds and impressive marketplaces like Amazon. We have senior leaders who come from major healthcare institutions like Optum, Press Ganey, UHS and Centene. There are also some leaders who, like me, are registered nurses, which is a competitive advantage for what we do at CareRev. I'm honored to be working alongside them and each of them is doing a phenomenal job of building out their teams with top talent who are creative, action-focused, and have incredible grit. Together, we are taking CareRev to greater heights.
Q: What are you most excited about right now and what makes you nervous?
WP: I am nervous about the number of healthcare professionals leaving the industry and the ongoing resistance to change driving people out of the industry. However, I am most excited that executives recognize these challenges and that there is a commitment to bringing in technology and the solutions to meet the workforce where they are.
Q: How are you thinking about growth and investments for the next year or two?
WP: Right now, I'm laser-focused on a few things. One of those things is our continued cultivation of a dynamic, local and flexible talent pool in communities across the U.S. Everything we are doing is centered around our ability to support healthcare professionals in living life on their terms.
The second thing I'm focused on is expanding product capabilities. For example, we've launched a cascade functionality that allows us to manage open shifts across internal staff and the external talent pool. We're ensuring that healthcare systems utilize our smart rates, which optimize fill rates by using data to calculate tactical shift rates that subsequently improve patient coverage and lower labor costs.
Finally, we are elevating our data capabilities so that healthcare facilities can take full advantage of how these can significantly impact their workforce planning strategies. Tackling the healthcare staffing shortage is arguably the number one priority for healthcare systems, and they need an on-demand solution that CareRev's marketplace platform offers.
Q: What will healthcare executives need to be effective leaders for the next five years?
WP: Healthcare executives must ensure that they offer AI that supports their workforce and their ability to efficiently and more quickly do their job and enable a more flexible working environment. It will become increasingly clear that data insights will be one of the most useful tools for helping them make staffing decisions in business.
Q: How are you building resilient and diverse teams?
WP: Everyone at CareRev is invested in and contributes to our company's success. CareRev's goal is to hire the brightest subject matter experts in various fields who come from diverse experiences and bring diverse perspectives. Being inclusivity-focused is a necessity, as we must reflect our diverse industry of healthcare professionals inside our organization with our employees. It's important to me and my entire executive leadership team that we give employees the space they need to be creative, innovative and forward-thinking. We're not interested in boxing them in on what they can contribute, and we like and encourage open dialogues at all levels of our organization.