Client profile: Full service community hospital in a suburban location in a highly competitive Northeastern market.
Project type: Comprehensive strategic planning engagement with strong process component involving trustees and approximately 125 physicians.
Challenges: Assist management in separating strategic issues from tactics and operations. Help the board stay focused at a governance level and educate trustees on meeting community needs rather than catering to the self interest of physicians opposing recruitment.
DS&A's solutions and results: DS&A coordinated and facilitated the development of a strategic plan that included the following: development of a clinical plan which identified five service line priorities and the resources required to support them; the need for a new $250 million replacement hospital; an approach to recruiting 100 new/replacement physicians over a 10 year period; identification of sources and uses of capital to support identified strategic initiatives while maintaining a strong balance sheet and meeting routine capital needs.
The plan was endorsed by the Medical Executive Committee and greeted with acclaim by the Board of Trustees, which was composed of some "tough graders," including senior executives from major corporations, the managing partner of an international management consulting firm a professor from a well-known graduate school of business and a professor of health policy.