“Fail to Prepare, Prepare to Fail” - Paari Gopalakrishnan of GBMC HealthCare

Dr. Josh Elmore Welcome to the Land and Lead podcast, where we explore the real stories behind leadership transitions, the setbacks, strategies, wins, and moments of growth, all aimed at helping other leaders land well and lead effectively. I'm your host, Dr. Josh Elmore of Court Street Consulting.

Today we're speaking with Gopalakrishnan, President and CEO of GBMC Healthcare. Dr. Gopalakrishnan leads Baltimore County's only independent community health system. Known for a leadership style grounded in transparency, accountability, and compassion, he stepped into the role in September 2025, uniquely prepared to guide GBMC's next era of strategic growth and community impact.

Dr. Gopalakrishnan brings more than two decades of clinical and executive experience shaped most recently by his tenure as president and chief operating officer at Kent Hospital, a 359 bed community teaching hospital in Rhode Island. There, he state's first hospital at home program, expanded access to geriatric and specialty care, led the state's COVID-19 field hospital, and oversaw a dramatic financial turnaround that moved the hospital to surplus between fiscal year 2022 and fiscal year 2024.

His system level leadership extended across centralized medical staff services and a Medicare and Medicaid certified home health and hospice agency serving more than 160 employees. Since arriving at GBMC, Dr. Gopalakrishnan begun shaping the organization's future with a deeply personal leadership approach that emphasizes visibility and trust. His early initiatives, including relocating the executive huddle board into a public hallway and launching a comprehensive senior leadership pledge reflect his commitment to transparency, approachability, and shared accountability.

Through his weekly Better Together he reinforces these values, offering candid reflection on leadership, cultural alignment, and the responsibility of earning trust. Looking ahead, his vision centers on expanding access, advancing clinical integration, and ensuring GBMC continues providing the care we would want for our own loved ones. Welcome to the show, Dr. Gopalakrishnan.

Can I call you Paari? Paari Gopalakrishnan, MD, MBA Of course you can. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

Dr. Josh Elmore Yeah, certainly. We're excited to chat about your story and kind of ⁓ from there, can you share a little bit about your background and how you landed at GBMC Healthcare? Paari Gopalakrishnan, MD, MBA Sure.

You know, I'm a hospitalist by training. a physician and kind of fell into leadership, I would say a little backwards in the sense that I had no intent of going into leadership and thinking I'd be in a role like this. But what really happened for me was I started as a hospitalist very early in the hospitalist movement because of that our practice grew really fast and within three to four years of our group starting and growing we had many doctors and a lot of pains and so to help my practice and be operate more efficiently I started getting involved in leadership and process improvement that led myself into an MBA program that the organization I was part of put us through and just taught me how to think and approach leadership in a very different light.

And as I started doing that, I got this, you know, felt this value of when I used to take care of patients, you know, I would see 15 patients or 20 patients a day as a hospitalist. But as I started getting involved in process improvement and, you know, leadership and organizing our group, I was now influencing more than in the care of 100, 150 patients. And that's how my career kind of started in leadership. And of value as I went into other leadership roles overseeing larger hospitalist groups or a chief medical officer and so forth just felt like I was making more of a meaningful impact in the community I was serving.

And so that was really rewarding to it's something that my parents had instilled in us when we were very young, which is really about the impact you make in the world. And it really has started to resonate with me. And that's kind how it kind of went down this leadership path. I found myself at GBMC Healthcare as their CEO, which I'm thoroughly Dr.

Josh Elmore You mentioned this word hospitalist. Can you explain what that term is? Paari Gopalakrishnan, MD, MBA Absolutely. So when somebody gets admitted to the hospital, when a patient comes to our emergency room or gets admitted to a hospital, I would say 30 years ago, their general practitioner or their primary care doctor would see that patient there in the hospital, take care of them until they're discharged.

And that doctor would come into the hospital, make rounds in the morning, see their patients, go back to the office, see their outpatients. that's how it operated. Sometime in the, I would say, late 90s, this coin and term, hospitalist has came into where the specialty is literally focused only on the hospitalized patients. And so grew where the hospital is focused only on the acutely ill patients that require hospitalizations.

And that field has exploded over the last 20 years. And I would say almost virtually, almost every hospital either has a large hospitalist program or they're the only provider of inpatient services in a hospital Dr. Josh Elmore Wow. Okay.

So, Hospitalist is specialty and acute care. Paari Gopalakrishnan, MD, MBA Perfect. Dr. Josh Elmore So being specialty, being acute care, that right, the word itself, specialty, and you have this journey going from ⁓ that to MBA to ⁓ impact across full organizations, systems, right, hospital systems.

