IAM1532 – CEO Helps the Underrepresented Communities to Improve Health Care Issues

Oscar Delgado’s understanding of the power of compassionate healthcare began when he was a child accompanying his Mom on errands around Reno and Sparks.

His Mom helped support her family as a housekeeper in the maternity ward of Washoe Medical Center (now, it’s Renown). As one of a handful of Spanish speakers, she was called to provide translation services for Spanish-speaking patients who were navigating a largely English-speaking hospital. They thank Oscar’s Mom for her assistance during those stressful times. Those moments stuck with Oscar, and he devoted his career to ensuring that all the members of his community receive caring, respectful, and helpful attention for their medical needs.

An experienced, innovative leader, Oscar Delgado serves as chief executive officer of Community Health Alliance, where he works with a team of nearly 300 medical and administrative professionals who meet the needs of primarily low-income patients. With seven clinic locations as well as a mobile clinic serving the Reno-Sparks metropolitan area of northern Nevada, Community Health Alliance provides care to more than 25,000 patients. Oscar provides strategic leadership to the organization, works closely with other community groups, and ensures that the $31 million annual budget of the Community Health Alliance provides top-flight care.

Under Oscar’s leadership, the Community Health Alliance team takes pride in providing healthcare that is equal to any in the region. When Oscar was named CEO of Community Health Alliance in early 2019, he brought more than a decade of healthcare experience to the position. He had spearheaded outreach and development of programs that improved health outcomes in underrepresented communities. He played important roles in ensuring that multicultural communities got the word about state-sponsored health insurance plans. He worked closely with families of children with learning, physical, and behavioral disabilities.

Even while he worked long hours on healthcare issues, Oscar also has served since 2012 as a member of the Reno City Council. He’s been an effective advocate for quality-of-life improvements in the ward he represents, and he’s been a leader for the entire city on issues ranging from zoning and recreation to public safety. But even as he has blossomed into a respected, effective leader, Oscar Delgado is never far from that boy dedicated to the lessons of respectful compassion he learned from his mother.

• CEO Story: Oscar’s journey since he was a kid was always about serving. It’s a joy to see others’ success is also their success either as an individual, neighborhood or in a community. That led Oscar to serve as a public servant whether as a city councilor or health care advocate – making sure to get the proper health care that people deserve.
• Business Service: Going to communities that are underserved in terms of health care needs. Providing primary care.
• Secret Sauce: How to make sure the patient is taken good care of, how do you stay grounded on who you are best serving? Asking the question what’s the Why? Do what you want to do and give your heart unto it.
• CEO Hack: Reading a lot. Surrounding yourself not in your industry/healthcare – people that are honest and respected.
• CEO Nugget: Get out of your comfort zone. Get comfortable that you will be going to be uncomfortable for quite some time.
• CEO Defined: Bringing forward that you have a vision, an organic ever-changing vision, that is compiled by the goals and the people you lead.

Website: chanevada.org

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Transcription

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00:26 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:54 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Oscar Delgado of Community Health Alliance. Oscar, Super excited to have you on the show.

01:03 – Oscar Delgado

Thanks for having me, I'm a big fan.

01:06 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, I'm a fan of all the awesome things that you're doing as well too. And of course, before we jump into that, I'm gonna read a little bit more about Oscar so you can see why I'm so much of a fan. Oscar's understanding of the power of compassionate health care began when he was a child accompanying his mom on errands around Reno and Sparks. His mom helped support her family as a housekeeper in the maternity ward of Washoe Medical Center, now it's renowned, as 1 of the handful of Spanish speakers. She was called to provide translation services for Spanish-speaking patients who were navigating a largely English-speaking hospital. They thank Oscar's mom for her assistance during these stressful times. And these moments stuck with Oscar and he's devoted his career to ensuring that all the members of his community receive caring, respectful, and helpful attention to their medical needs.

An experienced and innovative leader, Oscar serves as Chief Executive Officer of Community Health Alliance, where he works with a team of nearly 300 medical and administrative professionals who meet the needs of primarily low-income patients with 7 clinic locations as well as a mobile clinic serving the Reno sparks metropolitan area of northern Nevada. Community Health Alliance provides care to more than 25, 000 patients. Oscar provides strategic leadership to the organization works closely with other community groups as well, and ensures that the 31 million annual budget of Community Health Alliance provides top-flight health care under Oscar's leadership. The Community Health Alliance takes pride in providing health care that is equal to any in the region. And when he was named CEO in early 2019, he brought more than a decade of healthcare experience to the position.

He spearheaded outreach and development programs and improved health outcomes and underrepresented areas. He also played an important role in ensuring that multicultural communities get the word out about state-sponsored health insurance plans. He worked closely with families of children with learning physical and behavioral disabilities. And even while he worked long hours on health care issues, Oscar also served since 2012 as a member of the Reno City Council. He's been an effective advocate for quality-of-life improvements in the ward. He represents as well, too. And he's been a leader of the entire city on his zoning recreation to the pub has blossomed into a recipe Oscar never is far from t to the lessons of respect he learned from his mother and the awesome things you're even more. Are you ready to speak I AM CEO community?

