When seven rural hospitals decided to pursue federal rural health transformation funding together, the first step was getting rivals into the same room.
“We left all our competition at the door, and in the room, we began to brainstorm: How can we make this a better place for the people we serve?” David Walker, CEO of George E. Weems Memorial Hospital, a critical access hospital in Apalachicola, Fla., said during a Nov. 4 panel at Becker’s CEO + CFO Roundtable.
The hospitals are not merging; they are forming a regional network. And the relationships came well before the money, Mr. Walker said.
“We built that CEO network by just fellowshipping and talking with each other, and came to the realization that we want to serve our communities, and we’re stronger together than apart,” he said.
Because each community needs different services, the group plays to each hospital’s strengths. Some members, he said, were real rivals: “But we put that aside and said, how can we leverage resources for the environment we serve?”
For R. Kyle Kramer, CEO of Day Kimball Healthcare, a rural health system in Putnam, Conn., the challenge has been finding the right partner. Day Kimball is working to affiliate with Farmington-based UConn Health.
“This UConn opportunity is not our first trip down the aisle,” Mr. Kramer said. “Most people say once bitten, twice shy; we’re bitten, five or six times shy.”
Earlier efforts with Hartford (Conn.) HealthCare, Yale and Andover, Mass.-based Covenant Health did not yield results. Neither did talks with Prospect Medical Holdings that predated his arrival.
Staying independent is not sustainable, he said. Day Kimball’s payer mix is 70% to 75% federal, much of it Medicaid, and HR 1 has added turbulence. The system lacks leverage on supplies and contracts.
Mr. Kramer called his peer network’s role in the UConn decision “immense.” He drew on mentors and relationships from Yale New Haven (Conn.) Health, Radnor, Pa.-based Main Line Health, Hershey, Pa.-based Penn State Health and Austin-based University of Texas.
“Talking with others who have experience taking on and engaging other hospitals is a really sound way to approach things,” he said.
He said the aim is not “to be everything to the market” but to “build bridges so our patients in Northeast Connecticut have access,” including virtual subspecialty visits with UConn specialists in Farmington.
Partnerships such as these require leaders to stop keeping their cards close. The panelists said that kind of trust is built over time but can be lost in one conversation.
Chris Clark, DO, president and CEO of Saint Vincent Hospital in Erie, Pa., and Westfield (N.Y.) Memorial Hospital and Lake Erie regional president of Pittsburgh-based Allegheny Health Network, said transparency with independent hospital CEOs in his region has paid off. A relationship with the CEO of Warren (Pa.) General Hospital, for example, led to a clinical affiliation with Allegheny.
He has also been burned. Earlier in his tenure, the CEO of a competing health system asked how Allegheny’s independent cardiac surgeons were doing. Dr. Clark answered casually. A week later, that system announced a relationship with the same surgeons.
“That burned me,” he said. “It’s something I never forgot.”
He still talks with competitors, but carefully: “There are topics that are proprietary, and clearly there’s the concept of collusion, which I don’t want to go anywhere near.”
Mr. Walker said trust is earned. Some hospitals in his group arrived with trust concerns that eased as the members shared with one another and worked together.
“There’s always an element of trust when you’re dealing with new networks,” he said. “But the bottom line is we’re trying to serve our community.”
For Mr. Kramer, building networks extends beyond fellow CEOs. Over the last six or seven years, he has spent more time in Hartford and Washington, D.C., than he ever expected, building legislative coalitions across Connecticut and working with the state’s congressional delegation. He acknowledged that trust and politicians “don’t always go in the same sentence.”
He chairs the state comptroller’s rural health cabinet and a newly created rural health committee at the Connecticut Hospital Association. And as federal money flows to rural care, he said, Day Kimball’s relationships are changing.
“The fact that rural is a real thing and that there are federal dollars behind it is building a lot more desire among other hospitals to have a relationship with little, tiny Day Kimball,” Mr. Kramer said. “That’s a good thing in a lot of ways, but it also requires a different model of navigation.”
Becker’s 3rd Annual Fall Chief Pharmacy Officer Summit is the top tier event that the people leading the future of pharmacy convene. This 3-day event is built specifically for Chief Pharmacy Officers and senior pharmacy leaders. The sessions examine the workforce, financial and clinical priorities shaping pharmacy today. Becker’s is where candid discussions flourish and new ideas thrive. Becker's 3rd Annual Fall Chief Pharmacy Officer Summit
