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2006 Awards Winners

On Time, On Budget
2006 Top Leadership Team at a Medical Group Practice
Wichita Clinic
Wichita, KS

All healthcare construction projects may start on time and on budget, but it’s not often that they remain there. Add 160 doctors to the mix, spread them across 10 locations and more than 40 specialties, and most would expect time and money to go right out the window. But this wasn’t the case when Wichita Clinic in Wichita, KS, undertook its most ambitious expansion project ever: building a 32,000-square-foot surgery center and a 90,000-square-foot medical office building on a new 30-acre campus at a cost of $26 million. When the dust settled and the move-in began, the project was finished on time and without re-crunching any numbers.

In 2001, the group was outgrowing its two-room surgery center built in 1985. “The waiting room was like a bus terminal,” says Kimberly T. Shank, the group’s executive director. Nurses were adept at hurrying patients along to make room for the next one, and patients felt rushed. Even worse, doctors were having a difficult time scheduling cases in the limited space. Feeling the pinch from all sides, the group began to mull over the idea of expanding. Shank says the first order of business for the clinic’s leadership team was to answer the most basic of questions: “Can we afford it? Do we need it? What should we do?”

With 3 1/2 years on the team, Shank calls herself the “rookie.” Having a stable and long-tenured leadership group, she says, gives them a clear understanding of the group’s 50-year-plus history and culture while helping to establish a deep sense of trust. “The currency in leadership is relationships. We have relationships in spades at Wichita Clinic,” Shank says. “We can disagree one day and come back the next day and be friends.”

For this project, trust had to extend beyond the meeting room door and into the physicians’ individual offices—and even their wallets. One of the most challenging tasks of the entire process was convincing a large and varied group of physicians that helping to finance the most expensive build in the group’s history was truly in their best interest. After soliciting input via surveys and Q&A sessions—and getting a stamp of approval from 90 percent of the group—the board voted to move ahead.

Physician input didn’t end there, however. During the pre-planning period, doctors and staff members were consulted about the areas of the new facility they would be using, which saved money and time by keeping the number of costly construction change orders to a minimum. The leadership team met bi-weekly to keep abreast of the budget and building pace, and kept the group’s 1,200 employees updated on the progress. The clinic staff acted as project developer for the undertaking, which cut the overall project cost by 10 percent.

The group’s history in the community allowed the clinic to create effective partnerships needed to get the job done. “We have to be good stewards of the group’s finances, but we don’t just look for the lowest bid. We work to foster relationships with architects, contractors, lawyers, bankers and even local politicians,” Shank says. “We’re willing to take risks, but they’re very calculated.”

Perhaps the greatest testament to the teamwork required to launch Wichita’s new facility came just two days after the surgery center opened. No back-up surgery had been scheduled for a procedure designated for a Medicare surveyor’s review, so when a patient canceled just hours before surgery, the group was left with few options. As luck would have it, one of the group’s senior leaders was due for knee surgery later that week. With little persuasion, he stepped up to the task and had his surgery early so the operations could continue unhindered.

—Kara Olsen

The Wichita Clinic Leadership Team:
Kimberly T. Shank—Executive Director
Robert S. Kenagy, M.D.—Chief Medical Officer
Steven L. Taylor, M.D.—Immediate Past Executive Medical Officer
Jack L. Shellito, M.D.—Executive Medical Officer
Gary Bue—Director of Clinical Operations
Frank Cordon, CPA—Director of Financial Services
Ann Buess, CPA, CMA—Controller
Suzann Wright, R.N.—Director of Patient Financial Services
Laura Hill, R.N.—Director of Patient Services
Kevin E. Chiles—Director of Human Resources
John Bissell—Director of Information Services
Bob Schmidt—Building Services Manager
Kelly Isham—Purchasing Manager
Janelle Oliver, R.N., B.S.N.—Surgery Center Manager
Donna Johnson—Director of Medical Affairs
Angie Prather—Marketing Manager

Small Hospital, Big Plans
2006 Top Leadership Team at a Small Hospital
Beebe Medical Center
Lewes, DE

Coastal communities across the United States are notorious for their fluctuating populations. Persistent market instability can hinder a hospital’s year-round financial health. Such was the case in the mid-1990s for Beebe Medical Center, a 150-bed community hospital located on the Delmarva Peninsula in Lewes, Del. Seasonal volume changes made it difficult for the organization to lure and maintain employees, as well as convince physicians to reside in a highly expensive region of the state. Exacerbating the situation for Beebe was a two-hospital system with one of its clinics 30 minutes away, and a large tertiary facility located 45 minutes southwest. Both facilities had stronger reputations and more comprehensive programs, and the competition lured more than half of the residents in Beebe’s primary service area to the neighboring facilities.

