Salt Lake City-based Intermountain and Broomfield, CO-based SCL Health have now formed a 33-hospital, $14B nonprofit health system, which immediately becomes the 11th largest nationwide. The system will operate across seven states under the Intermountain brand, although the SCL hospitals will keep their legacy names and Catholic affiliation. Regulators signed off on the interstate merger after the systems agreed not to close any locations or services.
The Gist: Intermountain has been trying to build scale across the Mountain West in the last few years, having recently come up short in an attempt to merge with South Dakota-based Sanford Health.
The SCL deal will allowIntermountain to expand its SelectHealth insurance plan and integrated care model into the fast-growing Denver metro area, as well as into Kansas and Montana. As with any merger, the difficult work of combining cultures and demonstrating meaningful value for patients and consumers lies ahead.
A San Jose jury convicted Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes on four counts of fraud, deciding that she lied to investors while raising more than $700M in funds for the company. Holmes was found not guilty on four other counts relating to defrauding patients, though Theranos ended up voiding tens of thousands of erroneous test results. Each conviction carries a maximum twenty-year sentence, although Holmes is widely expected to appeal.
The Gist: It’s rare that tech executives are convicted of fraud. Investors, including many health systems, have been flooding healthcare startups with large sums of cash in hopes of big returns. But the Theranos debacle is a reminder that Silicon Valley’s “fake it till you make it culture” is not always the best fit for healthcare. Providers must continue to hold new medical technologies to high standards, regardless of how much promise they hold to “revolutionize” aspects of patient care.
When COVID volumes waned in the spring and early summer, most health systems “de-escalated” dedicated COVID testing and triage facilities. But with the Delta variant surging across the country, consumers are now once again looking for services like drive-through testing, which is perceived as more convenient and safer.
One physician leader told us patients in the ED are asking why the hospital got rid of the “COVID tent”, which provided a separate pathway for patients with respiratory and other COVID symptoms—and a highly visible signal that the rest of the department was as COVID-free as possible.
Another system is now fielding questions from the media about whether they’ll bring back their dedicated COVID hospital: “We spent a lot of time last year convincing the community that the dedicated hospital was key to safely managing care during the pandemic. Now we’ve got almost as many COVID admissions spread across our hospitals.”
Over the past year, providers have learned how to safely manage COVID care and prevent spread in healthcare settings—but consumers may perceive the lack of dedicated facilities as a decline in safety.
Unlike last year, hospitals are full of non-COVID patients, as those who delayed care reemerge. And with the current surge likely to continue into flu season, emergency rooms will only get more crowded, necessitating a new round of communication describing how hospitals are keeping patients safe, and reassuring patients that healthcare settings remain one of the safest places to visit in the community.
A physician leader asked recently whether we saw many health system executive teams work remotely throughout the pandemic. At her system, nearly every non-clinical leader worked mostly from home. “It seemed like two of our executives spent most of last year at their vacation homes,” she shared. “I know that we were being socially distant, but when our CEO held a virtual town hall from his beach house, it felt really tone deaf to our doctors and nurses.” In our experience, we saw most leaders spending many days in the office, even if some meetings were on Zoom. One
CEO mentioned he felt compelled to come to his office, even if it meant working alone: “If the people working on the front lines came in, I felt I needed to come in. And in the rare case someone needed to connect in person, they knew I was there.” There is power in just being visible to caregivers.
One recently retired CEO shared that he knew colleagues who rarely stepped into a hospital during the pandemic, missing a critical leadership opportunity. “No one expects the CEO to be hanging out in the COVID unit,” he shared.
“But being in our facilities, not just in the office, to hear directly from frontline workers and express gratitude, was so important—and caregivers remember that.” Now fully vaccinated, most health system leadership teams are back in the office. To remain competitive, health systems will likely need to create models that allow some non-clinical associates to work virtually—which will require evolution of cultures long centered around in-person collaboration.
I went out on a social event with a hospital CFO. During the course of the day, it seemed that all I heard was griping about the CEO. Then I heard that the organization was ‘giving back’ most of the last year’s gains, how most of the leadership team were idiots, and on and on. Finally, I told my friend that I thought he was in burn-out and that if he did not do something to alleviate the stress he was bearing, things were not going to end well. A couple of weeks later, I received a call from my friend. The conversation started with, “You will not believe what just happened.” My answer was, “How many guesses do I get?”
