Matt Merino on Healthcare, Tech & Talent

Work Forces

Matt Merino, CEO of Education Management Solutions (EMS), speaks about the innovative ways technology can be used to address talent gaps. Matt discusses the challenges and opportunities of leveraging technology to improve training, onboarding, and ongoing development for healthcare professionals. While Matt's focus is healthcare, his insights on leveraging technology to innovate and scale learning solutions offer valuable takeaways for leaders across all industries. He also shares his perspective on the importance of continuous evaluation and the need to start developing talent pipelines earlier on in a learner’s journey. Tune in to learn more about how technology can be used to create a more efficient and effective healthcare system.

Transcript

Julian Alssid: Welcome to Work Forces. I'm Julian Alssid.

Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with the innovators who shape the future of work and learning.

Julian: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained.

Kaitlin: Work Forces is supported by Lumina Foundation. Lumina is an independent, private foundation in Indianapolis that is committed to making opportunities for learning beyond high school available to all. Let's dive in.

Julian: One of the themes that keeps coming up on the podcast and in our consulting work is the need to pair work experience with learning.

Kaitlin: That's right, Julian, there are many innovative approaches emerging to address industry skill and hiring gaps, whether through apprenticeships, work and learn models or tech enabled simulations. We're excited to have a guest on the podcast today who is a leading expert in these tech enabled options with a focus on healthcare.

Julian: Absolutely, healthcare is a particularly ripe topic for discussion, given the challenges of regulation and providing hands on clinical experience. And so to introduce today's guest, Matt Marino is CEO of education management solutions, or EMS. Prior to his role at EMS, Matt served as the chief experience officer at Orbis Education, a program development and management company working with universities and healthcare systems to expand educational programs in nursing and therapies. During his many years in higher education, Matt led teams involved with the initial launch of online and hybrid programs for Arizona State University Online, the University of Miami, George Washington University, and Southern New Hampshire University. And before his career in higher education, Matt was a member of the United States Army Special Operations community, serving in over a dozen different countries. During his time in service, he was ordered over a dozen medals, including the Bronze Star in 2004. Thank you for joining us on the podcast today. Matt.

Matt Merino: Thanks for having me, and thank you for that extended introduction. I appreciate it. It makes me uh, reminds myself just how mature I'm getting. So I appreciate it.

Julian: Oh, and we had to edit that one down so you have even more to tell.

Kaitlin: Indeed with that being said, Matt, we did give that bio, but please, we'd like to hear a little bit more in your own words about what led you to education management solutions and more about your background.

Matt: Thanks for having me once again. For me, Education Management Solutions (EMS) is just another continuation on the path of what I've tried to do throughout my my career, and that's finding places that I believe can have impact on what I consider to be critical issues that affect people, regardless of things like socio economic status or location or race. Something that that has mass impact to all of us. So with EMS, this was just another opportunity to step into an organization that I thought had incredible potential to really drive at some of the deepest challenges we face and what is the most, in my view, indiscriminatory fact of life, and that is our health and our end of life at some point. So that's what brought me here. I've always lived in the higher ed world just because, uh, it speaks to me from a purpose standpoint. I came from a family of educators. I realized at a very young age that I was never going to have the patience required to be an educator myself. So next best up, let's, let's find a way to work in industries that can assist educators or assist workforce and people moving forward with their lives.

Julian: So what are the problems that EMS is addressing, Matt.

Matt: The problems that we face, that we're really going after now are trying to leverage technology solutions to assist with what I consider the big challenges we're facing in healthcare. One is we just don't have enough people. These shortages in critical roles are really a combination of two things. It's how many, obviously, clinicians are being able to be produced. But we're just in a situation where we have an aging population, demands in health care, and the needs in health care continue to go up. So we have a shortage of people. We have more people needing care. Solving it with a purely a people perspective, that's a long term solution. It takes time for the education process, through certification, being able to get all the way through and being able to work in an actual clinical setting. I do believe that what we're doing is we're trying to attack the shortage, the onboarding and then the delivery of care in a way that we're trying to do it on a continuum with not only higher education, but directly with providers. But we're trying to give them technology solutions that allow for the most rapid onboarding for new clinicians, gets them at the top of practice, and makes it so that they really do have tools that can take away anything that isn't working with patients directly. Is probably the best way to say it.

