Sacramento, Calif.-based Sutter Health restructured it's divisional leadership last October, naming six market presidents and six chief medical officers to lead dyad partnerships for more efficient decision-making and improved access to care.
Many health systems have undergone leadership reorganization in the last few years and change is always a hard, but necessary step to growth. One of the first pivots Sutter's executive team made was aligning market presidents and chief medical officers around one incentive plan, down from 39 different plans historically.
"To go from 39 to one incentive plan provided a great sense of clarity for the organization around a balanced scorecard," said Mark Sevco, senior vice president and COO of Sutter, on a recent episode of "Becker's Healthcare Podcast." "We have really put up top priorities across the organization for our leaders around patient experience, employee engagement, our growth and access quality. If we do those things well, our finances will take care of themselves and we'll continue to be able to reinvest in our people and technologies and our community."
Mr. Sevco is working with his colleagues to ignite a deeper level of operational rigor in the dyad operating model to drive better results. He asked his team to lean in and focus on problem-solving together. Mr. Sevco is also clear about organizational deadlines, timelines and project management.
"There's a lot of opportunity to do things better in healthcare, so I think that the aligned incentive brings us all together," he said.
The aligned incentives and operational excellence extends to the health system's medical groups as well. Sutter aims to enhance relationships with physicians and grow its network in the coming years. The health system is transitioning physicians from work relative value unit-based pay to value-based reimbursement. With this shift, Sutter aims to reduce the total cost of care and reimburse providers based on quality access. The physician group is setting up a clinically integrated network of physicians to align employed with private practice physicians as an accountable care organization.
"We have eight aligned medical groups across Northern California and it's really been an extraordinary opportunity to get to know the CEOs and medical directors of all those medical groups," Mr. Sevco said. "We spend a lot of time with them. How can we help them? How can we be more supportive to help their growth? The aligned incentive plan translates across all of our divisions, markets and with our physicians."
Seven months in, has the move made a difference?
"We had a great 2023," said Mr. Sevco. "We hit all of our measures and exceeded our targets for growth and financials. We've done really well, and as most organizations do, set higher expectations going into 2024. We're working really hard to make a difference for the patients that we look to serve."