Inside MultiCare's Oncology Access Playbook with CMO Dr. Yarrow McConnell

Inside MultiCare's Oncology Access Playbook with CMO Dr. Yarrow McConnell

In oncology, performance is not just about getting patients in the door. It is about getting them to the right specialist, at the right time, with less friction across every handoff. This episode features a presentation from the ROI-Centered Care Summit, a half-day virtual summit produced by Bright Spots Ventures in partnership with TytoCare and the American Telemedicine Association (ATA). In this episode, Yarrow McConnell, MD, FACS, Chief Medical Officer at MultiCare Cancer Institute, shares how MultiCare redesigned oncology pathways to improve access, strengthen coordination, and deliver measurable ROI. You'll hear how MultiCare is: * Using AI chart scrubbing to identify cancer diagnoses and concerning imaging findings earlier * Deploying nurse navigators to accelerate intake and reduce barriers to care * Building APP-staffed workup clinics to move patients more quickly from referral to consult * Creating disease teams to improve handoffs and reduce siloed care * Standardizing scheduling and authorization workflows, with virtual options built in * Improving staging and comorbidity documentation to better reflect complexity and reimbursement Key topics include referral lag, nurse navigation, specialty coordination, scheduling friction, and the connection between operational redesign and financial performance. MultiCare reported a 9% year-over-year increase in operating margin, an increase in likelihood to recommend from 97.86 to 98.41, and a 17% year-over-year increase in teamwork scores. If you are a health system leader, oncology executive, specialty operations leader, or care transformation leader working to improve specialty access and reduce friction across the patient journey, this episode offers a practical look at what it takes to build specialty pathways that perform. Link to Dr. Yarrow McConnel's Presentation: https://www.brightspotsinhealthcare.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/ROI-navigation-AIintake-McConnell-2026.pdf [https://www.brightspotsinhealthcare.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/ROI-navigation-AIintake-McConnell-2026.pdf] Bio: Yarrow McConnell, MD, MSc, FACS, FSSO, is a board-certified surgical oncologist, specializing in the treatment of breast cancer and benign breast disorders. Her expertise includes lumpectomy, mastectomy, sentinel node biopsy, and axillary dissection. She is also highly skilled in oncoplastic techniques to restore breast contour and symmetry following cancer surgery. For patients pursuing reconstruction, Dr. McConnell performs skin and nipple sparing mastectomies in close collaboration with plastic surgeons to provide both immediate and delayed reconstruction options. She also offers flat aesthetic closure for those who choose not to undergo reconstruction. In complex cases involving inflammatory, recurrent, or locally advanced breast cancer, she is experienced in performing modified radical and radical mastectomies. In addition to cancer care, Dr. McConnell treats a variety of benign breast conditions through both in-office and surgical procedures, including cyst aspiration, duct excision, abscess drainage, and steroid injections. She also provides comprehensive breast cancer risk assessments and guidance on genetic testing, enhanced screening, and prevention strategies. Dr. McConnell leads the Breast Program at MultiCare Cancer Institute, overseeing the coordination and advancement of breast care services across the system. Outside of work, Dr. McConnell enjoys gardening, baking, woodworking, and knitting. She can often be found hiking with her husband and dogs or spending time with family and friends. Thank You to Our Episode Partner, TytoCare. TytoCare enables health systems and plans to deliver high-quality remote exams anytime, anywhere. Their FDA-cleared devices and AI-powered diagnostic platform support virtual specialty care, school-based programs, and home health models, reducing unnecessary ED visits and improving patient experience. To learn more, visit tytocare.com [http://tytocare.com]. Schedule a Meeting with a Senior Leader at TytoCare: To explore how TytoCare can help your organization expand virtual specialty access and improve care coordination, reach out to jtenzer@brightspotsventures.com [jtenzer@brightspotsventures.com] to schedule a meeting. About Bright Spots Ventures: Bright Spots Ventures exists to help healthcare organizations accelerate the adoption of what's actually working. Healthcare does not suffer from a lack of innovation. It suffers from slow adoption, fragmented learning, and limited trust between stakeholders. For example, one health plan or provider may solve a major operational or clinical challenge while others spend the next 5–10 years rediscovering the same answer. We close that gap by creating trusted environments where health plans, providers, and innovators can share practical strategies, operational lessons, and scalable models that drive measurable improvement. Through the Bright Spots in Healthcare podcast, leadership councils, executive roundtables, curated events, and strategic advisory work, we help organizations build credibility, strengthen strategic relationships, and accelerate the spread of proven ideas across healthcare.