⁓ So that contrast, right, it sounds like it was a big one. Paari Gopalakrishnan, MD, MBA Absolutely. You know, what are the things you get to see as a practicing hospitalist is all the things that work well, but you also see all dysfunction between different departments around communication and collaboration how the processes are, you how you can get bottlenecks and barriers. And so it really makes you understand those kind of processes.

At least it did for me. Dr. Josh Elmore Certainly, yeah. I mean, getting that systems perspective allows you to kind of see maybe when you were in the hospitalist role, what things may have been, where the tensions that you felt, but maybe couldn't put your finger on, then you can say, okay, that's what's happening.

Paari Gopalakrishnan, MD, MBA Right, exactly. And then you learn, know, at least in those days, you know, leadership's very much about influence and not about control. So you learn to, you know, when you didn't have the authority but saw these bottlenecks to kind of work with the other, the areas where you're seeing this bottleneck to see what is the win-win that actually helps both of us be able to move patients through or processes through. Dr.

Josh Elmore Wow, very cool. So, we're thinking of your journey from a hospitalist professional training around your MBA, and then moving leadership positions. So, you entered GBMC September 2025. Can you tell us about the circumstances as you entered the organization?

Paari Gopalakrishnan, MD, MBA So, GBMC Healthcare was looking for their next CEO, they did a national search GBMC has had a history of longevity in their CEO position. I was going to Dr. Chessare who had been here 15 years. I was the fourth CEO of the system.

So they've had a long tenure in their CEOs. And that was one of the things that attracted me is they, you know, what it was clear to me was the was looking for a good fit, but a long-term fit. And that was really impactful for them. That was big value for them.

And that interested me quite a bit. The other about GBMC Healthcare was it's one of probably less than health systems and hospitals in the country that has gone through a Baldrige ⁓ application and been awarded the Baldrige Award, which happened about four or five years ago. And so those two things were the, I would say, the primary drivers for me to say I'd be interested to explore this opportunity because you have a board that's really looking for fit and long-term success in an organization from the top level thinking about organizational excellence and workforce engagement.

So those two things were the things that items that made me interested into learning about GBMC. So as I learned from afar during my interview process, you're doing a lot of due diligence, at least I was, is this something I want to pursue if given the opportunity? Because I was in a place that I loved. I loved the people.

I had started building it in a way that I liked. I had my team. We were starting to see success financially. We had done a turnaround.

and everything about it I loved. And so I wasn't really actively looking to ⁓ leave but when this opportunity came, those two aspects that I talked about made it intriguing enough for me to kind of explore the process. And as I explored it, I got more excited about it. Dr.

Josh Elmore And the Baldrige Award, can you explain that? Paari Gopalakrishnan, MD, MBA It's a presidential award that it's given to, it's not a healthcare given to a business around a couple of disciplines really, organizational leadership, culture, operational excellence, and how do you engage your workforce to do those. It's a really rigorous process to be able to go through and put processes and policies in place to make sure you achieve it. And it's more of a journey than an award, in the sense that organizations use the templates and the criteria to work through it.

And it takes several years to be able to get to where you are. And so it just, to me, ⁓ it just highlighted the importance and the value this organization puts into excellence and their workforce, which are two things that have been tenets of what I think are really important. So that's what intrigued me about joining this organization. Dr.

Josh Elmore Okay, and so the organization has a history of having long tenured CEOs. They were looking for that in their next CEO. As you were, ⁓ you know, obviously you chose to join. And as you were coming in, what was the situation?

Paari Gopalakrishnan, MD, MBA A couple of things that were challenging in the sense that, so one is a 15-year CEO who's well revered, well respected, well liked. That's awesome. That actually is not something I was concerned. That was refreshing for me.

The other was the pride of the community in the system of GBMC. Medicine is a really small place, and though I was in Rhode Island making a few phone calls to physician colleagues that I know in the region, it was very clear that the medical community respects this organization. That was two things. big that was here, as I was coming in, kind of two-fold.

Operationally, financially, there some challenges that we know we have to improve upon. So that's one of the things that's there, and it's one of the things that I was able to achieve at my last place to help kind of shepherd the organization to profitability. The other is the landscape of health policy in Maryland is different than the rest of the states. there was some ambiguity and some shift in that happening with health policy all around the time that I was coming in.

