Denise Brooks-Williams stepped into her role as executive vice president and COO of Henry Ford Health on Oct. 1, coinciding with the Detroit-based health system's official launch of its joint venture with Ascension Michigan.
Approximately 50 days into the position, Ms. Brooks-Williams told Becker's she is optimistic about the potential of the joint venture, which encompasses approximately 50,000 employees across more than 550 sites in Michigan under Henry Ford Health.
In an interview, Ms. Brooks-Williams, formerly the executive vice president and CEO of care delivery system operations at Henry Ford Health, shared her top priorities for the first year, her approach to integrating the joint venture, and her vision for how the partnership will advance health equity and access.
Editor's note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: In your new role as COO, what are your top priorities for the first year, and how do you plan to address them?
Denise Brooks-Williams: My first objective is to meet our new colleagues and ensure that we are establishing culture together. We're really excited because we know that that was one of the things that brought the joint venture together — the great similarities between the Henry Ford Health culture and the Ascension Michigan culture.
The second is looking at what our operating model will be. We're evolving that as a result of the joint venture. So a lot of time is being spent on how we are going to structure ourselves from an operating model perspective. [Next] will be, how are we going to create leadership systems? How are we going to work together?
The last part is ensuring that we're operating efficiently. Looking at where we, Henry Ford and Ascension Michigan, stand with our budgets. Our budget years are not the same. So really looking at how we'll ensure that we have the right data and information to manage and ensure that our quality and safety remains high.
Also, what tools do we have to ensure that we'll be in alignment? We are not right now on the same electronic medical record platform. So some of that is really just putting in structures to ensure that we have line of sight of what's going on.
Q: How will the new joint venture between Henry Ford and Ascension Michigan impact patient care and service delivery across the region?
DBW: Our anticipation is it's going to have a positive impact on both patient care and just overall care delivery in the region. We're coming together. So we know initially that creates access because you are going to be able to pull together two world-class systems and really create an opportunity from the primary care continuum all the way through complex care.
We also know that we can coordinate care well. We have our tertiary and quaternary site, which is our Henry Ford Hospital, which becomes now very easy from a transfer and accessibility perspective to some of the other sites that are joining the system.
And when we are fully integrated, the network will occur over a period of time. It will make the journey very seamless for patients in our community.
Q: What challenges do you anticipate as you lead the integration of operations in the joint venture, and how will you approach them?
DBW: I wouldn’t necessarily say challenges, but definitely opportunities. I mentioned that one of the significant investments that we're excited about will be moving our electronic medical record platforms to be the same. We'll be transitioning the legacy Ascension facilities onto the Epic platform, which is the platform Henry Ford currently utilizes.
This is going to honestly facilitate the integration, if you can imagine, because it'll benefit our patients and our care teams by having that one universal platform. So, it's an opportunity. I don't look at it as a challenge, but we will need that to be fully integrated. And so, we anticipate that occurring over the next 18 to 24 months.
Q: How do you see this joint venture advancing Henry Ford's and Ascension Michigan's goals for healthcare equity?
DBW: We're bringing together two systems that have had a significant focus on health equity, and I think the joint venture will just enhance and increase that. We know that it's going to contribute to the wellness of the community. We've already begun, as an example, to bring together our two community health departments to understand what programs already exist and how we can accelerate those.
We also have our population health and value-based care initiatives that are underway, and so we're looking at how those will be able to be aligned. We're not just letting it happen coincidentally. We are continuing to focus on our healthcare equity and access agendas. And because of the strengths in both of the systems as we come together, we believe that it's going to be enhanced.
Q: What considerations or insights would you share with leaders looking at similar initiatives, like a joint venture or M&A strategy, as they plan for 2025?
DBW: If you're looking at your M&A potential in your community, doing it along the lines of strategically — how does it serve the communities that might come together? — is going to be, to me, a much more strategic way to view it than saying just scale for scale's sake.
The work that we do is in service to communities and making sure that we can create access. If we can improve or enhance quality, enhance the complexity of care, as an example, that might be able to be better coordinated. In our instance, bringing together organizations that have like values so that you're able to advance the care even faster.
So definitely, the strategic pillars around why you would come together, I think, would be much more important than just getting bigger. You want to come together where you can create overall value for the communities that are going to be served. And that can be variable. You could be bringing different types of value in those communities, but certainly, it should be strategic in nature — around how you're either going to reduce a certain issue or illness, how you can enhance equity, how you can provide greater integrated services, bring services that are needed in a community to be available — something in that vein. I think it's more helpful than just to say we're going to do it because we want to get bigger.