Tackling Nurse Burnout with AI Solutions with Tim Darling, co-founder and president of Laudio Insights

[00:00:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Outcomes Rocket founder stories. I am so excited to be with the amazing Tim Darling today. He is a co-founder of Laudio and president of Laudio Insights. He's got over 20 years of experience in healthcare technology.

[00:00:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Tim's had a real passion for using data and analytics to serve the challenges facing healthcare organizations, which as we all know, are so many. The analytics and research from the arm of Laudio, Laudio Insights, they provide unique evidence-based perspectives on the dynamics affecting healthcare frontline workers and their leaders, things like nurse burnout, employee shortages, those kinds of things. That's what we're going to talk about today.

[00:00:50] [SPEAKER_00]: So Tim, so excited to have you with us today. Thanks for joining.

[00:00:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Saul. Thanks so much. Thank you.

[00:00:55] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a pleasure. And look, let's get started by uncovering your story. What is it that inspires your work in healthcare and entrepreneurship?

[00:01:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I am really inspired. Actually, I've been at this company now, this particular company for seven years. Seven years in, you start to get a bit of an itch. But no day's ever been the same here.

[00:01:16] [SPEAKER_01]: It has been inspiring. And it is just really great to be in the space that we're in, healthcare in particular. But there's just so many interesting problems to solve, such a dynamic environment. The people that we serve and support are doing such typical jobs running 24-7 units in hospitals.

[00:01:33] [SPEAKER_01]: And there's so many important topics like nurse burnout and others that are out there and being able to take a little bit of a crack at them to help. To me, I'm inspired by all of that.

[00:01:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. Yeah. So it's been seven years. I think that's like the sweet spot, right? Where that sort of year five to 10, where you start to see your efforts pay off. Talk to us about those efforts. Talk to us about the focus of your company and how you're adding value to the ecosystem.

[00:02:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. Thank you. Well, seven years is very much a wonderful time. I mean, the first five years, everything's spinning. As an entrepreneur, your eyes are spinning, the gears are spinning.

[00:02:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Everything's spinning.

[00:02:15] [SPEAKER_01]: Everything's spinning. And about this point, we know who we are. We know what we're doing. We've got some great clients. We've got some great reach. We're at a size where we're able to hire and bring on people with great specialties, which when you're young, you don't have.

[00:02:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Everybody's a jack of all trades. That is, to me, so much fun. That is just amazing that we can have people now who really know what they're doing and are doing their specific things.

[00:02:35] [SPEAKER_01]: And we're beginning to get all the great stories of impact and case studies and so on. So to me, this is a really fun time.

[00:02:41] [SPEAKER_01]: But it has been a long journey. And seven years ago, we started, the company came about because we saw real challenges facing frontline managers and other executives in health systems.

[00:02:50] [SPEAKER_01]: And two challenges in particular, and those challenges are more real today than ever, although our ability to help support them, I think, is more real as well.

[00:02:57] [SPEAKER_01]: But executives, there's a real need to shorten the gap between their organizational goals and the work of daily frontline leaders.

[00:03:05] [SPEAKER_01]: So we recognize that. And also for frontline managers themselves, this is the toughest job, maybe among the toughest jobs in the world.

[00:03:12] [SPEAKER_01]: And they have just such huge influence on the outcomes of their organization. So being able to support them and unlock what they're doing is a huge opportunity.

[00:03:19] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, for sure. And so let's talk about that. How are you guys helping these frontline folks? And give us some example of the frontline folks.

[00:03:27] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm envisioning nurse managers and directors. Is it clinical? Or does it also get into the tech side of things? Because we all know cyber is a huge issue.

[00:03:36] [SPEAKER_00]: And even in coding, there's so many different aspects. So help us understand the focus.

[00:03:41] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely. We started the company with a real focus on nurses and nurse leaders. And as I said earlier, nurse burnout was a topic that was really important to us early on.

[00:03:50] [SPEAKER_01]: And as we've been serving health systems, we've increasingly pulled into serving all the different roles.

[00:03:55] [SPEAKER_01]: And most of the health systems, we serve all roles, whether they be IT, supply chain, billing and coding, as well as the clinical and the patient access and support services and so on.