Julian: So tell us a little bit about the tools that you've developed at EMS and how they work and exactly which level of clinicians are you targeting.

Matt: Yeah. So very interesting. You know, our roots started in the world of simulation solutions for nursing schools, medical schools helping to to train doctors and nurses using those simulation capabilities that are all been used either to replace clinical experience or prep for clinical experience. So that's the roots of the organization. We see simulation has moved absolutely into the provider space, and is gaining traction there right now. On our end, though, something we were really excited about in the past year introducing was two other pieces to this, and the first one was taking all of that simulation, which traditionally has been done in a very large facility with dedicated real estate and rooms, so a high capital expense, in creating those same capabilities in a mobile solution that can be wheeled around in a 25 pound case as a way to not only reduce the cost, but reduce the requirement related to space needed and whatnot. The second thing we did is we've invested heavily in competency, education, management and tracking, which is really related to how do doctors, it goes all the way down to medical assisting. It can be used for technologists, anyone who works in a clinical capacity in the workforce. This is designed so that organizations can have a way to not only evaluate where their clinical competencies are for their specific role, and that role could be the same job title, perhaps, of nurse, but they could work in one of 30 specialty areas. So really knowing where their competencies fit based on what's required for the role they're in, and most importantly along the way, is instead of trying to do a one size fits all for training and developing clinicians throughout their time with an organization, the tool gives the insight, the calculations, the data, the visibility, so that they can now plan out more of a custom and more efficient and effective ongoing clinical training model within the systems. It helps with standardization. It also helps with just a broad overview. So when those times come and you see this all the time, where they've got to flip different clinicians to fill in for different shifts in different areas, who's best suited for that, so that the quality of care remains right where the expectation.

Kaitlin: So Matt, as you're talking about these different solutions, it sounds like they're very focused on the end user being the learner. Is there also a side of this that focuses on the needs of HR teams? Or how? What is the link there?

Matt: Yeah, so, so one of the things that we're really focused on with this, and it's a great point, is visibility all the way throughout an organization. So there is the HR component. And oftentimes what we see in the clinical setting is that we'll integrate an HRIS into the system, since ours is strictly focused on clinical skills. But what it does do, it has all these different permissions sets so an administrator could see the entire system, and perhaps someone working just at, let's say, one hospital in a set of 30, could see just their hospital, maybe a floor manager can see just their floor, and a shift manager may just be able to see that shift. So we're going to give views all the way through, to give all the business intelligence that's needed for the organization, regardless of level. And you know, the other side of it that we do that I think, is really important. It gets overlooked a lot of times. I am an eternal optimist, believing that whatever people choose to do with their career, they want to be good at it. They want to be successful. So the learner or clinician, in this case, can see where they're at based on expectation, and it can even give a plan of here's areas to focus on, and recommendations on what could be done next. You know so often times when, when we're going through evaluations or being evaluated, the most important piece that sometimes gets the least amount of attention is just that I have the awareness of where I'm at and what could be done next, as opposed to, oh, well, here's your final report, and you're deficient here, here and here. If I can see that ongoing and see improvement over time, that's really what we're chasing for, for the individual user, to be able to see.

Kaitlin: Matt, you know, I think we, having spent a number of years designing competency based education, I'm curious to know when we, when you're talking about competencies, who's defining them? Are they coming as like predefined in your system? Are you working with individual employers to define those, to define competencies? What's your process?