So the things that I, as I was entering the organization, is trying to understand operationally how do we position ourselves to be financially viable over the long term. What are the levers we are trying to understand as much as I could from afar. And the second is, you know, the health policy of how hospitals get reimbursed in Maryland has historically been different than the rest of the country. and the sands were shifting and it hadn't set yet.

And so trying to understand those two things were front of mind. And for me, you know, one thing I kept saying is I don't want the fact that I'm a new CEO into a new region to be a reason the organization has to suffer around something like that. And so I have to spend more of my time to really knowledge base so that could make sure onboarding doesn't impact us for long term. And so that front of mind for me because sometimes had other jobs where you think about the first 90 days and it's all about listening and your focus that is the most important thing.

But there are some pressure points which usually, you every leader knows even in those 90 days you're addressing. It just so happened that this pressure point was a macro level pressure point on economics that I to get some deep understanding and relationships for. Dr. Josh Elmore Hmm.

Yeah, and so, right, so you have kind of external pressure to accelerate your learning, while simultaneously maybe, get your lay of the land you entered and give yourself time for that. Maybe there's some things that were some things that you take a slower or measured approach as you entered. Thinking about the strategies that you use across these kind of more time-sensitive that you could take your time on, what strategies have helped you kind of come in and get on board? Paari Gopalakrishnan, MD, MBA I tell my kids this all the time, fail to prepare, prepare to fail.

That's like something that I always say to them. And I used my time before I came. I prepped a lot and got ready for this role. I asked a lot of questions from mentors and other people that had roles like read as much as I could find.

And so a couple of things that I did, retrospect, has helped me. I didn't realize the amount it would help me as I was putting my onboarding together. I went through and thought through my first year, first 90 days, here are the things that I wanted, the processes that I'm going to do it here are some of the deliverables for myself. At 120 days at six months and at a year high level You know really put down each of those areas put down key deliverables that I want to keep hold myself accountable to.

And I made sure I shared that with the board before I arrived So they could give me some feedback and I could refine that helped at least set a roadmap for the first year for myself but also made sure that my board was aligned with that roadmap. That helped quite a bit. The second thing I did, and this one, know, has helped me the most, recognizing that I needed to come up to speed really quickly. And listening is the most important part.

And the fact that, you know, in 90 days I needed really gather as much as I can while the sands are shifting underneath One thing I did was I created various stakeholders our board, all our executives, our physician leaders, and our nursing leaders. I created, wrote a letter to each of them separately saying, I'm all about listening and here's my leadership style, but I'm going to ask you 20 questions and give me, know, give me this quick survey, shouldn't take you more than 10 minutes, and then I offer to them, do a SWOT analysis for the organization.

And what I actually expected, I asked my executives, they had to do it. I said, you know, get this to me by the time I get there. And then the physician leaders, the nursing leaders and the executives, I basically said, I've asked this of our executives, please, if you want to, you're welcome to do it as well. I had about 40 swats at high levels before I got here.

So using this, you ask for something, you're like, wow, I didn't realize that I knew what I asked for. Because I got the most enriched information possible. So before I arrived, I had a really much better understanding of what my executives, physician leaders, nursing leaders, and our executives, mean, and our board members thought about strengths and the weaknesses and opportunities and threats. And I asked some really pointed survey questions to get a better understanding of where I should put my focuses, how collaboration, communication, how things had worked in the past, things like that.

It gave me a big head start, but then I used that as I arrived. I met with each of those people individually for an hour, and it was rough in the sense that time-consuming is I'm meeting an hour with them and using this information that they've given me to really point our conversation. so, in my opinion, it made me be able to accelerate my knowledge base of what's happening within the organization and my leaders and my board members thoughts of external factors as well. So that's helped me quite a bit shift into this organization sooner than I thought possible.

And so super powerful practice getting inside such rich picture of the organization before you enter. Dr. Josh Elmore And so super powerful practice getting inside ⁓ such rich picture of the organization before you enter. With the board, you're seeking alignment on that year long plan and now you're working with those folks who you've got feedback from.

To what extent has all of that listening, that kind of rich picture informed, prior to today, but even today, how you work with the board, how you set expectations with the board, how you work with all the other stakeholders who gave you that feedback? Paari Gopalakrishnan, MD, MBA Yeah, it's, know, we'll talk about the board first. was the president and chief operating officer of a hospital in a system before I came here. So I never had my own board to manage with, right?

