Case Studies: Problems Solved

Hospital Affiliation with a System

Many independent community hospitals are asking if they can survive in the future as a standalone hospital. MedTrend has worked with multiple community hospital boards and management teams to bring a robust process to evaluate hospital affiliation. Our process involves first understanding and testing the compelling reasons, or “whys”, of any potential affiliation. If an affiliation is the best strategy, we lead teams through a rigorous approach to creating measurable objectives, criteria for evaluation, and methods for assessing system partnerships. MedTrend has been involved in over a dozen examples, some leading to system affiliation, some clearly showing that affiliation wasn’t the right solution.

Multi-system Partnership Model

In some markets, partnering with just one system can’t work. MedTrend had the opportunity to lead a process with a community hospital to define a potential partnership model that included multiple partners. An evaluation of the local market, understanding referral patterns and patient preferences, current market dynamics and share, and understanding community expectations through market research were all critical to developing a model that could include participation by multiple players in the market.

Medical Staff Re-engaged in Planning

A small community hospital based in Minnesota knew it needed to develop a new strategic plan that would allow it to capitalize on growth in its market. But they had a history of having little to no involvement from their physician stakeholders, and without them, little could be implemented. Maureen Swan brought a robust planning process that included interviews with all medical staff, a statistically valid community phone survey, and analysis of market demographics, market share and future healthcare demand projections. She developed and led a planning retreat with the medical staff that focused on key data conclusions and provided multiple opportunities for their input. The result: the hospital developed a shared vision and set of strategies with ownership by the physicians and the physicians now anticipate and ask about the annual retreat .

Collaborative Service Line Development Among Traditional Competitors

A large Midwestern University wanted to expand their presence in surgical services and had an opportunity to explore a collaboration with a local community based surgical group. But given the history of competition, care was required in the approach. Maureen developed a process designed to receive frank input from all surgeons and then bring them together in multiple events to develop a shared understanding of needs, where they shared a common vision, and identify critical success factors for collaboration. The result: the groups achieved ownership in a collaboration model that both sides felt good about.

Regional Service Line Growth for a Community Hospital

A 100+ bed community hospital was interested in expanding its market share and presence through the development of regional centers of excellence. MedTrend provided analytics to understand the market opportunity, and created a criteria based model to evaluate the hospital's potential for successful execution. The work resulted in clarity around which product lines offered the best market opportunity, and a plan of operational implementation.

Academic Medical Center Strategy

Academic Medical Centers often struggle to focus the work of their triple mission of research, teaching, and clinical care. MedTrend has experience working in what can often complex, challenging academic settings . Working with departments that include cardiology, orthopedics, women’s health, pediatrics, and radiology, MedTrend helped develop focused strategic plans. Ensuring a collaborative process with faculty, using data driven decision making, and driving execution through linkage to a measurable scorecard , accountability systems, and even physician compensation structures resulted in planning that created notable change in the department’s success.

Bio-materials Company Re-positioning for Bundled Payment and ACOs

One bio-materials company had a strong history of rigorous planning, but they looked to MedTrend to bring fresh knowledge on hospital industry trends and help broaden the participation and depth of thinking regarding their own position going forward. MedTrend used Michael Porter’s Five Forces Model to drive deeper understanding of the critical issues they were facing, and then helped update their strategy given their new insight.

Health Policy Solutions For A Hospital Association

A hospital association board needed to engage it members in a new way to create shared ownership for its policy strategies. Maureen used a process developed by Shell Oil called “scenario planning” to develop four plausible but divergent future scenarios that could face the association’s hospital members.  A retreat allowed the board trustees to engage in a deeper level of conversation than in the past and to identify the critical “must do” strategies for the association. The result: Deeper engagement from competing members and clarity of focused priorities for the association staff.

Community Hospital Evaluation of Change to 501c3

A regional community hospital with government ownership needed to evaluate it's ability to thrive in a market with growing consolidation and physician integration. MedTrend led a process to engage Trustees in evaluating their own model and understanding pro's and con's of 501c3 status.