- Great success can sometimes be difficult to imagine until it is actually achieved.
- The expansion of boundaries can produce even greater successes.
- The way an enterprise defines their market highly influences the potential reach and revenue of that enterprise.
St. Helena Hospital, located in the beautiful Napa Valley, has existed since 1878. The primary market for the 116-bed campus has 20,000 residents, with a population of a mere 5,000 in the local town. This equates to the hospital having 5.8 beds per 1,000 people in the local market, while the national average is 2.6 per 1,000 people. As a legacy hospital that was founded by generous, philanthropy-minded leaders, it has an extraordinary history. However, it also has a spotted record of success and failure according to business metrics.
To address a period of shrinking volume and losses, Chairman of the Board, Scott Reiner, recruited Terry Newmyer, market strategist, to be the hospital CEO. Terry’s role was dedicated to improving outreach and going beyond traditional geographic boundaries to acquire patients. Through a combination of both market analysis and outreach initiatives for programs such as world-class orthopedics, cancer center, heart institute, and the Take Ten lifestyle medicine program, the hospital resolved that instead of being a community hospital only, that the entire West Coast was its market. An example of new goal setting was to conduct 2% of knee replacements on the West Coast, instead of a locally guided metric.
- A 60% growth of volume to the hospital in three years.
- The average address of a patient admitted to the hospital expanded to seventy miles, compared to the national average of seven miles.
- Patient satisfaction scores soared, with the hospital being recognized as “Top in the West” by NRC Picker for overall patient satisfaction.
- With the introduction of “Destination Quality,” the hospital expanded from having no 5-star service lines, as measured by Healthgrades.com in 2009, to twelve separate 5-star service lines by 2012. Even Brian Williams on NBC national news brought attention to the “destination quality” attributes of the programs.
- EBIDA for 2009-2012 improved by $50 million compared to the prior four years.