Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason
Speaker 1: Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. I do have to say that
Speaker 1: reaching out to members of the medical community, Jason, have
Speaker 1: really been so helpful for us, right given us very
Speaker 1: direct and transparent views of the impact of this crisis. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: So let's turn to someone who has been at the
Speaker 1: four of this and literally runs the health system that
Speaker 1: has treated more COVID night teen patients than any other
Speaker 1: system in the country. I'm sure he would say it's
Speaker 1: a dubious distinction, but they have been working so hard
Speaker 1: right here at the episode we're talking about Michael Dowling.
Speaker 1: He's the president and CEO of north Well Health. He
Speaker 1: joins us on the phone from late Success, New York.
Speaker 1: I have to say I live within a mile of
Speaker 1: one of their hospitals, the Phelps Hospital here in Westchester,
Speaker 1: so very familiar with this system. Michael. Really good to
Speaker 1: have you here with Carolin myself. Now, I'm I did
Speaker 1: thank you so much for having me, appreciate it very much.
Speaker 1: So I guess I would start by asking you and
Speaker 1: knowing everything you do, where are we in fighting this
Speaker 1: disease from a clinical perspective and from what you've seen
Speaker 1: and the trends that you're seeing across the system right now,
Speaker 1: on the trends look good. We have reduced admissions each
Speaker 1: day and have had those reductions each day for the
Speaker 1: past dozen days. We only have about half the number
Speaker 1: of patients in the hospital today with COVID that we
Speaker 1: had about two and a half weeks ago. So we're
Speaker 1: und the downslope of this. But I have to caution
Speaker 1: that it doesn't necessarily mean you're out of the world
Speaker 1: is because if the public doesn't continue to practice social
Speaker 1: distancing and prevention, then you could have an uptick in
Speaker 1: cases and that's not what you want to do. I
Speaker 1: also believe too your question that we're learning how to
Speaker 1: treat the patients better now than we did at the beginning.
Speaker 1: Because of very beginning, this was a completely unknown and uh,
Speaker 1: we now know a lot more about the patients. It
Speaker 1: doesn't mean we don't have a cure, but I think
Speaker 1: we're learning a little bit more about how to delay
Speaker 1: putting a person on event. Uh, we understand better I
Speaker 1: think the aphacare that is needed. So we're learning a
Speaker 1: lot more and we are doing a lot of treatment
Speaker 1: styles on sept and drugs. But we're a long ways
Speaker 1: from having a vaccine, as you know, or from having
Speaker 1: a drug. The window actually really works on a large basis,
Speaker 1: On a large basis, we're in a very good position, uh.
Speaker 1: And I believe that the health systems, the hospitals, all
Speaker 1: of the hospitals in New York, especially in the city
Speaker 1: area and in Long Island, have done a spectacular job here. Um.
Speaker 1: This is an experience and an adventure of that. Uh.
Speaker 1: Nobody really wants to live through. But when you're in it,
Speaker 1: you do the best you can. And I think we've
Speaker 1: done an exemplary job. And if it comes back again
Speaker 1: in the fall, I think we are quite ready to
Speaker 1: hand it was whatever is drawn at us in the fall,
Speaker 1: assuming and hoping, of course it doesn't happen. I have
Speaker 1: to say, I talked with the CEO of Unilever earlier today,
Speaker 1: and you know, they are expecting and others are expecting
Speaker 1: that we do get a second wave, and you've got
Speaker 1: to be pandemic ready. And I do wonder. You know,
Speaker 1: you have a massive healthcare system, um, largest as I
Speaker 1: think Jason said in uh, the city of or the
Speaker 1: state of New York. So are you planning for a
Speaker 1: second wave, Do you feel like you will be better prepared? Yes,
Speaker 1: we we We We have a very strong uh you know,
Speaker 1: emergency management infrastructure here, and we walk as a reel system,
Speaker 1: so all hospitals walk together, etcetera. So we have put
Speaker 1: in place already a whole structure of what we would
Speaker 1: do if there is another rebound in the in the fall.
Speaker 1: So we are ready given the experiences that we've been
Speaker 1: through over the past about them a half where we
Speaker 1: have actually created an out health system alone and all
Speaker 1: those similar things, about two thousand new beds, so we
Speaker 1: know how all. We know how to surge up to
Speaker 1: create new beds, We know how to create the I
Speaker 1: CEU facilities quickly, we know how to deploy staff and
Speaker 1: much more efficient with and we did at the very
Speaker 1: beginning of this. So we are very much much much
Speaker 1: more prepared. Um. We obviously will be much better to
Speaker 1: coropate all of the ppe the masks and the gloves
Speaker 1: that was a problem, as everybody knows at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the crisis. So yes, the answer is we're more
Speaker 1: prepared um. And we learned an awful lot of things
Speaker 1: that every time you go through this you learn and
Speaker 1: then the next time you're most your your better positions.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about PPE because that is something too
Speaker 1: that came up with Alan Joe CEO of Unilever, and
Speaker 1: again he taps into global supply chains understands and he
Speaker 1: said they didn't. He said, there's lots of PPE out
Speaker 1: there if you tap the global networks. Is that where
Speaker 1: we messed up? Well, you know, uh, we we did.