[00:04:06] [SPEAKER_01]: So today, it's everybody. But we still have a particular focus and real depth of, I think, experience with the nurse leaders in particular, because they have a very unique challenge, which is they're responsible for a physical area of the hospital that anybody can come into.

[00:04:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Patients, families, other team members, patient transport comes in, food and nutrition comes in, as well as their own teams.

[00:04:30] [SPEAKER_01]: And it is a very complex and dynamic job. So we have particular areas of focus for them as well.

[00:04:36] [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, the product is an AI-based software platform helping nurse leaders do those things, helping support the managers with their workflows and just all the challenges of their daily work.

[00:04:47] [SPEAKER_00]: That's great, Tim. And so help us understand. So you got this platform. What exactly are you delivering? Right.

[00:04:54] [SPEAKER_00]: If you're if I'm an executive or a nurse leader thinking about how I could help my team, what's the value prop? How do you communicate that?

[00:05:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think that there's been a realization in health systems, in particular, in the last two, three years that,

[00:05:08] [SPEAKER_01]: A, these frontline managers are incredibly overworked and B, that they are an incredible opportunity and potential for unlocking all the value of the health systems.

[00:05:20] [SPEAKER_01]: And what we do is help these frontline leaders do all the things that they need to do to get through their day and also prioritize and optimize the work that they're doing to help their health systems achieve the outcomes that the health systems themselves want to do.

[00:05:32] [SPEAKER_01]: To give you an example, we connect into different sources around the hospital. Every day we're pulling information about who are their team members, where they were, what they were doing.

[00:05:41] [SPEAKER_01]: We pull data from the medical record, HR systems and so on. And we pull all this together and they the managers log in and they see some recommendations.

[00:05:49] [SPEAKER_01]: So our AI and statistical models have said having a conversation with this team member who's been constantly skipping breaks, for example,

[00:05:57] [SPEAKER_01]: is the best thing that you can do to improve team member engagement, improve team member retention and avoid potential future burnout.

[00:06:04] [SPEAKER_01]: All the algorithms in the background, all the data feeds, all coming together to give them, this is the thing that's going to have the biggest impact for you to do.

[00:06:10] [SPEAKER_01]: If you're a frontline manager, you've got 100 direct employees, not 100 employees, 100 direct reports.

[00:06:16] [SPEAKER_01]: A 24-7 unit, you have all these data in front of you, you've got all the chaos of the job.

[00:06:21] [SPEAKER_01]: Having somebody or having a platform help you figure out what are the 5, 10 most impactful things you can do today.

[00:06:30] [SPEAKER_01]: That's our value proposition to them.

[00:06:32] [SPEAKER_00]: That's massive. That's massive. No, really cool. Really cool to know.

[00:06:36] [SPEAKER_00]: And is it 100? That's a lot. Is that the average? Is that what you're seeing out there?

[00:06:42] [SPEAKER_01]: It's, well, 100's on the high side, but it absolutely can be in 100.

[00:06:46] [SPEAKER_01]: The average is in the mid-50s headcount for frontline managers, clinical managers, and they can be as high as 120, 150, almost 200.

[00:06:56] [SPEAKER_01]: So if you're, and it varies a little bit by specialty.

[00:06:59] [SPEAKER_01]: So an emergency department, the average is about 110. So emergency departments are huge.

[00:07:05] [SPEAKER_01]: And these are direct reports.

[00:07:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Direct reports, yeah.

[00:07:08] [SPEAKER_01]: This is one of the challenges of this role is that they can benefit from a bit more of an org chart that might assign team members to an assistant manager and so on.

[00:07:19] [SPEAKER_01]: And there are places that do a bit of that.

[00:07:21] [SPEAKER_01]: But for the most part, this person is responsible for all their team members.

[00:07:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Imagine writing 100 annual reviews every year.

[00:07:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's what I'm like, that's what I'm imagining.

[00:07:30] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, geez, man.

[00:07:32] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I've had, that could take you months.

[00:07:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes. And ergo, why we're here, right?

[00:07:39] [SPEAKER_01]: And so we saw early on.

