Becker's Hospital Review

7 CEO / STRATEGY Texas Health: 'Strengthening capabilities in the marketplace' Arlington, Texas-based Texas Health Resources has pursued capability-based partnerships for years. CEO Barclay Berdan said the system has repeatedly been approached by organizations interested in entering the Dallas-Fort Worth market but has chosen not to pursue those opportunities. "We feel like in all those cases so far that those would be dilutive to us, and have chosen not to pursue any of those opportunities," Mr. Berdan said. e system's board has continued to direct Texas Health to focus its growth within North Texas, where it is the market leader. Mr. Berdan said he is skeptical about the scale economies that can result from large mergers and acquisitions and has favored partnerships that add specific capabilities. "If you look at our partnerships from the early days on, they've been about capabilities. And I think that's where we've concentrated for the most part," he said. Texas Health has built roughly 35 ASCs in North Texas with SCA and developed imaging centers with Envision Imaging. It also operates a clinically integrated network with Dallas-based UT Southwestern Medical Center, giving the system access to research, education and quaternary services. "We did those [partnerships] because the companies we've partnered with are better than we are at doing those specific things," Mr. Berdan said. e system also took a deliberate approach to where it placed imaging centers. "e first ones I put in place were not next to my hospitals; they were next to my competitors' hospitals," he said. e system's newest partnership is with PT Solutions. Texas Health has three physical therapy sites open and is looking to add two more as it expands outpatient therapy beyond its hospital locations. "So that's essentially been our approach to partnerships. It's more really about expanding and strengthening capabilities in the marketplace than it is about gaining ground in geography," Mr. Berdan said. n Why a hospital president is turning rivals into partners By Laura Dyrda E mily Moorhead, president of the Macomb market at Detroit-based Henry Ford Health, spent her first year building a foundation — strengthening quality metrics, deepening physician partnerships and improving financial performance. The growth question she's now putting to her leadership team doesn't start with service lines or market share. She knows the Macomb market can't serve every community need on its own, and trying to is a mistake. "In many cases, our communities need more access, more coordination, more creativity, not necessarily more duplication," Ms. Moorhead said during a recent "Becker's Healthcare Podcast" interview. "Sometimes that greatest impact can come through collaboration." That means approaching organizations historically called competitors differently — a shift that an increasing number of health system leaders are weighing as financial pressures and access gaps make collaboration more practical than competition. The case for collaboration isn't theoretical. Mr. Moorhead first year applied it concretely. The Macomb community has substantial resources through nonprofits, the public health department and the local mental health authority — capacity that goes underutilized when patients can't find it and health systems aren't actively connecting them to it. "In my first year here, I've really been pleasantly surprised by how many resources this community has through nonprofits, through [the] public health department, through the mental health authority," she said. "Those are the kinds of partnerships that I'm looking to enhance and make sure that that coordination piece is there. Because if the average person doesn't know they're there, and we're not helping them access that, then those resources are going to waste and they're not being utilized appropriately." The reorientation extends to where care should happen at all. Ms. Moorhead is prioritizing site-of-care navigation, steering patients toward urgent care, primary care or freestanding emergency departments rather than hospital emergency departments when the situation doesn't require it. She is also focused on advancing minimally invasive procedures and precision medicine models that improve recovery times and reduce unnecessary inpatient stays. "I think our greatest opportunity is really to redefine what growth even means," Ms. Moorhead said. "I'm challenging our leadership team that we have to look beyond traditional measures of growth and start asking some deeper questions around where is the disease prevalence increasing, where are access issues creating delays or gaps in care, and where can we start partnering with others to better serve the community." The long-term bet is that organizations willing to collaborate on access — sharing care with nonprofits, public health agencies and former competitors — will ultimately serve communities more effectively than those that try to capture every patient. "It has to be centered on helping patients receive the right care at the right place at the right time," she said. "It really requires us to think differently about organizations we've historically called competitors." n

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