Years ago, San Francisco-based Dignity Health began a mission to expand its health system to Arizona. The process didn't end up going according to plan right off the bat.
"We identified locations based on where didn't have access, and also based on where there was population growth either currently happening or projected to happen," Gregg Davis, chief strategy officer of Dignity, said at the Becker's Hospital Review 7th Annual Meeting in Chicago on April 28.
"One of our challenges as a system, and I think many other face this, was the ability to secure capital in a capital-strained environment," Mr. Davis said. "That slowed us down and, typical of a health system, we're not as agile as we'd like to be. So in a 7-year period we opened one."
At that point, Dignity approached Adeptus Health to form a partnership that would help the system develop a vision for freestanding emergency departments in Phoenix.
"From a Dignity Health perspective, we're a system that embraces partnership," Mr. Davis said. "Many times those partnerships enable us to move faster than we could alone. [This partnership] allowed us to fill out our access points in a much more timely fashion than we could on our own."
Working with Adeptus, Dignity was able to operationalize their plan for breaking into the freestanding ED market in Phoenix as a joint venture
Through its partnership with Adeptus Health, Dignity Health created a variety of access points for care in just a year and half, including seven free standing emergency departments and one micro-hospital. Mr. Gregg says the partnership has paid off from a quality perspective, patient experience perspective and business perspective,.
"I think the criteria and the process that Adeptus put in place to identify appropriate locations where there is a need for freestanding EDs are exceeding the budgeted volumes we expected," Mr. Davis said. "But most importantly, and this was critical for us, is the true alignment between our organizations to ensure we're delivering a quality product, meeting the needs of patients and being respectful of our brand is where we've had the greatest success."