#9 – Facilities Management in Healthcare with Jason Lea

9-facilities-management-in-healthcare-with-jason-lea

Intro:

Welcome to another episode of the modern facilities management podcast brought to you by stratum. I'm your host, Griffin Hamilton. This is the show where I interview industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights into modern day facilities management, from hospitality, to commercial, real estate, and everything in between. We'll learn what it really takes to succeed as a facilities manager. 

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton   

Good afternoon, thanks for joining for another episode of the modern facilities management Podcast. Today, I've got Jason Lee. Jason, how are you doing?

Speaker: Jason Lee  

Doing excellent today. Thanks for having me.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Absolutely, I appreciate you taking the time to sit down and chat. Jumping into it Jason, tell us a little bit more about who you are both personally and professionally.

Speaker: Jason Lee  

Alright, well, thank you. Professionally, I've landed in the world of healthcare facility management. That's nowhere on my career horizon, I ever thought I would be totally a far from what you went to school for or what you thought you went to school for. Started out after college and got a job with a university managing construction projects and updating the files and drawings. Go from there, transition into healthcare a few years later, had some great mentors, traveled the country different hospitals over my career and finally landed at my present facility where I've been for four years, kind of make a circle around the country and get back to the home state.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Very nice and very similar story to what we hear out there. Just kind of fallen into the industry. You mentioned that you didn't get a degree doing what you're doing right now. What did you go to school for?

Speaker: Jason Lee  

Mechanical engineering. And through that, by the time I graduated, I had realized, if this is what a mechanical engineer does, this is not what I want to do for the rest of my life. So, I was definitely looking for, a job that was not sitting at a table, draft and plans all day, I had no interest in that whatsoever. And that's just due to my personal nature. I grew up just on a hobby farm, but we drove tractors and cut hay and you built everything you needed to make and you didn't go to town to buy anything. And those kinds of things. And so just do and that was kind of where I chose mechanical engineering, it was a good chance, but a good area to be in lots of growth and lots of market. But going to school for that you did you don't get a good feel for what kind of careers are really out there. And facilities was definitely not on my radar.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

So, how do you make the leap going from the first job, at the university to getting into Facilities Management, going from that engineer route to facilities?

Speaker: Jason Lee  

Well, I got hired at the university merely because I had put AutoCAD down on my resume. So that was my ticket in. And at the university, you could see that there was a great need for what I was doing updating these projects, keeping the one lines accurate. Updating fire safety features, the as built drawings, making sure all that was recorded correctly and filing, there was a great need for that. And I enjoyed doing it with the more I was there, the more I fell into facilities management, facility operations. The HVAC supervisor, shop foreman kind of took me under his wing and really gave me some experiences I'll never forget. You know, he'd take me around in mechanical rooms and say, this is what I teach all my guys about rounds and how this room it'll talk to you, it’ll sing to you, she'll tell you what's right and what's not right. And that let you understand when there is a problem and you can stop something ahead of time. And he didn't know what he was teaching me about what we call it today. But it was definitely facilities management, you know, knowing your building.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Yeah, absolutely. And so, with that, looking at it from you know, your experience going from the engineering route and unknowingly getting into facilities management, taking that experience and looking back and just looking at the industry in general, how do you classify or define what facilities management is?

Speaker: Jason Lee  

So great question should take lots of thought to answer. It's really being a jack of all trades. I mean, it's hard to describe what it is because it is everything. It's whatever is needed at the moment. I mean, from keeping the building run in under normal conditions to keeping the building running on a shoestring budget, to managing whatever the disaster of the day is, and how that impacts your ability just to keep things running. I mean, it's really, you're the guy that can get things done and, and do things in a safe manner and keep everything, keep the lights on,

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

I think at the end of the day, you're not getting any phone calls saying great job. It's usually to your point, put out fires, something's wrong, you got to call Jason.

Speaker: Jason Lee  

That's right. That's absolutely right.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

And so, with regards to facilities management in healthcare, how do you think that's different from other industries out there?

