Trying to launch a successful cardiology program without engaging physicians in the development process is a recipe for failure, says Marybeth Antone.
Ms. Antone is the associate vice president of operations at Silver Cross Hospital in New Lenox, Ill. She recently joined the Becker's Healthcare cardiology podcast to discuss her role in launching heart care services at several hospitals, where she sees the field headed and more.
Here is an excerpt from the podcast. Click here to download the full episode.
Editor's note: This response was lightly edited for length and clarity.
Question: What's a critical part of getting a successful cardiology program off the ground?
I've been very fortunate to work in organizations that really see our physicians as true partners. I think a hospital that doesn't engage their physicians in the development of these programs is doing themselves a disservice because quite frankly, if you get buy-in from the [doctors] on the front end, you're more likely to have a successful program because their wants, needs and desires will be heard on the front end. Sometimes it's hard … working with physicians: They're strong-willed, they're entrepreneurs just by the very nature of the kind of businesses that they go into; running their own practices and kind of being their own bosses. But they're also very talented individuals that without bringing the patients to your facility, you're simply just not going to grow.
I most definitely have that here at Silver Cross where we are an independent hospital. We're not a part of a large system. Our medical staff are truly our partners. And I will say that any success we've had here in this organization is because we have engaged the physicians. Now, that's not to say that we always do things the way the physicians want to do it, but I think just by bringing them to the table on the front end and kind of level setting to say, 'You're the clinician. You know what it takes to provide really good care to patients,' and we're the experts on the process of how that happens; how we bring in the right equipment, how we make sure that we do it in a financially responsible manner, how do we code it and get it paid for.
The other piece of that success is really having talented staff to be able to recruit individuals who are going to buy into the concept of growth, not just the status quo. That's the one thing I will say here at Silver Cross Hospital, we have a very dynamic executive team and a really engaged board of directors. There's a lot of transparency around how we develop these programs and how we bring people on board. And it's interesting that some of the physicians we work with will say, "Well [at] another hospital, you couldn't get in to see the president, or you couldn't speak to the highest level executive over in that area." Here, it's completely different. There's a lot of transparency and there's a lot of 'We welcome your opinion. We want to know what you're thinking on how we can do this the best,' because quite frankly, at the end of the day, we're partners in providing this care to our community.