Why Your CV Service Line Is Underperforming

Thursday, June 16, 2016 | Larry Sobal

 

Last week MedAxiom held its annual Cardiovascular Service Line Symposium. It had the usual hallmarks of a MedAxiom meeting: fantastic presentations by leaders of some of the most progressive heart programs about their advancements, extensive capture of quantitative data via audience participation questions, meaningful networking with CV colleagues and industry partners from across the country, and a great venue (the Mayflower Hotel in Washington DC). The bonus was an amazing group dinner celebration (Happy 15^th anniversary to MedAxiom) at The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

After the conference, I reflected on what the speakers shared and the audience responses to the questions posed by the speakers. It is from that reflection that I came up with the title for this week’s blog post. If the audience of a few hundred heart programs is a representative sample of CV Service Lines across the country, there was widespread acknowledgement that the health care industry is changing so fast, and demanding unprecedented pace of innovation, that even the most advanced heart programs are struggling to find success across the board.

Let me offer some examples.

Jonathan S. Nalli, CEO of St. Vincent Indiana and Senior Vice President, Ascension Health/Indiana Ministry Market Executive, shared his system’s aggressive strategy and learnings regarding population health. One of his audience polls asked, “Do you view yourself as prepared for 50-60% Fee for Value By 2018?” The audience response was: 27% Yes and 73% No.

Dr. Penny Wilton, Department Chief of Cardiovascular Services and the Frederik Meijer Endowed Chair of the Frederik Meijer Heart and Vascular Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan (Spectrum Health), shared her organization’s work to align the CVSL team on quality, safety and finance. Among her audience poll questions was, “Do you have a physician scorecard linked to compensation?” The audience response was: 32.8% Yes and 67.2% No.

Cathie Biga, President and CEO of Cardiovascular Management of Illinois, gave an in-depth description of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA). One of her audience polls asked whether “My organization has a solid plan in place for MACRA readiness.” The audience response showed that 98% are not prepared for MACRA, even though the initial impact for physicians starts on January 1, 2017.

Mike Mytych, Principal and Founder of Health Information Consulting, spoke about how to make the massive amount of dollars being spent on IT investments pay off. One of his audience polls asked, “What is your assessment of your interoperability across all CV venues of care?” The audience response showed that 63.9% felt they had less than 50% interoperability or had no idea.

I still stand by my speculation that most Cardiovascular Service Lines are underperforming.

Based on this sampling of topic presentations and audience questions, we can see that there are many innovative programs out there leading the way, and many that are challenged by the current health care environment. While I am very excited about the progress we are making, I still stand by my speculation that most Cardiovascular Service Lines are underperforming. The meeting offered some confirmation of this, and it is quite consistent with what we see when we perform CV Service Line assessments for MedAxiom members and clients.

And now, for the what-to-do-about-it part. Quick and easy answers are hard to come by. But, I do have a very strong suggestion for where to begin. MedAxiom has recently developed the nation’s first qualitative survey for CV Service Lines to benchmark themselves against each other. My suggestion is that you start with completing the CV Service Line MedXcellence tool to obtain an initial idea of how you compare against your peers in the Organizational, Operational, Clinical and Transformational aspects of your service line. You can find the survey at medaxiom.com/medXcellence. From there, you can identify and begin to prioritize those areas where the largest gaps exist.

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Larry Sobal is Executive Vice President of Business Development at MedAxiom. He has a 35-year background as a senior executive in medical group leadership, hospital leadership and insurance. As part of his current role, Larry consults, writes and presents on topics relevant to transforming physician practices and health systems.

 

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