Case studies
Financial turnaroundThe new CEO of a hospital in a competitive market wanted to improve the bottom line and strengthen his leadership group. The project began by creating a team that mixed the consultants with some of the hospital’s strongest managers and providing facilities, computers and data for this team. Hospital leaders set a five percent bottom-line improvement target.
We quickly identified a lack of commitment to the project among several of the hospital’s executives. We focused on this by convening an off-site planning session focused on leadership alignment. The executives returned from this session having aired their concerns in a safe setting and committed to powerful new terms for working together.
We then tackled the hospital’s most pervasive problem: 25 percent vacancies among nursing and technical staff, which cost more than $1 million a year in temporary staff and lost patient revenue. We created a breakthrough project – a hiring blitz – to streamline the hiring process and fill depleted ranks. Hospital leaders set a goal of 50 hires in 30 days and we eclipsed this by hiring 83 new nurses, OR techs and other hard-to-find staff.
With staff shortages relieved, we completed the revenue cycle, productivity, surgical scheduling and other turnaround work. The hospital exceeded the five percent margin target and strengthened its management considerably.