Q&A with CHIME CEO Russ Branzell, Part 1: “The One Thing We Had to Do Was Stay Connected.”

Of all the ways in which healthcare was affected by Covid-19, one of the most significant was the inability to collaborate at in-person events. CHIME was no exception; as the pandemic forced both its Boot Camps and Fall Forum to convert to virtual events.

It forced the organization — which has always been a proponent of face-to-face interactions — to pause, but not to stop. “We’re constantly trying to figure out what are the toughest problems in healthcare, and what can we do as a collaborative group to make it less burdensome for all of us,” said Russ Branzell in a recent interview.

It’s pretty clear what the toughest problem was in 2020. CHIME, like many organizations, was forced to pivot, and rapidly accelerate a strategy that had already been outlined to become a digital organization. And while changing the conference format was a key step, it certainly wasn’t the only one; education, task force meetings, and one-on-one conversations took on a new nature, and even opened up new opportunities for collaboration.

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Key Takeaways:



* For CHIME, the vision of moving to a digital organization means figuring out how to “reach a broader audience in an industry that’s changing dramatically.”

* Because the groundwork had been established, CHIME was able to “expand a bit” and re-ground itself during a time when many organizations were forced to retract.

* Holding summits and events virtually isn’t meant to replace in-person interactions, but rather, “present a new opportunity” to serve a wider audience.

* “We want to come together as a family. And just because you can’t physically get together with family, it doesn’t mean you don’t stay in touch with them. It became clear that we really needed to do that.”





Q&A with Russ Branzell, Part 1

Gamble:  I want to start by talking about Covid’s impact; how CHIME was able to pivot and make difficult decisions about what was going to happen?

Branzell:  Like so many organizations, we dealt with having people work from home. But I want to back up to the summer of 2019, during which our board gave us some strong strategic direction that digital is the future for healthcare, and set a vision to move CHIME to a digital organization.

It doesn’t mean we don’t continue to capture everything in an in-person environment and continue to do what CHIME does (and does well), but for us to get our message out, and to support the healthcare ecosystem, we were going to have to figure out how to scale — not from a revenue or cost perspective, but rather, how can we reach a broader audience in an industry that’s changing dramatically.

They gave us some pretty clear direction; we had a whole roadmap. What happened — which was no different for everybody else — was that we thought was a two to three year plan really happened in about two to three months. As an example, we had a one-year plan to implement our digital education and learning management system, and we did it in 10 days.

Tim Stettheimer, our VP of Education, just said, ‘We can do this; it’s just going to be crazy for the next two weeks,’ and they did it. They put an entire digital education system in place. We now offer hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of digital education programs to both members and non-member who, in many cases, never would have sought that education in person due to cost constraints or travel constraints, and so the audience has expanded significantly. Our team launched over 40 new internal and external programs and activities by Christmastime.