To combat its lack of identity and a sometimes weak employee cohesiveness, Beebe’s leadership team began implementing systems in the late 1990s that not only added initiatives to better serve the facility, but also eliminated any existing policies that were considered detriments to the hospital. “We were working to get the right people in the right jobs so they weren’t frustrated and we weren’t frustrated with them,” says chief operating officer Rick Schaffner. The goals were aimed specifically at clinical program development, physician and employee recruitment and retention, and customer service.

Executive members developed mission objectives specific to their departments, and shouldered individual responsibility for ensuring those goals were met. According to President and CEO Jeffrey Fried, this helped maintain a consistency throughout the hospital as each leader was in some way accountable for Beebe’s overall success. “We started out by trying to develop a high performance organization,” he says.

Customer service became the foundation for Beebe’s overhaul. Senior leaders recognized that by using customer service as a backbone for a cultural shift, a newfound emphasis would be placed on both in and out-of-house clientele. The Beebe Employees Achieve More Satisfaction program was instituted as a way for senior team members to reinforce their commitments by voicing them to groups throughout the facility, spreading leadership roles far and wide. “Sometimes you lead, and sometimes you follow,” says Fried, who acknowledges that the most effective leaders are those willing to relegate power when necessary. Schaffner agrees. “Members of our team aren’t afraid to share their opinions many times over,” he explains.

Beebe’s senior team emphasizes the usefulness of transparency when revamping an organization. Goals must be communicated in a way that makes everyone on board feel like a vital contributor to the hospital’s mission. “We try to be transparent about everything we do at Beebe. We communicate with all of our staff so no one feels out of the loop,” says Fried.

Using outside expertise to measure Beebe’s success has been critical in its ability to advance, Fried says. “You can’t manage something unless you can measure it.” Beebe benchmarked with companies renowned for their excellence, such as Ritz Carlton and Baptist Hospital in Pensacola, Fla. The hospital also utilized its longstanding relationship with Delaware’s Christiania Care Health Services to strengthen clinical affiliations.

Beebe’s statistics today reflect the progress its leadership teams have made in the past decade. A Press-Ganey survey has shown percentile increases for impatient and outpatient care, emergency department and ambulatory services at anywhere from 35 percent to 65 percent. Active physician rates have more than doubled, going from 72 in 1995 to 182 today, and employee turnover rates have decreased. “Much can be accomplished if no one cares who gets the credit,” says Fried.

—Matt Rogers

The Beebe Medical Center Leadership Team:
Jeffrey M. Fried, FACHE—President and Chief Executive Officer
James W. Bartle—Chief Financial Officer, Vice President, Finance
Richard A. Schaffner, Jr.—Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer
Catherine Halen—Vice President, Human Resources
William J. Wenner, Jr., MD, JD—Vice President, Medical Affairs
Wallace E. Hudson Jr.—Vice President, Corporate Affairs
Marge White, PhD, RN—Vice President, Patient Care Services
Donna Streletzky—Vice President, Operations
Barbara P. Vugrinec—Vice President, Information Systems and Chief Information Officer

A ‘Small Fish’ Makes Big Waves
2006 Top Leadership Team at a Health Plan
ConnectiCare
Farmington, CT

Ida Schnipper, ConnectiCare’s senior vice president of operations, sums up his organization’s spot on the Connecticut managed care food chain this way: “We’re a really small fish in a big pond.” The Farmington-based plan shares territory with Goliaths like CIGNA, UnitedHealthcare’s Uniprise, and Aetna. But this David’s successful efforts to improve a poor customer service record while adjusting to a new life as a for-profit entity sets ConnectiCare’s leadership team apart from the pack.

Now in its 25th year, ConnectiCare is a member of the HIP Family of Health Plans. The company serves nearly 240,000 members and employs more than 500 people. In 2000, the organization completed a successful conversion from nonprofit status to a venture capital-backed for-profit. Along the way, an executive suite reorganization brought in several new team members. Only two people, including Schnipper, were holdovers. Though they came from different cultures, the newly minted team members rallied around the idea that private sector success would require dramatic changes in the way they did business.

ConnectiCare set new growth targets to reach customers across the state while creating an organizational culture to propel them toward the goal of becoming one of the nation’s best health plans. But several challenges stood in the way. The new senior management group was learning the for-profit ropes and working to mesh into a true team. Employees reported low commitment, and customers weren’t happy. The ConnectiCare call center fields around 28,000 calls per month, and in 2000 about 6 percent were going unanswered. “In managed care, when things are not working well upstream, the call center is the place where the rock rolls downhill,” Schnipper says.

To spark a turnaround in service, the team started with the employees. They removed the underperformers and placed a new emphasis on teamwork. “To survive, we needed to be nimble and flexible, and we needed talent,” says Schnipper. They focused on making sure new hires were right for the job and instituted a company-wide training program to ensure that every hire came in speaking the same language.

