CEOs Win the Growth Game with Liaisons on their Teams

To position your growth teams to achieve your organization's strategic goals, the question arises: Does chain of command matter? The resounding answer is: "Yes!" according to a group of healthcare leaders who attended the Healthcare Marketing and Physician Strategy Summit.

At the conference, Tammy Tiller-Hewitt, FACHE, CEO of Tiller-Hewitt HealthCare Strategies, led a panel discussion exploring the structural relationships between physician liaisons and senior leadership of their hospitals. Amy Ballance and Tammy outlined the key success factors of their physician outreach program when Amy was Division Vice President, Business Development, Strategy, and Marketing for Hospital Sisters Health System (HSHS). She is now President of Levare Solutions, LLC.

The direct reporting relationship of their Southern Illinois division physician liaisons to their respective hospital leaders is considered a best practice and gold standard for strategic growth. "When you have liaisons directly reporting to an executive level leader it will impact financials quickly and dramatically," said Tiller-Hewitt. "It brings unfiltered market intelligence to the C-Suite and laser focus on strategic priorities for outreach."

Especially as healthcare systems grow, there is a risk for hospitals losing local focus. Without the direct reporting structure, accountability for where things sit with physician relationships becomes diluted from the hospital CEO's perspective and volumes suffer.

"We changed the structure, and now our client services executives do have a seat at the senior leadership table at each of the hospitals. They report directly to the CEOs and still have a dotted line reporting relationship to my role," said Ballance. "This way, our strategic plan, marketing initiatives and liaison efforts align. We connect the dots to make sure that everybody is focusing on the same priorities all of the time. Instead of working in silos, we're working very collaboratively."

For more information and a copy of the presentation, contact Tammy Tiller-Hewitt, FACHE at tth@tillerhewitt.com or 618-651-8700.