Mon Health System President and CEO David Goldberg marked his one-year anniversary on the job last month and spent some time with The Dominion Post Editorial Board to look back and look ahead.
“It has been invigorating to come back to Morgantown,” said the WVU alumnus. “The spirit here, as I go out to all these different locations, is unbelievable in this state.”
Goldberg stepped into an organization suffering some financial challenges stemming from planned growth and rebounding from leadership turmoil: Previous CEO Darryl Duncan stepped down in March 2018 following submission of a no-confidence letter by Mon Health physicians.
Last June, Goldberg was able to describe how Mon Health turned the tide and was moving forward.
Looking ahead, Goldberg described six pillars of Mon Health’s strategic plan, all intertwined under a single vision.
The first pillar relates to patient care: Quality and safety.
The second is people. Mon Health has 40 locations and sees more people in the various offices than it does in its emergency room, he said.
Third, not just growth, but strategic growth.
“I can grow the best services tomorrow, and if there’s no way to pay for it, then I’ll just grow bankruptcy.”
It means they have to manage the financial margin while staying true to what the community needs. It means not hiring neurologists or pediatricians when the system across the street already has well developed programs. “Why would we duplicate cost?”
Mon’s new Growth Council regularly reviews tactics and strategies for growth, he said. They talk with doctors about what kind of growth will be best.
The fourth is integration and efficiency. It means unifying the recently acquired medical practices and hospitals under a single administrative and business system. That saves money and effort.
“I want to invest more at the patient side.”
Goldberg and the leadership team have been working to unify the three hospitals — Mon Health Medical Center, Stonewall Jackson Memorial Hospital and Preston Memorial — and all the offices into one Mon Health System.
An example is Mon’s durable medical equipment business. The three hospitals all had their own and it made no sense for them to compete. Unified under the Mon Health umbrella, they’ve been able to grow staff and revenue at all three.
The fifth pillar is stewardship, making the best use of resources.
And sixth is something new: Physician-led care, instead of administrator-led care. This means doctors say where to do things, at what level and how it impacts patients.
“These men and women are really doing the care and they need to be empowered.”
Goldberg talked about a renewed focus on employees. That 2018 no-confidence letter, signed by 28 physicians, highlighted eroded employee morale and high-profile resignations.
Goldberg said engaged employees make the system thrive.
“I don’t want someone to be satisfied; I want someone to be wowed.”
A system-wide survey revealed three employee priorities. They want a voice in their future, a work environment that allows them to grow and a role in decision-making.
Goldberg — and all of Mon Health — were excited about this year’s Ball of the Year (held Saturday), and more so in what it benefits. Mon Health is developing a perinatal depression unit to aid moms identified with perinatal depression.
“I didn’t realize how big an issue this was until we started announcing it — the amount of people coming around the community saying, ‘I had that issue but I didn’t know where to go.’ ”
They’re collaborating with other providers, including Goldberg’s previous employer, Allegheny Health Network, to put the program together. It will offer a standardized screening of all moms-to-be and offer identified aid to navigate their way through appropriate medicine management and behavioral health care.
Mon Health performs about 1,300 to 1,500 deliveries per year, he said, and statistically about 10% of those women could have some form of a mood disorder tied to a pregnancy.
“That’s what a community provider does,” he said. “We step up with our resources and make the investments in what the community needs. And this one is definitely becoming much bigger of an issue than we thought it was.”
Mon Health will be just the 13th medical center in the nation to house such a program.
Goldberg and his team are also dealing with some challenges, he said. One is getting out the word about Mon Health, especially in light of its collaborator/competitor across the street.
“There’s choice,” he said. “And we have to make sure the community knows that they have choice in where they go for health care.”
Mon Health Medical Center Chief Administration Officer Mark Gilliam is relatively new to the area, with two years under his belt after working in Nashville. He offered his perspective on this topic during the meeting. The state has a tremendous need for health care, he said.
“Getting everyone to understand that we can all have our niche and we can all have our service we deliver, but we can also play together. … Various players in the market got a little bit isolated and decided we don’t want to play in the sandbox together. All that does is affect the service we provide and divert time, money, energy and resources to things that aren’t helping the health of the community.”
But he’s seen the transition in the last two years.
“We all can play. We all can partner. We can collaborate we can compete. But let’s focus on reaching out and meeting the needs of the people in the communities we serve — or in the state — so that we raise the level of health, of the care we provide. … It’s both been a challenge but it’s also been exciting to watch as we moved the needle a little bit over the last year.”
A second challenge is selecting what care to offer. “We can’t be all things to all people with a shrinking health care dollar,” Goldberg said. As he said previously, they have to invest in the right way.
“That’s been a little bit of a growing pain in some of our communities,” he said.
Some question investments in Morgantown when Mon Health also serves other communities. Some may want something in Lewis County that makes more sense to offer in Morgantown, the population center.
But people don’t want to come to Morgantown for everything. So they have the Gateway clinic, Elkins cardiac care and Preston orthopedic care.
“Those patients are gracious and thankful we brought that level of investment closer to home. … I’m a believer in bringing care closer out to the community for the level that’s appropriate, and the higher level service should be where you have all the accoutrements and you to do it cost effectively and highest quality.”
A third challenge harkens back to the idea of developing a unified system. The challenge, Goldberg said, is getting the workforce to be more progressive and buy into the unified health system model. He offers the analogy of moving from a holding company with many pieces to an operating company.
“I didn’t realize how entrenched some people would be,” he said. But they are coming around.
Goldberg closed with some final reflections on his new job.
“You don’t get handed an opportunity like this, to find a well-capitalized, stable, high quality organization … and really make an impact happen so quickly. That has really been the most exciting thing for me.”
