Thriving in the New Health Care Economy
How Hospitals and Health Systems Can Pivot Their Operating Models for Sustainability
Health system executives have described it perfectly. There isn’t a more succinct description of the new health care economy that emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic. Because things are different, and nearly everything in this new economy is different.
What’s not different, though, is how some hospitals and health systems operate. As a result, many organizations are struggling to achieve clinical, financial and operational efficiency. What they need is a new operating model — one that matches and overcomes the material changes happening in their markets. Traditional, marginal responses to those material changes won’t cut it anymore.
This Trailblazers report from the American Hospital Association’s Market Scan outlines the key tenets and characteristics of that new operating model and details how two health systems are using that model to respond sustainably to the material market forces that are permanently changing their respective health care economies.
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How Hospitals and Health Systems Can Pivot Their Operating Models for Sustainability
Think of the new operating model as a new way to run a hospital or health system. The model combines discipline, rapid improvements, digital technologies and operations capabilities in a well-integrated, well-sequenced way to achieve sustainable improvements in business, consumer experience and cost. The new operating model translates strategy into structure. It dictates where and how the critical work gets done across a hospital or health system. It defines the hospital or health system as a whole, not as individual parts.
Case Study: Main Line Health
The End of Seasonality
Under President and CEO Jack Lynch III, Barbara Wadsworth, Main Line’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, and Director of Performance Excellence Martha Rudi, Main Line pivoted its operating model. The new model focuses on what Rudi calls “dynamic and innovative” solutions to Main Line’s capacity challenges as well as other material market changes like staffing shortages and an aging patient population.
Case Study: SSM Health
Whiteboarding the Future State
SSM Health once ran under a traditional command-and-control management style. Mandatory directives came from the top down. It worked. But as market changes turned material from marginal, the system needed to evolve to continue fulfilling its mission as a Catholic health system. Here is how the health system evolved.
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Thriving in the New Health Care Economy