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03:27 – Oscar Delgado

Let's let's do that very much.

03:29 – Gresham Harkless

Absolute and let's definitely make kind of kick everything o on a little bit, but I was a bit more on what I call your CO story. We'll let you get started with all the awesome work you're doing.

03:39 – Oscar Delgado

Yeah, thank you. Thank you again. And to start with that long bio, appreciate that so much. It just has me reflecting and reminiscing about all the time I spent here in the Reno-Sparks area. I've been so blessed to be in such a great community here. You know both my parents came migrated from Mexico back in the late 60s. And so I have 3 brothers, all of us raised here in the city of Sparses a suburb of the city arena, but very much like all immigrant stories, they worked hard extremely hard for a better future. Along those lines, working hard and sacrificing For them, what I learned early from them was the need to make sure that you served, that you helped. If there was somebody alongside you that needed a little bit of help, you would take them along, you would try and explain to them what the processes are, and how to seek help to make sure that they're successful. And that was something my dad and my mom shared with me early on. Other people's successes are our successes, not only for us, but for our neighborhood, for our community, and everyone.

And so that's just been kind of the journey of my life. And at any which time I could, I was always about serving. I was helping people. And just the joy when you're able to see someone because I saw my mom's face light up and her smile and people would go and seek her out and say, thank you, Maria. Thank you for explaining and having that conversation with me and my doctor, because it was just so stressful and now we're better for it. And that's really just led me to being able to be a public servant, Whether it's in government as a city council member or just in these leadership positions in health care to be an advocate to ask the questions and an appropriate matter to say, why are we not getting the health care that we all deserve? And how do we get past some of these barriers? Ultimately we all want the same thing to be healthy, safe, and enjoy the comforts of all of our hard work.

05:37 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely loving it, you know, appreciate, you know, that's your story. And I think so many times I love that you said the need to serve. And I think so many times we could think that we want to serve, we may serve, and just all those words we put in that need to serve is really powerful to me because as you said so well, it's not just for sometimes the people that we're directly helping, it creates that domino effect amongst communities, amongst the people within the communities of families and generational, as we've ever heard, you know, from you and your story. And we can definitely realize that it's not just something you want to do. It's not just something you quote-unquote should do. It's a necessary thing that we need within societies, especially to continue to kind of, see those improvements and see the change that we want to see happen it's I hear all the smallest ripple effects in these transformative times.

06:19 – Oscar Delgado

School yesterday we were an Oscar and said, you know, for doing this. And I was like, you know, my focus was broader and global in terms of how we're able to go out and bring our medical units over to go provide our free physicals for kids and do the school vaccines get going. So like, you know, we had so many issues previously, but you guys were able to go. It was very thoughtful and done. And because of that, we were able to knock out everything. Our kids went to school healthy and safe. And you guys had all these other services I had no idea about. And that hits you in the heart. It hits you in the heart. It's not just about the soft things where you kind of see something on media, you say, come and get this. It's those meaningful conversations that you have with the community.

07:13 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. So I know I read a little bit and you touched on a little bit too on how you serve the clients and the people in the community. Could you take us through a little bit more on what that looks like and how you're making that impact there?

07:23 – Oscar Delgado

Yeah, you know, as an FQHC, which is the Community Health Alliance, it's a federally qualified health center. And FQHCs, for those that are listening, are something that was created back in the 60s as a way of a war against poverty. And so it was a way to get access into communities of need, where you had those deserts, those access issues, and in terms of medical services. And so what we really seek out to do and the best way we can is to make sure that we go into those communities that are underserved. In addition to that is learning from the communities about what types of programs they need and how can we efficiently and effectively and more than anything make sure that they're quality services when we go in there. So what Community Health Alliance does is we provide primary care. We do dental, we do behavioral health, and we also have a food prescription program. We have pharmacies. In addition to some of those, we have a WIC program which is for women, infants, and children.

We work with the state of Nevada. We're able to go out and make sure we're able to get people in and make sure that they're eligible right on the spot. We also work with them in terms of navigation, trying to figure out what's this craziness about insurance and what that means to me or how I make sure I get the most appropriate 1 for the most bang for the buck that we can do. In addition to making sure that we reflect the community that we are trying to support. How the nearly 300 team members that I have here at Community Health Alliance 70% of them are bilingual. And so it really helps to have individuals that are bilingual from the front office to the back of the office. And in addition to that, to our providers.

It eases the, sometimes the discomfort, the stressors when you go in talking about your healthcare, because we all know that could get very complicated and that's very personal. And you may want to talk and have that conversation with your mother tongue. In addition to that, we just want to represent the community as best we can and mirror the community as best we can So when people go into our health centers, they feel like they're at home. And that's something we've been striving to do, which I'm proud of my team, we've been able to accomplish. Hopefully, by the end of next month, we'll be serving close to 26, 000 patients and growing. And it's pretty exciting because people are seeking us out, trying to figure out how you do what you do. Again, it all comes down to just being thoughtful, being respectful, and listening to the community members about what is it that you were looking for and how we fill that need.