Speaker: Jason Lee  

The easiest segue is really two things, the easiest, first to pick off is just the sheer amount of regulation. Because not only do we have OSHA and state regulatory agencies, we have CMS, Joint Commission, DMV, whoever it is always watching your back. And they're not only making sure you're doing things in a in a safe way, but that you're doing it in the best way or the proven way. And there's just much more oversight in what you do. The next biggest piece is related to infection control. That's such a hot topic. Just today, I had a discussion about construction. Contractor not doing their job, not finishing what they need, and said, okay, we'll get done, we'll get that cleaned up. And that was my thought that right there is exactly what's different between construction and healthcare construction. In healthcare construction. You don't ever make the mess, you clean as you go, whereas construction, you clean up afterwards. That's probably the to two major differences, the regulation and working in clean environments.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

So, What measures do you have to take on a daily basis to make sure there is no mess and as you're going along, there's no going back cleaning up. What do you have to do?

Speaker: Jason Lee  

The biggest thing is just the daily oversight of the project, your daily rounds, someone's doing, someone's on your staff, you've got to ensure there's a checklist for consistency of what they're looking for. On any of these projects that you're doing any kind of renovation or invasive work, the easiest thing are footprints, if you can see footprints to and from the job site or in and out of the work area that it's not clean. That's by far the easiest.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

And so, with the checklist, you I imagine you've got a ton of projects going on with how large of a facility that you're managing. How do you stay organized there?

Speaker: Jason Lee  

That's always a challenge. We're just trying to stay above water most of the time and keeping the paperwork out there is always a hurdle. So, we've tried to develop the list of, here's the list of all the lists that you need to do when you do a project. So, you can quickly pull those and have them on the ready to at least get filled out or answer questions on.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

So, do you have just a folder of physical papers going all the way? 

Speaker: Jason Lee  

Oh yeah, we've got I mean, hot work permits both sealing permits, infection control, risk assessments, interim life safety measures for projects, there's about four or five things that you would typically use on a, even a small in house project that you're your own staff do. And so, you're just trying to keep those things grouped in on the ready. Because when I go, I got to go look up that form or oh, let me go print another one. Oh, go do this. That's just another barrier to not do it. You have to remind yourself; you cannot not do it. You always have to do it.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Yep. There's no other option. And obviously, we're in the middle of a global pandemic. How has that impacted, we know every industry has been tasked but specifically healthcare from a facilities managers perspective.

Speaker: Jason Lee  

Well, every day is different, even more than usual. One of the biggest challenges we had is keeping up with the changes. I mean, I think signage is probably the craziest. Starting out, things would change daily. And before we get the morning signs out and installed and placed everywhere, across this 2 million square feet. Here's the second edition for the day or the third addition. So about three weeks into this, we realized okay, we're just going to be late. And we would wait until the end of the day. And that was a running joke, mostly Staff leaves at 3:30. We were all sitting around at four o'clock, waiting on the change of the day that had to be done before the next morning. So typically, on signage, we became late so that we didn't go waste all our resources, putting it out just to change it the same day. So even though it was important and critical things were just changing so fast, you couldn't physically implement them before the next change

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

I imagine that was the first month or so of COVID in the pandemic, and I imagine that it's calmed down quite a bit, compared to that initial first few weeks. Currently, what's the lasting impact that you're experiencing in your role?

Speaker: Jason Lee  

For us the biggest issue, I mean, our operations have continued. So, we have delays in supplies, parts, repair parts, items that you typically wouldn't have delays. And I would surmise, it's just due to that industry. Not being deemed essential or something, you know, sink Manufacturers, right now, it's two months to get a sink if you need a sink. So, there's just things that surprised you that jump out, that normally would not have been an issue. The next thing is just our patient visitation, for us. That's a real issue that's so limited and changing every day, whether it's best practice or mandate from the state or governor, or federal level, or whatever, it may be, your CDC guidance, just trying to stay abreast of those and update things to allow people to be with their families as much as you can, but also keep everyone safe. And that's Phil, why you think that does. It involves facilities. But again, its traffic control, its security, its signage, all of those things impact that every time something changes, there's 15 other changes to be made in the physical environment.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

And with those changes in the constant change in the environment there, how do you communicate that to both your colleagues in the hospital as well as the guests? I mean, you alluded to the signage, is that still the case, the old-fashioned paper being posted everywhere?

