HFMA VIEWS

Tony Chen
Director, Product Innovation, HFMA

Recently I had a conversation with my friend and fellow blogger, Nick Jacobs, who is CEO of Windber Medical Center. Given that his hospital has received dozens of accolades and media mentions (featured on the Today show, Forbes Magazine, and the WSJ), I asked him about the secret of his success. What are the one or two things that they do really well? This is what he said:
 
"My team is excellent at taking pure air, a.k.a., one of my ideas, and operationalizing it in a very brief amount of time. For example, we decide to buy a piece of equipment that is so new that most physicians in the area have no real understanding of its capabilities. The team puts together a business plan, adapts the building, begins an educational blitz of all of the physicians in a four-county area, establishes billing/coding solutions, prints appropriate forms for every aspect of registration and billing, identifies key physicians for interpretation of the diagnostics, puts together a marketing plan, hires the expert staff and launches the new modality within a period of three months after the decision was made to move forward.

"During the past year, the above description has effectively occurred with the launching of a 16 slice PET/CT; 3T-MRI; 4D ultrasound; a new minimally invasive surgery practice; sleep lab; respiratory center and a new OB/GYN practice with three new physicians. 

"Because we're under 100 beds, my team is small, but they also are very bright, highly skilled, and extremely agile. 'Hire five, work like ten, and pay like eight.'"

In other words--a great team (and great leadership). And by the way, his team has also implemented Planetree, hired a hotel manager for their patient access area, and brought in a baker to bake fresh bread on the premises twice a day.