Speaker 1: We we tapped every part of the world that we
Speaker 1: could finally tap that we could possibly tap to get
Speaker 1: all in supplies. And so did in the state of
Speaker 1: New York. Um uh, they happened, and all the search
Speaker 1: here happened very very very quickly. Give you an example
Speaker 1: of masks alone in our health system, we use between
Speaker 1: ten and fifteen thousand masks a day, so that means
Speaker 1: you're losing you're using a hudd masks a week. Because
Speaker 1: of our scale and our size. What we need to
Speaker 1: do here is make sure that we have a number
Speaker 1: of places around the around the world that we can
Speaker 1: get the supplies from. But we also have to learn
Speaker 1: how to make these things here in the United States ourselves. Uh.
Speaker 1: You should not always be relying on people overseas to
Speaker 1: get basic core supplies that you need. We have to
Speaker 1: do them here. That's a lesson from this experience or
Speaker 1: the supply chain because most of us depending on off
Speaker 1: on on China, that supply chain got completely disrupted. So yes,
Speaker 1: where we cut off a little bit off God, a
Speaker 1: little bit at the beginning, that's if we make that
Speaker 1: mistake a second time around in you know, then it's
Speaker 1: on us that hopefully whatever again happened. But we have
Speaker 1: to make some of these things in the United States.
Speaker 1: There's no reason we cannot do it. We must do it. So, Michael,
Speaker 1: I do want to ask you. You know, you talked
Speaker 1: about learning how to treat this disease, and I do wonder,
Speaker 1: especially now that you have to look at, maybe more
Speaker 1: closely at how to treat everything else that you would
Speaker 1: normally be doing. How does that change, even in the
Speaker 1: short term treating you know, the patients who are COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen related, as well as doing the regular business of
Speaker 1: being a massive hospital system. Well, a lot of the
Speaker 1: regular business, mostly surgery, and a lot of our outpatient
Speaker 1: ambilatory facilities we close. We stopped doing except for emergency
Speaker 1: surgery that was that was necessary. So all all of
Speaker 1: that we have to bring back. But there are there
Speaker 1: are a couple of lessons here without over be getting
Speaker 1: too complicated. One is um tellent medicine that everybody has
Speaker 1: been talking about. There was a lot of resistance to
Speaker 1: tell a medicine. The payers and the government didn't really
Speaker 1: want to pay for it, and a lot of doctors
Speaker 1: didn't want to use it. I can tell you we've
Speaker 1: had a phenomenal increase in the use of telemedicine and
Speaker 1: virtual health during the last five or six weeks, so
Speaker 1: that horses out of the bond. We will be doing
Speaker 1: substantially more telemedicine in the future than we ever imagine
Speaker 1: that we would be doing, uh, you know, two months ago,
Speaker 1: So that's a benefit. The other thing is we have
Speaker 1: now we've had over the last six weeks thirty two
Speaker 1: thousand employees working from home, and we find out that,
Speaker 1: you know, with certain functions, that can work just as
Speaker 1: efficiently from home as they do by coming to the office.
Speaker 1: So my guess there's a lot of those employees will
Speaker 1: not come back to the office anymore. And the third
Speaker 1: item is that a lot of the various clinical disciplines
Speaker 1: we're all working to important unity breaking down all of
Speaker 1: the clinical barrios storing the treatment of COVID. That will
Speaker 1: be a benefit that will help sc forward. All right,
Speaker 1: stick with us, We're going to continue this conversation. I
Speaker 1: want to talk to you about some of the work
Speaker 1: you've done with Governor Andrew Cuomo. I mean, this has
Speaker 1: been a massive undertaking. We know we're speaking with Michael Dowling,
Speaker 1: President CEO of north Well Health. He'll be back with
Speaker 1: us in just a few minutes. This is Bloomberg. We're
Speaker 1: talking with Michael Dowling, President and chief executive officer of
Speaker 1: north Well Health, on the phone from Lake Success, New York,
Speaker 1: and it's a massive hospital operation here in New York State. Michael,
Speaker 1: one thing I do wonder, and I know we want
Speaker 1: to get into some of the work you've done with
Speaker 1: Governor Cuomo, but I do wonder about the financial impact
Speaker 1: of all of this. And obviously, when you're in the
Speaker 1: midst of a crisis, you do what you have to
Speaker 1: do right to take care of everybody, make sure your
Speaker 1: workers are safe, make sure patients are taken care of.