Speaker: Jason Lee  

That's a lot of it, because that's what we're looking at with so much regulation. That's the legal requirement. I know our marketing team has done a great job of posting things, they really use social media, Facebook, and others have been out there, but they're really doing a good job publicizing that. We had our housekeeping director was on the news last night, you know, going over how rooms are clean and procedures to give some public confidence in what we're doing here in the facility. I know, again, our procedures and other things, elective procedures and things like that are being restricted just due to the volumes at the time. But really, the facilities in great shape as it's ever been in, is in cleaner shape as it's ever been. I mean for the public, if you're going to get something done, now is the time because everything's being scrutinized and watched more than ever before.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Yeah, absolutely. And with your facility that you're managing, is that just on a single campus or are you spread out throughout Mississippi?

Speaker: Jason Lee  

Yeah, our system covers 22 counties, I think we're seven hospital system, but I have responsibility for the main campus, but still approximately 50 buildings throughout that region that I cover as well. So, quite a bit, a million and a half healthcare square foot is just under my pervy. And so, it's been every kind of practice, from a regulated clinic to non-regulated outpatient settings to surgery centers to health care. I mean, we're involved in every facet of industrial settings is way that we own and operate to support our health system. So.. 

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

And how do you interact with... First off, how are you organized with the 50 different buildings under that umbrella, do you have someone on site at each different location?

Speaker: Jason Lee  

No, most of it is housed here in the main area, and then we have a fleet of vehicles and service technicians that are covering those. And so that's handled and then each of the smaller hospitals, they all have personnel on site, and then we supplement and support them as needed throughout. So, lots of abilities for cross training and sharing utilizing staff at different places.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

That's fascinating. And I imagine with all the resources being distributed throughout different locations, communication has to be top of mind. How are you staying in touch with everybody and making sure you're prioritizing what needs to be done and where they should be going on a daily basis?

Speaker: Jason Lee  

Well, that's just our normal operations doing what we do. I mean, we use our work order systems to track the volumes and workloads and we know what's coming in and what has to be done. And we have our hierarchies for preventative maintenance and certain types of work orders. And then all of that just gets, it kind of flows. And we've, you know, trained everybody on responsiveness and due dates and targets and tried to give them as much real time information as possible. We by far don't have the most up to date systems, but we manage through what we have and have a good understanding so everybody can know what's out there. And what there is to do, we've had a few days, last two weeks that have really been heavy volumes for us, as opposed to other things while they're slow down. And that's probably one of the big tickers even 9, 10 months ago, when the rest of the area was in a slowdown and hospital was slow, and volumes were down. Areas were empty. So, people were looking for stuff to do. So, what they do, they put in work orders. That's what happened, you know, the last two weeks, there was a slowdown in some services due to the utilization. So, what they do they put in work orders. So, our volumes a couple of days, they were up 50, 75, 100% from normal, and we're trying to just sort through what's urgent and emergent and critical. And what has to wait. So you still see those effects today.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

So, the busier the hospital, I guess the less work other is being put in and vice versa. So, sounds like no matter what you guys are absolutely slammed.

Speaker: Jason Lee  

Yeah, we stay busy our production, we had one little dip about 30%, down in April of last year. And since then, it's been business as usual for us. We've not been able to staff as usual and other things and target things. But the income and volumes haven't changed, you know, 60, 70% of our workload is fixed based on preventative work. And the rest fluctuates, and it's running wide open.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

And looking forward, how do you think COVID is going to impact Facilities Management in health care?

Speaker: Jason Lee  

I think the first impact is the financial aspect of it, and just what it does to the resources available for a facility. I mean, I couldn't imagine being a small standalone hospital and having to not do surgeries or other procedures that are really what drives your revenue and then not having that to keep your income flow and to keep salaries and payrolls going. I mean, it's really a tough market to be in when the margins are so low compared to other industries. But its strictly volume driven, when you don't have volumes that impacts everything. Those volumes and balance sheets and forecast all impact the ability of capital and expenses to reinvest into the organizations. And so, when those things are at risk, a lot of those other things slow down, whether they're critical or important or urgent or emergent. They just balance across as they have to and again, every time there's a change, you got to squeeze more blood out of the turnip.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

And as far as the processes goes, what's going to be the lasting impact there?

