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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Driving Quality, Access, and Strategic Partnerships at Naples Comprehensive Health with Paul Hiltz
00:10:33
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- [00:02]
A
Every year, Becker's annual meeting brings healthcare leaders together to unpack the most pressing issues facing the industry. And every year, those conversations shift in profound and unexpected ways. This April, more than 3,500 healthcare executives will return to Chicago for Becker's 16th annual meeting. 795 elite speakers will offer new lessons, new case studies, and predictions about what comes next. Join us April 13th through the 16th. For the agenda and event details, visit BeckersHospReview.com and click on the events tab in the upper right.
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B
This is Laura Dearda with the Beckers Healthcare Podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by Paul Hiltz, president and CEO of Naples Comprehensive Health. Paul, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
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C
Good morning, Laura. Thanks for having me.
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B
Absolutely. Now, I'm looking forward to our conversation. I think there's a lot of amazing things happening in healthcare today and, you know, really looking forward to spotlighting some of the things you're doing at Naples Comprehensive Health. But could you first and foremost, tell us a little bit more about yourself, your background, and the organization?
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C
Be glad to. I've been here in Naples as CEO for six years now, believe it or not. Before that, I served as CEO in the Bon Secours Mercy system for 15 years throughout Ohio. And happy to be here in southwest Florida where it's a very active healthcare community.
- [01:26]
B
Absolutely nowhere better to be many times. So that's great. I'm curious. Tell us a little bit more about Naples Comprehensive Health. What do you do? In what services do you provide?
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C
Well, Naples Comprehensive Health is a very interesting organization, one that is rapidly growing. We've essentially doubled in size over the last five years from about 600 million net revenue to just over a billion. We're a locally governed, independent, nonprofit health system, so there's not many of those left in America. There's a lot of large health care systems, integrated delivery networks. But we pride ourselves in being independent and locally governed by a very strong and effective board of trustees and a really great management team here. And we provide a comprehensive array of services for southwest Florida, including a very robust labor and delivery service, a very busy cardiovascular service line. And just in July, we opened a premier freestanding orthopedic hospital in conjunction with the Hospital for Special Surgery out of New York.
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B
Well, that's fascinating. I mean, huge and impressive growth, as you said, and then being able to partner with others to bring additional care into the community, I know, is so critical. I'm curious, what are some of the big trends that you're watching currently? What's top of mind for you, Top
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C
of mind for us. And it comes from our board. We really want to double down on quality. We were just named the top 50 hospital in America based on our quality metrics. We're benchmarking ourselves against some of the best health systems in America. So quality is our primary focus. And now we're coupling that this year with access. So we really have focused in on making it easier for patients to access their doctors, to access outpatient care, and to make sure that they need inpatient care. We can accommodate just about everything they need, except we don't do transplants here. But other than that, we're very much a full service integrated health system.
- [03:39]
B
I love it. I think it's definitely critical to have that type of comprehensive care within the community. And when you're looking at access, looking at quality, how do you make sure that you're staying on top of accountability for those things? What do you measure and how do you, I guess, make sure that all are embracing this culture of doing things the right way every single time?
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C
Well, we have a real focus on customer service, customer satisfaction. We've really increased the access using a call center that we've developed that we do about 20,000 calls a week now, if you can believe that. We have a pretty robust digital front door where people can do self scheduling using epic and we have a lot of outreach here in Naples because there are quite a few concierge doctors here and. And we try to make it easy for those doctors and their patients to access timely and high quality care.
- [04:39]
B
Got it. That's helpful to understand. You know, it really makes a big difference when you can have that easy in customer service mindset. In order to connect now, what are you most focused on and excited about right now? What's been something, you know, you've been proud of from the last six to 18 months or so?
- [04:56]
C
Well, as I said, the orthopedic hospital opening was a big deal. Our partnerships that we have going on right now with Northwestern Medicine out of Chicago, with Nicholas Children's out of Miami, we have the HSS partnership that I mentioned. And now there's a medical school that has announced they're going to build here in southwest Florida over the next several years, and we are in discussions with the medical school to make sure we can be a strong partner there. So partnering is a key thing for us. We think that partnerships can make us stronger, faster than trying to do everything on our own. And that culture of partnering and working with the community and serving the community is Vitally important to me and to our team here.
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B
That makes a ton of sense. And, you know, I think all those partnerships are fascinating. It seems like now more than ever, healthcare is a team sport. And so, you know, when you're looking out at trying to fill some of those gaps and identifying the right partners and actually getting, you know, these types of alignments of partnerships and deals across the finish line to make them work and effective, you know, what does it take from your seat as a CEO to really get these done and collaborate in a meaningful way?
- [06:14]
C
Boy, that's a great question. We really believe in developing the culture here. So we have two really exciting initiatives we've been working on. One is a physician leadership Academy that we just graduated our third class out of. So we're trying to develop physician leaders that can be effective clinical and business leaders here in our health system. We also have a program called the President's Forum here where we are dealing with and developing our managerial, mid level and early career healthcare leaders to become even stronger leaders. Because we believe that healthcare in the future is gonna need more leaders than we've ever had before and people who can collaborate to get results. And that's what we're focused on as we develop the culture here. We want to make this a place where doctors and nurses can enjoy practicing their profession.
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B
I love it. I think that's such a great point. And, you know, very fascinating that you've had the Physician Leadership Academy bringing them into a space where they're learning more about the business side, because I know that's not a ton of focus when they're in medical school. And so have you. Have you seen a good amount of energy around clinicians wanting to do that and learn more about that or, you know, what has been kind of the most attractive aspects of that process to really bring in physicians that could have a meaningful impact not only in patient care, but also in growing the organization.
- [07:50]
C
Well, another great question. You know, we. I think we triggered a lot of interest in this by first, we started a leadership rounding program where we lead by listening to our doctors. So people on my team, including myself, shadow Doctors Quarterly to learn what it's like to be a practicing frontline physician. And then we talk about learning more about leadership. So we have a very strong interest in an application process to get into the physician leadership training. And I will just tell you that the final session of last year's leadership program for doctors was conducted at the Blue Angels training facility in Pensacola. So we trained doctors how to work in teams like the Blue Angel Pilot demonstration pilots do. And that was a very popular and very exciting day to spend with our doctor leaders.
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B
That's great to hear. And, you know, I appreciate digging a little bit deeper into kind of how that program came about and, you know, has grown over the last couple of years. Now, before we wrap, I wanted to ask, what advice would you give to evolving leaders today, especially given all the different dynamics in healthcare and, you know, for folks who want to continue to grow and develop, what advice do you have?
- [09:12]
C
Well, first of all, I think any young person that's looking at healthcare as a career, it's fabulous. There's never been a better time to be in healthcare. We emphasize teamwork here at all levels. So I would say work on interpersonal skills and teamwork skills. We tend to like to hire people that have played on sports teams and been active in civic groups. And we believe that that teamwork and those experiences help people learn how to build trust with their colleagues and with physicians. So that's the advice I give young people today, is get involved in a leadership role in some team based activity and it will always serve you for the future.
- [09:58]
B
I love that. Paul, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. This has been such a fascinating conversation, inspiring to see how much you've grown the organization and look forward to connecting with you again soon.
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C
Thank you so much for having me.
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B
Absolutely. And you know, we're looking forward to having you join us as well at our April annual meeting. I know you'll be speaking on a panel and really digging into some of the concepts that we talked about today. And so it'll be great to continue the conversation and, you know, be able to see you in person.
- [10:26]
C
There's a, well, see you in Chicago and I encourage people to attend. That's a great meeting. So thank you.