Becker's Hospital Review

26 Q: What are some of your health system or hospital's New Year's resolutions? And what are some of your resolutions as a CEO? Michael Dowling: As a health system, to me, an important goal is to con- tinue to stay positive and upbeat while healthcare is transitioning to the new business model. There is so much negativity today, so it's important to have an optimistic outlook and to believe we can get things done. My personal resolution is to try to have a better balance between continu- ous work and taking care of myself. This year I want to stay healthy and go to the gym more. I tell everyone they should be doing this too. David Grauer: A resolution is defined as something new and never be- fore done. Intermountain Healthcare has been focusing on essentially the same goals for a long time — we don't have dramatically new goals. At a high level, we are continuing to focus on being a model healthcare system at an affordable cost, and we make goals around how to do this. Christine Schuster: For the hospital, we are really striving to imple- ment our new vision, which is about caring for the community and working with our physician and community partners. Our other resolu- tion is to be agile and pivot in response to market changes and chang- ing regulations. It's about being more flexible with non-traditional business models. As a CEO, my resolution is to complete our strategic planning process to ensure our community has great healthcare for years to come. I call it "tak- ing care of the 100-year questions" — making sure in 100 years from now everyone will have great healthcare. Also, I want to make sure Emerson is the best place to come for care, and also to work, with a culture that sup- ports great patient care and a great place for our staff. Sandra Bruce: As always, our primary focus will remain on the com- munity and the patients we serve. At the end of the day, the success of any healthcare system is really just the sum of the tens of thousands of individual human interactions that take place every day with our pa- tients across all our ministries. In other words, we earn our stripes one patient at a time. This means easier access to care, more convenience and personal attention for every patient. We are in the service business, yet most Americans have an easier time interacting with their credit card company than their healthcare system. This needs to change. Of course, we will also be focused on the tectonic shifts in the healthcare landscape. I think of 2015 as a kind of bridge year for us. In the three years since our formation, we have constructed a new operating model, ex- panded our provider network and improved our clinical quality. 2015 is about getting all the final pieces in place to fulfill our vision of full imple- mentation of clinical integration and population health. Finally, we want to celebrate and empower our staff who are the drivers of all of this transformation. I'm inspired on a daily basis by their dedication and skill. So, my personal resolution is to make sure our team understands how much their work is appreciated and be constantly on the lookout for ways to empower them further. Q: What are some of the biggest challenges you anticipate for your hospital or health system in 2015? M.D.: I think the biggest challenge is managing the multiplicity of con- tinuous change that's going on, while at the same time preserving that which we shouldn't change. We need to get all of our employees to under- stand why change is important and necessary, and to have cultural adapt- ability. You have to be able to roll with the punches these days, and you have to be quick enough to take advantage of opportunities when they present themselves. D.G.: There are two major areas that will challenge us. We will be focusing on shared accountability, which is, in essence, Intermountain Medical Cen- ter's approach to be an accountable care organization. We are focusing on evidenced-based medicine, engaging patients and aligning costs to achieve our mission of high-quality care at an affordable cost. The other main chal- lenge is the implementation of Cerner EHR across the entire Intermountain system over the next year — all hospitals, clinics and facilities. C.S.: It's really continuing to manage the shift from inpatient to outpa- tient, and with that, innovating and staying ahead of the curve; to try new things and take some risk so we are ahead of the pack, developing alterna- tive sources of revenue. S.B.: Managing through the transformation at the right pace and balance will be important. Competition is intensifying and coming from non- traditional places. To survive and thrive, we first need to stay focused on the fundamentals, such as controlling costs, keeping a steady eye on the balance sheet and making smart investments. We will also need to look outward by developing new partnerships and networks with insures, phy- sicians, community groups and social services to better serve customers. Our goal is turn our challenges into opportunities. Q: What are you most looking forward to in the year ahead? M.D.: The opportunity to move the ball downfield. We've made a lot of progress but there is room for a lot more improvement. I like to continu- ally change; I don't like being stagnant. I look forward to delivering better healthcare, focusing more on population health and, in many ways, turn- ing the way we operate upside down without causing massive upheaval. D.G.: I'm looking forward to a successful implementation of Cerner EHR, because I really do think it will help us be more efficient and effective in serving our patients. C.S.: We have a lot to look forward to. First, we will open our new Center for Rehabilitative & Sports Therapies and our Cantu Concussion Center, a 16,000-square-foot innovative multidisciplinary rehab center. It will offer pediatric and geriatric care and all sorts of programs. We've been able to fundraise $2 million of the $3 million from the community. We've also signed an agreement with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts to implement a telemedicine pilot. We are looking toward how we can use telemedicine to better care for chronic care patients and help keep them out of the hospital. I'm also excited to continue working with our physicians to align goals between them and the hospital. Now, more than ever before, we have to be in lock-step with physicians — the future will be a 'united we stand, divided we fall' scenario. I'm looking forward to it, because the ones who benefit are our patients. S.B.: Most exciting for me will be seeing what, for decades, has been an ab- stract idea become reality. People like me, who've been in the industry for a while, have long wondered how such a transformation would work in practice. Like an old Polaroid photo that slowly comes into focus, the face of healthcare reform will become a lot sharper and more vivid by the end of 2015. That's exciting on a personal level. At Presence, we're looking forward to moving the ball forward on clinical integration and creating more access points for pa- tients and serving them in new ways. We're squarely focused on building new bridges to a whole range of constituencies including the public sector and community groups, which will be key to treating the whole patient. Q: What do you believe is the most essential factor for achieving a successful population health management program and why? M.D.: I think you have to have a good structure inside the organization and good care management. An area that's often neglected when dealing with population health is the non-medical side, like social, behavioral, lifestyle and "WE ARE IN THE SERVICE BUSINESS, YET MOST AMERICANS HAVE AN EASIER TIME INTERACTING WITH THEIR CREDIT CARD COMPANY THAN THEIR HEALTHCARE SYSTEM. THIS NEEDS TO CHANGE." — SANDRA BRUCE

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