Matt: I love that question because it's really important. So I think of competencies right as kind of the end all be up at the roll up of a bunch of different things. And what that leads to is that you often we'll see the same title used for a competency, but what our partner organizations feel makes up all of those sub competencies and skills that roll up into it there is variance between them. So oftentimes, we will come with a framework that says, here are some of the examples of what we've seen from like organizations, without giving away who they are. But I think what our partners appreciate is the flexibility, because even sometimes with the same competencies, not only are there different areas that roll up into them depending on who you're working with, but there's different value based on them. So you will see a different value, and we don't want to make it so that each competency is weighted the same. We want to give you the ability to be flexible with that, because we do understand that, you know, we could have a world where someone needs has 15 different competencies that they need to be successful at, or they want to measure or be considered knowledgeable, and that doesn't mean that all 15 of those carry the same value or the same weight from the organizational perspective. So we try to give that flexibility in the system.

Kaitlin; Really interesting. And I feel, yes: It's like, depending on what role you're in, depending on where you're being employed, exactly the emphasis on those skills might be different. So I appreciate there's like, a level of variability within the different competencies as you're talking about, I guess, like how they roll up. I appreciate that.

Matt: In a perfect world for us, right? We'd live in a world where everyone valued in every Health Core organization the exact same skill and competency in the same way. But that's never going to be the case. So as opposed for our viewpoint, instead of trying to force someone into, quote, unquote, our ideal. Let's listen to them and see what they consider the ideal for their organization and help them get there.

Julian: Matt, at this stage, what are the what are the greatest challenges you see with taking this, this work, to scale?

Matt: Boy, I think there's a lot of challenges right now. I think the first one is when you're working in an area that has so many pressures on it. And I would say healthcare is absolutely that there is pressure coming from all different angles right now. Sometimes you're just battling to get through the next week, the next month, the next quarter. And really where, where this is focused on is a long term solution that you'll see impacts, but the impacts just get greater and greater with the solution, the longer you're using it. So it's not a magic bullet. And sometimes when organizations are struggling, they're looking for magic bullets. I'd say there's one. I think that it is a mindset also that no different than other areas in workforce that we have to get to that, and it's hard to admit, for some people, is that we all get educated. And I learned it. I was excellent at it. I have that skill now, but over time, if you don't use it all the time, it starts to degrade a little bit and like, if we would put a third year business calculus problem in front of me right now, I'm pretty sure I couldn't answer one of them, but, you know, 25 years ago, I was pretty good at doing those types of things. So I think having that mindset of continuous not only improvement, but continuous evaluation, so that it can't be an event, right? How we evaluate people shouldn't be an event. It should be just part of what we do every day. So there, and I think that also is a bit of a mindset shift in an environment in any industry that has regulation and whatnot, it's documentation. We're going through this regulatory event, and we're done, and now we're done with this, and let's move on. I really think we have to get to a world where we quit thinking of things and events and just thinking of as things we do all the time. And the final thing that we have to really do is that we have to understand that in these very specific verticals like healthcare, you have brilliant minds that are there to be clinicians. They're not there to be technologists. They're not there to be people that come from other areas, and this is something we work on. We do this. We're not just there to sell people the solution and walk away. You've got to give them resource to help it get set up and educated. Because the term competency in itself has been–had liberties taken against it over the past few years, to say the least. So I think there's an education at standpoint of what really is competency, because it goes way beyond just doing a checklist and looking at skills. So I think you've got to provide resource and education and partnership with these organizations as you get them on the path.

Kaitlin: Well, right? And then it's interesting to think about the complexities of implementation of these tools, right? So then it's not just about, oh, here's your tech tool. Implement it, it. There's so much more there.

Matt: I think so many have lived through that, right? Like they've lived through the world of someone's going to come in and they're going to sell me this and and they'll show you what the end product looks like, and you're like, Oh, this is amazing, but there's a bunch we have to do along the way. So when we do it, we don't really sell it as per se or offer it as and here's a piece of software that'll do this. It's more of, yes, it's going to be a piece of software, but let's work with you, with some of our resource our experts who have done this, to help you get everything organized how, and then we can build off that as we go, and then get it to the point over the first six months where then we really, as we're sitting right next to you, putting the system together, we're training you how to maintain it yourself. So so it's a bit different approach from that aspect, and a lot of technology organizations go but that's why I like the word a technology solution, and not just software.

