Hospital prepares for twenty-first century with innovative vision

Healthcare Financial Management, Jan, 1994 by Bill Siwiki

Staff at Hackley Hospital--a 228-bed, acute care, not-for-profit, community hospital in Muskegon, Mich.--have pushed the Clinton healthcare reform plan aside and implemented a healthcare reform plan of their own. The Hackley plan, contained in the hospital's new vision statement, represents a major shake-up of standard operational procedure designed to help hospital staff better meet the needs of patients well into the twenty-first century.

Hackley's vision for the future is a community in which all preventable illness and injury is eliminated and all residents achieve optimum health through active partnerships with health service providers.

The Hackley vision statement outlines a five-point plan to achieve these goals:

* Establish an internal structure and systems to support community activism and leadership by all hospital employees.

* Redefine and retool current hospital-based inpatient and outpatient services, in many cases changing the location where they are provided as well as the form they take.

* Expand primary care services to create an integrated healthcare delivery system.

* Establish a patient database to measure hospital performance and encourage the use of data-base information to change care processes to improve outcomes and utilize resources optimally.

* Create an integrated healthcare delivery system based on the best interests of the community (e.g., by eliminating duplication of services where possible, avoiding competitive advertising, and participating in community-based planning).

The vision statement's primary authors are Hackley Hospital Chief Operating Officer Tom Mroczkowski, Director of Quality and Rehabilitation Services Gayle Miller, and Director of Planning Julie Strach. For their efforts, Hackley Hospital received the 21st Century Innovators Award for 1993 from The Healthcare Forum and 3M Health Care, an award honoring organizations that combine creative outlooks with realistic planning processes for healthcare delivery through the year 2000.

The financial manager's perspective

Every employee at Hackley Hospital has a hand in implementation of the vision statement. From the healthcare financial management perspective, Beth Cresse, director of financial services at the hospital and a member of HFMA's Western Michigan Chapter, feels the statement is a positive step in the right direction.

"We started the visioning process in 1988, and the new vision statement was born in 1992," states Cresse. "Through the process, hospital staff decided to 'break through the walls' of our departments for the future. Today, we have integrated so many hospital functions that you don't know where one department begins and another ends.

"To facilitate an integrated approach to pursuing our vision, hospital staff created interactive planning boards--based on the ideas of Russ Ackoff, a healthcare consultant--comprised of individuals from various areas to determine how all hospital departments should function five years down the road. As an example, a member of the finance department sits on every planning board; this affords my department a great opportunity to infuse the financial perspective into every operation.

"Hospital staff have also created support service boards to help implement the new vision. For the finance support service board, various staff members who use the financial department's services sit on the board and describe their finance department needs. Their input is reflected in any services that we redesign. It is from the functions of the interactive planning boards and support service boards that we continue to move toward our vision of Hackley's future."

Cresse considers Hackley's vision statement a step ahead of national healthcare reform efforts.

"With reform on the way," she remarks, "the job of providing healthcare services can no longer be done as it has in the past. Healthcare professionals cannot simply stay in the hospital--they have to move into the community to provide preventative medicine, improve public health, and help healthcare consumers make better health choices.

"Hackley Hospital staff are already implementing 'healthcare reform.' Our new vision allows everyone to work together to provide the best possible health care at the lowest cost. The hospital has not raised charges for three years and our charge per admission has decreased 7 percent over last year.

"If that's not healthcare reform, I don't know what is."

Bill Siwicki is associate editor of HEALTHCARE FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT. Suggestions for Provider Perspective topics should be sent to his attention at HFMA, Two Westbrook Corporate Center, Suite 700, Westchester, Illinois, 60154-5700.