09:47 – Gresham Harkless

I definitely appreciate that. And I almost wonder, like, I know you touched on this a little bit. I was going to ask you a little bit for your secret sauce. And it could be for the organization yourself personally or a combination of both. But it almost feels like you, for lack of a better term, meet people where they are, whether we're talking about, you know, serving them or as you talked about being bilingual, just all those things that really meet people where they are is to make sure that at the end of the day, they have a really great experience and you are really kind of, you know, hammering home that need to serve.

10:13 – Oscar Delgado

Yeah, you know, 1 of the great things too about NFQHC is that over 50% of my board, governing board, my bosses have to be patient. They're patients. And so to know that we are serving them and they come back to me and say, hey, you know, this is what I'm thinking about and really taking those questions to heart and saying, how do we better serve or answer that question is something that is really part of my sauce of saying, how do you make sure you stay connected? How do you stay grounded? How do you make sure you don't Now all of a sudden you're disconnected from who you're best serving and why you're doing what you're doing.

For me, it's always important to stay grounded and stay humble and ask those questions surrounding yourself with really what's the why and really enjoying that. It's a passion, right? It's not forced. And so for me, it's going into a neighborhood, going to a local restaurant and having conversations and making sure that people, it's not something that I'm just being reactive to social media trend or hashtag, right? It's saying, what are the meaningful pieces that I can take away from this and not ever forget why I do what I do? And that's really just been the heart of everything I've ever done. My secret is to do what you wanna do and give your heart to it and you won't ever go wrong.

11:33 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. I love that you said the word heart and it really resonated with me. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

11:46 – Oscar Delgado

You know for me it's I read a lot, I read tons, right? I just constantly consciously always reading white papers and reading your latest you know health care executive articles. But for me, my biggest hack is actually surrounding myself with people who are not in the healthcare realm. It's surrounding myself with people that are, whether they're colleagues, friends, or just people that I've been able to really respect in terms of what they've been able to accomplish is finding and surrounding yourself with people that are gonna be honest with you. That is gonna be honest, gonna be frank, and going to also be willing to motivate and push you. And it is so important to have that balance of people that surround you surround yourself with.

12:34 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. That's when you start to have those mastermind conversations. You have that iron sharpening iron. So what would you consider to be a CEO nugget, which is a little bit more word of wisdom or piece of advice is something I like to say. You might tell your younger business self if you were to hop into a time machine or potentially tell a client as well.

12:51 – Oscar Delgado

Yeah. You know, for me, it's, it's kind of going back on what I just shared is, get to get out of your comfort zones, get out of your silos. You know, make yourself get comfortable. The idea you're going to be uncomfortable for quite some time. And that's just being able to wake up in the morning and go like, oh man, you know, this is going to be nerve-wracking, but it's going to be healthy. It's a healthy thing. It's a good thing. You know, attend meetings for the sake of attending them because you may be able to grab some jargon, some word jargon that you're kind of, what does that mean or look like?

And that's okay, you know, to go in, walking out and saying, I had no idea what that was. It just went over my head, but I guarantee you, go back a second or third time, things are gonna start to click. I'm successful because of who raised me and who was around me and that was a part of my life. And if you're able to go out there and just kill it as a big tech guy or as a CEO and make tons of money, you'll be successful. God bless you. I'm grateful for that. But always come back around and make sure you give back. You'd be a part of where you're from and never forget.

14:01 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. So I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So ask her what does being a CEO mean to you?

14:12 – Oscar Delgado

It's bringing forward an understanding that you have a vision that's not set in concrete, but it's an organic, ever-changing vision that is compiled by your goals and the people you lead. It's really led by somebody as a CEO, as a leader to fulfill what that ultimate vision is that's been compiled by everyone around you. That's in a nutshell, that's what a CEO is to me. It's not 1 person at the top of the hierarchy or the top of our organizational chart. The way I see my CEO position is I am right in the middle with everyone else. I've just been lucky enough to have ultimately had the last say on how things kind of play out but it's never done individually. It's never done on my own. It's always a team effort and it's always a vision of saying why are we here and why are we doing it and everyone's a part of it.

15:07 – Gresham Harkless

I love it. So Oscar, truly appreciate that definition. Of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I wanted to do now is pass you the mic so to speak just to see if there is additional that you can do and of course how best pe view, it and find out about all they are working on.

15:23 – Oscar Delgado

Ultimately the biggest pieces. We all be a better community is a b all advance each other and motivate each other. The opportunity. Everybody pushes each other. Leave yourself with is during your journeys, take somebody along with you. Take somebody along with you. There's nothing worse than us living in a bucket full of crabs where you're pulling each other down. Let's flip that around. Let's pull each other up. And again, ultimately look in the mirror and say we're all better for it.

15:57 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. I truly appreciate that. We're going to have the information and everything in the show notes as well too, so that people can follow up with you, and find out about all the awesome things your team is working on. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:08 – Oscar Delgado

Thanks, Gresham. I appreciate you, brother.

16:11 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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