Lean into strategies that create success
It is easy to reflect on the current state of U.S. healthcare and focus on the doom and gloom. The past several years have been extraordinary, and headlines tend to focus on the negatives: labor and non-labor operating costs are significantly increasing; workforce turnover, burnout and attrition are prioritized concerns for nearly every hospital executive; and extended lengths of stay are compromising the financial outlooks of even the best run organizations. There is no doubt even the most agile health system needs to focus on the short-term as revenue, cash and stability have become strategic imperatives. Instead of reacting to these semi-endemic realities, however, there are multiple pathways to successfully lean into the current market situation. In this interview, Mark O'Connor, Chief Growth Officer at Surgical Directions, outlines lean-in strategies hospital executives can use to create immediate returns.
What does a lean-in strategy look like for the enterprise?
MO: Hospitals and health systems regularly confuse themselves as departments and service lines. Although administrative, financial, human resourcing, and other attributes of an organization align to these meta-structures, hospitals and health systems are actually ecosystems instead of binary siloes. Value is too often focused on a limited P&L model as opposed to understanding how an input may produce an output. A lean-in approach leverages the promise of big data and analytics, patient experience and design, as well as a set of key success factors required to engineer desired population outcomes and organizational results.
How can lean-in efforts be managed?
MO: Take steps to build this apparatus by: • Establishing a cross-functional team of doers that can see the vision and make it happen. • Provide them the creative, innovative runway necessary to establish a balanced scorecard for short-term organizational management. • Continue to have a finger on the pulse of the long-term objectives of the organization and pivot into the middleterm when you get there. • Remember the market is too dynamic to try and control year-over-year dynamics.
Where should I begin the lean-in journey?
MO: In an era where dollars are king, the most obvious location is surgical services. Due to the disproportionate impact surgical services have to an organization’s top and bottom line, there’s not only money to be gained, but there are also savings to be generated. Surgical services and, for most hospitals, a subset of surgical services like cardiology, neurology and orthopedics, can create immediate financial stabilization. Across these services, build an integrated surgical home model that captures available market, aligns nursing, peri-operative, anesthesiology, and data inputs, all while leveraging real-time performance analytics. With the right integration of people, process and technology, these surgical homes can generate immediate returns and fund the future work required to achieve those middle-and-long term objectives.
What is the secret sauce to the lean-in effort?
MO: It sounds simple, but it all comes down to people and listening. PowerPoints and spreadsheets have their place, and — on occasion — they may help, but the success of leaning in hinges on building bridges between administrative and clinical teams, minimizing the animosity that often surrounds the C-suite and boardroom, and understanding the best tactics and methods to genuinely support all the teams that comprise the care ecosystem. Leaders have a fiduciary responsibility to understand the situation in the organization by listening to their staff and the frontline clinicians, establishing transparent alignment across the vertical and horizontal continuums, and being trusted advisors to their partners and their communities. They will be honest about the current situation while also acknowledging it will take a village to achieve success in the coming years. Organizations who successfully lean-in will empower localized decision making, create integrated accountabilities and foster a true sense of culture and mission.