Speaker: Jason Lee  

Well, we have, I wouldn't say more, but we have more application of protocols. So, there's been a lot of focus around infection control and work in repairs and these COVID room similar to we do on isolation areas in isolation fans. And so, whereas before you had one or two fans and one or two, five, six rooms, you know, now you've got 50,80 or 100 rooms, and 30 fans, and you're having to use those processes and the PPE and more training and focus and get everyone to understand that, you know, you can't afford to have personnel sick. I mean, that's because you're already using everybody their full potential and you just can't be down those staffing. Unfortunately, we've seen throughout our system is most places we've not had a rush of folks were the whole department or areas out or under service at one time, things kind of roll through a few here and there and odd so it's allowed you to manage through but you could see could really, really be impactful if you know, half your staff is out or something.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Yeah. And you hit on PPE and I wanted to go back to that for a moment. We all know how difficult it is to come across the supplies or how difficult it has been specifically over the last 12 months, what have you done with regards to PPE to prepare for that. And how did you react when initially this supply chain was really hit hard there?

Speaker: Jason Lee  

Well, our first approach as a system was to visit the procedures and utilization to identify consumption rates, and our purchasing software and programming personnel were able to manage that very quickly. And within just a few days, could narrow down and identify this departments using more than normal and this is not what's happening and kind of drive home on that. And then they limited the very quickly what we had in stock, we're very fortunate we purchase supplies in bulk for our system and the industry through our own channel. So, they had a not an abundance, but enough to want, once you restricted the use and flow, you could parse that out until you were able to retrieve others. Also, our environment, we had several vendors and industry partners that secured those items, those first several months. And then you know, call to say, hey, we have some of these do you own any and things like that? I don't remember a time that we were out of things. Things were difficult to come by, and you had to ensure you were asking appropriately, you know, even safety goggles, hey, we need some goggles for this. Oh those are all for taking care of patients, we still have to have one to fix this equipment that's taking care of the patients. And you'd have to write a paragraph to get a $3 pair of safety goggles. Because they're all on lockdown. You know, we've gotten through that and supplies are back in and now that we've gotten plenty of mass for general use and things like that. I mean, it's I just can't remember call for the volume we have, you know where that stuff was totally unavailable. We even had some materials and things donated that, we realized this is more than of this type than we'll ever use in these settings. And so, we were able to share that with other systems and facilities and nursing homes and other things like that, to give them some of those needed resources.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Makes sense. And so, taking a step back and looking at, again, your career you fell into facilities management, and you happen to get into the healthcare space, with your experience now. What advice would you have for someone that's interested, not only in facilities management, but specifically in the healthcare space?

Speaker: Jason Lee  

Well, one thing I've seen is, those of us that are in it, we're in it because we want to be in it. And if you didn't want to be in it, you'd have already gone somewhere else. I mean, it's very obvious to tell when you have staff and coworkers and partners and my counterparts I know across the country, everybody that does health care facilities, they do it for life, you know, very, very few people do it for 20 or 30 years and then go run a factory somewhere. Because they're in it so long, they figured out how to ride the wave and be successful. And they just follow through with that. And it's really a career that will always be there. And it's always a career that you can go anywhere you want to go. I mean, it's so versatile, from a location setting, because there's hospitals, you know, almost everywhere. It really allows you that opportunity to make those decisions and find employment. And while everywhere is different, everywhere is the same. So, you can have some consistency in the craziness.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Very cool. Well, Jason, definitely appreciate the time here this afternoon. It’s a pleasure. I get to learn more about your background and the insights into healthcare facilities management. So certainly, appreciate you taking the time to connect and we'll talk soon. 

Speaker: Jason Lee  

All right, sounds great. 

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Alright, take care, Jason. 

Speaker: Jason Lee  

Thank you. 

Outro:

Thanks for listening to another episode of the modern facilities management podcast. Make sure to subscribe for future episodes and visit our website stratumcommunity.com for more facilities management content