Inside Ascension IL's ED Throughput Playbook: 4-Minute Door-to-Doc and Better Flow

Emergency department performance is often shaped long before a patient is admitted, or discharged. This episode features a presentation from the recently held ROI-Centered Care Summit, a half-day virtual summit produced by Bright Spots Ventures in partnership with TytoCare and the American Telemedicine Association (ATA). In this episode, Robert Sumter, PhD, FACHE, EVP / Market Chief Operating Officer at Ascension Illinois, shares how his team redesigned the emergency department front door to improve patient flow, reduce waiting, and strengthen both operational and financial performance. Rather than treating ED congestion as a staffing problem alone, Ascension focused on redesigning throughput across the full process: front-end intake, middle-care treatment, and back-end disposition and transition. The goal was not simply to move faster, but to build a more coordinated operating model that improves access, creates capacity, and supports a better experience for patients and staff alike. You'll hear how Ascension Illinois: * Uses a "pull to full" model to reduce waiting room congestion by moving patients directly into treatment areas * Combines triage nurse and provider teamwork to accelerate assessment and initiate care earlier * Deploys discharge nurses to free up clinical staff, improve transitions, and arrange PCP follow-up * Uses standing order sets, bi-hourly huddles, and dedicated patient transport to reduce bottlenecks and keep patients moving * Focuses on "heads in the bed" to move admitted patients to assigned beds in under 30 minutes and preserve ED capacity Key topics covered: * Why ED throughput is about more than speed * The emergency department as the true front door of the health system * Reducing overcrowding, LWOT/AMA, and staff burnout through workflow redesign * Connecting patient flow to consumer satisfaction and financial sustainability * Building operational discipline without compromising quality of care Ascension reported an average door-to-doc time of 4 minutes and median outpatient throughput under 145 minutes, alongside a broader focus on improving patient experience, reducing overcrowding, stabilizing staffing, and increasing capacity without simply expanding footprint. If you're a hospital operations leader, ED executive, or health system decision-maker working to improve access, throughput, and sustainability, this episode offers a practical look at what it takes to redesign the front door of care in a way that actually performs. Link to Rob Sumter's Presentation: https://www.brightspotsinhealthcare.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Improving-Patient-Access.pdf [https://www.brightspotsinhealthcare.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Improving-Patient-Access.pdf] Bio: Robert Sumter, PhD has more than 25 years of healthcare leadership experience driving operational excellence, strategic growth, and innovation across hospitals and health systems. He currently serves as Market COO for Ascension, where he oversees operations and strategic initiatives focused on improving patient outcomes, financial performance, and care delivery. Prior to Ascension, Robert served with UnitedHealth Group as the Interim Deputy COO and Chief Operating Officer for UnitedHealthcare Community & State. His leadership experience also includes executive roles at Hawaii Pacific Health, Regional One Health in Memphis, Tennessee, and Spectrum Health, where he served as Chief Operating Officer. Throughout his career, he has consistently led initiatives that improved patient satisfaction, reduced hospital length of stay, increased operational efficiency, and enhanced financial performance. Robert is widely recognized for his ability to lead large-scale operational transformations and build high-performing teams focused on delivering quality care and sustainable growth. His expertise spans hospital operations, healthcare strategy, population health, performance improvement, and executive leadership. Thank You to Our Episode Partner, TytoCare. TytoCare enables health systems and plans to deliver high-quality remote exams anytime, anywhere. Their FDA-cleared devices and AI-powered diagnostic platform support virtual specialty care, school-based programs, and home health models, reducing unnecessary ED visits and improving patient experience. To learn more, visit tytocare.com [http://tytocare.com]. Schedule a Meeting with a Senior Leader at TytoCare: To explore how TytoCare can help your organization expand virtual specialty access and improve care coordination, reach out to jtenzer@brightspotsventures.com [jtenzer@brightspotsventures.com] to schedule a meeting. About Bright Spots Ventures: Bright Spots Ventures exists to help healthcare organizations accelerate the adoption of what's actually working. Healthcare does not suffer from a lack of innovation. It suffers from slow adoption, fragmented learning, and limited trust between stakeholders. For example, one health plan or provider may solve a major operational or clinical challenge while others spend the next 5–10 years rediscovering the same answer. We close that gap by creating trusted environments where health plans, providers, and innovators can share practical strategies, operational lessons, and scalable models that drive measurable improvement. Through the Bright Spots in Healthcare podcast, leadership councils, executive roundtables, curated events, and strategic advisory work, we help organizations build credibility, strengthen strategic relationships, and accelerate the spread of proven ideas across healthcare.

