Worcester Business Journal

wbjournal.com | May 1, 2017 | Worcester Business Journal 9 Richard Siegrist Chairman, UMass Memorial Health Care Board of Trustees DEGREES/CERTIFICATIONS • Bachelor of arts in political economy, Williams College • Master of business administration, Harvard Business School • Master of science in accounting, NYU Graduate School of Business • Certified public accountant COMPANIES FOUNDED • PatientFlow Technology (acquired by Press Ganey Associates) • HealthShare Technology (acquired by WebMD) • Transition Systems Inc. (for-profit subsidiary of Tufts New England Medical Center, later became part of Eclipsys of Georgia) U.S. PATENTS HELD • Analysis and Reporting of Performance of Service Providers • Performance Data User Interface Lynda Young, appointed in March 2013 • A former president of the Massachusetts Medical Society, Young is a pediatrician in the Department of Pediatrics at UMass Memorial Health Care and UMass Medical School. She retired after 30 years in private practice in Worcester. She was appointed for her perspective as a local physician as well as knowledge of the regulatory environment. Peter Knox, appointed in September 2013 • Knox was the executive vice president and chief learning and inno- vation officer at Bellin Health System, an integrated healthcare delivery system based in Green Bay, Wis. He retired after 32 years with Bellin and offers expertise in the areas of population health management and accountable care organizations. Raymond Pawlicki, appointed in June 2016 • An information-technology expert, Pawlicki began his career in the healthcare industry when he was recruited by Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis as its chief information officer. He then joined U.S. drugmaker Biogen as CIO, where he is credited with remaking the company's IT organization. He now serves in directorships on various boards. UMass Memorial board members Over the last four years, UMass Memorial Health Care executives have stacked the board of trustees with leading health and technology experts as it tries to maintain its strong lead as the dominant provider in Central Massachusetts. Here are some of the key players: Source: UMass Memorial Health Care Becoming patient-centric At Press Ganey, Siegrist said there was a constant focus on improving patient experience for hospital clients, and that work is ongoing at UMass Memorial. In the four years since he joined the board, Siegrist said there's been a cultural shift in the system's hos- pitals. By becoming more patient-cen- tric, rather than provider-centric, he said patient outcomes have improved, and providers are happier at work. Reducing anxiety and easing patients' concerns are vital to a good overall experience, Siegrist said, which is why the system has implemented hourly rounding. Nurses visit every patient, every hour, each day. Regular executive rounding, where hospital executives visit patients, has also been added, along with staff huddles, where executives generate ideas from the frontline staff on how to improve daily operations. "It comes down to not how much you spend, or having the most fancy facilities. It's how you treat the patients, and how you address their needs," Siegrist said. Patient experience is important for the bottom line, because the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid now penalizes hospitals up to 2 percent of Medicare payments if patient experi- ence surveys show underperformance in more than two dozen categories. Items patients are asked about include pain management and facility cleanli- ness. Meanwhile, health care is becom- ing more consumer driven, and health plans are incentivizing patients to seek services from providers delivering high-quality care in low-cost settings. Leveraging technology Siegrist said UMass Memorial Health Care is no different from providers across the U.S. facing financial uncer- tainty as healthcare policy at the federal level is in flux. Providers must adopt the best available technology for efficient healthcare delivery, which also leads to a better patient experience, he said. The system is inching closer to implementing its new electronic records platform, called Epic, in October. Doctors will no longer have to access multiple electronic records sys- tems to collect information on patients, which Siegrist said is an important step toward improving patient flow. "It will make it much easier for our caregivers, having one system," Siegrist said. UMass decentralization With revenue and operations on rela- tively strong footing – the system fin- ished its fiscal 2016 year in October with a $68-million surplus – the challenge is to continuously adapt to pressure on reimbursements. UMass Memorial is particularly challenged, as a large num- ber of its patients are covered by Medicaid, which offers lower reimburse- ment rates than commercial health plans, and it has high overhead costs, as the region's only hospital equipped with a level-one trauma center and the aca- demic partner to the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Meanwhile, the system is decentraliz- ing in order to manage expenses, and continuing to grow its services, primar- ily through affiliations with other pro- viders in the areas of urgent care, physi- cal therapy, imaging, and, most recently, mental health. That's brought out-of- state providers – including for-profit companies – into the nonprofit UMass Memorial network. "We very carefully vet the partners that we work with," Siegrist said. "The end result, I believe, is better patient care because of the broader services we provide." In April, the system announced it is pursuing an affiliation with US HealthVest, a national provider of behavioral health services, to build a standalone, 120-bed inpatient psychiat- ric hospital in Worcester. Of plans to eliminate about half of the 28 inpatient psychiatric beds at the University Campus in Worcester, which are on hold after the state Department of Public Health last month deemed the beds essential for the welfare of the community, Siegrist said the system must balance the need for more medi- cal-surgical services (the closures would make way for a med-surge expansion) with demand for inpatient psychiatric services. While psychiatric services typ- ically generate less revenue than med- surge services, Siegrist said the planned closures are not a financial decision. Meanwhile, construction of a new ambulatory surgery center is now underway in Shrewsbury. The center is expected to be finished in February 2018, allowing UMass Memorial to move surgeries out of the high-cost hospital settings in Worcester to a loca- tion with lower overhead, which means lower costs for health plans, and ulti- mately consumers. A return to UMass Siegrist's tenure as board chairman, and relatively recent appointment to the board, are actually a return to Central Massachusetts health care, in a sense. Siegrist noted his first client after founding HealthShare Technology in the 1990s was the Medical Center of Central Massachusetts, which in the late 1990s combined with Memorial Health Care in Worcester to form UMass Memorial Medical Center. As the system continues to evolve, Dickson said he's thankful to have a continued mentor in Siegrist. State and federal healthcare finance reform threaten to eliminate vulnerable healthcare players, and Dickson said the next six years will be make or break for UMass Memorial. But with the right leadership, he hopes the sys- tem will come out on top. "We have the most qualified board chair in New England to be leading a health system," Dickson said. "For me, he's been a godsend, in terms of being a coach." P H O T O / E D D C O T E W

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