And so that I took very seriously trying to understand, what is going to be my strategy and my style to work with our board, which is a large board, a very dedicated but 25 plus board. what are my strategies? And, you know, I consumed a lot of information before I came looking at, you know, some of the McKinsey reports and other on how, you know, what are best practices, AHA has some stuff. So I consumed a lot of that as well.

know, my questions to our board essentially was on that survey, It was very pointed to what was working well and what wasn't, right? A nd what they thought what and you know, were some key themes that came out of that You know, they want to be more involved in in how we come up with strategy rather than being told at the last minute, that's how they ... I'm being exaggerating but they want to be part they want to be a partner in some of these things and, you know, there were some things around where they felt that they were getting a lot more Data than they needed but they needed more information.

It helped me point how do i navigate some of these things and so i've been consciously working on those things with our board chair and we're working through our you know how do we make the meetings more meaningful for everyone so it's a work in progress it's a work in progress. But that they've been super of what we're trying to do and i'm you know i tend to be i'm transparent to a fault like at the end of the day you know I want the same things as our board and I want the same thing as our organization the best for our organization.

So and we're all dealing with really complex problems and so in those complex problems there isn't usually a right and wrong and so you need to sit and really make sure you're on the same page on a lot of things and with that you need some healthy dialogue. Certainly, yeah and so just kind of keeping with the board real quick. Dr. Josh Elmore Certainly, yeah.

And so just kind of keeping with the board real quick, they've been working with the same leader for 15 years. Right. And did your predecessor stay on the board? Paari Gopalakrishnan, MD, MBA He didn’t.

He's local, but he and I have a good relationship. We actually meet for breakfast and he's helped mentor me, but he's also been very clear. I'm not going to come and get in the, you know, he's been very, I've been very impressed with how some boundaries himself. I didn't ask for it.

He did it himself, but is there for, you know, phone a friend very quickly. Dr. Josh Elmore That's great, yeah. I just wrote an article predecessors staying on as chair, focusing on the Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway, Greg Abel story and the challenges that come with that.

And then thinking about the stakeholders, right? That gave you that data, the SWOT analysis, the survey data. How has that helped your listening prior? Paari Gopalakrishnan, MD, MBA It's helped a lot in the sense that, you know, it also, it established my approach with them pretty easily, right?

So then I was able to bring the, you know, so for the physician leaders, for example, I took all the physician leader SWOTs, combined them into one, and shared that at the chairman's meeting and various physician leader meetings. Did the same thing for the nursing leaders and did the same thing for the executives. But I think what the most powerful was bringing all of them, all of those together and to say, we're not actually, you guys aren't actually that different. You have similar thoughts on our strengths and similar thoughts on our weaknesses and similar thoughts on opportunities.

And so it just tells us that once we decide how we want to align to move this organization, the same page here. Dr. Josh Elmore And that can be a powerful force once you get everybody moving in the same direction. Paari Gopalakrishnan, MD, MBA Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. We haven't picked a direction in many areas yet, but it's early. Dr. Josh Elmore Yeah and right, so September 2025, four or five months in.

And so thinking about that short period of time, what are some wins or setbacks and how do they manifest? Paari Gopalakrishnan, MD, MBA So I'd say the wins have I feel like I'm earning trust the way I think that feels good to me where we are. Some of the wins are getting the organization structure in the reorganized in the way that I think will make us effective long term. I had initially intended that to be about a six month process because of how we onboarded to that spot right after the new year.

I think those are some of the wins that we've been able to. And then I think one of the wins is just the message of understanding two things about my leadership for our entire system. One is very data driven, so we need to get much more refined on our data and how we approach it. the other is being approachable and transparent is something that I think I've really in four months been able to really start instilling.

that people recognize that my leadership and my team's leadership is going to be all about the fact that we don't know all the answer. don't expect that, you know, we're not going to deliver a plan and say follow this that we've truly expect a two way conversation and we truly expect to kind of navigate this together. Dr. Josh Elmore And, right, 4 months, not a lot of time, but any setbacks in that period?

Paari Gopalakrishnan, MD, MBA You know, some of the setbacks are, you you plan, you know, certain things and they don't go the way you want it to, like, know, from, perspective, that's one, you're paying attention to your finances, but you're not actually making any impact on changes, right? And so paying attention to those things and I'd say, I wouldn't call it a setback, but I think in the first four months, you're doing all these things, but you haven't actually, tangibly, started moving down operations of changing things.

So I wouldn't say any real setbacks in four months. I think it's kind of the honeymoon period in some ways, right? You're learning a lot, there's a lot of excitement. And so I wouldn't say any major setbacks.

