Located roughly 200 miles from a major market, our sole community provider client experiences almost no direct competition, and as a result, little financial pressure from competitors. However, the hospital has the concomitant challenges of lack of scale and difficulty recruiting providers and key management. The board and management had concerns that the organization’s attractive attributes might erode over time, particularly as they felt transitioning to population health would prove difficult.
We were initially retained to organize a three-day board retreat to help focus on strategic and financial challenges, and what role partnerships might play in furthering the hospital’s growth strategies. We assessed the organization’s market position and developed financial projections of various scenarios. We also facilitated the inclusion of additional speakers at the retreat to cover legal and financial topics. Following the retreat, the board and management determined that they lacked the internal expertise and capital to fully execute their strategy and asked us to help them explore how a partnership might address these issues. We obtained more than ten proposals from highly regarded regional and national health systems on how they might help address these objectives through a range of affiliation and partnership alternatives. Ultimately, after giving careful consideration to all of its alternatives, the board opted to continue as an independent organization, applying a number of strategies and ideas that they learned as a result of this process.
