← Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Rick Hundorfean, MBA, Chief Operating Officer of MUSC Health – Charleston Division
00:19:51
Loading summary
Transcript16 lines
- [00:02]
Athenahealth Representative
@ Athenahealth, we know your ambulatory practice wants healthier a healthier business, healthier care teams, and healthier patients. But the complexities of modern healthcare tech make it hard for you and your care teams to focus on what matters most. That's where athenahealth can help our AI native all in one solutions reduce administrative burdens, streamline billing and payments, and deliver critical insights when clinicians need it most. That means fewer clicks, more time for patients, and stronger bottom Practicing medicine is complex, but running a practice can be that much simpler. With Athenahealth, see how simpler is healthier at athenahealth.com.
- [00:44]
Laura Dearda
This is Laura Dearda with the Beckers Healthcare Podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by Rick Hondurphine, Chief Operating Officer of the Charleston Division at MUSC Health. Rick, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
- [00:57]
Rick Hondurphine
Good morning Laura, Appreciate you having me. Thank you.
- [01:00]
Laura Dearda
Now I'm excited to have you on the line because I know there's so much happening in healthcare today and also digging your perspective on the future too. But before we do, can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit more about MUSC Health? What's been your biggest winner success story from the last year?
- [01:15]
Rick Hondurphine
Sure, I would love to. Thank you and first of all, appreciate the opportunity to come on this podcast and highlight the great work that MUSC Health is doing not just in Charleston, South Carolina but but throughout the state. Also looking forward to the opportunity to serve at the Roundtable as a panelist for the upcoming Beckers CEO CFO Roundtable here in Chicago this upcoming November. So just to give a bit of a background about MUSC Health, MUSC was founded in 1824 here in Charleston, South Carolina and we are the only comprehensive academic health system in the state, which we're very proud of. Our mission is to preserve and optimize human life in South Carolina through education, research and patient care. But just from a stats perspective, each year MUSC educates over 3500 students in our six colleges which has a total of 41 degree programs and we train roughly a little over a thousand residents and fellows across our health system. We are comprised of 17 hospitals with five currently in development and have over 2,800 license beds. We see roughly 3.21 million patient encounters annually and we do provide care in each of our 46 counties in South Carolina at over 950 plus locations. So we really have done a great job over the past, I would say 10 years expanding care throughout the state. And I'll talk a Little bit more about that later on in the podcast. But we're super proud of our outreach. We do have a little over 34,000 care team members that are employed in the health system spread across four divisions. I would say the last thing specifically about the Charleston division that I think is important to note is that our university medical center located in downtown Charleston, has been named by U.S. news & World Report as the number one hospital in South Carolina for the past 11 years with several nationally ranked specialties. So we are, we're very proud of that. In terms of the biggest win or success story in the past year, I have a couple things that I'd like to call out or at least draw attention to. Earlier this year, in April, our MUSC Board of Trustees approved a resolution to initiate the planning and construction of a state of the art comprehensive cancer house cancer hospital, a medical office building in an outpatient surgery center in Charleston. This really marks a very bold and visionary step in advancing cancer care for us as well as research and prevention throughout South Carolina and beyond. So that was a really big win for us. Couple others that are really important to note here. In May of this year, MUSC Health announced we would be expanding access to emergency and urgent care services through a key collaboration with Intuitive Health. And this is a partnership that will allow us to expand access to immediate medical care, really, across the state of South Carolina through the development of several state of the art emergency rooms, or ERs, offering combined emergency and urgent care services. This strategic collaboration will really allow us to ensure that our patients are receiving exceptional care when they need it close to home. And the last one that I'd like to call out that just, just came in this morning, US and news world report for 2025, 2026 best children's hospital rankings were recently released and our Sean Jenkins Children's Hospital remains South Carolina's only children's hospital to make the rankings. We're super proud of that. We also had six specialties ranked in the top 50 in the nation. And, and just with the efforts that we continue to have, we hopefully will have more in the rankings for next year. But super proud of the CARE team members and all of the leaders that have made that possible.
- [05:21]
Laura Dearda
So, no, access to care is a really big challenge for health systems across the country. And so it's really amazing to see everything that you're doing across South Carolina to make a difference and ensure that the entire population has access to care. Now, what are the top two to three issues you're focused on right now?