I wouldn't call it a setback in the sense that the health policy landscape in Maryland has settled more and it's gotten a little clearer. So that helps us now, at least we understand more where the next 10 years are going to look like. Not quite settled, but getting there. And so that's helped in that sense.

Yeah, and what it sounds like, and these can, what you're mentioning, they can feel like I call them in organization development Dr. Josh Elmore Yeah, and what it sounds like, ⁓ and these can, what you're mentioning, they can feel like setbacks, I call them in organization development terms, or any time you try something or do something new, you have to kind of learn and see what happens. And sometimes when you do something, it doesn't have the intended ⁓ effect, or it can, ⁓ the downstream effect takes longer, to your point.

So yeah, sometimes it's always important to reflect on those moments of I did this thing, is it working, is it not, let me give it time. And given what you've learned, how do you pivot and address it in a different way? Makes sense, especially four months in. And so I asked this question of all my guests.

I know it's gonna be very different for you. It sounds like, know, because you're four months in, but I'd love to know what it feels like at this time. Thinking about in the 1980s, John Gabarro ran a few studies focused on general managers and presidents as they pursued new roles and wrote the results up in the book, Dynamics of Taking Charge. Gabarro explained that an executive has fully taken charge when they have mastered the new assignment in sufficient depth to be managing the organization as efficiently as the resources, constraints, and the manager's own ability allow.

Thinking about this definition where 100 % is having fully taken charge in your new assignment, what percent would you say you are at now? Paari Gopalakrishnan, MD, MBA Yeah, I mean, I maybe I'll give you two scores then. One is I think I've, in four plus months, at least laid some organizational framework about how we are going operate, meaning different processes, how we're tracking data, what are the frameworks of how that comes. I feel like I'm where I thought I'd be in that regard.

As far as truly taking charge, knowing all the metrics and starting to turn things, I'm at like 30 percent. You know, I have ways to go, but I feel like we've, with how we've restructured the organization, set up various, and how the information kind of feeds into the organization so we know where the challenge, that we have awareness as an executive team of the bigger issues that we can make those decisions together. I think I've set that framework up where I feel really good about where we are four and a half months in that framework.

And then now we just have to execute on these things and it's gonna take some. Dr. Josh Elmore Yeah, and I appreciate the answer because it's a hard one to answer four months so thinking, a lot of the focus is forward, which makes sense, Because starting things out, laying the foundation, you have things kind of put in place. And as we're having this conversation and as you think, as you've been thinking about that future focus, you've got your foundation set, you're looking towards that, right, beyond 30%.

What are you looking towards that's exciting for you and you just can't wait to dig into as a leader? Paari Gopalakrishnan, MD, MBA It's our strategy I mean you know I think there's two aspects of our job right like part of my job and our my team's job is to make sure we're operating efficiently and making sure we're making good use of the resources. And we're because there you know, the health care dollar needs to stretch appropriately and so that's one part of our job and we have to do that It doesn't matter what the health policy is.

It doesn't matter where you got to run your business what that is that's not as fun for me The strategy portion of where we want to be. What do we want to be when we grow up? Is how I keep saying it mean, we're you know, we're a 60 year old organization, but but ⁓ you know in this time as an independent health system that has a good reputation. we can't be, we're not a huge system and we're not a small system, but we're a system in which we got to pick and choose what strategies and where we want to be.

that's what I'm starting to focus ourselves on. That's the second part of this year is a strategic planning initiative that we've kicked off. What I'd like to get to by the end of, in the next six months. How do we deliver the care we want to deliver?

Like, the way we deliver it. Where do we want to be when we deliver the care? Meaning, obviously we're a big, you know, our health system's in one spot and we have a couple of satellites, but do we, is there other parts of this community that we should be in, geography-wise, that's best for our patients? And then, what are the service lines?

What do we want to be, what type of services do we want to be providing? We can't provide everything and do it well. We got to pick and choose and that's what working through now and that's really exciting because that's going to lay and framework for our organization to say here is where we're going and then we got to execute appropriately. And so when we get I'm really excited about that.

Dr. Josh Elmore And I hear, so at beginning of our conversation, you mentioned the hospitalist, right? Like the kind of focus areas. When I talk to leaders and all of what the research says is when a leader comes in, ⁓ they have things that they address that they're oriented towards, right?

Like how do we, so obviously with the MBA, with like that systems perspective, you're coming in and kind of getting that full lay of the land and taking a picture. I saw one of your pillars for strategy around what is it that we actually do? Does that from your hospitalist background? Paari Gopalakrishnan, MD, MBA I think so.