Speaker 1: But there is a reality of the financial cost. Talk
Speaker 1: to me a little bit about that. Yes, Well, when
Speaker 1: you're in the middle of a crisis like this. In
Speaker 1: a situation like this where the public health is such
Speaker 1: a major, major, you know, foremost priority, you don't let
Speaker 1: yourself worried so much about the financial impact. You just
Speaker 1: do what you have to do and at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, you do the right thing irrespective. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you are obviously with the recognition that you're going
Speaker 1: to get hurt financially, but you then say, I'm going
Speaker 1: to deal with that later. For our health system, for example, Uh,
Speaker 1: this has impacted us a big time. We are losses
Speaker 1: are about three fifty million a month because we had
Speaker 1: to croptail most of the major revenue streams that were
Speaker 1: coming in, like surgery, and we we stopped all of
Speaker 1: that sorgery to be able to take care of COVID patients. So, yes,
Speaker 1: it does have an impact, but we will recover. Um.
Speaker 1: We are now beginning to think about how we get
Speaker 1: back that other business that we lost over the next
Speaker 1: coup the months. It will take time because it is complicated,
Speaker 1: and also you have to make sure you build confidence
Speaker 1: among the public that they feel very very safe when
Speaker 1: they come back to any health care facility that has
Speaker 1: had corpid patients in it. So we will recover, We
Speaker 1: will come back. It will take time. Um, but you
Speaker 1: have to feel good about what you do, irrespective as
Speaker 1: a financial impact, when you know you're doing what's right
Speaker 1: by the public. And so let's talk about your work
Speaker 1: with Governor Cuomo if we can, uh. The governor uh
Speaker 1: making a statement today, you know, no more school uh
Speaker 1: for this year. Certainly that impacts a lot of us
Speaker 1: here in New York State, and it has an impact
Speaker 1: on reopening, especially when it comes to parents. Help us
Speaker 1: understand the advice that you are giving him about reopening
Speaker 1: and what that looks like, especially across the state and
Speaker 1: candidly and very parochially, especially here in the down State area. Sure, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I've known the governor for a long time.
Speaker 1: I worked for twelve years with his father, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Andrew the Governor has been you know, providing
Speaker 1: extraordinary leadership here as we all know. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a lesson in great leadership. So it's easy to work
Speaker 1: with him, UM, I do. I've talked to him quite regularly.
Speaker 1: And now, of course the focus is on to make
Speaker 1: sure that we can get the economy back, but we've
Speaker 1: got to do it very smartly. We can't just jump
Speaker 1: and make you know very quick judgments too quickly, because
Speaker 1: what you'd want to avoid is to generate any um uh,
Speaker 1: continuing increases and transmissions so that you have the the
Speaker 1: COVID crisis comes back to hit you again. So it
Speaker 1: has to be done very deliberately, business by business, sector
Speaker 1: by sector, and I believe that will begin to happen
Speaker 1: now over the next couple of months. UM. It is
Speaker 1: inconvenient for everybody. Um. People are unhappy, but there will
Speaker 1: be a lot more unhappy if we do things stupidly
Speaker 1: and we get another round of the COVID crisis. Then
Speaker 1: it only makes the economic situation so much worse. Um.
Speaker 1: And you let people second guessing all of the time.
Speaker 1: But you have to take a very rational, smart look
Speaker 1: at how it is you do that. And and that's
Speaker 1: the process that the government is going through. Nobody wants
Speaker 1: the economy open up more than hand, but he wants
Speaker 1: to make sure we do it right, especially given the
Speaker 1: degree and the severity of the issue that we've had
Speaker 1: in New York, because we've been the epicenter of the
Speaker 1: COVID crisis. Well, and I think that's a really good point,
Speaker 1: because we you know safe to say it's different around
Speaker 1: the country. But what happened in New York. You were
Speaker 1: seeing it firsthand, your staff was seeing it firsthand. I
Speaker 1: mean tell us, I mean it was really difficult, yes,
Speaker 1: and I I and I've been in this business a
Speaker 1: long time, and I've been in every hospital and every
Speaker 1: intensive care unit almost every day for the last couple
Speaker 1: of weeks. And I don't and I don't care how
Speaker 1: long you've been in this business or how extensive your
Speaker 1: knowledge has been. I don't. I've not met anybody that
Speaker 1: has been in a circumstance like this, when you are
Speaker 1: in a hospital with extraordinarily sick people where you got
Speaker 1: you know, mortality rates happening, you know quickly each day.
Speaker 1: Actually you have so many people on events, many who
Speaker 1: may never come off. And where your hospital is essentially
Speaker 1: all COVID patients, with a few exceptions COVID patients. It's
Speaker 1: it's a strange, strange experience to go through. Um, you
Speaker 1: don't want to go through the second time. You want
Speaker 1: to go through this once. I think we handled it
Speaker 1: quite well, but you do not want to recome back now.
Speaker 1: It may you may get a bump up in this
Speaker 1: in the fall. But it's just a bump up. You
Speaker 1: can handle it. Um So, if you have to delay
Speaker 1: and reopening for poot to three weeks despite somebody inconvenience
Speaker 1: to appoy what might happen again, it's the right thing
Speaker 1: to do, all right. Michael Dowling, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for all of your time on this Friday, President, chief
Speaker 1: executive Officer of Northwell Health. They have truly been in
Speaker 1: the thick of it when it comes to the virus
Speaker 1: here in New York joining us on the phone,