Observations on Operations

What do baseball and healthcare finances have in common?  Well, more than you would think!  Over the past several weeks Major League ballparks in Houston and Philadelphia served as venues for hospital senior financial, operations, and physician executives to gather for Healthcare Financial Management Association round tables focusing on identifying value-enhancing opportunities in tough economic times… and a little baseball.

The site was appropriate; the healthcare profession best known with playing hardball is the CFO!  I had the good fortune to participate as a member of both discussions and to serve as a host given ARAMARK Healthcare’s sponsorship of the events. When we planned these events months ago, we had no idea that the 2008 world champion Phillies would clinch the 2009 National League East Pennant the night of our event in Philadelphia. The energy of the night was electric … both the discussion and the on-field heroics.

Many of the healthcare executives that participated identified a number of key strategies and opportunities to help add value. Here are a couple of points from both the Houston session on 9/9 and the Philadelphia session on 9/30/2009:

• The economic environment increased the value of innovation. Processes that normally would not be tried are now opportunities to improve
• A few key goals are identified, reviewed and discussed often.
• CFOs are fundamentally involved in creating metrics, setting benchmarks, encouraging best practices, and working with operations and clinicians to attain best practices.
• There is a direct correlation between the hospital reducing hospital acquired infections and the financial impact. The smaller the infection rate, the more cost effective the care delivered.
• The financial implications of linking HCAHPS scores to reimbursement create an alignment with patient satisfaction and finance goals. It is recognized that staff satisfaction is correlated with patient satisfaction.
• CFOs are part of the process of creating a positive patient experience.  By training employees to deliver personal relevant experiences to patient, patients recommend the hospital in their evaluations and are loyal to the hospital.

Overall these discussions were rich with ideas. One of the take a ways for me, besides the memory of watching my Phillies clinch the NL East Pennant, was the connection that these hospital executives are concerned with value – not just costs. Simply, there is a great deal of synergy that support service functions can bring to the equation.

If you are interested in learning more about these sessions, keep an eye on the HFMA web site as well as the HFM Journal and the magazine Leadership, where they will be covered in detail in the near future.

In the background as the stands begin to fill in Philadelphia, Michael Walsh (center), Senior VP of Finance at Abington Memorial Hospital, shares a thought with Gerald Tofani (left) Chief Financial Officer at Monmouth Medical Center and Christine Winn, VP of Administration at Paoli Hospital.

Todd Nelson (center) of the Healthcare Financial Management Association leads the discussion geared to adding value in challenging economic times. From left are Gerald Tofani, Chief Financial Officer at Monmouth Medical Center, Christine Winn, VP of Administration at Paoli Hospital, Mary Finn AVP Financial Planning Kennedy Health System, Bill Myers, CFO Montgomery County Emergency Services, Anthony Stanowski, VP Industry Relations, ARAMARK Healthcare, Martin McElroy, Principal, Acorn Medical Management and Ray Lefton, VP of Finance, Princeton Healthcare System.