LMC in Alternative Health Journal

Lexington Medical Center’s healthy hospital and Green initiatives are featured in an article by Dan Dunlop in the current edition of the Alternative Health Journal. You can read the article here.

Lexington Medical Center is showcased for its hospital healthy eating program called “Better Choices” and for its Green initiatives. The hospital is the first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-certified health care building in South Carolina. That honor comes from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) for its new “green” medical office building, Lexington Medical Park 2.

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LMC and Providence Reach Significant Agreement

A note from Mike Biediger, Lexington Medical Center’s president and CEO:

Today is an important day for Lexington Medical Center and the people of Lexington County.  Below is information about a significant agreement between LMC and Providence Hospitals.  We believe this agreement will enhance our mission to provide quality health care that meets the needs of our community.  The agreement allows us to take a significant step toward securing the heart program we’ve long desired.  We’ll keep you up to date as the process moves forward.

Mike Biediger

Lexington Medical Center and Providence Hospitals Reach Significant Agreement

West Columbia, S.C.  – After several months of discussions, Lexington Medical Center and Providence Hospitals are pleased to announce the terms of an agreement that advances both of their efforts to improve health care delivery in the Midlands. Specifically, Providence Hospitals will support Lexington Medical Center’s efforts to secure an open heart surgery program and Lexington Medical Center will drop its objections to a proposed expansion at Providence Hospitals Northeast.

Thad Westbrook and Michael Kapp

Under the terms of this agreement, Providence Hospitals will support Lexington Medical Center in seeking regulatory approval through a joint Certificate of Need (CON) application. Within the application, Lexington Medical Center will request approval for one open heart surgery suite and the authority to perform open heart surgery and therapeutic cardiac catheterizations. If approved by the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC), Providence Hospitals will de-license one of its open heart surgery suites, allowing Lexington Medical Center to add a suite, in keeping with the 2008-2009 State Health Plan.

Lexington Medical Center has dismissed its lawsuit which opposes Providence Hospitals’ plans to expand and improve its existing Northeast facility. Additionally, Lexington Medical Center, upon licensing of the new heart program, would provide $15 million over a three-year period to Providence Hospitals in consideration of de-licensing one open heart surgery suite. Those funds will allow Providence Hospitals to reinvest in technologies and equipment for other service lines.

Lexington Medical Center’s unique situation as the only hospital located within Lexington County, with one of the state’s busiest emergency departments and a busy diagnostic catheterization lab, supports the need for a full service open heart surgery program to perform open heart surgery and therapeutic catheterizations. This agreement will allow Lexington to obtain such a program for the citizens of Lexington County.

Providence Hospitals believes that this joint CON application will not create new capacity in the open heart market, since no new open heart surgery rooms are being added to the service area. In addition, Providence believes that collaborating with LMC on the delivery of health care services and preserving the integrity of the health planning process is in the long term best interests of the Midlands community.  While each of the hospitals will continue to be strong health care competitors, they may now also be able to explore additional strategies that would serve to improve patient care.

Providence Hospitals President and CEO George Zara noted the impact of working collaboratively in coming to a resolution on the issue. “In keeping with our faith-based mission, it is incumbent that we move past these conflicts to focus on our common goals of providing quality patient care.”

Mike Biediger and George Zara

Mike Biediger, Lexington Medical Center’s president and CEO commented on the joint agreement, “For years, it has been our priority to make cardiovascular care more accessible to the people of Lexington County. We are now one step closer to achieving that goal. We fully expect that this agreement will allow us to address acute cardiac events in a more timely fashion, ultimately saving more lives.”

According to Thad Westbrook, chairman of Lexington Medical Center’s board of directors, “This agreement has been a long time coming and is an important milestone for citizens of Lexington County and the Midlands. The need for a full service open heart program for the people of Lexington County has never been greater, and we now see that our dreams may soon be realized thanks to this agreement with our colleagues at Providence Hospitals.”

Providence Hospitals’ board chairman Michael Kapp is optimistic about the understanding the two hospitals have reached. “I firmly believe that this marks a turning point in the relationship between Providence Hospitals and Lexington Medical Center. We have put aside our differences in order to pursue initiatives that will advance the delivery of quality health care for the people of the Midlands.”

Both Providence Hospitals and Lexington Medical Center appreciate the volunteer assistance of Mr. Frank Mood, senior vice president & general counsel for SCANA, during the mediation process.

