BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT/PLANNING

Heart Institute at Cincinnati Children’s Juggles Multiple Initiatives with Aplomb Using Rigorous Project-Planning Framework
The noted Ohio cardiology program has seen astronomical growth in recent years, including a 9% higher contribution margin and 480% leap in total patients.

Strategists are often forced to pick and choose between new endeavors. But the Heart Institute at Cincinnati Children’s has found a way to have it all, juggling numerous strategic initiatives at once and doing so with rousing success.

Deploying “embedded” marketing, planning and business development professionals matrixed from the main hospital’s own teams, has proven pivotal. Leaders with the noted cardiology care program strive to think where they want to be five years into the future to help achieve their aspirations.

The Heart Institute has also shied away from prescriptive, one-size-fits-all approaches to strategic initiatives, instead tailoring to each individual partner or community need, experts noted. This flexibility and open-mindedness have paid off for the cardiology program.   

“If someone walks in the door and says, ‘Your cardiology services are great, but we really need an obesity clinic, too. Can you do that?’ Our answer is almost always, ‘Yes, we can do that,” said Mark McDonald, the Heart Institute’s vice president of finance, who oversees strategic planning and daily operational business management. “You have to be flexible. It’s not about what we want to give you, it’s what do you need, and how can we work together to get there?”

Many Irons in the Fire
The Heart Institute’s inception dates to 2008, and its strategic initiative ambition took roots shortly after. Accoding to McDonald, this year the group has tackled more than a dozen different strategic initiatives. Those range from planning for a full-scale pediatric cardiology operation in Owensboro, Kentucky, 200 miles away, to adding a simple subspecialty clinic for fetal heart treatment in Elizabethtown, 100 miles west.

McDonald said he and his total business team involved in daily operations as well as business development of roughly 40, are willing to try a variety of different delivery models for their partnerships. Some require the acquisition of a cardiology practice, while others result in time-sharing a space with another entity. Cincinnati Children’s has built partnerships around telehealth, the remote interpretation of diagnostic images and mobile clinics, too. And sometimes the Heart Institute may supply its own clinicians at a new location or execute professional-services agreements with partner providers.

The institution relies on a range of information to fuel its partnership determinations in the early stages. Demographics and birth rates are key, along with disease incidence estimates and any corresponding care gaps, McDonald said. Planning each initiative is a multi-disciplinary effort, incorporating business, nursing and physician leadership. To help stay on task, the group hosts monthly check-in meetings to pore over the results and explore potential new initiatives. The powwows are particularly powerful when the Heart Institute needs to loop in others from IT, real estate, legal and specialists outside of cardiology. 

“It’s how you keep everyone on board and focused when you have four or five things occurring simultaneously,” McDonald said. “They are very important and the documentation that we use is absolutely critical because it’s not just keeping that team in sync, it’s also communicating to senior leadership what we’re doing on a quarterly basis so they know which initiatives are moving forward, which have been completed and where we should expect to see growth.”

The Smartsheet collaborative software has been “highly leveraged” by Cincy Children’s to help guide meetings and provide data visuals related to each project. Both marketing and new-business outreach teams are tapped into the project management tool, with their progress reports embedded in the dashboard.

Some examples
McDonald and colleagues have also harnessed the documentation tool to gauge metrics after implementing a new initiative. Total encounters, testing volumes, no-show rates and downstream surgical procedures are just a few metrics followed both at county and state levels. 

All told, the Heart Institute has initiated about 20 strategic growth initiatives since December 2019, with more than half occurring during the pandemic.

McDonald cited a newly launched obesity clinic as one key win during the public health crisis. The Center for Better Health and Nutrition, as it’s called, has “dramatically” improved access for patients via telehealth.

Asked for insight into those astronomical growth numbers, McDonald highlighted the purchase of a Louisville cardiology practice in late 2018. The group had just one doctor at the time, with five staffed sites. But it’s now ballooned to six cardiologists across seven locations, with an eye toward expansion in further clinical specialties.

Using the acquisition as a foundation, the Heart Institute has also moved 200 miles west to open the site in Owensboro, Kentucky, over the summer. Along the way, the heart multidisciplinary team overseeing acquisitions has shared learnings, methods and timelines in the project planning tool to consult during future projects.

The Heart Institute also recently expanded, with a new partnership in Shelbyville, Indiana, about 40 minutes outside of its established service area. They’re also looking to build up their cardiology electronic educational forum, Heart University, which is climbing toward 10,000 registrants this year. McDonald admits that initiatives have occasionally missed the mark, but there have been far more bullseyes.

“It’s okay to take a risk,” he encouraged others. “You’re going to face competition, no matter what your mission is, and if you can think of something, they can think of it, too. Question is who can get there first. So, if I had any advice, it’s do your homework and take a risk.”

 

This article features interviews with:

Mark McDonald
Vice President, Heart Institute|
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital
Cincinnati, Ohio

Kelly Ahern
Business Manager
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital
Cincinnati, Ohio

 

Images courtesy Cincinnati Children’s Hospital