[00:07:41] [SPEAKER_01]: I love that.

[00:07:41] [SPEAKER_01]: What if we could, and this is even before LLMs were in place and everything, although LLMs have really helped accelerate some of this work.

[00:07:49] [SPEAKER_01]: What if we could write the first draft of an annual review for 100 different people based on all the data that we're seeing, all the notes.

[00:07:55] [SPEAKER_01]: I love that. That's awesome.

[00:07:56] [SPEAKER_01]: All the stuff that we've been doing all through the year.

[00:07:58] [SPEAKER_01]: And just get that out there.

[00:07:59] [SPEAKER_01]: And it will be, obviously the manager needs to come in and fine tune it and add to it their own things and make it real.

[00:08:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Sure.

[00:08:05] [SPEAKER_01]: But if we can get it three quarters of the way done, when you multiply that by 100 people and the fact that these annual reviews have to get done in a six week window at the end of every summer.

[00:08:13] [SPEAKER_01]: The quality then of the review, the impact that it can have from the individual team member, the amount that it's really based in real data and real conversations, I think increases so substantially.

[00:08:23] [SPEAKER_01]: As well as saving so much time for the frontline leader.

[00:08:26] [SPEAKER_01]: So that's why we're here. We're here for the frontline leader. We're here to take an impossible job and help make it sustainable.

[00:08:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh man, Tim, thank you for diving into that. That really helps me understand.

[00:08:36] [SPEAKER_00]: And folks, can you imagine, has anybody listening to this ever had 100 direct reports?

[00:08:41] [SPEAKER_00]: I never have. I think the most I've had is like 20 something. And that was hard.

[00:08:47] [SPEAKER_00]: And there's a book, Extreme Leadership, Tim. Have you ever read Extreme Leadership?

[00:08:51] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know it. No.

[00:08:52] [SPEAKER_00]: This guy, Jocko Willink, he's a Navy SEAL.

[00:08:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I do know him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen his masterclass, but I haven't read the book.

[00:08:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, you have? Yeah, I've seen that too. I never took it though. Have you taken it?

[00:09:02] [SPEAKER_01]: That's amazing. Awesome. He's exactly who you don't think he's going to be, which is a fascinating thing about the video.

[00:09:08] [SPEAKER_01]: You expect this guy's going to come in and say, it's my way or the highway. I'm a Navy SEAL.

[00:09:12] [SPEAKER_01]: And he actually comes to me as a deeply empathetic leader. It's really fascinating stuff.

[00:09:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Wow. That's interesting. I got to look at that class.

[00:09:18] [SPEAKER_00]: But folks, if you haven't read this book, it's amazing. He says six. Groups of six is like the most optimal for an AVCL group to execute effectively.

[00:09:28] [SPEAKER_00]: And you have groups of 100 in healthcare. It's like, oh my God. We need technology, folks. We need Tim.

[00:09:35] [SPEAKER_00]: We need Lodio. So glad that you're doing what you do, Tim.

[00:09:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you. And thanks for the book recommendation. I will check it out. There is a science behind all this, right?

[00:09:43] [SPEAKER_01]: There is a reason some of this thing happens in hospitals. They are a unique place with unique challenges.

[00:09:49] [SPEAKER_01]: And there are reasons why certain things are set up a certain way and it's really hard to change them.

[00:09:53] [SPEAKER_01]: At the same time, as you point out, there is a science behind what's possible and what's optimal for human beings working with other human beings.

[00:10:01] [SPEAKER_01]: And where those gaps are the biggest, technology can help be part of the solution of filling some of them in.

[00:10:06] [SPEAKER_01]: And so incredible challenges, as you can imagine, leading teams. And they're 24-hour-a-day teams, right? They never stop, most of them.

[00:10:13] [SPEAKER_00]: That's crazy. And so I love seeing big problems like this because the opportunities are sorely needed.

[00:10:19] [SPEAKER_00]: And so great to hear the work that you and your team are up to here.

[00:10:24] [SPEAKER_00]: As you've built the platform and made it work for your clients, what's been the biggest challenge and biggest setback that you ran into that has now become a strength or something you learned from Mass?

