Wooster Community Hospital, Wooster, Ohio
Award Winning Team—an extremely competitive market, this hospital has to shine. And with help from QHR, it does. Investing in new services and attracting new specialists, the dedicated team gains market share and wins awards for quality and community development.
A True Community Hospital
Vigorously expanding its ability to serve northeastern Ohio, the community-owned hospital remains firm in its financial prudence. “We don’t borrow,” explains former Mayor and Board Chair Judi Mitten. “We’re committed to a pay-as-you-go policy.” The community is equally devoted to its hospital. “At one point in the early 1990’s,” she adds, “we needed to expand but didn’t have the money. The community helped raise it.”
Today, the 150-bed organization is able to return the favor, and has offered to contribute to the community’s growth by underwriting a portion of health insurance costs for corporations relocating there. The hospital has won the Quality Growth Award from its County’s Economic Development Council three times in the last seven years. Finally, WCH was also named among the 100 Top Hospitals® for 2007, a significant national achievement.
“We have been focusing on three goals: solid financial performance, enhancing patient satisfaction, and becoming more of a regional referral center,” explains CEO Bill Sheron. “Along the way, we’ve benefited from a wide array of QHR consulting services. They help us think strategically.”
Sheron and his staff have recruited new specialists in areas like geriatrics, infectious disease, rheumatology and neurology. “People previously had to leave the community for those services. Now patients are coming to us, and our service area has expanded.”
Support for the Team
Growth hasn’t always been easy – or even possible.
“Having a financially sound hospital makes all the difference in the world when it comes to recruiting new physicians,” comments Chief of Staff Dr. Amy Jolliff. Looking back over her 17 years at Wooster, she remembers, “When QHR and Bill Sheron first came here, we weren’t so stable. I remember medical staff meetings when we worried about payroll; now we discuss new technology.”
“We’ve always had headwinds,” adds CFO Scott Boyes. “We just keep working through them. QHR supports us with top shelf consultants. They help our department heads learn to be business managers as well as clinical managers.”
He credits QHR for helping drive improvements in:
- Revenue cycle
- Supply chain
- Patient financial services
- Manager education
- Strategic planning
- Staff development
- Facility planning
“We need accountability,” explains Boyes. “QHR recently gave me the idea to do manager intelligence reports to help department heads respond fast to changes. QHR helps us keep a sense of urgency.”
Investments in Care
Financial success cleared the way for growth; Wooster never looked back.
After a 50,000 square foot expansion provided state of the art Progressive Care and OB units, the Wooster leadership was able to utilize new open space for other services.
They added two new service lines through creative remodeling.“We opened wound care and then an inpatient rehabilitation unit on the top floor of the older patient tower,” describes Boyes.“If we’d had to build new space, it might have been cost-prohibitive for both projects.”
The hospital moved its outpatient rehab center housing speech, occupational and physical therapies to a beautiful new facility calledHealthPoint. It’s grown into much more.“We didn’t intend HealthPoint to be a wellness center,” Boyes admits,“the public asked about fitness
memberships. It’s a powerful connection to the community.”
It’s All About the Community
At Wooster, even investments in IT consider the patient’s needs.
“Healthcare is in large part an information business,” Sheron asserts. “We’re fully wired for electronic order entry, but we also use technology to improve communication with our patients. They will be able to make appointments and check test results from home via eCare, a patient portal we developed at the hospital for our community.”
Wooster also stays in touch with the community face to face, through its Senior Partners group.“We have monthly education sessions – they give us candid feedback on all kinds of issues,” reports Sheron. The group is extremely popular, with approximately 10,000 active members.
Whatever the Community Needs
Carefully weighing priorities, Sheron, Boyes and the Board worked closely with the staff in selecting their projects:
- PCU/OB: $19.6 million
- HealthPoint: $11.6 million
- ED: $2.8 million
- Lab: $1.2 million
- OR: $2.8 million
“The Board really listens to the staff. And we all share the same attitude of ‘what can we do to improve patient care?’ Dr. Jolliff reports. Mitten agrees.“ Our Board is strong, with CPAs, lawyers, businesspeople and physicians from Wooster and surrounding towns. They are experienced in healthcare issues and we work well together.” And the results benefit the patients. “We’ve recently obtained molecular rapid testing, so we can diagnose infectious disease in 2-4 hours, rather than 2-4 days. We were the first hospital in northeast Ohio with that capability.”
Even with significant outlay for equipment and services – like a 64-slice CT scanner, digital mammography and an open MRI – the team keeps delivering an impressive bottom line, maintaining an operating margin well above the national average over the last ten years. That attention to detail funds the progress.
Satisfied Customers
Quality and service have always been important at Wooster, but when the nearby Cleveland Clinic opened a new facility, the team refocused attention on patient satisfaction.“Our gainsharing program distributes five percent of our margin equally among employees,” Boyes explains.“We decided to raise it to six percent and tie a portion of it to our Press Ganey scores.The positive peer pressure worked.”“Our scores improved significantly,” smiles Sheron.We have been on the top 3% of all hospitals for inpatient care, and at the 93rd percentile overall during the past year.”
Planning for the Future
Unwilling to rest on its accomplishments, the team is looking ahead, with 10 and 20 year forecasts from QHR’s affiliate American HealthFacilities Development.“ 78 million Americans will become eligible for Medicare by 2011,” Boyes says.“AHFD came up with a plan that allows us to continue to cope, by remaking this hospital on our campus.”
In general, northeast Ohio is not experiencing booming economic growth; Wooster is an exception.
“The hospital is good for the community,” says Mitten.“Strong and growing – it gives companies the confidence to bring their business here.” Wooster Community Hospital is helping to lead the way.
"QHR is a real asset for our hospital, providing the consulting support we need, like benchmarking - not just locally but nationally. They also give us a lot of good ideas about how to plan for the future... for the baby boomers."
