Savvy Health Systems Focus on the Basics to Achieve Higher Goals By Taking “Systemness” to the Next Level

We just published the second in a series of articles that I’ve co-authored with Dave Johnson, CEO of 4sight Health. The article examines systemness and how intra-company logisitics facilitates the success of healthcare organizations to become “one entity.” Below is an excerpt from the article, and you can click here to read the full article.

Football is a “system” sport. Offense, defense and special teams function as distinct units with their own coaches, schemes and measures of success. But teams that win the Super Bowl bring those distinct units together to operate as one entity, a winning team.

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How to Overcome Major Obstacles and End Up Better and Stronger

One Louisiana health system’s journey

Over the past several weeks, we have seen a number of natural disasters in the US. Could your organization survive an unprecedented natural disaster, like Hurricane Katrina, and eventually turn that into something positive? That’s what the Advisory Board’s “Lessons from the C-Suite” asked of Warner Thomas, president and CEO of Ochsner Health System, Louisiana’s largest health system.

Immediately following the storm, Thomas says that Ochsner and its board realized that to even maintain operations they had to think through how to get evacuated staff back into the city to relieve staff that was onsite during and following the storm. Beyond those immediate logistics, Thomas says their organization had another team that worked on their “go-forward” strategy, which included outreach to physicians to see if they were returning to the city and if they needed a place to practice. Ultimately, Thomas says that the devastation of the hurricane strengthened both Ochsner’s culture and resolve to restore and expand healthcare in New Orleans and the region.

in Blog / Care Coordination / Consolidation / Future Growth / Streamlining 0 comments

Supply Chain: The surprising—or maybe not so-surprising—link to customer satisfaction

According to recent research from Gartner, only 27% of companies believe they offer superior service to their competitors, even though improving the customer experience is a priority for many CEOs. So where are CEOs looking for improved customer service?

The supply chain.

“The supply chain organization typically plays a secondary role to marketing in driving customer experience strategy,” according to Gartner research director Lisa Callinan. And while marketing certainly has a leading role, it is one that doesn’t supersede substance. The supply chain is all about substance, which is leading to change in forward-thinking organizations, “because the supply chain is uniquely placed to identify customers’ needs and drive better customer experiences,” Callinan continued.

in Blog / Improving Patient Care / Patient Loyalty / Supply Chain 0 comments

Take a Moonshot and Make a Giant Leap for Healthcare

This past July, The Health Management Academy gathered many leaders from within and outside of our industry for a summit that probed “CEO Leadership in an Age of Disruption.” There were many heavy-hitters in attendance, but in particular, I thought the discussion of Google’s Eric “Astro” Teller was particularly interesting.

Teller’s official title at Google X, the company’s research and development lab, is “Captain of Moonshots.” And if that’s not a disruptive title, I’m not sure what is. (It should be noted that renowned author Thomas Friedman discussed Teller in his opening remarks entitled “Thriving in an Age of Accelerations.” Teller himself was not present.)

in Blog / Disruption / Future of Healthcare 0 comments

Elements of Successful Outsourcing

Has it ever occurred to you to equate outsourcing with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? It had not occurred to me either until I read an excellent post by Kate Vitasek, architect of the “Vested Business Model” who is also a professor at the University of Tennessee.

Abraham Maslow, the founder of humanistic psychology, defined the hierarchy of needs something like this: human beings are motivated by unsatisfied needs and certain lower needs must be satisfied before higher needs can be addressed. The hierarchy of needs pyramid starts with physiological needs at the base, then moves up to safety needs, social needs and esteem needs. The fulfillment of those needs is what leads to self-actualization.

Is your outsourcing relationship self-actualized?

In a nutshell, here is Vitasek’s comparison to outsourcing.

in Blog / Future of Healthcare / Outsourcing / Vested Outsourcing 2 comments

Hats off to our MedSpeed summer interns!

By Angie Gray, Vice President of Human Resources, MedSpeed

This week, six college students from across the country successfully completed MedSpeed operations and marketing internships at six of our different offices. Each year, the MedSpeed team looks forward to hosting these individuals, who always infuse our business with fresh perspective and innovative ideas. We would like to thank them for their hard work, commitment and enthusiasm.

As the interns wrapped up this week, we were pleased to welcome them to our home office to report on their experiences. They brought several ideas forward related to efficiency, process refinement and strategy. They also shared how their assigned tasks helped prepare them for their future careers.

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Supply Chain Is All About Value

A blog post by the chairperson of the American Council of Sourcing and Procurement Executive poses a very interesting idea. That the job of the chief procurement officer has changed so much over the past few years that the title is no longer accurate. Most who conduct this job today do far more than source, buy and manage the supply chain.

As a company that works closely with those involved in supply chain, we know firsthand that supply chain touches every area within an organization. As a result, supply chain has the direct ability to create value across all areas of an organization.

in Blog / Supply Chain / Value 0 comments

You Can’t Manage What You Can’t Measure

According to the 2017 HealthLeaders Media Cost and Revenue Strategies Survey, healthcare executives who embrace determining the true cost of providing care at their organizations find themselves in a better position to offer transparency, which they see as a competitive differentiator.

One of the largest obstacles to revenue growth is our industry’s inability to determine the true cost of care delivery. The HealthLeaders’ survey bears this out. Respondents say that the biggest barrier to achieving sustainable cost reductions is the lack of data on the true cost of care (58%).

This lack of data/insight is something we’ve seen in our own work with organizations on the intra-company logistics front. We get it. The healthcare finance system is not designed to calculate transportation costs. The result: most organizations don’t know the true cost of transporting items throughout their system. Lacking that measurement means they have no way of knowing how to manage those costs or improve their operations.

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Honored by EY as Entrepreneur Of The Year®, Midwest

On June 21, 2017, I was honored to accept EY’s prestigious Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2017 Midwest Award on behalf of all MedSpeeders.

The competition has been around for 31 years and is one of the most significant, if not the most significant, competitions recognizing such areas as innovation, initiative, growth and culture. Some truly incredible companies have received the same award we did last night.

in Blog / In the news 1 comments

The Importance of the Supply Chain and Healthcare’s Quadruple Aim

As healthcare continues to march towards value-based care the importance of an efficient healthcare supply chain grows. Not too long ago, the supply chain was all too-often viewed as a transactional process. We at MedSpeed know that the transactional view of the supply was shortsighted. A recent article in Becker’s Hospital Review confirms that the supply chain “is [now] considered a core competency for hospitals to reduce waste and lower costs, while supporting patient care initiatives.”

Supply chain and supply chain leaders are now included in C-suite discussions, and for good reason: Reducing inefficiencies in the supply chain helps organizations focus more on patient care.

According to Peter Mallow, PhD, program director of health economics, market access and reimbursement for Cardinal Health, supply chain leaders have evolved into enablers with a greater focus on patient experience because instead of simply moving things from A to B, supply chain is looking to ensure that they’re improving—not adding complexity to—the job of clinicians.

in Blog / Deliver Better Care / Quadruple Aim / Supply Chain Management / Triple Aim 0 comments