In hindsight, it was easy to see this transition coming. I know. It has happened to me – more than once. The circumstances, emotions, and process leading up to a transition event are relatively consistent in my experience. People stop listening to you. You start feeling out of touch with the rest of the organization. Your relationships with peers begin to cool, especially the relationship with the boss. You learn that you are increasingly not invited to important meetings or summoned to participate in matters that are clearly within your scope. You begin to sense divergence of political and or philosophical views with the core leadership of the organization. Your boss and others start going around you to approach your staff directly.
These processes continue until you get invited to an unscheduled meeting where you learn that you are about to be freed up to seek other opportunities.
First, a disclaimer. I am assuming that the termination is not for cause, i.e., violation of policy, violation of the law, or behavior unbecoming. The majority of separations and terminations I am familiar with have little if anything to do with cause and occur primarily because of lack of fit or growing disagreement between the incumbent and their manager regarding the organization’s course. Sometimes, the incumbent’s area of responsibility is no longer meeting the needs of the organization. Too often, internal corporate politics are responsible for deals that started well souring. Sometimes, a transition follows an executive, usually but not always the CFO, digging in over their interpretation of the organization getting too close to crossing a compliance red line. Instead of greasing the squeaky wheel, the organization decides to address the problem by getting rid of the irritant. I have been in a situation more than once where I had to decide whether my integrity was for sale and what a fair price might be. In every case, I elected to avoid the disaster that has befallen executives that flew too close to the OIG’s flame, and in one case, it led to a separation from the organization.
One of my favorite Zig Ziglar quotes is, “Failure is an event; it is not a person.” Just because someone ends up in a transition does not mean by definition that they are a terrible person. Time and again, in these blogs, I have stipulated that for me to follow someone that was ‘bad’ in some way is extremely rare. In these articles, I address termination from the view of the ‘victim.’
I am speaking from experience writing this as I have been through an unplanned transition more than once. I know my problem; I get frustrated with politics, BS, sub-optimization, the toxicity of culture, and eventually lose my sense of humor or ability to eat crap without gagging. Not too long after I start telling people what I really think and, . . . . well, you know the rest of the story. What I believe is a growing risk of being an employee is why I decided to leave permanent employment and become a career Interim Executive Consultant. Regardless of the cause of a turnover event, it is gut-wrenching. Even if you sense it coming, it is no easier to bear. In a matter of a few minutes, you go from someone whose expertise and perspective are in high demand to someone that has no reason to get out of bed. The pain is increased exponentially by those that used to dote on you refusing to return phone calls or answer emails.
More than once, I have received a call from someone looking for help because their deal either has gone bad or is in the process of deterioriation. Invariably, a few weeks later, I get the call. Upon answering the phone, the conversation starts, “You aren’t going to believe what just happened to me!” My first thought is not again! It pains me almost as much to witness someone else go through a transition as it is to go through it yourself. As I said before, my response is, “How many guesses do I get?” I ask this question with a high degree of certainty that the answer is a forgone conclusion.
Sadly, people going through a transition process do not fully appreciate what they are facing, especially the first time. The first problem is the amount of time the executive is going to be unemployed. When this happened to me the first time in the ’80s, I was shocked when a mentor told me to expect a month for each $10,000 of pre-transition compensation. I could not believe this was possible, but I have seen it happen time after time. With the inflation that has occurred since then, a good rule of thumb is probably a month for each $20,000 of pre-transition compensation. Thinking back to my principle that the time to start planning for a transition is now, one of the things to be prepared for is up to a year of interruption in income unless you are fortunate enough to have a severance agreement.
Contact me to discuss any questions or observations you might have about these articles, leadership, transitions, or interim services. I might have an idea or two that might be valuable to you. An observation from my experience is that we need better leadership at every level in organizations. Some of my feedback comes from people who are demonstrating an interest in advancing their careers, and I am writing content to address those inquiries.
I encourage you to use the comment section at the bottom of each article to provide feedback and stimulate discussion. I welcome input and feedback that will help me to improve the quality and relevance of this work.
If you would like to discuss any of this content, provide private feedback or ask questions, you can reach me at ras2@me.com.
HENRY KOTULA 