Kaitlin: Right. It's a higher touch model where your focus much higher touch. So, Matt, just to drive us to the concrete for a second. Could you give us an example or two of like, when you mentioned, you know, the mobile solution for a simulation like, what are some of the content areas like that are addressed, like, can you give us an example?

Matt: So, so there's many healthcare organizations that have annual trainings that are required for clinicians, and if you're a large organization, or let's, let's take a large healthcare system that maybe has 180 different clinical environments, and those can be hospitals, maybe clinics, but everyone has to go through this training. Well, they have a couple options. One older model that's still heavily in use is, let's bring everybody to one place and train them, or send trainers around location by location to do it. The old satellite model that's incredibly expensive and time consuming. Another model has been that we've all seen in my military days. Saw this all the time, the train, the trainer. So let's take a group that we're going to turn into to people who's going to deliver this block of instruction. Let's bring them one place get that, and then let's send them out there to all the different locations. And we know there's individuals, there's changes that goes on, and the consistency sometimes lacks there. So that is an exact use case we were dealing with, without revealing my partner's name, 180 locations, trying to figure out, how are we going to deliver consistent training? So they took our mobile solution being able to put those at the sites. It goes beyond just being able to observe the training, because it is integrated with team and Zoom, or WebEx or whatever your preferred methodology is, so you can have synchronous, one person, delivering, evaluating a time. But it also comes loaded with these mobile solutions with a tablet with our software on it that allows you to record it. It allows you to make annotations while you're doing it. It allows you to set up checklists ahead of time so that you can have a consistent evaluation and you can debrief it, which is very popular, where people are going to record it, then afterwards they're going to watch it together and go through here's what went well. Here were the opportunities and more that it can be saved and then automated and rolled up into one system. So that's where it becomes different, that instead of people having to transfer data or enter it one by one. Once that's stored and saved, it can go right into to the bigger system. So it creates an efficiency with managing it. So there's an example on the on the mobile training side, right?

Kaitlin: So it sounds like it both decreases the concerns around variability and also allows for maybe more responsiveness as training needs change and evolve.

Matt: I would say, not only responsiveness, accuracy, which I think is a huge challenge right now, every organization struggles with that is, if you're a large organization, consistency and evaluation of the training and development you're delivering. That's a tough area.

Julian: Building on that comment, Matt, you know, so that your company is currently focused on innovation and healthcare space, but, and while we have many listeners in and interested in that space, what, what practical steps can our can the audience take to become forces in leveraging, you know, technology to address talent gaps in in other industries

Matt: Yeah, I think there's, I think there's a few. I think the first one is, and this is the hardest one is sometimes is not to be scared of the tech, if that makes sense, because it changes rapidly. It moves rapidly, and when I say not be scared of it, understand. It that what's out there is learnable. I think, over the past, call it 12 to 18 months, we've all been bombarded with the nebulous term of AI, thinking that AI is going to solve everything for us with a wave of wand, but it's not. It's a great tool to use as assisting but it's not a replacement tool. So I think that, no matter where you're at, you can't be afraid of the technology. I think number two, it goes to that mindset of, I should look at technology solutions as a way to take the repetitive or the mundane or something that doesn't require my skill set to do. And that's where I should find my technical solutions, and the stuff that does require that thought, that expertise that I bring to the table or my organization does, that's not what we're going to try to wipe out with tech, nor should we. And then I think the final thing is understanding I mentioned this earlier. There's no magic bullet. Nothing solves it overnight. You have to think of it as a continuum of what are the areas that I have those opportunities to bring technology into? And it doesn't mean that day one I flip the switch and it's doing all of it, but having a longer term strategic vision of where are the areas that I would if I could say tomorrow, we don't have to spend 10% of our time doing that, well, there's where I think you have to develop more of a longer term view of how do we get to that place, using some tech enabled resource.

