With an eye on efficiency, TRMC expands

Thibodaux Regional Medical Center CEO Greg Stock credits the board’s refusal to stand idle and a capacity to maintain the hospital’s growth and development during a time when the health care industry has been plagued with cuts for its success.

“You can’t become so conservative [during uncertain times] that you miss opportunities to grow, provide services that are not provided fully or, honestly, not provided at all in the service area,” Stock said. “We’re always looking to do those things.”

Thus far, the aggressive, forward-thinking mantra has paid dividends for the Thibodaux hospital. While some in the industry idly awaits the enactment or failure of the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act, TRMC has moved forward, relying on national trends and projected federal reimbursement programs to guide its voyage.

And as he looks to tomorrow, Stock credits past planning as helping the company maintain the necessary flexibility to be where it is today.

Enrollment and inflation in Medicaid inpatient costs increased by more than 60 percent from 1995 to 2010. At the same time, Louisiana government reimbursement decreased 9 percent.

Stock said the cuts in Medicaid “took about $1.2 million off our bottom line,” but the hospital was able to absorb the losses because its flexibility.

“We’re not ever going to go to a situation where poor-quality care is provided,” the TRMC CEO said. “What it does to a hospital overall is make you strive to be more efficient to get upstream on processes and approve them so that it takes waste out of the system. …We’re a more efficient hospital, therefore, we can absorb those cuts more readily than [most hospitals] can.”

TRMC tripled the size of its emergency department as part of a five-year expansion plan. Also, the hospital recently announced the development of a wellness center geared at preventing illnesses and tapping into future reimbursement programs.

Stock said prevention “is the future,” in both facilitating a healthier population and achieving further government reimbursement.

“Someone has to lead that cause, someone has to step up, draw lots of attention to it and begin to help prevent many of the things we see in heart care, diabetes caused by being overweight and other matters like that,” Stock said. “We think that possibly reimbursement will also be provided in preventative care much more than it is today.”

In conjunction with realizing and achieving alternative reimbursement from the federal government, TRMC, as well as other hospitals, must cope with heightened regulatory requirements. Stock said the use of information technology is pertinent in balancing quality care with lower costs.

“The challenge for leadership will be to acquire the right amount of IT and deploy it wisely, efficiently and effectively so that it actually results in gains in quality patient care and greater efficiency,” he said.

Another issue, the recruitment of skilled personnel, is combated with a core philosophy, values and work ethic as handed down by upper management, according to the hospital’s CEO.

Stock said the organization’s core focus is on the patient, and its values like “honesty, integrity and accountability” branch off that focus.

“It’s a feel that people have with each other,” Stock said. “It’s teamwork, all those seemingly simple things that in the absence of them, people don’t necessarily stay committed – they’re not loyal, but with them, there is much more loyalty. You have better performance. You get all the things you’re after. That’s a coveted position to be in, and we seek to be in that position as much as we can.”

TRMC’s employees, particularly those with daily customer interaction, helped the hospital achieve five awards from J.D. Power and Associates over the past three years in outpatient and inpatient service. Stock said that in addition to hiring the right people, the hospital is able to maintain its customer interface success through regular surveys and feedback exercises.

“We have honest conversations – what we call crucial conversations – and by setting goals around those key levels, goals set at a high level, high expectations,” Stock said. “It’s not OK, for example, to be average, and by comparing yourself to legitimate benchmarks, you can begin to understand how good you are or how poor you are at certain things.”

Through its forward-thinking, employee-active mechanisms, Stock thinks the future of the hospital will continue to overcome the challenges of the health care industry.

“Overall, we’re very optimistic about our future,” Stock said. “We feel like we’ve overcome a lot of problems and challenges and that we can rise up and meet the challenges that lie ahead.”