Independence Health hospital presidents focus on future plans

After reported losses of $62 million and hundreds of staff cuts, Independence Health System’s two new hospital presidents confirmed Monday that all five of the system’s hospitals — Westmoreland, Frick, Latrobe, Butler Memorial and Clarion — are part of the system’s future.

“Our leadership team right now strongly believes that it’s essential for us to have the five community hospitals in place, because they all have a special purpose for care for the community,” said Brian Fritz, who is president of Frick, Latrobe and Westmoreland hospitals.

The health system formed from the merger of Butler Health System and Excela Health in January. It has faced financial difficulties since and lost more than $62 million over the nine-month period ending March 31. Independence has cut 226 positions this year.

While some locations within the health system may have specialities in one particular area of care, Karen Allen, president of Butler Memorial and Clarion, said most services will be available throughout the region.

“Our goal is not to remove critical services from the communities that we serve,” she said. “We don’t want to remove those services.”

“The majority of the services that we provide, we now have a population large enough to support those at all five hospitals,” Fritz added. “Sub-sub-specialty high-end work, where the patient need is much smaller but there is a need, those are scenarios where it would make sense maybe to have it at one location.”

“As health care evolves and changes, and a lot of our inpatient activity continues to transform into the outpatient community, we have to make sure that what we do in the hospitals continues to evolve with those trends,” he said.

New leadership roles

The new presidents were officially announced in July to lead the two sets of facilities that make up Independence’s hospital sector. Both held leadership positions in multiple departments during their careers.

They are responsible for operations at their assigned facilities and oversee departments including pharmaceutical, surgical, lab, radiology, cardiology and nursing services. They report to President and CEO Ken DeFurio.

While Independence is now a single system, having hospital leaders who have experience with their respective regions helps promote expertise and local understanding, Fritz said.

“Every roof, every building, every floor, every basement, every supply closet in all three of these hospitals, I’ve been in,” Fritz said of his experience shadowing leaders in the Westmoreland County hospitals earlier in his career.

“Our organization is still new, and we’re still learning about each other,” he said. “In order to try to make the merger as seamless as possible, who would be the person locally that has history, knows the medical staff, the nursing staff, the local communities, to make sure that they can still oversee the part of the organization that have a level of expertise?”

Growth and challenges

DeFurio cited economic pressures from the pandemic, staff shortages, inflation, cost increases, declines in reimbursement rates and the stock market as contributing to the system’s financial struggles in a letter to staff in February.

In an interview with the Trib in June, DeFurio said he was “confident that we are going to come out of this in a very strong place.”

The two presidents also see potential for optimism and growth amidst the system’s financial struggles.

“We realize we have to be dedicated and diligent, but we’re very confident in our turnaround plans,” Allen said. “In health care, everything is always changing. You always have to be watching the environment and scanning to determine what is it that we need to do, where do we need to shift. I don’t know that you’ll ever be done making sure that you are providing efficient, quality care.”

Fritz sees expansion in outpatient facilities and the moving of some types of procedures from hospitals to outpatient centers as a health care industry trend that is likely to push change at Independence.

“We talk about the health care environment being challenging, but there’s also stories of expansion,” said Fritz, citing the upcoming opening of an outpatient facility in Connellsville to feed Frick Hospital. “That type of growth and service enhancement is happening throughout the system, and that will help point us in the right direction as well.”

Building long-term plans

Allen cited transparency and higher education collaboration programs as important to retention and recruiting at Independence. A nurse extern program that brought caregivers into Butler and Clarion will be coming soon to Westmoreland Hospital, she said.

At Butler, the program helped bring the hospital’s use of “travel” or “agency” nurses down to zero.

“Like every hospital in the country, people are anxious,” Allen said of staff concerns and anxiety amid the system’s struggles. She said Independence schedules “leadership rounding” visits in the system’s facilities that allow discussion with staff and providers about their concerns. “I think it’s being transparent with our staff and letting them know what is going on.”

She said the culture of valuing employees at Butler and Excela facilities are similar.

“We try to treat our employees every day like they’re the most important thing in the world, because they are,” she said. “We realize how valuable they are. The work that they do every day is difficult. We try to acknowledge them and recognize them, do some fun stuff, and make the environment a place you want to come to. I see people truly care about each other in these hospitals.”

Mapping the road ahead

The two presidents are working with other members of the leadership team in a “summer of strategic planning,” Fritz said.

The immediate to-do list, according to Allen, centers around merging the long-term strategic plans of both sides of Independence Health System, and searching for areas of growth for the future.

Looking to the upcoming year, Allen sees evolution and change at Independence as inevitable.

“I think it will be different next year,” she said. “We’re always looking at opportunities — where can we grow? There’s lots of examples in all of our counties that we serve of growth. Brian and I have worked very closely together to compare and contrast how things work at both places, and we’re taking best practices, and we’re moving forward.”