Kaitlin: I'm curious to talk a little bit more I think about the not being scared of the tech, because I feel like there's this balancing act right of Sure, not being scared, but also recognizing Technology is everywhere, and what does it look like to successfully integrate these tools or or, or determine which ones to use. Like, it just, I think that is, it feels like that's a big challenge for so, for so many people right now, is just like, Okay, well, you know, we know there's so much out there, like we have to use, we want to use it all, or we have to start, you know, we have to integrate the newest thing. And so it's not even necessarily, there's the fear piece. There's also the excitement. And it's like, how do you think about this technology in a strategic way, recognizing that maybe you know you want to seize the moment and get the next best thing that's out there?

Matt: Yeah, I think that. Look, if nothing else, most technology companies are really tremendous marketing tools. But I'll say this, so there's another side of the equation. So yes, you should be excited. Yes, we can't be afraid of it. Yes, we have to have a plan to know what we want to take on. But then there's the other side. The other side is, what are our capacities, internal capabilities and skill sets and resources we have? Right? Because if you try to do everything at once on limited resources, nothing works. So I think there's the first step. It's saying, okay, what are the first things that we what does our internal resource looks like, and what's our internal capability look like? I think it's really important when you're picking technology solutions, that you have to have the right people at the table. So yes, there's always, you always got to have your people from your technology group and understand the security and how it integrates into other tools and whatnot. But I always want the end users in the room when we're having these discussions, because if the people who are going to be using it aren't comfortable, or it's not user friendly enough, or they don't see the value in it, none of this matters. And we've, I bet all of us have worked at an organization at least once in our lives, where there was this really flashy tool introduced that did something and no one really ever did anything with it. So that's kind of my viewpoint is, if you have the people who it is meant to impact giving their direct feedback, and they may say, look, we'd love to use it, but this looks really complex. I don't know if we can Okay, then we probably need to find something else. Or if they say, yeah, it's easy to use, but I don't know how it helps us. Well, that's probably not the answer either. So I think it's that internal view that so many organizations miss, because when talking with technology companies, and look, I'm one of them. I can look at it and say, yes, this is exactly how we could impact your organization. But I think it's important we take a step back and say, but we need to first of all give you a realistic view of what that lift looks like. And let's talk about the resource you have in your end users to make sure that it's hitting your need.

Kaitlin: And making sure, like you said, it's staff from the purchaser's end, right? Like that, in the end of the day, well supported. On, on, I know you have a high touch model, but also making sure the staff is there to support the tool.

Matt: But in the end, right? No organization wants to be reliant on an outside organization to run internal things they consider critical to the foundation of what they do, right? Like they want to have a tool that they've got assistance with, getting it up and running, working with the solution, but then they want to be able to handle it on their own. And quite honestly, that's what we want for them, too. So I think having those conversations and not just hey, someday, it's putting time flights and timestamps on things. And I think you have to do that when working with another organization, internally in your organization, you have to say, we're going to make this investment. And that's what it is, an investment now, well, 90 days we need to be here, and in 120 days we need to be here. 180 days we got to be at this point of usage of these said solutions. So I think it takes some really specific conversation.

Julian: It makes me wonder about opportunities that you see in the future.

