Interview with James Lee, chief cinancial officer, Adventist HealthCare, Rockville, Md.
Could you describe Adventist?
Most of our operations are in Maryland, except for one acute care hospital in northwest New Jersey. We have three acute care hospitals, and two specialty hospitals. We also own six nursing homes and a home health division. In terms of total operating revenue, we’re looking at close to $900 million per year.
What impact did the recession have on Adventist HealthCare?
The biggest impact was the realization that healthcare is not immune to recession. There is a mindset that hospitals don’t deal with recessions. But we are impacted. We have increased our focus on cost management and making sure that we are wisely managing our resources. We have also expanded the circle of people who are monitoring that process. In the past, cost management has been driven mostly by our finance officers, but we now include operations colleagues, quality colleagues and clinical folks. There is now a more comprehensive understanding of finance and resource management issues by all the different executives in the organization. Everything we do is for our patients. All our cost management choices have to positively impact patient care. The recession has caused us to be more focused on that issue.
Was it challenging to bring everyone together around the cost management agenda, including clinical colleagues? Surprisingly not. We were dealing with an environment where everyone knew that banks were failing, people were being laid off, and there was an overwhelming sense that we had to do something. It was actually much easier to introduce this concept during a recession. Cost management has been in healthcare for a long time, and we have been working on it for a long time, but the recession gave us an opportunity to get everyone focused on it.