I think it's intentionality. I think as a leader, I pride myself on being intentional in everything I'm trying to do. And not that I'm perfect, not that I'm not intentional at times, but I got to rebalance myself on what is intentionally do we want to spend resources here? Intentionally do we want to do this?

And that's when then you really use limited resources to get to where you need to. And it comes probably from my, you know, I was engineering major for probably three years of my undergrad before I decided to go to med school. So it comes from that. I'm very intentional in how I lead.

Dr. Josh Elmore Hmm. Yeah, and you know, ⁓ also where you focus and what you have perspective on from the past, you also can know what good looks like. So ⁓ thinking about ⁓ as we wrap up here, what advice would you share with leaders currently entering a new high stakes role?

Paari Gopalakrishnan, MD, MBA I would say, you're gonna have a little bit of an imposter syndrome. If you don't, there's a problem. If it's the first time you're taking on a role like this, recognize have to rely on the strengths that brought you here, but also recognize there's a lot more that you need to grow in. You see one organization, you see one organization.

you really, I say a lot, there's 10 ways to do this, I get it, so I just need to understand more. So listening is probably the most important thing. Getting as much advice as you can, either from reading, literature, and people is really important. I think that what I feel I'm really proud of is without, my preparation to start this job, I'm really proud of it because I think I set myself and the organization up to, in the best possible stance because of that, which is reading a lot of stuff, talking to other people that had these jobs, that had been doing the jobs for a while but also who had just entered in the last few years to see what are things that they would have done differently really being open-minded about getting feedback and not coming in in a way that like here's my ten point plan to fix X, Y, and Z.

I think those are the advice I'd give and I think that's same advice to any role you take. It's not, know, and there are big, you know, from a CEO perspective, I also, you know, I think you should think about your gaps that you don't have in the role you had before, right? So if you're going CEO to CEO, you likely understand all of those things. But there were big, big gaps that there was, that I didn't have to do in my previous role, right?

So philanthropy, was part of philanthropy, but I wasn't the main person of philanthropy for our organization, then that's a big job of the CEO to work with the philanthropy team to make sure that and so that's something I get ⁓ Advice and rely on my team on how best to do it and be not be you know, feel like I have the answers or not fade away that's an important part of job that I have to grow in. Now there's the board management. in front of boards many times, I've had interactions with my board members but they I didn't report to the board and so that relationship.

so those kind of things, understand your gaps, come up with strategies, don't get fixed on just because you think this is your strategy, Don't say this has got to be it, you got to be willing a little bit. Dr. Josh Elmore Yeah, I mean, and it makes sense. There's a great ⁓ HBR article, seven surprises of a new CEO.

And one of the surprises is how much external focus you have to have, right? To your point around philanthropy, right? Being the spokesperson for the organization. So ⁓ makes sense, great advice.

So thanks for joining us, Paari. And is there anything you'd like to share that's coming up you or GBMC Healthcare? Paari Gopalakrishnan, MD, MBA For us, you know, I'm really excited about the next year. So we have three arms of organization.

One of one of them is Gilchrist which is the largest hospice provider in the region in the state. won the Circle of Advocates award this past summer, which only two hospices in the country won. But they're they're partnering with another health system in Virginia and starting a joint venture. So we're growing there.

So I'm really excited about that aspect of And then the other is from our, main hospital perspective. We are transparent approach to data. So we started, you know, having all of our senior team huddles outside in the hallway with all of our metrics, including patient comments there. Really excited about that because I'm trying to make sure that the entire community recognizes we're about taking care of our patients as safe as possible, and we're not going to hide from anything.

So. Yeah, the transparency piece, being able to up and say, folks are, what are we going to do about this? ⁓ Dr. Josh Elmore yeah, the huddle, yeah, and transparency piece, being able to stand up and say, here's what folks are saying, what are we gonna do about this?

Anything surprising come out of that transparency? Paari Gopalakrishnan, MD, MBA You know we just started it in the last month. It took awhile to get it framed and we just started running it. We've had it's about it's been about a month.

You know. I'll get, are sure we want to put up this negative comment from a patient on there? What I've often coached back is, you know, don't kid yourself. Those comments are being sent in the community.

So we should be aware and know them. And most people have gotten really positive. They're like, this is how you should, you this is great. Dr.

Josh Elmore Amazing. Well, Paari, thank you so much for joining the show. Thanks for listening to the Land and Lead podcast. I'm your host, Dr.

Josh Elmore. Tune in next time for more stories from leaders navigating high stakes role transitions.