$30M loss to breakeven in a year: MUSC Health revives hospitals to expand

When Thomas Crawford, PhD, arrived at MUSC Health in 2015, the system had four hospitals on the Charleston peninsula. Since then, MUSC Health has grown into a 16-hospital system and they're adding three campuses in the near future.

What is driving the expansion?

"We had a simple strategic vision, which was if the best care is provided locally, we needed to get off the Charleston Peninsula and start becoming local," Dr. Crawford said during an interview with the "Becker's Healthcare Podcast." He said expansion plans have one "very, very well" because of their strategy.

"We specialize in taking hospitals that are failing financially and actually turning them around," he said, sharing a recent example of the system's success. "We are very pleased to have in our armamentarium Orangeburg Regional Medical Center as part of MUSC Health now in Orangeburg, South Carolina. The year before we acquired them, they lost $30 million. We actually had them breaking even within 12 months, and this year they are forecasted to have a profit."

Over the years, MUSC Health has built a playbook on turning around financially struggling hospitals and has become efficient at yielding results.

"We're very fortunate that the brand is well recognized in the state of South Carolina and has a lot of brand loyalty where patients want to come and be treated by our world class physicians and clinicians," said Dr. Crawford.

The MUSC Health executive team has worked with a variety of hospitals and health systems to strengthen their financials and position in the market. What's the difference between success and failure? Two words came to Dr. Crawford's mind.

"It starts with accountability and discipline," he said. "All of our divisions come to Charleston proper to our corporate headquarters, and the CEOs and their executive teams of each division are going to report out the KPIs under our six pillars."

The Charleston meeting's purpose is to hold divisional leaders accountable for meeting their KPIs and establish standards for all to follow. The central leadership team also inquires about how they can best support divisional leaders and act as resources for success.

"I personally have gone into two of our divisions and been named their interim CEO for a period of time just to help either get them back on track from a cultural standpoint, or to get them back on track from a financial standpoint," said Dr. Crawford. "But we also have a CEO that's been here for a number of years, Dr. Pat Cawley, who's a phenomenal leader, a visionary, who really has set the tone for this organization along with our president of the university, Dr. David Cole. Together, they really push us every day."

Armed with the mantra of: "We earn our positions of leadership every day," MUSC Health's executive team knows they have to produce results and work well with others to thrive.

"It's a privilege to carry that [leadership] mantle. It's not a right," said Dr. Crawford. "We need to be striving to be the very best we can be because, frankly, our patients deserve it."

In the next year, MUSC Health will continue to focus on growth amid transformation.

"As we transition from volume to value, while our margins contract, you still need more volume so that you can actually produce the margins and reinvest in our physical plan, our people, our equipment, etcetera," said Dr. Crawford. "Then if we get to value, I need a larger population, a swath of patients, so we can diversify some of our risk pools. So we are going to continue to grow. We are going to continue to earn the business and trust of the South Carolinians we serve."

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