Being a team player is not an option for any employee—it’s woven into annual evaluations and performance bonuses. Thanks to a tip from an employee, the organization reinforces the team mentality by creating an environment based on the “Pike Fish Market Philosophy,” which emphasizes having fun, choosing your attitude, making the customer happy, and being there for one another. “At the end of the day, the culture is really what defines you,” says Dick Rogers, the company’s vice president of human resources.

Turning their attention to customer service, senior leaders made the decision to implement “empowerment” programs. “This allows frontline staff to right a major wrong at the point of call.” Schnipper says. “We really had to sell the idea that frontline staff should be able to make decisions and spend money.”

The structural and cultural changes have paid off. Unanswered customer service calls have dropped to less than 1 percent, and employee turnover is down from a high of around 35 percent in 1999 to around 10 percent in 2006. As the company has continued to achieve high quality and service goals, growth has followed despite the competitive market.

Now the ConnectiCare management team continually looks for new ways to raise the bar for performance, says Schnipper. “Last year’s goals aren’t this year’s.”

—Kara Olsen

The ConnectiCare Leadership Team:
Mickey Herbert—President and Chief Executive Officer
Paul A. Bluestein, M.D.—Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer
Gail Bogossian, Esq.—Vice President, General Counsel
Mark Dixon—Vice President and Chief Information Officer
Paul Philpott—Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer
Dick Rogers—Vice President, Human Resources
Ida Schnipper—Senior Vice President, Operations
Michael Wise—Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer

Leaders Before the Storm
2006 Top Leadership Team at a Large Hospital
Ochsner Health System
New Orleans, LA

Aphorisms about overcoming adversity are often overused. But when an organization is faced with a challenge unlike any it has seen before, it’s much easier to brush aside clichés and see that adversity actually does have the potential to bring out the best in people. Ochsner Health System of New Orleans faced such a challenge.

Forty-eight hours before Hurricane Katrina was forecasted to arrive in New Orleans, Ochsner’s senior leadership team implemented strategies for properly controlling what would become a seemingly endless surge of hurricane victims and recurring crises. “Calm, cool and collected leadership sets the tone,” says Warner L. Thomas, president and chief operating officer.

When the storm finally hit, Ochsner was forced to rely on generator power to support its patients. Temperatures throughout the building soared to near 100 degrees. The rising flood waters created a highly volatile living and working environment. And unlike many other neighboring facilities, Ochsner sits above sea level—which inevitably left the city’s overwhelming need for healthcare services largely on the hospital’s shoulders after floodwaters receded.

Tasks that might normally take weeks, or even months, to complete were tackled by staff members in hours. Thomas distributed water to evacuees in the streets, and patients were constantly moved from one floor to another to ensure their safety. Weekly conference calls were made to help motivate employees and discuss how to address impending challenges. And CEO Patrick J. Quinlan, MD, made helicopter rounds to survey damage and report back to the executive team. “It’s amazing how when you need to do something, you can improvise and get it done very quickly,” says Quinlan.

In the wake of the storm, Ochsner’s overall fiscal health suffered. The hospital’s primary concern was patients’ well-being, and the facility functioned for weeks without requiring any sort of compensation from anyone. Ochsner previously had been approaching an $8 million profit year; within weeks of the hurricane, the hospital estimated more than $60 million in losses for 2005. Still, the organization’s 600-plus physicians and nearly 7,000 employees pulled together and brainstormed ways to keep the hospital’s foundation sturdy. “We have 7,000 leaders at Ochsner,” says Quinlan.

The leadership of Ochsner utilizes operational methods already in place with an eye on advancing the organization as a whole—not dividing it. Thomas and Quinlan agree that this philosophy is what enabled the hospital to succeed before, during and after Hurricane Katrina. “How you lead during adversity says far more about your organization than times of success,” Thomas explains. The two executives also attribute much of Ochsner’s strength to the General Electric tools known as CAP/Work-Out, which allow senior leaders to delegate responsibility onto those most affected by a specific issue. “We’ve developed consistency based on common methods,” Quinlin says. “It’s not about individual people, but about processes and beliefs.”

Dedication to patient satisfaction and quality leadership at Ochsner continues to fuel the organization. A pre-Katrina campaign that emphasized the need for staff members to say “yes” to both patients and one another has since blossomed into a ubiquitous reminder of the Ochsner leadership spirit. Signs can be seen posted all around the hospital campus, and Ochsner’s human resources department has manufactured thousands of pins in honor of the hospital’s efforts during one of America’s worst-ever natural disasters.

—Matt Rogers

The Ochsner Health System Leadership Team:
Patrick J. Quinlan, MD—Chief Executive Officer
Warner L. Thomas—President and Chief Operating Officer
Bobby C. Brannon—Executive Vice President and Treasurer
Scott J. Posecai—Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
William W. Pinsky, MD—Executive Vice President and Academic Officer
Richard D. Guthrie, Jr., MD—Medical Director, New Orleans