- [05:40]
Rick Hondurphine
Sure, yeah. I'll give you the top two if that suffices. So one of our biggest issues that our health system is facing is the critical workforce shortages that we're experiencing across the system tied closely with retention opportunities. It's important to note that this is not an MUSC specific issue, but really a nationwide issue that we're seeing in the healthcare industry. I would just comment further that as musc, we are one of the largest academic health systems in the state with an expanding footprint into our rural and underserved areas. Through acquisitions like our regional health network, we really have an immense demand for doctors and nurses as well as allied health professionals. Our workforce shortage is really most severe in the health professional shortage areas that MUSC is actively trying to serve through our statewide mission. And the success of our expansion into the rural communities is directly linked to our ability to recruit and retain staff in those remote locations. And I would just comment further on this specific issue that our six MUSC educational colleges train a significant portion of the state's healthcare workforce and we have a high in state retention rate for our graduates, which we're very proud of. However, the overall supply of workers still does not meet the state or our system's growing demand. And this has really necessitated major investments in workforce development initiatives and pipeline programs to sustain operations. And I would say the second issue that I'm currently focusing on in the Charleston division is really around infrastructure development and downtown Charleston constraints, which were which we're also facing specifically as we try to expand services and our facilities. And to really comment more into that, the physical location and expansion in downtown Charleston presents multiple complex challenges. We're super proud of our historic city, but with an older city like Charleston, especially one positioned on the coastline, we face many challenges that have come up. Specifically vulnerability to flooding. Our downtown area is very prone to flooding, as we all know, anybody who lives here, which has led to other institutions to relocate. With storms or hurricane season really running for a majority of the year from June to the end of November, coastal cities like Charleston, this is a real concern for us and one that we deal with for, like I said, a majority of the year. Other potential issues that this, this really brings up in terms of infrastructure needs are potential development conflicts. And what I mean by that is proposed zoning changes for MUSC development can sometimes face significant opposition from the community and local governing bodies due to concerns about our impact on parking or local character or just environmental concerns like stormwater management. These are matters that we take extremely seriously and we do our very best to partner closely with the community to ensure that what we're doing is really the best for Charleston and the surrounding communities. I would say that our city of Charleston has been a great partner for us in addressing these issues, such as the one I just commented on, and really look forward to continuing to partner with them on that.
- [09:14]
Laura Dearda
That makes a lot of sense, you know, and it's helpful to understand both of those challenges and issues. I think the workforce, as you mention, is critical in being able to have that type of retention and continue to expand. That I know will be a big part of the future. And then your physical footprint too, is just really interesting to hear from you. Some of the different challenges as well as opportunities to keep figuring out how you can expand your broader reach to those communities. So thanks for talking through some of those things. Where do you see some of the opportunities for growth in the next few years?
- [09:52]
Rick Hondurphine
Sure. Thanks, Laura. Yeah, our health system's biggest opportunities for growth, I would say in the next few years really align with our one MUSC strategic plan and capitalizes on South Carolina's growing and aging population. I would say four key areas of opportunities that I'd like to call out. First is geographic expansion and our continued integration with our regional health network. The second being specialized care. The third, I would say opportunity is innovation. And then the last is around workforce development, which ties very closely to, you know, our top issues that I had just provided some background on. So to dive a little deeper into each of those for geographic expansion and just overall continued integration with our regional health network, we continue to deepen our reach across the state of South Carolina, especially in those underserved areas or rapidly growing coastal areas. In a few examples of this include our expanded majority ownership of Thailand's Health, which was just recently announced. This will help us extend our services across Georgetown and Horry counties. And another example of this development is with our Kiowa Partners Pavilion and our comprehensive medical campus in Indianland. You know, these are areas that we continue to identify the large need and we continue to expand our services in those markets to bring care closer to home. We're also meeting patient demand by creating convenient lower cost access points throughout a partnership with Intuitive Health. You know, I had mentioned that in my wins above as we were talking through, but really just elaborate a little further on that. That's a collaboration with Intuitive Health to develop combined emergency department and urgent care facilities throughout the state which will help streamline patient triage and care. And really these expansion efforts target a growing need for accessible right level of care close to home in terms of specialized care. We continue to enhance our reputation and capabilities in high demand, high acuity specialties. This really includes planned construction of our new comprehensive cancer hospital in downtown Charleston and our continued focus on accelerated preeminence in areas like cancer, digestive health, heart and vascular neurosciences, precision health and many others. So a lot of great work that's being done there in terms of innovation. We continue to stimulate the state's economy and healthcare ecosystems by translating academic research into commercial ventures through our 1824 Health Ventures Fund and our South Carolina Health Innovation fund, both totaling $30 million in investments. We provide dedicated seed capital for MUSC affiliated startups and other high impact innovation companies that are committed to growing in South Carolina. So that's pretty neat. And then lastly around workforce development. This is a huge opportunity for us, especially with our continued expansion initiatives. We continue to reshape and grow our current and future workforce to meet the rising demands of our organization and most importantly, our patients. A few examples of initiatives we're working on to grow our workforce include the construction of a new College of Medicine building right here in our downtown Charleston campus. This will allow us to enhance medical education for those students who end up getting services and education in that building. We've also recently in the past several years expanded resident programs across our regional health network to our Florence and Lancaster sites. And I would say maybe a last example of just overall workforce development strategies has been the development of a new center of excellence within our College of Nursing Behavioral Health Center. You know, these are things that are tangible initiatives that we're actively putting in place and it's helping to address just overall recruitment efforts to our location spread out all over the state of South Carolina and really helping us to retain our workforce.