[00:10:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. Being an entrepreneur is just, it is a daily collection of ups and downs.

[00:10:42] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think if there was a particular big setback that really changed everything, there might have been.

[00:10:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Certainly the pandemic, I know it's a bit of a cliche, but the last seven years, it's the big macro story of the last seven years.

[00:10:53] [SPEAKER_01]: And that was definitely a moment where we all realized things were going to have to be so different.

[00:10:56] [SPEAKER_01]: And we had to learn to train and onboard our users virtually. And many things slowed down or changed.

[00:11:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Some things accelerated, but in ways that weren't predictable.

[00:11:04] [SPEAKER_01]: But as you say, what came from it? A positive side was, first of all, a real focus on nurse burnout in the world.

[00:11:12] [SPEAKER_01]: People weren't talking about it before COVID. It was real that they weren't talking about it.

[00:11:15] [SPEAKER_01]: Now they are. And what's really interesting about how that shaped over the last five years or so, four or five years, is if you remember during COVID,

[00:11:25] [SPEAKER_01]: healthcare burnout was a big topic. And the big solution was to put it on the frontline team member, which was yoga programs and wellness programs.

[00:11:34] [SPEAKER_01]: And really all the different ways that you as an individual could help manage this. And our response to that has been, and is, and always will be, it's not an individual person's challenge.

[00:11:46] [SPEAKER_01]: When four out of five team members are reporting stress and burnout, it is a system issue that needs systems-based solutions.

[00:11:52] [SPEAKER_01]: That's what we've been focusing on even before that. But certainly, if it's possible to say, a positive thing that came out of all of that was that there is now much more of a national focus on this challenge.

[00:12:01] [SPEAKER_01]: And people are looking for more system solutions today.

[00:12:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, for sure. Well, glad you guys are doing what you do. And it sounds like this challenge became an opportunity to focus at a national level.

[00:12:13] [SPEAKER_00]: And now here you guys are, you're making huge progress. I love what you guys are doing.

[00:12:18] [SPEAKER_00]: If the leaders and listeners listening to this want to reach out to you, Tim, and learn more about Laudio.

[00:12:26] [SPEAKER_01]: So I'd be delighted. I love having conversations with people of different perspectives.

[00:12:32] [SPEAKER_01]: So first of all, you can reach us on our website, laudio.com. And there is a tab on there, Insights, which is where we publish all of our articles, all the data that we're putting to use and putting to bear to deliver these recommendations and everything else for the frontline managers.

[00:12:45] [SPEAKER_01]: We're also putting into perspectives. What are we seeing national trends? There's a lot of articles there. And you can see those things. You can sign up.

[00:12:54] [SPEAKER_01]: I'd love to have anybody who's interested in these topics to be part of our community, sign up for the articles as they come out.

[00:13:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Or reach me personally, which is tim.darling at laudio.com.

[00:13:06] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm happy to have conversations with people who are interested in topics like nurse burnout and the application of AI to big problems in healthcare.

[00:13:13] [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, either way.

[00:13:15] [SPEAKER_00]: That's fantastic, Tim. And folks, if you're looking for a better way to lead your teams, if you're looking for more tools to empower your leaders, Laudio is it.

[00:13:28] [SPEAKER_00]: So you got to find unique ways. And the truth is, like Tim said, like technology is going to be the way you do it.

[00:13:35] [SPEAKER_00]: So find out what they're doing. Find out what Tim and his team are up to. Now's the time. I saw that you guys were at AONL, Tim, and your commitment to that organization.

[00:13:45] [SPEAKER_00]: So kudos on being all in on this group. It makes a huge difference.

[00:13:50] [SPEAKER_00]: And so thank you so much for being with us, for sharing more about you and listeners. Check out the show notes. It's laudio.com. Make sure you check out the insights.

[00:13:59] [SPEAKER_00]: They're doing a lot of work, Tim and his team, to bring you tip of the spear on ways to improve productivity, reduce burnout, and have a conversation with them. That's the best way to improve.

[00:14:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Tim, appreciate you being with us.

[00:14:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, it's been so much fun. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for the kind words.

[00:14:15] [SPEAKER_01]: My pleasure, Tim.