Lake Charles Memorial Health System (LCMH) and Memorial Medical Group (MMG) partnered with Tiller-Hewitt HealthCare Strategies to identify and rapidly realize $24.3 million in incremental net revenue growth for strategic services and specialties offered within the system by:
“Tiller-Hewitt was my first call when I arrived here as the new CEO, based on my experience partnering successfully with them at previous organizations. Their team consistently provides the expertise needed to deeply engage and drive strategic growth in alignment with every organization’s business goals. Tiller-Hewitt helped us produce immediate home runs, including year-one, double-digit revenue growth and a boost in market share. They’re a true partner that fosters a culture of collaboration, transparency and accountability. They helped our already-strong team deliver the best customer experience, achieve new levels of performance and drive exceptional strategic growth.” - Devon Hyde, MBA President and CEO Lake Charles Memorial Health System
Lake Charles Memorial Health System’s position as market leader was at risk because of over $100 million of outmigration from their medical group to local competitors for services LCMH offers. LCMH faced unrivaled challenges. At the same time America faced the pandemic, their community additionally endured two hurricanes, flooding, and historical freezing, becoming known as “the most weather-battered city in America.” The organization also confronted industry-wide headwinds: workforce challenges, shrinking margins, high capital costs, and rising competition. Many health systems nationwide cite “lack of capacity” among their top challenges to growth. But very often, front-end issues like patient access delays, and other challenges in clinics and ancillary services, create an illusion that an organization lacks capacity. The fact is, capacity can be unlocked through a 360-degree approach to uncover inefficient processes, solve access bottlenecks before they become chokepoints, engage providers and their staff, ramp up new providers rapidly, and execute professional outreach focused on strategic growth.
To protect and grow their competitive advantage in the face of these unprecedented challenges, the new Chief Executive Officer engaged Tiller-Hewitt shortly after arriving in his new role. In partnership with members of the LCMH C-suite, Tiller-Hewitt quickly got to work assessing, designing, and executing a high-performance Rapid Impact Strategic Growth solution to improve patient access, increase referrals, and drive volume to strategic service lines and specialties. The CEO also engaged Tiller-Hewitt to transform MMG’s new provider onboarding process from a brief and disjointed “drinking from the firehose” experience into a robust, system-wide coordinated, year-long provider integration program that includes mentorship and family integration.
Tiller-Hewitt implemented their industry-leading process for assessing, developing and implementing successful strategic growth programs.
Tiller-Hewitt combined extensive quantitative referral and claims data
analytics with qualitative insights gained through stakeholder surveys
and interviews. They discovered untapped opportunities (the “what”)
and barriers preventing strategic growth (the “why”). Utilizing
LCMH’s existing acquired external claims data and internal EMR data,
Tiller-Hewitt conservatively estimated $100 million in leakage from MMG
to competitors for services LCMH provides. Discovering this opportunity
sparked newfound hope, the spirit of innovation, and momentum for positive
change throughout the organization. More than 350 stakeholders participated
in the assessment which uncovered current-state barriers preventing strategic
growth and provider engagement. Access-related bottlenecks and the lack
of collaboration were among the top barriers to in-network referrals that
needed to be tackled.
Energized by stakeholder buy-in and grounded data analytics, survey and interview findings, the team moved quickly and simultaneously on multiple fronts to prioritize opportunities, eliminate barriers, improve access, and engage physicians as referral sources.
Tiller-Hewitt initiated a collaborative, cross-discipline patient access improvement process, bringing together 60 members from the C-suite, patient access team, referring physician practices, key service lines, information technology, and marketing. The process improvement project rallied stakeholders to solve access bottlenecks – masquerading as capacity issues – that were driving patients outside the LCMH network for services they had the capacity to provide. Through lean value stream mapping and process improvement projects, over 125 improvement action items were identified, with 95% completed in less than 120 days.
“Our engagement with Tiller-Hewitt HealthCare Strategies was a true collaboration, laser-focused on identifying and eliminating growth chokepoints, meticulously measuring KPI’s, hardwiring stakeholder accountability and delivering measurable ROI. I strongly recommend their strategic growth, physician liaison and provider integration/onboarding programs for any organization struggling to grow market share in these challenging times.” - Manley M. Jordan, M.D., FCCP Chief Medical Officer / Executive Vice President Lake Charles Memorial Health System
At the same time, Tiller-Hewitt created priority service line growth plans and engaged cross-functional growth teams to collaborate and maximize opportunities:
Development and execution of the data-driven physician outreach strategy
is the centerpiece of the Rapid Impact Strategic Growth solution, focusing
on the provider targets with the greatest upside for incremental growth.
Tiller-Hewitt developed and deployed LCMH’s outreach strategy, based
on their nationally recognized, boots-on-the-ground approach that includes
hiring, training, and coaching professional physician liaisons. The two
new physician liaisons targeted 500+ providers and accomplished over 2,500
visits to build awareness of newly streamlined access, highlight key service
lines, and introduce specialists to referring physicians in the community.
As direct reports to the C-Suite, the liaisons earn trusted advisor status
with medical practices and provide accountability for rapid response when
issues arise in the field. They uncover needs and resolve issues by working
with cross-discipline teams to deliver strategic solutions and tools that
improve the provider and patient experience and drive referrals from targeted
practices.
The development and execution of Tiller-Hewitt’s Rapid Impact Strategic Growth playbook included service line growth teams, process improvement programs, physician outreach strategy, deployment of the professionally trained liaison team, and a formalized physician integration program to ensure rapid ramp-up of new providers. As a result, the LCMH and Tiller-Hewitt partnership improved the patient and provider experience and generated a return on investment of $24.3 million of incremental net revenue through double-digit growth in targeted specialties and service line volumes.
"Tiller-Hewitt gave us a jump start for early success. By focusing our program on the right initiatives and tracking the right data, we got our outreach ..."
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