Northwell Health CEO John D'Angelo, MD | The Next Operating System for Healthcare

The healthcare system we've built is remarkably good at treating disease. The question is whether it's designed to create health. In this episode of Bright Spots in Healthcare, Eric Glazer sits down with Dr. John D'Angelo, President and CEO of Northwell Health, one of the largest health systems in the country, for a candid conversation about what healthcare leaders may be underestimating about the decade ahead. Rather than focusing on individual trends, Dr. D'Angelo challenges some of healthcare's biggest assumptions, from the way we think about affordability, to the way we deliver care, to the role technology should play in helping people stay healthy before they become patients. The discussion explores why affordability may ultimately be a prevention challenge, how healthcare can move from episodic encounters to continuous health management, what workforce shortages mean for the future of care delivery, and why building the right digital infrastructure may be one of the most important investments health systems make over the next decade. If you're responsible for leading change inside a health system, health plan, physician organization, or healthcare company, this conversation offers a thoughtful perspective on what healthcare may need to become, not just what it needs to improve. In this episode, you'll learn: * Why Dr. D'Angelo believes healthcare can't "cut its way" to affordability What a more proactive and personalized healthcare system could look like * How workforce shortages are forcing leaders to rethink traditional care models * Why continuous health may become more important than episodic care * How Northwell is building the digital foundation for the future of healthcare * What healthcare leaders may be underestimating about the next decade About Dr. John D'Angelo: A physician first and foremost, Dr. John D'Angelo leads with compassion. With over 25 years of practical experience, he continues to transform health care operations with his recent appointment as president and CEO of Northwell Health, the Northeast's largest nonprofit health system. Dr. D'Angelo oversees a complex network of 28 hospitals and 106,000 employees, including over 1,000 outpatient facilities, 22,000 nurses and over 20,000 physicians with an operating budget of $22.6 billion. Northwell cares for more than 3 million people annually in the New York metro area, including Long Island, the Hudson Valley, western Connecticut and beyond. Full bio: https://www.northwell.edu/sites/northwell.edu/files/2026-03/dangelo-john-newsroom-03-25-2026.pdf [https://www.northwell.edu/sites/northwell.edu/files/2026-03/dangelo-john-newsroom-03-25-2026.pdf] Follow Dr. D'Angelo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-dangelo-md/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-dangelo-md/] About Bright Spots Ventures: Bright Spots Ventures is a healthcare strategy and engagement company that creates content, communities, and connections to accelerate innovation. We help healthcare leaders discover what's working, and how to scale it. By bringing together health plan, hospital, and solution leaders, we facilitate the exchange of ideas that lead to measurable impact. Through our podcast, executive councils, private events, and go-to-market strategy work, we surface and amplify the "bright spots" in healthcare, proven innovations others can learn from and replicate. At our core, we exist to create trusted relationships that make real progress possible. Visit our website at www.brightspotsinhealthcare.com [http://www.brightspotsinhealthcare.com].

Inside Northwell Health's ED Follow-Up Playbook: Reducing Returns and Improving Throughput

