Within the last 10 years, East Chestnut Regional Health System (ECRH) was formed from the merger of three organizations: East River Medical Center, Northern Mountain Hospital Consortium, and Archway Hospital.
East River Medical Center (ERMC)
ERMC is the anchor hospital for the system. The medical center resides along the east side of the Chestnut River. Historically, ERMC was recognized as the location of choice for medical care. However, this reputation has deteriorated over the last 3 to 5 years. As the city of Chestnut has grown, ERMC has found itself on the edge of an urban blight. Safety has been a concern for patients, visitors, and physicians who use and serve the medical center. The technology offered at the medical center has been maintained at an excellent level of proficiency. At the same time, the medical staff is aging with the average age of the physicians being 57. There are younger primary care physicians who serve the specialists, but the specialists are aging as well. ERMC boasts a Level 1 Trauma Center with an air service. The total number of licensed beds for ERMC is 550. On any given day, the occupancy rate is 300 heads on the beds.
Northern Mountain Hospital Consortium (NMHC)
NMHC was originally formed in response to the migration of patients to Chestnut. Due to the rather aggressive strategies carried out by the hospitals in Chestnut, these rural hospitals decided to create a consortium of rural hospitals so that they could gain economies of scale in a number of areas, which include group purchasing, benefit administration, and physician and staff recruitment. Additionally, they worked together to stem any further deterioration of their market share. Patients were selecting to go to the larger community for services and leaving the smaller communities that collared the Chestnut metropolitan area. NMHC represented individual hospitals in four counties that circled Chestnut County: Walnut, Butternut, Oak, and Maple. Walnut and Butternut Counties had good employment with Oak and Maple Counties being mostly rural. In each county, the inpatient facilities averaged about 20 years of age. The upkeep of these facilities has been sketchy. No facility needs any major upgrades, but modernization is needed. The state does not have a Certificate of Need (CON) process. The medical staff makeup varies each location. The hospitals in Oak and Maple Counties are critical access hospitals. Further details will be provided regarding these organizations later in the case study.
Archway Hospital (AH)
AH is located directly in the community of Chestnut. It fully resides in the urban area of the community. The hospital has 200 registered beds, but on any given day there are only 50 to 75 patients in this facility. This hospital was a Doctor of Osteopathy (DO) hospital; therefore, most of the physicians that worked out of this facility were DOs. The payer mix for this hospital was heavily burdened with Medicare and Medicaid. This payer mix composed nearly 85% of the reimbursement. The facility is aging and needs considerable repairs. It is questionable if it will be worth the investment in this facility.
Leadership and Organizational Culture
The original merger that created the East Chestnut Regional Health System (ECRH) occurred 10 years ago. This merger was between ERMC and AH. AH had a rather dynamic leader who was about 57 years old at the time of the merger. The AH CEO became the new President and Chief Executive Officer of ECRH after the merger. Since this CEO had only worked in a smaller organization, he had not experienced the cultural changes and demands that occur after the merging of a large organization. Additionally, he began to change the culture of the organization such that decisions were made on a decentralized basis. He trusted the management team at AH to do the right things and make the right decisions with low supervision. However, the Chief Operating Officer (COO) who was put in charge was originally from AH but left 2 years after the merger with a new COO being put in place. This COO developed a rather poor reputation and was known to want to build his own empire at AH and to be dishonest at times. This reputation created a culture within the traditional AH that lacked a cohesive team effort to create a system. This positioning of the COO was left unattended by the President and CEO of ECRH since he was actively pursuing the acquisition of NMHC. The hospitals of NMHC were doing okay, but those in the consortium realized that their ability to stand alone was becoming difficult in today’s market. When the leadership of the consortium assessed the market as to a partnership, they decided that ECRH would be the best choice. The other option was to develop a for-profit hospital that also resided in Chestnut. The leadership was attracted to what they saw happen with AH. They liked that the central leadership of the system allowed AH to continue as their own entity without a lot of centralized control.
By the time all of this was put together, the President and CEO of ECRH was near retirement. He retired about three years after the merger activity was complete. During those three years, he became lax in his leadership role. ECRH deteriorated in market share and profitability during this time. Upon his retirement, the Board of ECRH performed a national search for a replacement. They employed Hunter Brown as the new President and CEO. Mr. Brown was the CEO of a smaller health system and had been in that position for nearly 10 years. Therefore, he had limited experience from other markets in the art of strategic implementation. However, he was also well trained, bright, and articulate in expressing his knowledge. He has now been the President/CEO of ECRH for nine months.
As for the remainder of the leadership team for ECRH, there is a newly hired corporate counsel. She has 15 years of experience and is extremely competent in the work that she does.
The CEO also hired a new Chief Financial Officer. He has taken good strides in managing the accounts receivable throughout the system as well as extracting exceptional dollars from high quality supply chain management.
The Chief Operating Officer (COO) is new and has three years of previous experience from the same organization where the CEO departed.
The Chief Medical Officer (CMO) has been retained from the old leadership team. His reputation is excellent, and he works well with other physicians, including the medical staff and the employed physicians.
The Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) is three years away from retirement. She is known for not getting along with the medical staff and will always defend nursing when at times this is not appropriate.
The Senior Vice President for Human Resources is competent and respected by management and staff throughout the organization.
The remainder of the leadership team was retained from the old regime. This included information technology, employed physician group leadership, marketing, human resources, and other vice presidents or directors responsible for varying service lines. It should be noted that the IT leadership is just completing the implementation of the EPIC system. The future for this team depends on how well the overall implementation of the system goes. Likewise, those in the marketing department will need to be stellar in senior leadership advisement regarding the marketing of complex issues that will be
