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’s 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 Community Health Alliance provides top-flight care.

Under Oscar’s leadership, the Community Health Alliance team takes pride in providing healthcare that is the equal of 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 for 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 – 01:03
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 – 01:05
Oscar Delgado: Thanks for having me, I'm a big fan.

01:06 – 01:31
Gresham Harkless: Yes, I'm a fan of all the awesome things that you're doing as well too. And of course, before we jumped into that, I'm gonna read a little bit more about Oscar so you can see why I'm so much of a fan. And Oscar's understanding of the power of compassionate health care began when he was a child accompany 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. And experienced an 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 cares 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 being health care that is the equal of 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. And he spearheaded outreach and development programs and improved health outcomes and underrepresented areas. And he also played important roles in ensuring that multicultural communities get the word out about state sponsored health insurance plans. He worked closely with families of children with learning and 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 iss zoning recreation to pub has blossomed into a respe Oscar never is far from t to the lessons of respect he learned from his moth the awesome things you're even more. Are you ready to speak IMCEO community?

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03:27 – 03:29
Oscar Delgado: Let's let's do that very

03:29 – 03:39
Gresham Harkless: much. Absolute and let's definitely make kind of kick everything o on a little bit, but I wa 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 – 04:12
Oscar Delgado: Yeah, thank you. Thank you again. And to start for that long bio, appreciate that so much. It just has me reflecting back 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 actually 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 basically a suburb of the city arena, but very much like all immigrant stories, they worked hard extremely hard for a

04:12 – 04:13
Oscar Delgado: better future.

04:23 – 04:23
Gresham Harkless: And along those lines, working hard and sacrifice For them, what I learned early from them

04:23 – 04:49
Oscar Delgado: was the need to make sure that you served, that you helped. There was somebody alongside you that needed a little bit of help, that you would take them along, that you would try and explain to them what the processes are, how to seek help in order 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 for everyone. And so that's just been kind of the journey of my life. And

04:49 – 05:18
Oscar Delgado: 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 will 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 on government as a city council member or just in

05:18 – 05:36
Oscar Delgado: 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? Because ultimately we all want the same thing and us to be healthy, safe, and enjoying the comforts of all of our hard work.

05:37 – 06:05
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 even heard, you

06:05 – 06:18
Gresham Harkless: 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, you know, see those improvements and see the change that we want to see happen

06:19 – 06:54
Oscar Delgado: it's I hear it all the ti smallest ripple effect th is transformative times. School yesterday where a Oscar and say, you know, you 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

06:54 – 07:12
Oscar Delgado: 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 – 07:23
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 – 07:51
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

07:51 – 08:21
Oscar Delgado: 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, we also have a food prescription program. We have pharmacies. In addition to some of those, we have a WIC program which is women, infant 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

08:21 – 08:50
Oscar Delgado: 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 insurances and what does that mean to me or how do I make sure I get the most appropriate 1 for the most bang out of 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 from having individuals

08:50 – 09:18
Oscar Delgado: 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.

09:19 – 09:46
Oscar Delgado: 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 do you do what you do. And again, it's 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 do we fill that need?

09:47 – 10:08
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 like 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

10:08 – 10:13
Gresham Harkless: a really great experience and you are really kind of, you know, hammering home that need to serve.

10:13 – 10:44
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 patients. 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

10:44 – 11:19
Oscar Delgado: 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 staying humble and asking 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's the meaningful pieces that I can take

11:19 – 11:32
Oscar Delgado: away from this and not ever forgetting why I do what I do. And that's really just been the heart of everything I've ever done. And my secret is do what you wanna do and give your heart into it and you won't ever go wrong.

11:33 – 11:46
Gresham Harkless: Yeah, absolutely. I love that you said that 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 – 12:23
Oscar Delgado: You know for me it's I read a lot, I read tons right. I just I'm 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 that are not in the health care 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 people that are gonna be honest with you. That are gonna be honest, gonna

12:23 – 12:34
Oscar Delgado: be frank, and going to also be willing to motivate and push you. And those are so important to have that balance of people that surround that you surround yourself with.

12:34 – 12:51
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 – 13:23
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

13:23 – 13:50
Oscar Delgado: 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

13:50 – 14:00
Oscar Delgado: 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 – 14:12
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 – 14:49
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 a 1 person at the top of the hierarchy or the top of our organizational chart. The way I see my CEO position is I have right in the middle with

14:49 – 15:07
Oscar Delgado: everyone else. I've just been lucky enough to have ultimately have 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 – 15:23
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 additional that you can l and of course how best pe view, find about all the are working on.

15:23 – 15:56
Oscar Delgado: Ultimately the biggest pieces. We al a better community is a b all advance each other an and motivate each other. The opportunity. Everybody push each other. Leave you 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 – 16:08
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 – 16:10
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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