- [14:19]
Laura Dearda
That's amazing to hear and you know, thank you so much for sharing with us. I think there's a lot of opportunities when you look at innovation, geographic expansion, as well as some of the workforce development issues that really can be top of mind in solving some of those for the future. Now before we wrap up here, I am curious, what will it take to lead a thriving organization in the next five years or so?
- [14:41]
Rick Hondurphine
Yeah, that's a great question. I would say really three things come to mind. The first is we need to continue focusing on integration and achieving what I call systemness across the enterprise. We've expanded rapidly into a statewide System ever since 2018, 2019 timeframe. And you know, it's important that our leaders continue to focus on seamless, high reliability integration across our network of clinical sites, regional Hospitals and academic departments. That's the first. The second is we must continue to drive health transformation and overall economic impact as an academic health system. Our growth is tied to our ability to generate new knowledge and really translate it into commercial success and superior clinical outcomes. An example of this that I've spoken about previous is leveraging the 1824 Health Ventures Fund and the South Carolina Health Innovation Fund to nurture MUSC originated and state focused startups. The second example of that is using AI to support patient volume growth without commensurate staff increases, which is a core challenge for all academic health systems today and that allows us to drive preeminence in areas like precision health. The third is something related to one of our challenges and overall threats and that's to a thriving organization which is around burned out, understaffed workforce. A key theme that I've spoken about today is workforce development. Our health system is actively cultivating a high engagement, resilient culture investments such as the ones that I've spoken about. Examples like the College of Medicine building, the expansion of our residency programs, the centers of excellence that we've been building out. These allow us to strategically recruit for high demand roles, even including things like nurse practitioners, which ultimately will help, you know, help us thrive as a system in the coming years. And then I would say maybe last, just a side note, you know, there's other tactics that we, we are constantly working on including a overall well being plan and just cultivating a culture of engagement and exemplary experience which continues to allow us to build out our leadership capacity through throughout the organization. Things like career ladder development. That's something that we're working on very strongly to make sure that we're, we're promoting from within and building up our workforce.
- [17:20]
Laura Dearda
That's amazing to hear. And you know, I think truly when you look at that leadership building, having that right pipeline and career development, I can imagine is very much welcome from the broad and really, you know, support so many angles of what we talked about today. In addition to the technology side, looking at how you can continue to automate and be innovative. It's truly amazing to think through everything that you've been able to accomplish with the Health Ventures Fund and really impact operations as well as the clinical side of providing better outcomes for patients across the board. So thank you so much Rick for your time today. I think this has been such an informative conversation, inspiring to hear, you know, everything that you're doing and look forward to connecting with you again soon.
- [18:06]
Rick Hondurphine
Laura, thank you. Really appreciate the time.
- [18:08]
Laura Dearda
Absolutely. And you know, I know you're planning to speak at our CEO and CFO Roundtable in a couple weeks here and you know, it's just really going to be an amazing opportunity to learn from each other and grow and continue this conversation, get into more specifics as well as a broad perspective on what it's going to take in order to thrive in the next two to three years especially.
- [18:29]
Rick Hondurphine
Yeah, yeah, I'm really looking forward to that. You know, MUSC has two really big aspirational long term goals which coincide with our one MUSC Strategic Plan. You know, the first being that we'll be a top 20 academic health system in the nation and that South Carolina will be the top 20 in the nation for health outcomes, and we'll achieve that through our one MUSC strategy. I'm really looking forward to talking more about those initiatives that are going to help us get there, a lot of which I've covered today. Just talking through big opportunities and some of the challenges we're working through. But I'll definitely be diving deeper at the Panelist Roundtable forum.
- [19:10]
Athenahealth Representative
At athenahealth. We know your ambulatory practice wants healthier a healthier business, healthier care teams and healthier patients. But the complexities of modern healthcare tech make it hard for you and your care teams to focus on what matters most. That's where athenahealth can help our AI native all in one solutions reduce administrative burdens, streamline billing and payments, and deliver critical insights when clinicians need it most. That means fewer clicks, more time for patients, and stronger bottom lines. Practicing medicine is complex, but running a practice can be that much simpler with Athenahealth. See how simpler is healthier@athenahealth.com.