MOUNT VERNON — Partnerships can provide valuable benefits if you choose the right partner. Deciding whether you need a partner — and finding one that helps you thrive — is a deliberate and thoughtful process.
Knox Community Hospital is undertaking that process and will hire an outside consulting firm to guide it along its journey.
CEO Bruce White cautioned that the exploratory process will take time. He also emphasized the hospital’s board has no preconceived result or direction it wants to achieve.
“There’s no conceived intent that we have to do this or that. It’s just to say we need to educate ourselves and the other stakeholders in the process of what kind of opportunities are out there,” he said.
“We need to make sure we’ve done our due diligence and really looked at all the different opportunities, what the trade-offs are for each, and then identify, given our objectives, what we think might be potential partnerships we should explore.”
As the board members move through the process, transparency and forestalling rumors are uppermost in their minds.
“The board was very clear,” White said. “They said we’re going to be open and transparent and communicate as much as we can … to let people know what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.”
The decision to hire an outside firm came after meeting with the three legs of the hospital’s leadership stool: board members, management team, and medical staff leadership.
White said the board hopes to engage a firm by the end of September. The exploratory process could take six to 12 months.
“At the end of the process, the intent would be to have a good, clear vision of what kind of partnership or partnerships we think are going to best position us,” he said.
What’s the catalyst for exploring strategic partnerships?
As part of its upgrade to a new electronic medical record (EMR) system, the hospital spent the past 12 months evaluating the three primary EMRs.
It settled on EPIC, the national leader. However, EPIC does not go into smaller hospitals.
“The only way for a hospital of our size at this point in time to get onto an EPIC application is to partner with a larger partner,” White said.
Partnerships are nothing new for KCH. The hospital already partners with OSU, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, and Ohio Health for radiation oncology, pediatric, pathology, and telestroke services, among others.
Still, as the board explored potential local and regional EMR partners, including Ohio Health, OSU, Licking Memorial, and a partner in southern Illinois, it realized it was looking at an in-depth partnership.
Additionally, White said the hospital would like to bolster some key service lines.
Those factors, along with health care challenges such as the increasing prevalence of comercially run managed care products and maintaining sufficient cash reserves to protect against legislative changes or interruption to business operations, make choosing the right partner even more essential.
“Entering into really long-term partnerships becomes a very, very critical strategic decision because you have to make sure you’re picking the right partner with as much foresight down the road [as you can],” White said.
What’s different this time?
White said board members periodically review the hospital’s partnerships to determine if they still align with the KCH mission of providing compassionate health care that exceeds community expectations.
“They’ve always come back with, hey, we like the partnerships that we’ve established and don’t see a whole lot of opportunity for more extensive partnerships,” he said.
“But, you always have to keep your head up and looking on the horizon. It’s just a good time to [review it].”
White said the board did not want the community to be surprised if the partnership exploration results in something deeper than what it has done in the past. Potential alignments could offer the opportunity for the investment of operating and/or capital resources.
He noted, however, that the process is about exploration, not selling the hospital.
“The whole objective and the whole focus here is maintaining the best possible health care and best possible hospital organization we can provide for the community,” he said.