Physician Strategy News: March '08
Physician Needs Analysis Case Study
Community Hospital was acquired by a regional health system, with the objective of stabilizing operations and improving access to capital. The regional system immediately initiated a strategic planning process to define Community's strategy for serving the community and growing its profitable volume. As that process progressed it became clear that physician recruitment would be a core element of the strategy. As a stand alone facility, Community had not focused on that imperative.
After a series of planning meetings, the legal counsel for the regional system realized that Community did not have a physician manpower plan that would pass muster if challenged. The CEO of Community also realized the hospital lacked meaningful data to support their physician recruitment decisions. While the management team, board, and medical staff had discussions about specialties they felt the hospital should recruit, there was no rigorous community needs assessment data o serve as the foundation for a physician recruitment plan.
This realization created three problems: First, many of the strategic initiatives would be stalled until the physician needs analysis was completed. Second, the management team had no time to devote to the issue as they were overwhelmed by the challenges related to the acquisition and a variety of strategic imperatives. Finally, the development of the plan by an outside firm would tear one more hole in Community's budget.
When the CEO of Community Hospital called Healthcare Strategy Group and explained the hospital's need, we were able to provide a reasonable solution. Our Physician Needs Analysis provides a relatively fast answer (6 weeks), based on a commitment from the hospital to respond to our requests in a timely basis. It requires the hospital staff do minimal work, simply provide us the data and work with physicians to encourage their completion of the online physician opinion survey. And it was relatively inexpensive, at $12,750 plus the cost of inventory development, which was $1,300 in this case.
For that, Community Hospital got an efficient, defensible, and affordable solution to physician needs planning. The approach utilized the basic methodology Healthcare Strategy Group applies in much more complicated manpower planning engagements, and reflects our commitment to improve our processes and services to deliver the value our clients require.
Please contact Belinda Muench at (502) 814-1184 or Leslie Robinson-Smith at (502) 814-1190 for more information on the Physician Needs Analysis.
