Strategic Planning in a Time of Uncertainty

Last Thursday and Friday, I spent most of the day with our senior team, nursing leaders along with our service line physician leaders and administrators. We were together to review the findings of our SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analyses and to begin the creation of our one and three-year goals and next year’s strategic operating plan to get us there.

John Ellis, Senior Vice President for Strategy and Business Development, and Amber Taylor, Director of Planning and Business Development took us through their analysis of changes in the local health care market, the results of their interviews with health insurance leaders and patients, and the results of surveys answered by our leaders and members of the Board. Cathy Hamel, Vice President for Continuing Care and President of Gilchrist, presented the strategy over the next few years for Gilchrist, and Harold Tucker MD, President of GBMA and Ben Beres, Chief Operating Officer of GBMA, presented their thoughts on strategic moves within our physician company.

Our service line leaders (Medicine: Neal Friedlander MD and Jessica Heslop; Surgery: Jack Flowers MD and Michael Finegan; Women’s: Victor Khouzami, MD and Susan Bowen, RN; Geriatrics and Continuing Care: Tony Riley, MD, and Cathy Hamel; Cancer: Paul Celano, MD, and Michael Stein; and Primary Care: Robin Motter, DO and Danielle DaSilva) presented their thoughts as well. The group considered all of the information and began the work of creating one and three-year goals to move us closer to our vision under our four aims.

The next steps will be to choose the final initiatives to work on and then create the annual operating and capital budget. Keith Poisson, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, has done an excellent job overseeing this process and he was ably aided by Amber Taylor and Lisa Griffee, Director of Lean Operations, who kept us on schedule and even made the process fun at times.

I am very proud of all of the people who have participated so far and I am grateful for their hard work. Even though we don’t know the fate of all of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act and if the country will continue its march towards the triple aim of better health and better care at lower cost, we will persevere in serving our community and each patient as if he or she was our loved one.

THANK YOU TO OUR SOCIAL WORKERS!!!
March is Professional Social Work Month and I would like to thank the dedicated group of social workers who serve GBMC. We are fortunate to have such a talented and hard-working group of social workers on our team. Our social workers and care managers have helped GBMC reach the lowest readmission rate in the state and have designed a system that assures that our patients with chronic and advanced illness receive the support they need. Please take the time to thank our social workers for all that they do to move us closer to our vision.