What happens after a patient leaves the emergency department is often where performance is won, or lost. This episode features a presentation from the recently held ROI-Centered Care Summit, a half-day virtual summit produced by Bright Spots Ventures in partnership with TytoCare and the American Telemedicine Association (ATA). In this episode, Albert Villarin, MD, MBA, FACEP, VP & Chief Medical Information Officer at Northwell Health, shares how his team redesigned the ED follow-up model to reduce avoidable returns, improve patient experience, and shorten length of stay, by rethinking discharge as the start of a coordinated, end-to-end process. Rather than treating discharge as a handoff, Northwell Health built an integrated model that connects workflows across clinical teams, patient communication, and technology, ensuring patients not only receive instructions, but understand and act on them. You'll hear how Northwell Health: * Builds a connected follow-up model across the full patient journey, from admission through post-discharge touchpoints * Uses automated outreach, education, and callback workflows to close care gaps after ED visits * Embeds language access and fully translated discharge instructions into core workflows to improve safety and reduce readmissions * Standardizes discharge processes to ensure consistency and reliability at scale * Leverages AI and automation (including ambient listening and documentation support) to reduce clinician burden while improving patient understanding Key topics covered: * Why many ED return visits are driven by breakdowns after discharge, not during care delivery * Discharge as a system, not an event * Closing the loop after ED visits to reduce unnecessary utilization * Reducing variation in patient communication and follow-up * The role of language access as a clinical and operational lever * Using automation to scale reliable, repeatable care processes If you're a health system leader, emergency medicine executive, or operations leader working to reduce avoidable utilization, improve throughput, and deliver more consistent patient experiences, this episode offers a practical, system-level blueprint grounded in real-world execution. Link to Dr. Villarin's Presentation: https://www.brightspotsinhealthcare.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/ROI-Centered-Care-Summit-2026.pdf [https://www.brightspotsinhealthcare.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/ROI-Centered-Care-Summit-2026.pdf] Bio: Dr. Albert Villarin is a visionary leader in healthcare informatics with over 30 years of experience. As the VP-CMIO at Northwell Health, he is dedicated to enhancing patient care through innovative technology and data-driven solutions. Dr. Villarin's career spans roles as a Board-Certified Emergency Medicine Physician, Clinical Informatics expert, and retired US Army Reserve Major. He is currently completing a thesis for a Master of Medical Informatics from Northwestern University and has an MBA with a Specialization in Healthcare Management from Long Island University. Dr. Villarin is committed to advancing healthcare equity and reducing clinician burnout through the responsible use of artificial intelligence and clinical innovation. https://www.linkedin.com/in/albert-villarin-md-mba-facep-1358655/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/albert-villarin-md-mba-facep-1358655/] Thank You to Our Episode Partner, TytoCare. TytoCare enables health systems and plans to deliver high-quality remote exams anytime, anywhere. Their FDA-cleared devices and AI-powered diagnostic platform support virtual specialty care, school-based programs, and home health models, reducing unnecessary ED visits and improving patient experience. To learn more, visit tytocare.com. Schedule a Meeting with a Senior Leader at TytoCare: To explore how TytoCare can help your organization expand virtual specialty access and improve care coordination, reach out to jtenzer@brightspotsventures.com to schedule a meeting. About Bright Spots Ventures: Bright Spots Ventures exists to help healthcare organizations accelerate the adoption of what's actually working. Healthcare does not suffer from a lack of innovation. It suffers from slow adoption, fragmented learning, and limited trust between stakeholders. For example, one health plan or provider may solve a major operational or clinical challenge while others spend the next 5–10 years rediscovering the same answer. We close that gap by creating trusted environments where health plans, providers, and innovators can share practical strategies, operational lessons, and scalable models that drive measurable improvement. Through the Bright Spots in Healthcare podcast, leadership councils, executive roundtables, curated events, and strategic advisory work, we help organizations build credibility, strengthen strategic relationships, and accelerate the spread of proven ideas across healthcare.

Why Health Plan Innovation Fails, And What Actually Scales | Healthworx

Why do so many healthcare innovation efforts stall after pilots? In this Bright Spots in Healthcare episode, host Eric Glazer sits down with leaders from Healthworx, the investment and innovation arm of CareFirst, for a candid discussion on what actually allows innovation to scale inside complex healthcare organizations. As health plans invest heavily in AI, digital transformation, startup partnerships, and new care models, many still struggle to operationalize innovation in meaningful ways. This conversation explores why innovation often breaks down between idea and implementation, and what organizations can do differently. Guests include: * Emily Durfee, Director, Corporate Venture Capital, Healthworx * Soo Jeon, Head, Healthworx Accelerator * Mike Batista, Managing Partner, Healthworx Studio Together, they explore: * Why health plan innovation efforts often fail to scale * The operational barriers that prevent ideas from gaining traction * Why healthcare struggles to move beyond pilots and experimentation * What startups misunderstand about working with health plans * Why incremental operational evolution often beats transformational change * How Healthworx approaches innovation through investing, accelerating, and building * What separates organizations that successfully scale innovation from those that don't This episode offers a practical look at the operational realities of healthcare innovation and what it takes to turn new ideas into measurable impact Panelist Bios: https://www.brightspotsinhealthcare.com/events/why-health-plan-innovation-fails-and-what-actually-scales-healthworx/ [https://www.brightspotsinhealthcare.com/events/why-health-plan-innovation-fails-and-what-actually-scales-healthworx/] About Bright Spots Ventures: Bright Spots Ventures is a healthcare strategy and engagement company that creates content, communities, and connections to accelerate innovation. We help healthcare leaders discover what's working, and how to scale it. By bringing together health plan, hospital, and solution leaders, we facilitate the exchange of ideas that lead to measurable impact. Through our podcast, executive councils, private events, and go-to-market strategy work, we surface and amplify the "bright spots" in healthcare, proven innovations others can learn from and replicate. At our core, we exist to create trusted relationships that make real progress possible. Visit our website at www.brightspotsinhealthcare.com [http://www.brightspotsinhealthcare.com].