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LMC’s ‘Better Choices’ Program Gets National Press

(Post contributed by Dan Dunlop)

Earlier this week I received a Google Alert for a great article on the HealthLeaders Media website titled “Resolve to Help Employees Lose Weight.” The article, by John Commins, details the steps that Lexington Medical Center is taking through its ‘Better Choices’ healthy food campaign to improve employee health. (See Jennifer’s post from December 15, 2008.)

The timing of this article could not have been better, given that Mark Shelley (director of marketing and advertising at Lexington Medical Center) and I are putting the finishing touches on our presentation for the Fourteen National Forum on Customer Based Marketing Strategies. The conference is being held February 4-6, 2009. Our presentation is on marketing green practices in healthcare and the healthy hospital movement. One of the elements we will be discussing is Lexington Medical Center’s healthy eating program.

If you’d like to check out the article, click on this link. For your convenience I’ve posted images from the campaign below (posters, banners, table tents). If you are interested in more information about hospital nutrition programs, I recommend downloading the “Healthy Food, Healthy Hospitals, Healthy Communities” report by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. Click here for that download. It’s available from Healthcare Without Harm, a global coalition of 473 organization in more than 50 countries, all working to protect health by reducing pollution in the healthcare sector. You can find them at www.noharm.org. Another resource for information about hospital nutrition programs in North Carolina Prevention Partners. They can be found online at www.ncpreventionpartners.org. You’ll find a lot of useful information on their website. You can go directly to their Healthy Hospitals initiative at www.healthyhospital.org. From there you can download their “Obesity and Cost Fact Sheet.”

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Cultivating a Caring Corporate Culture in Healthcare

(Post by Dan Dunlop)

Lexington Medical Center is one of my firm’s clients, so I’m visiting them regularly and get to experience all of the things they are doing right. It is an amazing organization.

On Friday (Halloween), one of my colleagues and I visited LMC for a day of strategic marketing. Purely by coincidence, Friday also happened to be the day of LMC’s Fall Picnic and Lexy Awards. This is an annual employee appreciation event and patient satisfaction awards ceremony. What a great day. Lunch was served to 5,000 employees under a huge tent while several employees were singled out for their excellence in delivering an incredible patient experience.

In an industry where employee satisfaction is so closely linked to patient satisfaction, Lexington Medical Center has fostered a corporate culture that is both caring and patient-focused. They are maniacal about patient satisfaction without letting it feel oppressive.

While sitting under the big tent on Friday with 5,000 LMC employees, it was obvious that their commitment to creating an extraordinary patient experience is genuine and heart-felt. As validation of their patient-focused culture, Lexington Medical Center was recently awarded the National Research Corporation’s Consumer Choice Award for the seventh consecutive year! Consumers in the Columbia Area were surveyed for this study and asked about four key metrics: best overall quality, best image and reputation, best doctors and best nurses. LMC was also selected by the readers of The State Newspaper as the region’s best hospital – for the 9th consecutive year!

It’s obvious from these accolades and patient satisfaction numbers that all of the hard work is paying off. This isn’t a casual commitment; these employees at LMC live the brand everyday and are true ambassadors for the organization. The people of the Midlands Region of South Carolina are fortunate to have a national leader in patient care right there in their backyard! Of course, it is the people of the Midlands who staff the Medical Center and care for their neighbors.

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Management by Walking Around – At Night!

(Post by Dan Dunlop)

Recently I wrote an article for Healthcare Advertising Review about “living the brand” at Lexington Medical Center in West Columbia, South Carolina. In the article, I talked about Lexington’s CEO, Mike Biediger, and his habit of walking the halls of the hospital each day – spreading culture along the way. As he walks the halls, he is also mindful of opportunities to improve quality and service delivery within the hospital.

There’s an interesting article in the October 2008 issue of HealthLeaders that takes the concept of management by walking around to the next level. The article, titled “The 24-Hour Executive,” presents the case for executives doing evening rounds to gain insights that will eventually lead to quality improvements in their organization. The point is that at night, you’ve got an entirely different organization. Staffing is limited; there are fewer physicians on duty; and there may be fewer nurse supervisors working. In essence, you’ve got a different hospital at night and on weekends than you have during a typical weekday. Doing rounding at night can reveal opportunities for quality improvements that may not be relevant during the day.

For this story, Maureen Larkin interviewed Ramanathan Raju, MD, the chief medical officer and executive vice president of medical and professional affairs for the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation. To find the article online, visit www.healthleadersmedia.com.

If you’re interested in more information about the benefits of rounding at night, check out the recent article from the New England Journal of Medicine, May 15, 2008. The article is titled “Like Night and Day – Shedding Light on Off-Hours Care” by David J. Shulkin, M.D.

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