Gwinnett Hospital System: No ‘I’ In Team
Hospital Systems
Written by Amanda Gaines   
Saturday, 01 December 2007
Gwinnett Hospital System: No ‘I’ In Team - Health Executive - RedCoat Publishing
Philip Wolfe outlines the partnerships that are preparing this nonprofit hospital system for a population explosion.

What attracted Philip Wolfe to Gwinnett Hospital System wasn’t just its tremendous growth potential. It also wasn’t just the strong foundation he knew would help him lead the organization from a good healthcare system to a great one. It was the sense of community support he sensed during the interview process.

Gwinnett Hospital System: No ‘I’ In Team - Health Executive - RedCoat Publishing
Philip Wolfe, President and CEO
In addition to being interviewed by the board and senior management, Wolfe was interviewed by the chairman of the county commission, the administrator of the county, and the president of the chamber of commerce. Since his appointment to president and CEO in 2006, that sense has turned into reality.

The county recently agreed to give the organization’s flagship facility, Gwinnett Medical Center, $25 million over a five-year period to help its expansion efforts succeed, and the community’s leaders, acting through the Chamber’s strategic initiative, Partnership Gwinnett, have asked how they can help recruit the 600 physicians needed to keep up with the population growth.

“I look at the partnership with the community as our best secret weapon in getting through the recruiting challenges we have so we can grow as fast as we need to,” Wolfe said. “I don’t want to diminish the fact that it will be a tremendous challenge, but it’s nice to know the community sees our success as an element of its success.”

Launching pad
As important as community support was in attracting Wolfe to the Georgia-based nonprofit healthcare system, it was not the sole reason. During his interview, he told the board the organization was on the launching pad, and someone was preparing to ignite the rocket that would take it to the next level.

“We don’t have the capacity we need, and we’re behind in terms of our facilities and services,” Wolfe said. “I looked at those challenges as great opportunities, and I was fortunate to be selected.”

Prior to Wolfe’s arrival, Gwinnett Hospital System’s administration had taken steps to address its need for additional capacity. With the understanding that the county was under- bedded, and with an idea of where it wanted to expand, the administration chose Duluth, Georgia, as the organization already had a smaller facility in the region. “The Joan Glancy facility was 60 years old and needed to be replaced, and the previous administration decided it made sense to start in a market where we already had a presence,” Wolfe said.

The new Duluth hospital was the first all-digital hospital to be built in the metro-Atlanta area. The facility does have a PACS, but the move to paperless, according to Wolfe, is still in the distance. In the meantime, Gwinnett is working with longtime partner McKesson to transition into an EMR and CPOE. Completion is still a few years off, but the multi-million-dollar project will ensure the hospital’s connectivity to physician offices across the county.

“Right now we’re building the infrastructure to support all aspects of the record, including laboratory, pharmacy, business office functions, registration, and accounting,” Wolfe said. “Once it’s completed, the system will be seamless.”

The organization is in the midst of expanding its main hospital campus in Lawrenceville as a way to build on the strategic plan, including a new patient tower, two new ORs on the existing facility, and a building facelift that will give the hospital a warmer feel than the cold sterility it had in the past. The entrance will be designed with wood and stone, the lobby will be expanded, and a wide mezzanine will welcome patients as they walk through the facility’s doors.

“The Lawrenceville campus is centrally located in the county,” Wolfe said. “On this campus we’ll add much-needed services, such as open-heart surgery.” As a CON state, healthcare organizations in Georgia have to apply to add new services, but Wolfe is quick to point out the necessity of adding such a program. “We are the largest county in the US population-wise without an open-heart surgical program,” he said. “We’ll be launching a capital campaign soon, but we’ve already received a $1 million gift. We expect big things from this project and from the capital campaign.”


Hungry for change
The “strategic appetite” of Gwinnett Hospital System over the next five years calls for $428 million. But when looking five years out, Wolfe saw a problem: the organization’s bottom line was $100 million short of fulfilling that goal. One suggestion was to ask the community for $100 million, but Wolfe and his team believed they could find the answers inhouse.

“We knew we had to get to a 4% to 5% margin to fund the $428 million,” he said. “Last year we were only hitting 1%. We brought in Michael Rindler, someone who had worked with other hospitals in Georgia, to facilitate the strategic performance improvement (SPI) process.”

Nine interdisciplinary task forces were developed. The overall goal was to find $20 million worth of potential savings, and each team was given the task of finding at least $2 million worth. Within the 90-day timeframe of the project, 950 items were brought to the executive team’s attention, and Wolfe’s team accepted and implemented the changes for 95% of them. Consequently, the group found $22 million worth of cost-cutting efficiencies.

The scope of savings for each project ranged from $200 to $40,000 to $1 million. Some of the ideas weren’t accepted because they weren’t possible, and some were put into the organization’s “parking lot” to be reviewed at a later date. The final stages of the SPI process have been centered on the associate teams’ recommendations for improvements at the executive level.

“We want to continue this kind of proactive productivity, engaging our associates at every level,” Wolfe said. “What we did wasn’t rocket science. It was just putting the discipline in place to look at everything we spend money on and determining its relevance. It’s just another example of how, by working together, we can accomplish anything.”

 
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