Matt: Boy, you know, the thing about the opportunities of the future are for me, I look at it and say, I have a high level of confidence that in talking strictly in healthcare right now, but this applies to most verticals. I think that have a specialized form of education, training, whatever it may be. Most of the time, people who enter verticals such as these, a they know this is what they want to do. It's not so much. I'm trying to find a way to make more money, or most people who are going to work in the health professions, I always feel it's more of a calling. More of a calling for them than a job, per se. I'd say that number two, we know how much intense pressure is on our health care professionals right now, and both those things I just said could come across as really negative, but that's what I think leads to the opportunities of the future, is that right now, we haven't given those tools fully to those professionals, and when we do over time, as we have better prepared clinicians, better ongoing, skilled clinicians that are being utilized to do what they're there for and not doing mundane other work, taking time away, it's going to lead to elevated care, and it's going to lead to better outcomes, and that's a world that we can get to, and I think we have to have a we have to change our mindset of the future, of the possibility where we can't wait till things devolve into a crisis before we do something about that, which tends to be how we function. It seems lately is that we wait for something to be an absolute crisis, and then we try to figure out a plan. The good thing is, we still know, I don't want to call it a crisis yet, it's extreme strain, but we know it's coming, so we have time to do something about it. That means we should be in the educational phase. We should be working with people at younger ages to identify who potentially would want to work in healthcare. And if, and I've seen some really interesting things going on, where you see these high school academies getting built in partnership with healthcare organizations to actually build out a healthcare focused education, focused secondary education, which I think is really smart, right? So for not waiting till someone's a senior to have an experience or working in the summer, all four years of high school, they are integrating and weaving healthcare education into every subject. And I think that's where we've got to start thinking about every field of need, of profession in this country, is we've got to start younger and younger with getting people involved in it. And it doesn't mean with it, people need to decide by the time they're 10 years old whether this is what I'm going to be but when we know that there is that interest in that drive, the best way to foster and encourage it is to do it at a younger and younger.

Kaitlin: I think that's a theme we're seeing time and again, as you're saying across industries, Matt, that the need to start to build this pipeline earlier and just an honest and build the pipeline. But also, as you're saying, just make everyone aware, right? When we say, when we talk about jobs in healthcare, here's what they are, and here are the skills you use, and here's what a day looks like, right? I think more and more there's the need to build that in to secondary learning experiences, so that people know that kids know, like, here are the options available. And especially we're talking about changes in tech around implementation of tools. But changes in tech really do impact these jobs as well. And so what it looks like to be in a lot of these roles is really different than 10, 20 years ago.

Matt: You're absolutely right, and I think it'll change even more in the next 10 or 20 years. You know, as an interesting conference a few weeks ago talking about healthcare, and one of the questions posed was, and certain professional roles, or clinic clinical roles. Are those skills going to have to be redefined, or those competencies gonna have to be redefined over the next decade as the the world of work changes with the technology involved with it, I think it's a fair discussion, but once again, we need to have the discussion, and we need to be thinking about it before it's on top of us.

Kaitlin: 100% so with that being said, and with us talking about future opportunities, how can our listeners continue to follow the work you're doing and learn more about your work.

Matt: Easiest place to follow us is at ems-works.com. Can also follow us on normal social media. Pick your your favorite social media, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, whatever it is. And we will continue to do what we like to do. You know, we are, we are focused on that whole idea of, how are we going to give people the tools they need to be successful at what they want to do? And we're going to have some exciting stuff coming up here in the next three or four months of new announcements of additional technology we're putting into this space so you can follow us there and and hopefully it keeps everyone informed, and hopefully more p

Julian: Well, thank you so much, Matt. It's been a great conversation, and we so appreciate your time, and I'm ready to save your site and keep checking in to follow your progress.

Matt: Well, I really appreciate you having me. Really enjoyed the conversation and appreciate the work you're doing and putting some light on a really needed aspect of the world that we are in, and the world, more importantly that we are going to be.

Kaitlin: Thank you so much, Matt for taking the time. Thanks so much. That's all we have for you today. Thank you for listening to Work Forces. We hope that you take away nuggets that you can use in your own work. Thank you to our sponsor, Lumina Foundation. We're also grateful to our wonderful producer, Dustin Ramsdell. You can listen to future episodes at workforces, dot info or on Apple, Amazon and Spotify, please subscribe, like and share the podcast with your colleagues and friends.