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| Bayshore Home Health: Strategic Decentralization |
| Home Care | |||
| Written by Amanda Gaines | |||
| Tuesday, 01 April 2008 | |||
 President Stuart Cottrelle explains how putting power in the hands of employees gives this home health organization strength.
“Community healthcare is about doing things closer to the client,” said Stuart Cottrelle, president. “Patients want whatever resources you can put close to their bedside.”  Stuart Cottrelle, President “It’s a question of whether you’re committed to that style,” said Cottrelle. “I would like to be able to walk around my business everyday, but I can’t. However, if there is a problem in Kelowna, British Columbia, which is three time zones away from where I am in Toronto, there will be a person in Kelowna to take care of it. The individual in that community is the face of Bayshore.” Although Bayshore’s history dates back to 1966, it wasn’t until 1994 that Cottrelle purchased the company. Since then, the Canadian healthcare environment has changed as governments struggle with the growth in demand compared to the capacity to pay. The change has impacted Bayshore as the company is now challenged to provide less care to more clients. “We need to reengineer the system by moving from an acute-care-based system to more of a chronic long-term care system,” said Cottrelle. “In Canada, we have far too many hospital beds, but we do the wrong things in them.” As people continue to live longer, countries across the world see chronic disease management as where homecare should be. In many cases, the industries have evolved. In Canada, it’s still a struggle. Consequently, Bayshore has looked to other areas to continue to grow. Medicare business represents roughly half of the company’s book of business, and the company has worked with workers compensation boards and the federal government. However, Canada’s federal government does not deal with the Medicare system, which is controlled by the country’s provinces. Just as a decentralized business structure ensures patient satisfaction, it also gives the company a better way of handling payor contracts. When dealing with six time zones and an even larger number of payor contracts, each of Bayshore’s centers are empowered and expected to keep up with the rules and regulations, typically a challenge for Canadian companies. “They have trouble operating in more than one province because of the different regulations,” said Cottrelle. “We’re a national provider that can handle each regulation across the board. Most people see the Canadian healthcare system as socialized, but there are many players providing healthcare. We don’t have any one payor in our company that represents more than 2% of our volume.” Bayshore is not an entirely decentralized organization. Its national service center provides many of the skilled services not available at the local level, such as information technology, financial management, and a number of clinical resources. In addition to regional training centers, employees receive further training at the national service center. Bayshore also provides a buddy system in which branches and branch managers work with other locations that offer similar services, and each branch has an employee trainer. “We know we can’t fully train our employees without regional training centers, a national service center, a buddy system, and regional trainers,” said Cottrelle. “We typically used each of those four modules, but it depends on the position of the employee in training.” The company’s IT platform is also centralized because, according to Cottrelle, a necessary variable for a strong decentralized organization is centralized IT, especially when dealing with healthcare professionals. He said that while most healthcare professionals are comfortable using technology, it must be delivered in a user-friendly way. And because Bayshore’s home health focus requires managing data outcomes to understand performance indicators, maintaining a solid technological structure is imperative. “Financial statements are historical. We need indicators about how we’re doing and what it’s going to lead to,” Cotrelle said. “We’ve been spending a lot of money on data mining to produce those outcome measures.” Great companies, continued Cottrelle, rally their employees around key measures, of which Bayshore has three: the right level of training and education for employees, the continuity of care that comes from a well-trained staff, and the ability to fill positions. Just as in the US, Canada is enduring a severe shortage of healthcare professionals. However, Bayshore is doing better than most at filling its positions. And in the past three years, the company has almost doubled its size. “Canada’s governmental healthcare programs haven’t grown significantly for a number of years,” said Cottrelle. “We’ve been growing and filling when others haven’t.” The difference, he said, goes back to a simple company-wide mission statement that represents more than a plaque on a wall: “Make a difference in our clients’ lives. Every visit. Every time.” And when Bayshore was listed as one of Canada’s 50 best-managed companies in 2007, Cottrelle made certain to state that his employees, not he, were the reason for the company’s success. “I get a buzz around the fact that we have created a unique culture,” he said. “It’s been one of the reasons for our success. We’ve got a decent mission statement that’s simple and understandable, and all of our employees live it.” |
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