The Exec: Virtua Health’s New Chief Clinical Officer Built Residency Programs
By Christopher Cheney
Jennifer Khelil, DO, MBA, led the creation of residency programs at Virtua Health before becoming the health system’s chief clinical officer.
Khelil was promoted to executive vice president and chief clinical officer of Virtua early this month. She had served as CMO of the health system since 2019 and was previously vice president of medical affairs starting in 2013.
Virtua has added several residency programs to the institution over the past five years, including residencies in family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, surgery, and psychiatry. The health system has a fellowship program in cardiology and will be adding an anesthesiology residency program.
“Part of running a successful academic institution is having faculty engagement and having faculty who are excited about teaching,” Khelil says.
When Virtua started the process of launching residency programs, there was some push-back from physicians, according to Khelil.
“We had some faculty who were concerned about what it meant for them and how it would affect the day-to-day care of patients,” Khelil says. “We had to provide some education, and we had to give them the resources they needed.”
In particular, physicians wanted training on how to educate residents, so the health system introduced faculty development tools and education.
“We taught our physicians how to teach and how to give good feedback,” Khelil says. “Part of a resident’s program is that they receive monthly evaluations. So, we trained our physicians on how to evaluate a resident.”
Virtua achieved faculty engagement once physicians began interacting with residents, Khelil explains.
“We got wonderful feedback,” Khelil says. “The faculty got excited. Having young people in the institution with inquisitive attitudes brings a level of excitement.”
The health system has developed a robust faculty, which is not only interested in teaching but also clinical research, according to Khelil.
“We have brought many research opportunities into the organization, including clinical trials and device trials,” Khelil says. “We have partnered with industry partners to bring cutting-edge advances to our organization.”
An essential element of successful residency programs is recruiting the right residents, Khelil explains.
“When we recruit our residency class, we look for residents who will fit into our culture,” Khelil says. “We want residents who are just as excited and just as interested in engaging in clinical learning and research as our faculty.”
Virtua is particularly interested in recruiting resident candidates from New Jersey.
“If you grew up in New Jersey and you train in New Jersey, you tend to stay in New Jersey after your training,” Khelil says. “Every state is facing a shortage of healthcare workers, so if we can select individuals from this geographic region and train them, and they stay in the state, that benefits everyone in New Jersey.”
Leading strategic growth
In addition to building residency programs, Khelil was involved in leading strategic growth initiatives before becoming chief clinical officer.
“When you talk about strategic growth, you are really talking about partnering with your community and meeting your community where it needs to be met,” Khelil says.
One of the first strategic growth initiatives Khelil helped to lead was an effort to increase patient access to services.
“That included putting practices in remote areas of our counties that did not have access to primary care,” Khelil says. “That included pulling specialists into those practices, so that patients did not have to drive 45 minutes to see a specialist.”
Another strategic growth initiative was stepping up efforts to address social determinants of health, according to Khelil.
“We have an area that is a food desert—those patients do not have access to healthy food,” Khelil says. “We have put programs in place to address that need.”
Those programs include a mobile farmers market and a mobile grocery store, since part of the patient population does not have a supermarket in their general vicinity.
“Those patients are going to small corner stores that do not have fresh produce or fresh meats,” Khelil says. “The mobile farmers market goes out to areas in the community that do not have access to fresh produce or meat.”
Nutritionists are paired with the mobile farmers market and the mobile grocery store, so they can advise people on how to prepare healthy meals.
Supporting physician services
Khelil has been involved in efforts to support physician services at Virtua.
“At Virtua, physician services come down to our medical staff,” Khelil says. “We must provide resources to the medical staff so they can come in every day and do their jobs.”
A primary area where the health system has been providing resources to physicians has been to address clinician burnout, according to Khelil.
“The past few years in healthcare have been rough on our providers,” Khelil says. “They have had stresses that we had never seen before—the coronavirus pandemic stressed the workforce for not only nurses but also physicians.”
The first step was to ask physicians about the challenges they were facing.
“The doctors told us that they loved taking care of patients and loved being at the bedside, but there was other noise that was weighing on them,” Khelil says. “Doctors were burdened with the electronic medical record, the patient message in-box, and other touch points that impacted their day and pulled them away from the bedside.”
To help physicians cope with the electronic medical record and documentation burdens, Virtua adopted an ambient listening AI tool.
“Instead of having to leave the bedside and sit down for 20 minutes to compose a note, the clinician can leave the bedside and already have the structure of a note in place,” Khelil says. “They can edit the note. They can add to the note or delete information from the note. It speeds up the process, so our clinicians are spending more face-to-face time with our patients.”
Physicians at the health system receive as many as 100 patient in-box messages per day that need to be answered, according to Khelil.
“We addressed the patient message in-box,” Khelil says. “We put processes in place, and we put people in place who could offload some of the patient messages.”
Christopher Cheney is the CMO editor at HealthLeaders.